Songs of old and songs of sorrow, songs and stories told through time, over and over, again and again. But why do we tell the tales we know? Why sing the songs with the saddest ends when we know what will come like sun meeting snow?
First, let’s look at what this is, this sense of the audience already knowing that which the characters have yet to discover. It is known as dramatic irony, for reasons I can only assume to be the helplessness of the audience to change the story they know so well. It may be the most heartbreaking kind of irony there is.
Take the myths; dramatic ones and comedy, the tragic ones of love and loss, like Orpheus and Eurydice. Particularly recently with the production of Hadestown popularising the myth of such a love that stands through death but not through doubt, we are left to wonder what makes us relive tragedies with the wound still fresh. Maybe because of the way it is told, maybe we fall in love with the relationship between the characters, or the characters themselves. Reading, or any other form of absorbing a story relies on the empathy of the audience in order for the words to take meaning, and the story to take life. If we cannot directly relate to Orpheus with his lyre and his quest in which success balanced not on bringing his love back from the underworld necessarily, but only that they should be together, we, as an audience, can empathize in the wanting for a relationship like that, which is why we can empathize with Hades for letting them leave. Letting them try.
‘And Orpheus turned.’
We can empathize with the doubt in Orpheus’ mind as he traveled, lacking the ability to see Eurydice, feel her touch, or hear her footfall behind him, not knowing if she was truly there, or if it was all a trick of the god to get him out of his domain. We know what it’s like to come within an inch of something you long for, only to make a mistake that costs your goal. We can relate to Orpheus through his wanting.
The line I’ve taken for this post, the title line, is taken from the portion of Percival Everett’s Frenzy, in which he details the myth of the star-crossed lovers in what I saw as an attempt of Dionysus to study humanity and the capabilities of the human heart, learning how far it can go. In the end of the observation, I believe he understands the passion, but not the point of it if it doesn’t always lead to satisfaction and often leads to pain. Frenzy in itself is a retelling of a myth, another old song to be sung, another that ends in disaster for most, if not all involved.
Perhaps then, it is the new style of telling of the ancient tales that captures our attention and keeps them from growing tired. Everett adds a philosophical aspect to the Bacchic story and an added humor; shows like Hadestown as well tell the tale in a new light with added poetry in its scenes, again adding another myth to juxtapose the main story. Both retellings, as many retellings do, add to the original stories with the aspects of the time period in which they are being retold, picking new things that best compliment the old.
We can also consider that people enjoy the melancholy or mournful from time to time. As the cliche goes, you can’t know joy without first knowing sorrow. Sometimes heartache, even secondhand can be so strong of a feeling that it wakes the senses, opens a deeper feeling for things than has been felt in a while. Or, sometimes it can just make you think about the world, think about why something failed, or why it was doomed to from the start. Orpheus’s sorrow was caused by the doubt that exists in human nature, Pentheus failed for his pride in The Bacchae, and other characters from other classics, other epics or tales from when show different things, tell different things to those willing to look and think on them.
Maybe we simply commit to retellings because the story strikes something in us. Maybe we enjoy the plot as well as characters and lessons learned. Sometimes the ties of another time and hint of magic are enough to strike our fancy, whether it turns out well or woeful, and we find something that we can embellish upon and add an air of our own. Really, these stories stay with us because they connect us in our joys and missteps, and tales older than modern time have a way of peaking our interest no matter the content, as a way of knowing that the ancients felt and danced and loved and mourned with as much passion as the present, knowing that something exists outside of time, for us today.