Eurydice’s Curse

The prospect of death is one of J. M. Coetzeeâ s central and enduring concerns. As David Attwell observes in his biography, â The most trenchant of the purposes of Coetzeeâ s metafiction . . . is that it is a means whereby he challenges himself with sharply existential questionsâ . My claim in this essay is that Coetzee uses the act of writing existentially to orient himself and his readers to the prospect of death. I argue that Coetzee treats the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as a story about how to deal with the prospect of death. What seems to terrify the Coetzeean protagonist is the thought of the absolute solitariness of death. I call this the curse of Eurydice. Eurydiceâ s fate in the myth is to be left alone in the Underworld, dying for a second time after her impatient lover turns to gaze at her before they have safely reached the surface of the earth. To take Eurydiceâ s point of view in the story is to begin to glimpse the solitariness of death. One of the roles of women in Coetzeeâ s fiction, I suggest, is to mitigate the male characterâ s fear of this solitariness by conducting him to the threshold of death, but no further

Absolute (philosophy · Art · Biography · Character (mathematics · Curse · Epistemology · Existentialism · Literature · Mythology · Psychoanalysis · Reflexive pronoun · Theology · Philosophy · Psychology · South African History and Culture