Midway through his novel Aurélia, Gérard de Nerval pauses to evoke Orpheus, and the crucial moment of the play when the hero turns and sees his wife snatched back into hell and cries out, uselessly, "Eurydice, Eurydice."
The scene must have had resonance for Nerval, who certainly understood that even the most superhuman effort may end in failure, and who had every reason to say "ma seule étoile est morte."
For whatever reason, that passage in Aurélia produced from me this drawing, in which the face of the one you love is reduced to a mask peering up from the underworld. Or from a wall in the British Museum, as it happens.
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