Hi everyone. I'm Josh, and this is The Emerald,

currents and trends through a mythic lens.

The podcast where we explore an ever-changing world and our lives in it

through the lens of myth, story, and imagination.

The Emerald.

All that's happening on this green jewel in space. I had heard of him, of course.

Everyone has at least heard the name.

Something about a journey to the underworld to find a lost bride,

a failed agreement not to look back.

And once you've heard the name, if you start looking for

him, you'll find him everywhere. He's stirred the imagination of poets and writers and artists for

30 centuries. Unlike some of his contemporaries, who faded back into the groves of trees where they

were born, he's had a remarkable staying power. Where you least expect him,

there he is. Rilke wrung his pale heart out to him. He finds his way into Shakespeare and Nietzsche,

into the librettos of Stravinsky and List. He's the subject of ballets and sonnets and even avant-garde

films. I'm speaking, of course, of Orpheus. But like many figures of ancient

history or myth, he was, for me, always a little two-dimensional. I couldn't yet hear him breathing

beneath the stars, couldn't yet hear the sound of him tuning his lyre in the forest groves,

preparing to sing, couldn't see those open eyes

gazing skyward to receive the song that was about to leap forth, a song so powerful it would set

the stone skipping. Until I read Anne Rose's remarkable book, Orpheus, the song of life,

if you are a lover of word and poetry and song and nature, you have to read this book

...