Marcuse, "Images of Orpheus and Narcissus"

[Dave Monroe]

... from Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry
into Freud (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966 [1955]) ...

If Prometheus is the culture-hero of toil, productivity, and progress
through repression, then the symbols of another reality principle must
sought at the opposite pole.  Orpheus and Narcissus (like Dionysus to
whom they are akin: the antogonisty of the god who sanctions the logic
of domination, the realm of reason) sand for a very different reality.
They have not become the culture-heroes of the Western world .... (162)

Literature has preserved their image.  (162)

[Rilke, Gide, Valery, Baudelaire]

The images of Orpheus and Narcissus reconcile Eros and Thanatos.  (164)

... the redemption of pleasure, the halt of time, the the absorption of
death; silence, sleep, night, paradise--the Nirvana principle not as
death but as life.  (164)

In contrast to the images of the Promethean culture-heroes, those of the
Orphic and Narcissistic world are essentially unreal and
unrealistic.They designate an "impossible" attitude and existence.  The
deeds of the culture-heroes also are "impossible," in that they are
miraculous, incredible, superhuman.  However, their objective and their
"meaning" are not alien to the reality; on the contrary, tehy are
useful.  The promote and strengthen this reality; tehy do not explode
it.  But the Orphic-Narcissistic images do explode it .... (165)

The classical tradition associates Orpheus with the introduction of
homosexuality.... he protests against the repressive order of
procreative sexuality.  (171)