(Prose & Poetry) Eurydice by Susan Hawthrone

When you subsume yourself in mythic figures, they often return under different guises. In the early 1990s I wrote this poem.

EURYDICE

Orpheus sings as he returns
from the dead.

Eurydice cried out, Don’t
leave me here like this.

Eurydice’s eyes are dry
with fear and anger

As darkness closes in on her
once again.

This poem is from my collection Bird and Other Writings on Epilepsy (1993). In the poem I am trying to find a way to convey the experience of loss of consciousness. Orpheus, because of his talent for music, is told that Eurydice can accompany him out of the Underworld, but the condition is that he does not look back until they are both in the upper world. Yes, Orpheus looks back, thinking he has been tricked. And so Eurydice disappears once again.

The figure of Eurydice is very dear to me. In one version of the story, she died when Aristaeus pursued her (I assume with intentions of raping her, as so many did). She stepped on a viper and died. Ovid, however, says that Aristaeus was not the cause, but rather that Eurydice was dancing with naiads on her wedding day when she trod on the snake. There are so many stories hidden in here about assault, about the power of music, about men’s fallibility, about the importance of snakes (sacred to Persephone, Queen of the Underworld) and perhaps about the patriarchal desire to eradicate the practice of women’s rituals passed down through the generations.

In 2017, when my novel Dark Matters was published, I returned to the story of Eurydice. In this book, Eurydice is the great aunt of Kate (Ekaterina) and one of seven sisters in the generation of Kate’s grandmother, Maia.

And finally, Aunt Eurydice, she was always disappearing with her girlfriends. Eventually she went so far away, her sisters never saw her again. There are three photos of her. In one she is standing alone. It is such a small photograph I can’t see the features of her face. In the second photo, because I don’t know her, I cannot pick her out in the one taken with so many of the sisters in Paris in the early 1920s. What were you doing there? Living it up? Finding love or a companion?

The last photo is of Eudy standing on the moors or some other wind-blasted place with another woman. Who is she?

Ruby. You are the mystery woman in the photo with Eurydice. I found your name in a letter which was signed, Eudy and Ruby.

Here, the reference is twofold. The disappearance of lesbians from history and, in this case, from family history. Like many lesbians, Eudy, felt the need to go into exile, because remaining in one’s home country would bring too much shame. Eudy’s life period is that of the late nineteenth century to mid-twentieth century and she goes into exile from Australia around 1919 to Britain. The other reference is to the disappearances of those who resisted the Pinochet regime in Chile, some of whom were lesbians. This is another narrative strand in the novel.

Rewritings of our history in myth is a way of excavating the unknown and the erased. So much of women’s history has been disappeared and when you dig into the furrows, you can find those other disappearances that are due to disability, sexuality, race and ethnicity.

Bird and Other Writings on Epilepsy is available here and from online retailers: http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=48/

Dark Matters is available here and from online retailers: http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=297/

(Meet Mago Contributor) Susan Hawthorne.