Another of F. Holland Day’s dreamily beautiful Orpheus photographs, featuring (the also dreamily beautiful!) Nicola Giancola. At first I thought this a cropped detail of a photograph I had seen and shared before, but the angle changes between exposures.
Book Three in the Hades and Persephone series. Seventy years have passed since Elysion was created, and Persephone’s efforts to conceive a child with Hades have been in vain. But a secret rite on Samothrace might bend the Fates and give her all that they have dreamed of, or pave a path of untold suffering.
Chapter 8
Wind battered the west wall of the temple and guttered the torches. The winter had been a stormy one, a hard start to the season. The Thracians had worried that there hadn’t been enough sacrifices to Zeus at the Spring of Midas, The Arcadians swore that Poseidon had whipped up the seas in anger, and the Athenians worried that they hadn’t sent enough propitiations to Eleusis for Demeter.
But the summer had been kind to all. There were bountiful stores of grain— not just on Samothrace, but in every small village and great city in Hellas, Thrace, the islands and cities beyond. Orpheus stared out at the pool that dominated the center of the atrium. The oculus above and the slender clerestory windows had been sealed shut for winter, covered by tar-thatched reeds and battened down with hempen rope. It would keep the place warm for anyone seeking sanctuary. He reached the twelfth brazier and stoked it with an iron poker, the heat grown heavy beneath his woolen himation.
“Where did you hear the name Zagreus, hymnist?”
Every hair on his neck stood up. Orpheus stopped in his tracks and held his breath.
I can’t promise you fair sky above Can’t promise you kind road below But I’ll walk with you, my love Any way the wind blows
I finally finished my part for the amazing @signawyvern ‘s Hadestown Art Collab!! The backgrounds came out so lovely and I’m still ‘!!!’ over it (●´□`)♡
Take this voice, take these hands I can’t use them anyway Take this music and the memory Of the muse from which it came If it’s true what they say I’ll be on my way (x)
Im gonna be working on it in earnest this semester and hopefully have what I want done by the end of February or in time for my IB art show in… April? May? Who knows. So here’s a cast lineup type dealie while i figure out body types and heights.
From left to right we have the original willowy poet boyfriend™, the bad choice songbird, big mc huge large, our lady of the impossible waist to hip ratio, that one asshole and those three freaky ladies whose speech always rhymes.
album i would pay $$$ to watch as a stage musical: hadestownby anais mitchell
“what you gonna do when the chips are down?”
with; natalie dormer/lara pulver as either eurydice/persephone | jonny lee miller/benedict cumberbatch as either orpheus/hades (because i’m not totally stealing a page from boyle’s frankenstein no) (and also it’s totally not because these four are from elementary and sherlock)
sort of based off jdrox’s (and my own) need for a movie with natalie and lara together
lover, tell me if you can - who’s gonna buy the wedding bands? times being what they are; hard, and getting harder all the time
lover, when i sing my song all the rivers sing along, and they’re gonna break their banks for me to lay their gold around my feet, all a-flashing in the pan, all to fashion for your hand - the river’s gonna give us the wedding bands
doubt comes in with tricky fingers; doubt comes in with fickle tongues; doubt comes in, and my heart falters and forgets the songs it’s sung. where are you? where are you now?
Cinderbricks and razorwire Walls of iron and concrete Hound dogs howling round the gate Them dogs’ll lay down and play dead If you got the bones, if you got the bread But if all you got is your own two legs You best be glad you got ’em
ORPHEUS Wait for me, I’m coming Wait, I’m coming with you Wait for me, I’m coming too I’m coming to
HERMES You’re on the lam, you’re on the run Don’t give your name, you don’t have one And don’t look no one in the eye That town will try to suck you dry They’ll suck your brain, They’ll suck your breath They’ll pluck the heart right out your chest They’ll truss you up in your Sunday best And stuff your mouth with cotton
-“Wait for Me” from the folk opera/concept album Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell, a retelling of the myth of Orpheus set in post-apocalyptic Depression America. Srsly, one of the most beautiful things I’ve heard all year, so I made a painting.
Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus (1900), by J.W. Waterhouse
Orpheus played the lyre (small harp) with such skill and passion that he inspired even animals, trees and rocks. However, when he tried to revive his beloved wife Eurydice from the underworld, the helpers of Dionysus got so tired of his music that they killed him and threw his head and lyre into the river. The story is symbolizing the purity of art in a wretched society.
The two nymphs are the focal point of this painting. Their pale flesh stands out against the dark colours in the background. Only when one follows their line of sight, the head of Orpheus reveals itself in the water, next to a small waterlily. This is a trick Waterhouse used to avoid too much drama. The painting was displayed on the Royal Academy and sold to Alexander Henderson in 1901.
