The ways that we interpret myths reveal things about ourselves. I go looking to myth for truths, as I think a lot of interpreters do, and sometimes tell myself that what I want more than anything is the truth: the unilateral interpretation of a story that captures every facet, every thread, of a narrative. But that sort of thing is hard to find, except with patience and reflection and time.

All of which is to say: the story of Orpheus and Eurydice means something to me, and I'm still feeling out just how deep that meaning runs. Maybe it's facile, but really, only time will tell.

If you're unfamiliar with this myth, here's a brief summary:

In some ways, it's similar to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, with Lot's wife looking back at their dying city and turning into a column of salt. And there's certainly something powerful about the idea of not being allowed to look back. But there the similarities end.

For me, interpreting the myth has to start with the very end: why does Orpheus look back? More enigmatically, why is this the bargain Hades makes with him?

This is a story about death, of course, but it's also a story about love. And my take is by no means the canon take here, but: I think that this is a story about mortal love, the sort of love that's capable of dying. This is a story of two couples, one undying and one already dead. And it's a story about a man moving a goddess to tears with the song of his love, and another man testing that singer, and the singer failing that test.

All these pieces feel related, to me.

Because what's beautiful about the non-fairytale kind of love is that it's not guaranteed to last forever. And that's not just a fact of death: it's a fact of life as well. To live is to move and to grow and to change, and love—which in its only true form is a creation between two people—is not about the same people, ten years in, that it was in the beginning. To grow sometimes means to grow apart. (Which is why another gorgeous Greek myth about love, the one about Philemon and Baucis, ends with the dying lovers turning into a pair of trees eternally entwined. The dream of eternity is still a dream of growth, but one of growth together, not of life unchanging.)

Love is not always romantic, but romantic love is the stuff of grandeur, the stuff of conflagrations. We call love a flame, we call it all-consuming, but the thing about passionate flames is, they have a way of leaving ashes in their wake. But we don't want the flames to die. Early on, when those sparks first become more than sparks, the hope is that this will last forever, this will change our lives, this will make us who we were always meant to be—because, in this version of the story, we are each of us incomplete, and only "finished" when we find someone who reveals our truest form. But really, who can ever tell?

Love is a test of faith, and it's no surprise that faith is at the heart of many (if not all) religions. But faith can only ever be as strong as doubt. That which you refuse to doubt is that which you can never have faith in—because faith is a test, not a static trait. Faith is tension; it is uncertainty; it is the feeling of finding your way home again that you can only know once you are really, truly lost. Doubt, and its cousin skepticism, are the byproducts of our awarenesses that life, and people, and we, are stranger than can ever possibly be anticipated, that there is no end of unexpected revelation. And revelation, in turn, is of course synonymous with apocalypse. (Not only is the book of Revelation frequently translated as a tale about the end of the world, but the Greek word from which "apocalypse" is derived means "revelation" more than it means "ending.")

So Orpheus travels to the literal end of the world to get Eurydice back, and the damnedest thing is he gets her back, and the even damnedester thing is he loses her once again. For the consummate artist, the passionate romantic, even the fiercest love must one day die.

But this isn't just a story about love, or about death. It's a story about doubt. Because Orpheus, not Hades, kills Eurydice the second time. And I don't think the moral is just that we should never doubt the ones we love—this isn't a parable with a "lesson" at the end. I think the point, if anything, is that we do doubt love—not can or should or often or must, but flat-out do. To love is to doubt. Because love is mortal, as are we all, and to love is to ponder love's death, as surely as to be aware of life is to be aware of the short, swift drop at the very end.

Perhaps Persephone was moved to tears because Orpheus sang of love eternal, love divine, love undying. And perhaps she cried because she knew, before Orpheus did, because mortal love is not. Perhaps she knew, even then, that Orpheus would look back, or that Hades would ask Orpheus to prove what he could not: that his song spoke the truth, that his love was as eternal as the sweetness in his voice attested, that this too would never falter. And perhaps that was the nature of Hades' test.

But that presumes that Orpheus's song was about a certain kind of love, or that it spoke a lie. Rather, not a lie, but a hope: he sung of what he wished was, and lost Eurydice because of the simple fact that what he wished for wasn't to be. Perhaps his song was of longing, rather than of love. And the nature of desire is that, one way or the other, it dies—and dies more surely when it's fulfilled than when it isn't, because hope and faith are not one and the same.

In that version of the story, Persephone weeps because she hears a story of love more uncertain than her marriage of spring and winter—or because she hears a song of spring, and knows too-well that winter will inevitably follow.

But is that truly a song to move the gods? Are we doing Orpheus a disservice when we assume that he, too, is a cautionary tale about hubris, about the arrogance of thinking that your love might sing itself more truthfully than the inevitability of the gods?

What if Orpheus, too, knew that he was fated to look back?

What if he knew all along that the ending was guaranteed from the beginning, and sang about that too?

There are songs about love, and there are songs about grief. Songs about remembrance, about acceptance, about doubting, not love, but whether love was worth it. Whether love is worth it, when you know all along that this, too, will surely die.

Perhaps Orpheus sang a song of spring and winter mixed, and Persephone wept because she heard, not his story, but her own. Perhaps what Orpheus sang was: you too will blossom and die. You will blossom again, and die again, and your death shall be the blossoming of your love, just as your rebirth shall be your separation.

Perhaps what Orpheus wished for was a miracle, but not the miracle we think. Perhaps, rather than wishing for life, all he wished for was to see Eurydice one last time. To love her as he had loved her: not steadily and calmly, but with such agonizing doubt and longing that the uncertainty of her was death and life at once.

Perhaps what he came to ask of Hades was: Give me one last moment of faith in her. Give me an eternity of doubt, an eternity of unknowing, an eternity to hope that love is the gentle touch of her fingertips to mine. Give me one last chance to look back, one last chance to believe in her, one last chance to realize what she meant to me, so I will always remember what I miss.

Maybe he looked, in that last moment, because it was the final moment when he could look back. Because, in that moment, he had the miracle of love: the proof and the ephemerality all at once. And maybe Hades blessed him with a walk just long enough that Orpheus would have to look, rather than a shorter, doubtless walk that would leave him with no kind of love or faith at all.

At the end of the myth, we are unsure whether it is even in Hades' prerogative to let the dead go back. The gods are not omnipotent. Their domains are often the extent of their reach. Who's to say that Eurydice, upon reaching sunlight, wouldn't immediately turn to salt the way Lot's wife did, looking back? Who's to say that what Hades granted wasn't the greatest blessing he could have possibly allowed? He cannot love his wife without killing spring. How do we know that the bargain he offered Orpheus was any less than the bargain which he himself was forced to suffer?

Perhaps Persephone wept because this is love, for the humans and the gods combined. Perhaps love is the fragile seed from which trees grow, not just the trees themselves. Perhaps the lives we build upon our love are rooted in an uncertainty which never goes away, a longing which never ceases, just as faith gets mightier the more our underlying doubt persists. Orpheus got more for his song than any of us will ever get for ours. Perhaps our tragedy is that, when we hear his story, we can only think of it as tragic, because we too will never stop doubting or longing or loving or building our lives upon the ghostly touch of love, or praying for the one vision that could make us believe. Perhaps our tragedy is not that such a certainty is impossible, but that even that miraculous surety could never be enough.

In one version of the tale, Orpheus abstains from women after Eurydice's death, turning his from Dionysus's revelry to Apollo's sun. In this version, Orpheus is ripped to pieces by female worshippers of Dionysus, for reneging on his faith and theirs. He is murdered in an orgy, because their attempts to stone him fail, for even sticks and stones refuse to touch a man who sings so beautifully. How fitting, that a man like that should die for breaking up with a god, or that he should be killed, not by that god himself, but by the ones who chose to love him.

Anyway Hadestown was pretty great. I'm not sure I felt the ending tho