Tony Harrison: Metamorpheus

Length / Form  Film Poem

Allusion to Classical figure Phanocles, Orpheus, Thracian women, Eurydice, Kalais, Alcaeus/Alkaios, Terpandros, Arion, Sappho.

Allusion to Classical place Thrace, Lesbos, Hades, Antissa, Methymna

Relationship to Classical text The Professor remarks that there is no definitive version of the death of Orpheus, only literary representations (CFP, p.387). He suggests that Phanocles’ depiction, in which Orpheus is torn to pieces by Thracian women because he spurned them for the beautiful boy Kalais, offers ‘a gay reformulation’ of the myth. Orpheus’ head and lyre are carried over the sea to wash ashore at Lesbos).

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts The Professor translates Phanocles from Otto Kern’s  Orphicorum Fragmenta (CFP,  p.387 and p.397).

Classical/post-Classical intertexts Toys with a ‘documentary format’. Initially presents a Classics Professor tracing the myth of Orpheus through Thrace (modern Bulgaria) and the journey of the mythic poet’s severed head down the Hebrus and over the sea to Lesbos. Scenes become increasingly surreal as the film progresses.

Comment Considers the limitations of scholarship as opposed to poetry (‘I think it needs that ancient scream / to pierce the skulls of Academe’: CFP, p.397)

Note Directed by Peter Symes. Tony Harrison plays the Poet and Oliver Taplin the Professor. Dialogue for the Professor written by Taplin (who is Emeritus Professor of Classics at Oxford University). Text published in CFP, Faber, 2007.