The Myth of Marsyas 1: Skin and Sound

 

   In order to analyze the myth of Marsyas, this week I am looking at the relationship between sound and skin, before exploring the symbolism behind the flaying of Marsyas's skin.

   ''Athena made a flute out of bones but threw it away after seeing her reflection and how ridiculous her puffed cheeks looked with the flute. She cursed the first one to pick it up, which happens to be Marsyas. Marsyas, a satyr, delighted by this instrument, recklessly challenged Apollo to a contest with his lyre. Apollo turned his lyre upside down and played, challenging Marsyas to do the same with its flute. That was how Apollo won, and Marsyas's punishment was to be flayed alive.''

   According to Anzieu, one of the earliest of the many skins is an envelope of sound. In early development, there is no clear distiction between tactile and auditory sensations. Mother's voice and songs become a 'bath' of sound for the whole body. Self is formed as a bodily wrapping of sound, with a double surface like the skin itself, inwards and outwards, sounds from the baby's own body and outside. The space of sound is the earliest psychical space.

  Steven Connor says that, skin has a sonorous capacity that is directly related to its resilience. Some myths of life preserved in skins emphasize the tautness or stretching of the revivified skin. The taut skin is resonant and tuned. A dead skin, when stretched, like in a drum, given back its voice and life. We can see the fantasy of the 'skin that talks' in many stories, in which dead bodies are turned into musical instruments.

   One of the most important features of the myth of Marsyas is the antagonism between two instruments and the bodily fantasies they represents. The realms of sound lie between the two extremes of human existence, the biological body and language's presentation. An instrument is an image of the body's transformability, possibility of remaking itself in sound.

   The myth of Apollo and Marsyas encodes a more general antagonism in Greek culture. Apollo's lyre on the one hand, symbol of refinement, reason and measure, which requires a 'distance' to play, and Marsyas's flute on the other, a coarse, primitive, 'orgiastic flute' belonging to Pan and Dionysus. The strings of the lyre stand for metaporical relations, whereas with the flute, no relations are possible between things because there are no gaps. In the Apollonian world, according to Nietzsche, I am a part of the cosmic order by remaining apart. In the Dionysian world, I am a part of everything because I become what I touch, the unity with nature.