Sonnets to Orpheus
Fifty-five sonnets written in under three weeks as a grave-marker for a nineteen-year-old dancer, addressed to the singer whose voice raised a tree in the ear and who is at home on both sides of death. Mirrors, fruit, a horse loose in a field at night, machines that threaten to take the word away from us, and a standing instruction to praise even when what is praised is loss. Finished at Muzot in February 1922, in the same weeks that broke a ten-year block on the Duino Elegies.
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Lineage
- reworks ↑ Orpheus and Eurydice
- companion to ↑ Duino Elegies
Attributes
Genre
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Conflict
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 67% · 13 shared
- 61% · 13 shared
- 61% · 13 shared
- 57% · 10 shared
- 51% · 10 shared
- 51% · 10 shared