why nothing's simple III
Here's the unnecessarily obscure poem I whined about a few entries back. For musical context, one might listen to, for example, the Master Musicians of Jajouka. Other (variably significant) references I normally would just throw out there and not bother explaining, trusting that readers rise to the challenge -- except these days I am riddled with doubt and self-hate and it's another self-indulgent fault of mine for me to pick at -- include:
--Marsyas, the Satyr who lost his musical contest with Apollo, his skin and his life, and enjoyed an afterlife as a Roman symbol of subaltern free speech, or parrhesia;
--the folk tale "The Goose Girl", in which an unjustly decapitated horse's head hanging over the city gates affirms the heroine's true self and wins her redemption, retold by Brecht in a Depression-era poem in which an old nag dying in the streets of Berlin is set upon and carved alive by hungry people;
--a shitload of blown musical instruments from different cultures and eras, associated with "low class", mad, Dionysian, or wild contexts. In ancient Greek settings the aulos, for example, bore the connotation of the instrument of slave-girls and hetaerae, prostitutes who entertained at drinking parties (symposia);
--and speaking of wild, drunken parties, we have the Komos, the Bacchanalia, and the medieval Feast of Fools, "a brief social revolution, in which power, dignity and impunity is briefly conferred on those in a subordinate position", presided over by the Lord of Misrule;
--the Blatant Beast, a villain from the Faerie Queene whose many-voiced mouth slandered and assailed all, with no regard for station: "the Blatant Beast ran at him with open mouth, huge and horrible; it was all set with a double row of iron teeth, and in it were a thousand tongues of every kind and quality--some were of dogs, that barked day and night; some of cats that yawled; some of bears that growled continually; some of tigers that seemed to grin and snarl at all who passed by; but most of them were tongues of mortal men, who poured forth abuse, not caring where nor when; and among them were mingled here and there the tongues of serpents, with three-forked stings, that spat out poison at all who came within reach, speaking hateful things of good and bad alike, of high and low, not even sparing kings or kaisers, but either blotting them with infamy or biting them with their baneful teeth";
--Phrygia, the death-place of the liberated Marsyas, also connotes barbarism, freedom and manumission, via the symbolism of the Saturnalian Phrygian cap, first worn by Marsyas' friend Midas to cover the donkey ears pinned on him by Apollo for judging the satyr's pipe music as the winning composition.
O Marsyas, Die Du Hangest (Parrhesia)
Flutes, reeds, and syringes,
Whistles and tibiae,
Auloi and salpinges
Speak to me, call through me;
Pipes, rhaitas, restless air,
Mournful cacophony,
Aeolian despair,
Sigh through me, weep with me;
Conchs, horns and bones, sing out,
Shawms, mazamir, agree,
Bagpipes and duduks, shout,
Laugh with me, cry through me;
Komast, bacchant, and fool,
You blatant beasts of glee,
Of panic and misrule,
Bleat with me, bray with me;
Hetairai pursing lips
That blow a kiss to me
With cunning fingertips
Prey on me, play with me;
Flayed in some Phrygian cave,
My skin nailed to a tree...
The outcast and the slave
Pray to me, plead through me;
My voice from flesh unwound,
Defiant song set free,
Until the trumpets sound
And end all things
--Marsyas, the Satyr who lost his musical contest with Apollo, his skin and his life, and enjoyed an afterlife as a Roman symbol of subaltern free speech, or parrhesia;
--the folk tale "The Goose Girl", in which an unjustly decapitated horse's head hanging over the city gates affirms the heroine's true self and wins her redemption, retold by Brecht in a Depression-era poem in which an old nag dying in the streets of Berlin is set upon and carved alive by hungry people;
--a shitload of blown musical instruments from different cultures and eras, associated with "low class", mad, Dionysian, or wild contexts. In ancient Greek settings the aulos, for example, bore the connotation of the instrument of slave-girls and hetaerae, prostitutes who entertained at drinking parties (symposia);
--and speaking of wild, drunken parties, we have the Komos, the Bacchanalia, and the medieval Feast of Fools, "a brief social revolution, in which power, dignity and impunity is briefly conferred on those in a subordinate position", presided over by the Lord of Misrule;
--the Blatant Beast, a villain from the Faerie Queene whose many-voiced mouth slandered and assailed all, with no regard for station: "the Blatant Beast ran at him with open mouth, huge and horrible; it was all set with a double row of iron teeth, and in it were a thousand tongues of every kind and quality--some were of dogs, that barked day and night; some of cats that yawled; some of bears that growled continually; some of tigers that seemed to grin and snarl at all who passed by; but most of them were tongues of mortal men, who poured forth abuse, not caring where nor when; and among them were mingled here and there the tongues of serpents, with three-forked stings, that spat out poison at all who came within reach, speaking hateful things of good and bad alike, of high and low, not even sparing kings or kaisers, but either blotting them with infamy or biting them with their baneful teeth";
--Phrygia, the death-place of the liberated Marsyas, also connotes barbarism, freedom and manumission, via the symbolism of the Saturnalian Phrygian cap, first worn by Marsyas' friend Midas to cover the donkey ears pinned on him by Apollo for judging the satyr's pipe music as the winning composition.
O Marsyas, Die Du Hangest (Parrhesia)
Flutes, reeds, and syringes,
Whistles and tibiae,
Auloi and salpinges
Speak to me, call through me;
Pipes, rhaitas, restless air,
Mournful cacophony,
Aeolian despair,
Sigh through me, weep with me;
Conchs, horns and bones, sing out,
Shawms, mazamir, agree,
Bagpipes and duduks, shout,
Laugh with me, cry through me;
Komast, bacchant, and fool,
You blatant beasts of glee,
Of panic and misrule,
Bleat with me, bray with me;
Hetairai pursing lips
That blow a kiss to me
With cunning fingertips
Prey on me, play with me;
Flayed in some Phrygian cave,
My skin nailed to a tree...
The outcast and the slave
Pray to me, plead through me;
My voice from flesh unwound,
Defiant song set free,
Until the trumpets sound
And end all things