places a curse on it: “Whoever would make use of it next must die.” Her humiliation would cost a life.
The next user is a cheerful satyr named Marsyas. He cleverly learns how to imitate people with his tunes: “Prancing along behind them he could do their walk, fast or slow, lurching or clipped, just as he could render their tics or trace their contours: a low swell for a belly, shrill fifing for fluttering hands, held high notes for the adagio of soft speech. At first no one understood. But once they caught on they slapped their thighs: his songs were sketches.”
Apollo is furious, since he’s the god of music and his own art is pure and abstract. He challenges Marsyas to a musical duel:
Marsyas cringed before him like a dog when it walks through a ghost, bares its teeth and pulls back its ears. Anguished, he had slept in the hot breath of his flock; his animals had pressed up against him, holding him between their woolly flanks, as though to warm him. The ribbon his jolly and jiggling woman had tied around one horn flapped listlessly against his low, hairy brow, like a royal banner flown by a worker’s barge.
To the gods, as young as the morning, Marsyas seemed a twilight creature; he smelled of leaf mold and wolf-lair. His glance was as serious as a deer’s when it emerges from the forest at dusk to drink at the calm pool collecting below a steaming cataract.
And to Marsyas his rival was cold and regular as cambered marble.
Since Marsyas knew to play only what was in front of him, he “rendered” Apollo—not the god’s thoughts but the faults he wedged into the air around him. The sisters watched the goatman breathe into the reeds, saw himdraw and lose breath, saw his eyes bulge, brown and brilliant as honey, and that made them laugh. What they heard, however, was music that copied sacred lines, for Marsyas could imitate a god as easily as a bawd. The only trick was to have his model there, in front of him.
If Marsyas gave them the god’s form, the god himself revealed the contents of his mind. His broad hand swept the lyre, and immediately the air was tuned and the planets tempered. Everything sympathetic trembled in response to a song that took no one into account, that moved without moving, that polished crystal with its breath alone, clouding then cleansing every transparency without touching it. Marsyas shuddered when he came to and realized that the god’s hand was now motionless but that the music continued to devolve, creaking like a finger turning and tracing the fragile rim of the spheres.
The satyr was astonished that the muses didn’t decide instantly in their brother’s favor but shrugged and smiled and said they found each contestant appealing in different ways. The sun brightened a fraction with Apollo’s anger, but then the god suggested they each play their music backwards. The universe shuddered as it stopped and reversed its rotations; the sun started to descend toward dawn as Apollo unstrung the planets. Cocks re-crowed and bats re-awakened, the frightened shepherd guided his flock backward down the hill as the dew fell again.
Even the muses were frightened. It was night and stormy when Marsyas began to play. He had improvised his music strophe by strophe as a portrait; now he couldn’t remember it all. The descending figures, so languishing when played correctly the first time, made him queasy when he inverted them. Nor could he see his subject.
The muses decided in the god’s favor. Apollo told Marsyas he’d be flayed alive. There was no tenderness butgreat solicitude in the way the god tied the rope around the satyr’s withers, cast the slack over a high branch of a pine and then hoisted his kill high, upside down, inverted as the winning melody. Marsyas saw that he’d won the god’s full attention by becoming his victim.
The blood ran to Marsyas’s head, then spurted over his chest as Apollo sliced into his belly and neatly peeled back the flesh and fat and hair.
The next user is a cheerful satyr named Marsyas. He cleverly learns how to imitate people with his tunes: “Prancing along behind them he could do their walk, fast or slow, lurching or clipped, just as he could render their tics or trace their contours: a low swell for a belly, shrill fifing for fluttering hands, held high notes for the adagio of soft speech. At first no one understood. But once they caught on they slapped their thighs: his songs were sketches.”
Apollo is furious, since he’s the god of music and his own art is pure and abstract. He challenges Marsyas to a musical duel:
Marsyas cringed before him like a dog when it walks through a ghost, bares its teeth and pulls back its ears. Anguished, he had slept in the hot breath of his flock; his animals had pressed up against him, holding him between their woolly flanks, as though to warm him. The ribbon his jolly and jiggling woman had tied around one horn flapped listlessly against his low, hairy brow, like a royal banner flown by a worker’s barge.
To the gods, as young as the morning, Marsyas seemed a twilight creature; he smelled of leaf mold and wolf-lair. His glance was as serious as a deer’s when it emerges from the forest at dusk to drink at the calm pool collecting below a steaming cataract.
And to Marsyas his rival was cold and regular as cambered marble.
Since Marsyas knew to play only what was in front of him, he “rendered” Apollo—not the god’s thoughts but the faults he wedged into the air around him. The sisters watched the goatman breathe into the reeds, saw himdraw and lose breath, saw his eyes bulge, brown and brilliant as honey, and that made them laugh. What they heard, however, was music that copied sacred lines, for Marsyas could imitate a god as easily as a bawd. The only trick was to have his model there, in front of him.
If Marsyas gave them the god’s form, the god himself revealed the contents of his mind. His broad hand swept the lyre, and immediately the air was tuned and the planets tempered. Everything sympathetic trembled in response to a song that took no one into account, that moved without moving, that polished crystal with its breath alone, clouding then cleansing every transparency without touching it. Marsyas shuddered when he came to and realized that the god’s hand was now motionless but that the music continued to devolve, creaking like a finger turning and tracing the fragile rim of the spheres.
The satyr was astonished that the muses didn’t decide instantly in their brother’s favor but shrugged and smiled and said they found each contestant appealing in different ways. The sun brightened a fraction with Apollo’s anger, but then the god suggested they each play their music backwards. The universe shuddered as it stopped and reversed its rotations; the sun started to descend toward dawn as Apollo unstrung the planets. Cocks re-crowed and bats re-awakened, the frightened shepherd guided his flock backward down the hill as the dew fell again.
Even the muses were frightened. It was night and stormy when Marsyas began to play. He had improvised his music strophe by strophe as a portrait; now he couldn’t remember it all. The descending figures, so languishing when played correctly the first time, made him queasy when he inverted them. Nor could he see his subject.
The muses decided in the god’s favor. Apollo told Marsyas he’d be flayed alive. There was no tenderness butgreat solicitude in the way the god tied the rope around the satyr’s withers, cast the slack over a high branch of a pine and then hoisted his kill high, upside down, inverted as the winning melody. Marsyas saw that he’d won the god’s full attention by becoming his victim.
The blood ran to Marsyas’s head, then spurted over his chest as Apollo sliced into his belly and neatly peeled back the flesh and fat and hair.
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