The Triumph of the Second Orpheus: How Death Flees from the Victorious Dead
The dead don’t need the living; it’s the living who need the dead.
The idea of descending into the Underworld to rescue one’s beloved is as ancient as the world itself. Very few venture there. Orpheus, the son of Apollo, loved the beautiful nymph Eurydice so much that he decided to follow her to hell and face Hades himself.
He goes down with his celestial music and accomplishes the unthinkable. After hearing his irresistible lyre, Hades grants him permission to take Eurydice back to the land of the living on one condition: he must not look back at her until they reach the surface.
Orpheus failed. Overcome by fear and anxiety, he looked back and lost Eurydice again. Virgil, who died in 12 B.C., described the failure of Orpheus in Georgics. Virgil knew that the living could not rescue the dead. What he didn’t know in 12 B.C. was that there would soon be another Orpheus descending from Heaven who would love his bride so much as to follow it all the way to Hades.
Unlike Orpheus, he would go there already dead. The living cannot rescue the dead. Only the dead can rescue the dead… and the living. The Second Orpheus descended into Hades on Friday with the Song of Triumph, and death itself fled. The gates of hell could not resist his Song and crumbled. The harrowing of hell is the Orpheus myth retold and re-enacted.
Death is not afraid of the living. Death is only afraid of the victorious dead. Only the victorious dead can rescue both the dead and the living. That’s why it says in the Book of Hebrews that we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses — the victorious dead — who can help us run the race set before us.
Virgil didn’t know that in 12 B.C. But in 1321, Dante took him down to his Inferno, and Virgil saw the harrowing of hell and the reversal of Orpheus’s failure with his own eyes. He also saw the victorious dead — Beatrice, St. Lucia, and Virgin Mary — who orchestrated Dante’s rescue.
There are invisible powers in this world, a host of the victorious dead, who orchestrate our rescue this very minute. We need them because they are infused with the victorious Song of the Second Orpheus. Death flees from them. When we listen to their voices, they lead us out of our Inferno. As G.K. Chesterton said,
“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.”
The voices of the dead are precious. They are the Song of the Second Orpheus that shatters the bars of hell. Like Obi Wan Canobi, they whisper in our ear when we feel weak and lost: “Trust the force, Luke.” Like Beatrice, they bring guides into our lives when we are in the midst of the “dark forest” and attacked by the lynx, the lion, and the she-wolf.
They are like the song of Luthien Tinuviel in Morgoth’s fortress Angband who sang before Morgoth, and her music was so enchanting and filled with magic that it lulled Morgoth and all his servants into a deep sleep. She did it to rescue her beloved Beren.
The dead don’t need the living; it’s the living who need the dead. We need to hear the Song of the Second Orpheus to run the race set before us. All we need to do is give ear and a vote to the “democracy of the dead.”
I love that phrase: “the victorious dead.” This is why people— modern people— who deny the past can have no future. They believe that ignorance and half-baked ideology will produce a brave utopia. They don’t see how the dead have shaped them. They deny the strength of their ancestors.
In their flight from “determinism” and “repetition” they think they will escape a dire fate. I think modern people believe the future is a blank slate if only they can forget and ignore all that went before, good and evil alike. But their fear is founded in an error— they presume that human beings are fundamentally a product of material forces. This is Marxism.
But to call upon the dead, to recognize the power of the dead to inform us, is the way to hope, the way forward. The dead have such riches to impart, if only we can pay attention.
"The living cannot rescue the dead. Only the dead can rescue the dead… and the living.".
...and the living...perfect twist i needed! ty!