Η ομιλούσα κεφαλή στην έξοδο του ορφικού μύθου: Ενατένιση μιας πτυχής από τη λογοτεχνική τύχη του Ορφέα σε συνάρτηση με κάποιες από τις εικαστικές της αποτυπώσεις στους νεότερους κυρίως χρόνους

Abstract

This report proposes a reading of the last episode of the Orpheus myth in the light of a comparative and structural-functional approach, based on samples from related treatises in modern literature dealing with some of its artistic representations, especially during the period from the Renaissance onwards. In the first chapter the sub-theme of Orpheus' death rises το prominence and the shift of our attention to this is triggered by a general interest concerning the anthropological validity of emblematic body parts in various myths. The second chapter explores the central mytheme of the last episode, the chopped head, in its course through legends, customs and art handlings, emphasising the importance of formative arts' narratives. Ιn the third chapter main points of the previous two are drawn, on the occasion of visiting key examples of the motif's literaty exploitations. The general opinion is put forward that all are subject to an optimism about the length of days (the "duration"), grafted with the traumatic eclipse of the individual ideal woman of the past. Ιn the last chapter it is argued that optimism about the "duration" outflanks in the concluding sub-theme of the ancient myth all tendentiousness of the religious movement (i.e. orphism), and exalts its images as the arguably earliest allegoty of auto-referentiality, and at the same time as the idea of the aesthetic pleasure's perennial power, beyond the realistic assumptions of civilization. The psychoanalytic connotations of such a reception abound. This self-awareness process imposes against natural order the allegation of intellectual "immortality" as the heyday of speech auto-reference.