verse renderings of the myth. Here we have a succession of actions,
indeed, quite corresponding to those of the prose story. But these images
of action, succeeding one another in time, are now evoked by successive
musical sounds,--the sounds being, as in prose, arbitrary word-symbols of
image and idea,--only that in poetry the sounds have a certain ordered
arrangement which heightens the emotional effect of the images evoked.
Prose writer and poet might mean to tell precisely the same tale, but in
reality they cannot, for one is composing, no matter how cunningly, in the
tunes of prose and the other in the tunes of verse. The change in the
instrument means an alteration in the mental effect.

Now turn to Lessing's other exemplar of the time-arts, the musician--for
musicians as well as poets, painters and sculptors have utilized the myth
of Orpheus and Eurydice. What can the musician do with the theme? Gluck's
opera may serve for answer. He cannot, by the aid of music alone, call up
very definite ideas or images. He cannot tell the Orpheus story clearly to
one who has never heard it. But to one who already knows the tale, a
composer's overture--without stage accessories or singing actors or any
"operatic" devices as such--furnishes in its successions and combinations
of musical sound, without the use of verbal symbols, a unique pleasurable
emotion which strongly and powerfully reinforces the emotions suggested by
the Orpheus myth itself. Certain portions of the story, such as those
relating to the wondrous harping, can obviously be interpreted better
through music than through the medium of any other art.

What can Lessing's "space-arts," sculpture and painting, do with the
material furnished by the Orpheus myth? It is clear that they cannot tell
the whole story, since they are dealing with "bodies that coexist" rather
than with successive actions. They must select some one instant of action
only, and preferably the most significant moment of the whole, the parting