GRGR(4) - Slothrop Orpheus

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

> From: s~Z
> >Here are the parallels as outlined by Kathryn Hume in _Pynchon's
> >Mythography_:
> >
>

 Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
 Clos'd o'er the head of your lov'd Lycidas?
 For neither were ye playing on the steep
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
 Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
 Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.
 Ay me! I fondly dream
`Had ye bin there'--for what could that have done?
 What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
 The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
 Whom universal nature did lament,
 When by the rout that made the hideous roar
  His gory visage down the stream was sent,
  Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?

Orpheus, the mythical originator of poetry and song, was reputed to be the
son of the Muse
    Calliope, and gifted with the power of charming by his music all animate
and inanimate
    things, which subsequently united in lamenting his death. After his
final loss of his wife,
    Eurydice, he wandered through Thrace mourning for her, where he was
encountered by the
    wild female worshippers of Bacchus. Enraged by his repelling of their
advances, they
    hurled their spears at him, but these, charmed by his music, fell
harmless to the ground,
    whereupon the women set up a loud cry, drowning the music, and the
spears took effect.
    They cast the head of Orpheus and his lyre into the river Hebrus which
bore them out to sea
    and cast them up on the island of Lesbos.


Yes, in Milton's Lycidas this is pretty much what we find, but in Pynchon,
old Orpheus makes the KK look like so many fortune cookies. Got milk?