PARADOXES IN THE STAGE INTERPRETATION OF THE MYTH OF ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE IN JEAN COCTEAU’S PLAY ORPHEUS

This article explores the peculiarities of the poetics of Jean Cocteau’s play Orpheus, written in 1926. The analysis of the paradoxical artistic thinking of the French artist in this renowned one-act drama of the mid-1920s is carried out within the context of a renewed interest in the image of Orpheus, the actualisation of which within European culture has always been accompanied by significant philosophical and aesthetic shifts since the 6th century BCE. Cocteau’s engagement with the myth of Orpheus follows the publication of Guillaume Apollinaire’s poetic book The Bestiary, or Procession of Orpheus (1911) as well as the staging of Claudio Monteverdi’s opera Orpheus, created in the early seventeenth century and staged on the Parisian stage in 1912 after a long period of oblivion. Cocteau’s one-act drama Orpheus, created against the background of the formation and development of avant-garde French drama, is poetic in structure, built upon the principles of intermediality (synthesis of the arts), and metaphysically oriented towards addressing fundamental existential questions. The thematic content of the work centers around the problematic juxtaposition of poetry and mundane life, love and loss, life and death, and the Apollonian and Dionysian principles (as conceptualized by Friedrich Nietzsche) within the realms of existential as well as artistic and aesthetic creativity – ontological and artistic contradictions revealing their unity within the paradox of individual existence. As a poet within the theatrical arts, J. Cocteau is interested in the challenges of artistic creativity, the nature of poetic talent, its potential, and its limitations. The playwright reinterprets the story of Orpheus’s descent into the realm of death, activating the ancient myth as an interpretive framework that does not negate but complements the religious (Christian) worldview. The theme of Orpheus can be regarded as central to the multifaceted oeuvre of the French artist, enabling comparisons between the 1926 play and Cocteau’s film Orpheus, which he directed and scripted in 1950, tracing the transformations that occur with the characters, as well as thematic and plot motifs in the author’s later artistic interpretation of the previous work.