Meditations on Orpheus: Love, Death, and Transformation

This book provides an array of meditations on the myth of Orpheus developed across three phases – syllogistic, phenomenological, and poetic (dithyrambic) – juxtaposing over fifty full color images throughout, providing a new translation of Rilke’s poem “Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes” (2016) by Frank Scalambrino. These meditations revolve around topics spanning Platonic philosophy, Jungian psychodynamics, philosophical alchemy, and existentialism. Taking the myth of Orpheus & Eurydice as a point of departure, Scalambrino examines the presence of Orpheus in the Western philosophical tradition, while guiding our meditations regarding love, death, and transformation. Scalambrino invokes a number of poets (including Keats, Rilke, and Valéry), painters (including Bouguereau, Leighton, and Draper), and ancient myths (including Dionysus, Persephone, Cupid, and Psyche) with a focus on providing philosophical insight into the more mysterious metaphysical dimensions of death from the perspective of the soul’s journey through life.