THE GLASS VOICE, THE MUTE VOICE & THE ECHO – ON OBJECTS OF VOICE IN ART AND LITERATURE
Among other definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary, voice is partly defined as ‘the sound produced in a person's larynx and uttered through the mouth, as speech or song’, partly as ‘the ability to speak or sing’ using the example: ‘she’d lost her voice’. (1) I see in this, the speaking and singing as being equally connected to voice. I see also the opposition of losing one’s voice as being inherent in the ability of using one’s voice. The dialectic between speaking and non-speaking, between singing and non-singing, between voice and muteness is present. It interests me, how voice is placed here: on a tangent of existence like glass ready to break.
In literary studies voice is a common object of analysis. We speak of the voice of a text, of how it performs, using words like rhythm, tone and distance to describe it. We speak of it as text, of its materiality, its elasticity, ask what it is able to say, from where it speaks and how it speaks. We discuss whether it is an anthropomorphic kind of voice or a more ghostly kind of voice. This would all be considered narratological studies. I am more considered with voice as an image. How is voice represented within art and literature? How is it described or made visible? The idea of describing or making visible what is almost not there, is a process of hope, I think, a coming to life. I find it comforting that art and literature can do this.
My work is divided into three essays on different voices: the glass voice, the mute voice and the echo. I will primarily turn around Francesca Woodman: Talking to Vince (photograph), Hans Christian Andersen: ‘The little mermaid’ (fairy tale) and Karen Blixen: ‘Echoes’ (short story). They are all examples of works on voice that tries to describe or make visible what might in fact be indescribable or invisible. I will closely analyse the three main subjects of my work as well as use different works of theory, art and literature to speak with them. It interests me how voice is made present as an object within different contexts, and I wish to open up a space of search rather than to close down.
I want each essay to speak both individually and together, becoming three different voices as well as one thick voice. Moreover, I want this work to become an (art)object – in itself – of voice. This, because I am considered with one main question: What is voice? And how does it come to life?
Searching for voice
I wish to begin my study here: inbetween topology and serendipity as methods of searching. The greek word topoi means place. It can be followed all its way back to Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), to whom it was a rhetorical term. He differentiated between special places (topoi idioi) and common places (topoi koinones), both being ways of speaking. The last one has sometimes been seen as a kind of cliché which I understand as rhetorical frases of recognisement. (2) Many years past and the German literary critic Ernst Robert Curtius (1886-1956) seems to have been the first who again tried to define topoi in literary contexts. He found it rooted in medieval literature being writing upon writing: most literature was written upon literature reusing forms of recognisement. He names therefore these Historic Topoi. He saw it as standing in complete opposition to modern ideas of original writing. This is a way of thinking topoi as historically founded and developed. (3)
The Russian semiotic Mikhail M. Bakhtin (1895-1975) speaks not of topoi, but of what he calls cronotopes, crono meaning time and tope meaning space. Placed in a triad between time, space and history, Bahktin seeks to describe certain recognisable motifs within literature. He finds them to be activating the plot. What interests him further is that he sees the cronotopes as placed on a tangent of the real world and literature. This, also, corresponds with his idea of cronotopes as never bound to a certain literary genre. Bahktin writes from a place in history where literary genres have expanded. (4)
Also, theory on intertextuality, motifs and figures can be seen as ways of speaking topology, and the lines between them are blurred. This means on the one hand that topology as a defined method can somehow be forgotten, but on the other hand that the defining in itself, as the Danish literary historian Christian Dahl considers, seems to not be that important. (5)
Within Art History, topology has been a useful tool too. It is a method of comparison, but with an awareness of a broader historical context. Some would say that topology is a search for motifs that has been used in the exact same way up through history, while for others it can be a process of showing how a motif has not stayed the same.
Topology can show how meaning is historically added to a motif. Topology crosses – and this is the best – the line between art and literature. It is a method of unfolding the cultural afterlife of a certain motif. To me it has become a process, also, of not always finding what you search for.
Serendipity is the act of searching for something but finding something else. It is known to be first appearing in a fairy tale by Horace Walpole even though, as explained by the theorist Sean Silver in “The Prehistory of Serendipity, from Bacon to Walpole”, it is rooted further back. (6)
As a method, it is my weapon against topology. Serendip was the name of ancient Sri Lanka and I have also heard serendipity explained as coming from the narrative of Columbus, who traveled out in search for America, but found instead India. (7) Some would call it a happy accident, but I find serendipity to be more actively useful as an academic tool. Where topology is an act of finding what you search for, serendipity is the opposite. I though believe them to be more closely intertwined: serendipity explaining what accidentally can happen within topology studies.
Now, tuning in on the object of my analysis, I neither force myself to fully discover all images of voice, nor do I look for happy accidents. I want to discover topoi at the same time as I open it up.
In order to leave the main question open for the reader to continue searching, I search for voice within chosen works that I find remarkable. I could have chosen more or other objects of analysis if I wanted the work to be closed, but what I want is to open up an area of interest that I do not find has been discussed much. On the border between topology and serendipity I become aware that research can lead you to open places.
I want this to become a work of inspiration. Like was the very act of searching for voice similar to the voice itself, only nearly visible, only nearly fixed as an object. I give you, my reader, this work as a beginning.
THE GLASS VOICE
THERE IS A picture of Francesca Woodman where she sits or stands in front of a wall, her shoulders lowered, her head a bit backwards like the body of an old person. Around her neck she has a silver necklace with a pendant which is hard to define. I see it as both a flower, a cross and an angel. It could be something else. The necklace bears witness to the situation.
She has her mouth open and from it comes a thin, dreamy spiral of glass, a glass voice or a water- like singing or speaking in glass. (8)
It is a black and white photograph, a self portrait from 1980 that is called Talking to Vince. In the left side you see a snip of cloth, maybe a curtain, in the right side you see something that looks like a door frame, but it could also be the side of a window frame. The light comes from here and she has her face and body turned a bit toward that direction letting the light shine on her chins and forehead while trying to look into the camera.
It seems to be hard for her catching the lens with her eyes, because of the glass voice growing out of her. She surrenders. I remember saying this about the picture, when I first saw it: She surrenders. I will never forget this as being one of my very first reactions to the picture, the voice being something you let go of. The voice, she can’t hold back. Is the glass voice unfolding by itself? There is something involuntary about it, something disturbing. I watch different editions of the photograph, some of them being a bit more sepia in the tones of colour than others, but they all have the same atmosphere, they all have the same motif.
This open mouth being the center of the picture, a hole, a large O, from where the whole picture unfolds. The light shines on the glass voice making it visible to us as viewers. It being a strange, magical appearance of voice. It has a form. Does the voice stiffen when it comes out of her mouth and meets the world? Is this where it takes on shape? The voice being glassy, empty, fragile, searching for hope, for help, disappearing into the air. But within this photograph: stiffening like a hold of time.
Is she talking to someone? Talking to Vince? Who is Vince?
In ‘Epiphanies in Glass’ by the writer Carol Mavor, she cites the German writer Walter Benjamin from his ‘Berlin Childhood’ memories in his remembering the voice of his aunt as “fragile and brittle as glass” (9). The voice, fragile and brittle as it was, here seems to appear in glass through memory. As if the very remembering turns the voice into an image of glass.
In the story of the Nightingale, an emperor search for the most beautiful voice of all the garden’s birds to have it come singing for him in his castle. When finally reaching it, the story goes: “’It sounds like tiny glass bells,” said the lord-in-waiting, “and see how her little throat works. It is surprising that we have never heard this before; she will be a great success at court.” (10)
The voice is here mentioned as bodily connected to the throat and becomes visible in the lord-in-waiting’s imaginary mind as glass. Not like Benjamin’s glassy memory, but a glassy imagination. Glass is used here as the material to describe, not only the bird song or the most beautiful singing, but also the singing which should not be catched. The mechanical bird has broken, like voices can break, remaining silent while being held in the castle. But the Nightingale that remains free, can sing. In secrecy it sings for the emperor, as if only nearly existing, keeping death at a distance. (11)
Singing, we say, is able to break glass. I find this to be a destructive image of voice. The tone of the high C being able to break glass seems though to be a myth. Rather than depending on the tone of the voice, it may depend on the tone of the glass, every glass having a tone of its own.
To break it by singing would mean to find this exact tone with your voice. The glass would resonate with your voice, holding on to the sonority of the voice like an echo. (12) In the Japanese artist Mika Aoki’s work series of Singing Glass from around 2010, I see a play with this myth as well as a play with the materiality of glass and of it in general being able to deliver sounds. Some of her works look like flower beds, some of them seem to be growing inside glass jars or test tubes, all of them being icy, bubbling organisms, like were they part of some fairy tale-like under sea world.
When I look at photos of Aoki’s sculptures I think most of all at Woodman’s glass voice. It affects the way I look at her voice as glass, a sculpture of voice, an object. How can I be sure it is at all glass? Without touching it, how do I know? I do not, but I look at it as glass and it, somehow, becomes part of my understanding. Topology can do this, I believe, infect the way we understand certain motifs. In both cases I have the feeling that the objects are only shot in a moment of existence, them still growing – I imagine them growing out of the picture frame – like were they really voices without end.
In Benjamin’s essay: ‘Experience and Poverty’ from 1933, he defines glass within a whole other context of seeing the modern world as a new form of barbarism: “It is no coincidence that glass is such a hard, smooth material to which nothing can be fixed. A cold and sober material into the bargain. Objects made of glass have no “aura.” Glass is, in general, the enemy of secrets. It is also the enemy of possession.” (13)
Glass here is described as slippery in the way that it is unable to hide as well as it cannot be hidden itself. It cannot possess and it cannot be possessed. What I find disturbing is that he speaks of glass objects at the same time as he speaks of the idea that nothing can be fixed to this material of glass. Like was it his Angel of History, Benjamin describes glass as a transparent object only nearly alive within present history. (14)
The French writer Jean-Luc Nancy writes in his work on Listening from 2002 (in extension of explaining Bernard Baas and Jaques Lacan):
“Thus, transcendental resonance is also incorporated – even, strictly speaking, it is nothing but that incorporation (which it would be better to call: the opening up of a body). The possibility of sense is identified with the possibility of resonance, or of sonority itself. More precisely, the perceived possibility of sense (or, if you like, the transcendental condition of significance, without which it would have no meaning) is overlaid with the resonant possibility of sound: that is, when all is said and done with the possibility of an echo or a return of sound to self in self.” (15)
The opening up of a body. This phrase articulates what seems to be elementary. To Nancy sense presents itself only through resonance of sound in the body. I see in this an idea of perception as being corporate. Before sense, there is body. I want to be aware that in defining a photograph I am always further. Sense is a translation of the French word originally used sens and should according to the translator be seen as a wide term. (16) What fix me to this quotation is this idea that sense can only appear through a bodily resonance or echo. It is a very technical description. I associate it with voice: before it is sense, it is in fact bodily. Francesca Woodman’s voice unfolds from the body. When I ask myself what kind of talk she is doing, I find that one will never know. In terms of it being a self portrait, is the glass voice actually picturing (not a talking to Vince but) a kind of echo, a speaking to self in self? From the title one must think that she talks to Vince, but she also speaks no words, she speaks glass. Is that in fact, a mute speaking? And is mute speaking also a speak of longing, not only for Vince, but for words?
I find in Francesca Woodman’s pictures a sense of playfulness at the same time as I find sadness. She died twentytwo years old. This has become part of my reading the picture. What kind of surrendering do I see when knowing she committed suicide? I have looked at more portraits by her, trying to describe them closely. And I always end here:
I sense a deep vulnerability in all her pictures. Even though the portraits often inhabits situations that to me can seem almost childishly playful: climbing huge roots or masking her arms in white birch like she was a tree, they all have the same atmosphere of vulnerability. The glassy spiral mimes underwater bubbles, soap bubbles, but also smoke rings from cigarettes, the curls of her hair and maybe chewing gum. The symbiosis of voice and glass gives the voice a form. It makes it visible. I sense both hope and struggle in that. When all come to all the voice comes alive as an object, but only nearly, I find, as speech. The photograph, like the glance of Woodman’s eyes, avoids you, avoids definition, forces you to leave it open, like a Nancian sound.
THE MUTE VOICE
A STORY OF a shipwreck, of marble and of foam. A story of longing and of distance. But even more: a story of losing ones voice.
When turning fifteen the little mermaid, the youngest of the six daughters of the Sea King, is allowed to rise up through the water to see the world above. She has been longing for years to get to know what she has only heard of: “Nothing gave her so much pleasure as to hear about the world above the sea”. (17) When finally breaking through the surface, what she sees creates a dramatic turning point of having to, little by little, die for love. She sees a prince of human kind, whom she saves from a shipwreck and falls deeply in love with. Giving up her voice for having the sea witch turn her tail into legs, she rises to land in order to make the prince fall in love with her. This seems harder than imagined and he never realises that she was the one who saved him. When in the end the prince marries his new wife, the little mermaid is turned into foam. In some transparent world, she, though, comes alive.
Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale ‘The little Mermaid’ from 1837 is a story that many people know. I’m born in a country where this tale would be told up through your childhood, even though the Disney version has influenced the – indeed tragic – ending much. It was written in the romantic period of history which I find is easy to see when you notice the idealisation of surroundings as well as the idea of nature as animated.
When reading the story as a grown up, I feel as if I have never known it before: it being much more sensitive and vulnerable than I imagined from remembering the vague contours of the plot.
The little mermaid falls in love with the prince by looking at him through a glass window, as if anticipating how she will never be able to get close enough: “the little mermaid remained by the cabin window, rocking up and down on water, which enabled her to look in”. (18) Losing her voice, will though not enable this closeness she desire, but keep the distance awake.
Within the story, the world is divided into three layers: the underwater world, where the mermaids and sea creatures live; the world above water, where the human beings live; and then an imagined world of immortal souls. The description of each world is glamourous. The underwater world is a paradise-like fantasy world of endless pearls, mussels and flowers, the world above water has golden sunset and glittering icebergs and the world of immortal souls among the glittering stars is an “unknown and glorious region”. (19) Like those miniature worlds inside shakeable glass bowls for Christmas, the sea kingdom seems to be a dreamy, safe space of joy, almost everlasting, but, one sense, with a possibility of dark zones. This glass bowl-like sea kingdom being always ready to break. (20)
When the little mermaid rises up through the surface, it breaks, and childhood turns into adolescence. She is no more a child but fifteen and has been longing to break free from the cell of water. The distance from which she considers the world above is shortened. Now she is no more collecting flowers from her own garden, as if she was cultivating herself to grow up. It says: “Each of the young princesses had a little plot of ground in the garden, where she might dig and plant as she pleased. One arranged her flower-bed into the form of a whale; another thought better to make hers like the figure of a little mermaid; but that of the youngest was round like the sun, and contained flowers as red as rays at sunset. She was a strange child, quiet and thoughtful; and while her sisters would be delighted with the wonderful things which they obtained from the wrecks of vessels, she cared for nothing but her pretty red flowers, like the sun, excepting a beautiful marble statue. It was the representation of a handsome boy, carved out of pure white stone, which had fallen to the bottom of the sea from a wreck.” (21)
The little mermaid is here presented, even before losing her voice, as quiet. She stands out, being different than the other sisters, because of her thoughtfulness and silence. She creates her own space, like children do when building caves or houses, and she makes visible the imagination of a burning sun. Later on, when in sorrow, she forgets the cultivation and the garden turns into being “dark and gloomy”. (22)
Cultivating a little plot of ground though also, in a disturbing way, makes it a tomb to which things from wrecks fall. Like the representation of a handsome boy, the prince has “life-like statues of marble” at his marble castle. (23) Moreover the care for the boy of white marble – one will come to know – mimes the care for the prince above. The marble boy having fallen from a wreck seems to anticipate what could have happened, when the prince falls from the ship. Like was he the statue of Shakespeare’s ‘The Winter’s Tale’, he will though, on the threshold of dying, come to life. (24) The description of the sea kingdom as the human land of the dead is present throughout the story. In a description of the mermaids singing, I read:
“They had more beautiful voices than any human being could have; and before the approach of a storm, and when they expected a ship would be lost, they swam before the vessel, and sang sweetly of the delights to be found in the depths of the sea, and begging the sailors not to fear if they sank to the bottom. But the sailors could not understand the song, they took it for the howling of the storm. And these things were never to be beautiful for them; for if the ship sank, the men were drowned, and their dead bodies alone reached the palace of the Sea King.” (25)
A mermaid, like the sirens of Homér, is explained as able to seduce sailors by singing. (26) The singing here comes from the land of the dead and is not able to reach the sailors as anything but air.
This description of the airy voice, not able to reach what it desires points directly to the end of the story, when the little mermaid turns into a daughter of air. Because mermaids sing, it is a landmark when the little mermaid loses her voice. She will not be able to seduce the prince like he was a sailor. In addition, when rising to land, she will – in a very concrete way – no more be a mermaid. Even though the “little mermaid sang more sweetly than them all”, she is the silent one, ready to give up her voice. (27)
The voice seems from the very beginning to be held back. At the moment the little mermaid breaks through the water, and her voice is finally useful, she becomes mute. Losing her voice keeps her – where she has been all the time – in silence. Therefore, by breaking through the surface, the division between the two worlds does not break down but maintain the distance. On her way to the sea witch, she meets the polypian creatures (half plants, half animals), who never loses what they have first caught, the most choking to her, a figure of “a little mermaid, whom they had caught and strangled”. (28) Like was it a voodoo-like doll of herself, she will lose her voice and die as if slowly strangled. The sea witch welcome the little mermaid, like a psychic already knowing what she wishes: “You are but just in time”, she says and steals the only thing, apart from the tail, that makes a mermaid a mermaid. (29)
Breaking through the surface creates a wound at the threshold between the two worlds. This is made visible also by the knife that she throws into the water in the end, “the water turning red where it fell”. (30) When she throws herself into the water again, it seems though, as if healing the sea. The days on land are spoken. I see the feeling of walking on knives as a slow and painful death pointing towards the end, as well as a reminder of what the little mermaid has lost forever. Not being able to speak creates a disharmony between her and the prince, because of the fact that she will never be able to tell him the story of his life. This is the most terrifying from the whole tale, because this fact: the voice, being the only thing that can – by telling the truth – overcome the distance, is held back by the sea witch.
The voice comes to stay as the only thing that could possibly change the tragic narrative. When in the end she looks into the horizon, it seems to me as if almost welcoming death, not in fear, but in peace. By giving her voice away, she loses the opportunity of telling that story which is the very reason for her losing her voice. In this perspective Hans Christian Andersen’s story of the little mermaid is also the story that cannot be told. Therefore am I, as a reader, left with being a witness to a tale that has turned into a memory. Getting the opportunity of killing the prince with a knife in trade for being transformed back into a mermaid, she refuses. (31) Staying mute kills the opportunity of telling the story but does not kill memory. In contrast, killing the prince would mean to kill the source of her memory.
“Where am I?” asked she, and her voice sounded ethereal, as the voice of those who were with her; no earthly music could imitate it. / ”Among the daughters of the air,” answered one of them.” (32) What happens in this very end is notifying. I see it as if she turns into an angel. She is among the daugthers of the air. An angel, a immortal soul of good deeds, is where the story ends. The little mermaid does not transform into foam, rather she stays where she has actually been all the time: watching life from a distance. Here she finds her voice again, like had it only been asleep.
Like the famous Hellen Keller, who could not speak but wrote the story of her life, memory is made present on behalf of voice. (33) In the work of Nancy, he beautifully unfolds the word mute, a passage from ‘Interlude: Mute Music’, in which he almost makes the muteness sound through his writing. I will end my essay here with a citation of that passage, but also by saying this: even mute voices are voices. They have just not come to life.
“Taken at its word: mot, “word,” from mutum, an emitted sound deprived of sense, the noise produced by forming mu.
Mutmut facere: to murmur, to mutter – muzõ, to do mu, mu, to say m.
Not saying a word: just m or mu, muttio, mugio, to moo, mûnjami, mojami.
Muteness, motus, to become mute [amuïr], disappearance of a phoneme [amuïssement]: of the t at the end of the word mot.
Kindred root: motus, motion, movement of the lips, emotion.
Mumble, mutter, grumble, mussitare [“to grumble”; in its transitive form, to keep quiet about a thing], moan, whisper, grouch, grouse.
Between the lips, mulla, passage of the lips, Mund, Maul, mouth, mug [gueule]. Word for word, muhen, to form muh, meuh, moo.
Mund, mouth – mucken, mokken, mockery, moquer.
Münden, open up, lead to, pour out.
Muõ, to close or keep silent, mustés, mustikos, mystery (not to reveal).
Motet: poem or song.
Another kindred sound: mouche [“fly”], musya, muia, musca, Mücke.
Mmmmmmmm.
In Phoenician Ugarit, Mot, god of the harvest, dies on the threshing floor with the wheat, to be reborn at the next harvest.
God of grain and of death.” (34)
THE ECHO
THE SHORT story ‘Echoes’ from 1957 by Karen Blixen (who writes under the pseudonym of Isak Dinesen) is the story of a singer, who has lost her voice. Her name is Pellegrina Leoni, but she will come to pretend to be Signora Oreste. After having left home and lover in Rome, she travels around from place to place. From Rome, she goes to a small town in the mountains where she soon meets the old man, Niccolo, whom she begs for a slice of bread.
Drinking wine and eating bread in the home of Niccolo catalyses the conversation between them, and the remembrance of Niccolo. As if this supper ritual was a repeating act of his actual memory, of having to eat the meat of his dead friend when being shipwrecked, it activates the past in the present through memory. (35) Like the famous madeleine cake of Proust, like an involuntary memory. (36) I see this as being the main themes of the story: the opposition between past and present, fear and hope, remembrance and non-remembrance, staying and leaving. While Niccolo stays with remembrance, letting it held him back in the way that he ever since has never wanted to kiss a woman with the lips that has touched the meat of a dead body, (37) Pellegrina is moved forward, it seems, by some kind af hope forcing her never to remember when having first left a place. (38) She says:
“But you see, Niccolo, some travelers are drawn forward by a goal lying before them in the way iron is drawn to the magnet. Others are driven on by a force lying behind them. In such a way the bowstring makes the arrow fly.” (39) This speaking, as a way of describing something that cannot be described: a certain force lying behind or before, that makes you wander through life. A goal or a flight that forces movement. Even though, the story begins with an explanation of Pellegrina leaving home in flight, like an arrow, because of her lover holding her fast by passion, (40) one will come to know that even more, she will be in search for her lost voice, like an iron drawn to a magnet: “’Have I been”, she asks, “for thirteen years traveling, not as I told Niccolo, in flight, but in reality – and in a beeline – toward a goal?’”. (41)
Staying throughout the night, she lies down with Niccolo on a goatskin like it was a nest, “(...) lay you down to sleep as peacefully as, when you were a small child, you lay down by the side of your mother, who could sing to you.”, she tells him, while the fire slowly burns out. (42) Earlier it has already been told how “he raked the ashes from the embers of the fireplace” telling her to come closer. (43) This points directly at the myth of the Phoenix, who burns out in the nest of its own and resurrects from its own ashes.
Having left Niccolo and arriving in a new town she sits down in a church. Here she hears the beautiful voice of a young singer, Emanuele, a church boy, who sings – one will soon find out – with the voice of her own. Later on, it is told that he has been saved from a mountain slide, as “a brand plucked out from the fire”. (44) I find this to be a description of rebirth from fire, like the rebirth of the Phoenix. This is further confirmed, when she mentions:
“’I have heard,” she thought, “the story of the Phoenix which burns herself up in her nest and has her one egg hatched by the heat, because there must never be more than one Phoenix in the world. It is an old story. But God likes a da capo. Twelve years ago this boy was still a baby. He may well have been born at the hour of the Opera fire in Milan. Was, then, that fire in reality kindled by my own hand? And was the flaming death of the old Phoenix and the radiant birth of the young bird but one and the same thing?” So she was to take up her voice of the olden days and to make it perfect as it had once been. She was to teach the boy Emanuele to sing.” (45)
Emanuele has been saved out of fire twelve years ago and she has lost her voice thirteen years ago. Now, when Emanuele sings he sings with the most beautiful voice of her: “It was the voice of young Pellegrina Leoni.” (46)
Like the Phoenix, when she rises from the ashes, Pellegrina’s voice has risen too. Teaching Emanuele to sing, will be her goal. It is a resurrection neither of the soul nor of the body but of something in between: the voice of a singer. “God likes a da capo”, she says, the da capo not only being a musician term for repeating, but within the logic of the story being the “heavenly da capo which is also called resurrection”. (47) Da capo here comes to point not only at the singing voice as being able to repeat itself, but also points at the many subjects and objects that echoes within the story.
Through teaching Emanuele to sing, she falls in love with him, or his voice, as if falling in love with herself, or her own voice. This love seems to be the love of Narcissus. In the end of the story, she “sat gazing down in the water of the trough, but she saw his face as he had lowered it like a small angry bull-calf, when he had thrown the stone.” (my emphasis). (48) Like in the myth of Narcissus, who watches his own face mirroring in the lake, she gazes down at the face of Emanuele. Furthermore, Isabella, who is Emanuele’s foster sister and is told to be his future wife, loves him so much that she wants to go to the monastery in order to pray for him forever as well as for Pellegrina. (49) When Pellegrina and Isabella first stares into the eyes of each other, it is described to be “like a reflection in a mirror”, an echo. (50) Like Ovid’s Echo, Isabella is going into hide in forever love of Narcissus.
The myth ‘Echo and Narcissus’ is from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It is a story of the nymph, Echo, who falls deeply into love with Narcissus. Echo has used much time trying to protect her sisters, all the nymphs, from the anger of Juno (Greek: Hera, god of marriage). Juno finds out that she keeps speaking to her as a hindrance for her to find the nymphs in the forest together with her husband, Jupiter (Greek: Zeus, god of heaven and thunder). As a punishment, Echo loses her voice. She then hides in the forest and finds Narcissus, whom she can only answer through the words of his own. Narcissus flights from Echo and finds his own face in a lake, like a mirror. He now falls in love with himself. Sleepless and dying from heart ache, Echo slowly disappears until only bones and voice are left, the bones turning into hard rock, the voice being the only thing that cannot die. (51)
Above all, I find this myth to be a story of voice. Echo, the voice of love, will be endlessly repeating, but existing. Within this myth, the voice of love cannot die. Whether this is hopefull or tragic is up for discussion. Echo is reduced to a sound without body, a sound of the mountains, an airy sound, holding on to nothing but life.
In one of Peter Doig’s paintings named ‘The Echo Lake’, a man is standing above a lake holding his hands to the sides of his head as if yelling. I – as a viewer – watch him from the other side of the lake. His body is mirrored in the surface like was he Narcissus himself. He looks like a business man. I notice the car with flashing lights in the background, perhaps a police car, as well as the pylon, and I find the painting to bear a narrative of flight or hunt.
I see it as if he calls out and nobody answers, because I am, as a viewer, the only witness to the situation. It is a mute voice, because I cannot hear it. I though imagine that the calling out from within a forest will – as the title could possibly indicate – return as an echo. Like was it the voice of Pellegrina Leoni. “On the course of her wanderings”, Blixen’s story begins: “Pellegrina Leoni, the diva, who had lost her voice, came to a small town near Rome.” (52) This is the very first initiation of the many echoes within the story, an initiation of this wandering being only one of many and being not exactly placed in time. How many wanderings has she already past, how many are to come? Reading on one will recognise that this opposition between past and present will break, as if was it only made of glass.
In the way Pellegrina knew who Niccolo was, Emanuele knows who she is: “’I know who you are,” said he. / ”Who am I?” she asked. / ”You are not Signora Oreste, from Rome,“ he said. “You are Pellegrina Leoni.” (53)
Emanuele soon tells Pellegrina how he was foreseen to meeting her, but this recognition is also an example of what seems to be a principle for the whole story: Everything echoes. It’s hard to tell if Emanuele knows of Pellegrina because of him being told of her, or because of him – in the logic of resurrection – being her. Like Pellegrina enables Niccolo to remember, Emanuele enable Pellegrina to remember: “the ban on remembering was lifted when she was with Emanuele.” (54) I notice, how Pellegrina, through teaching singing, seems to have a certain ability to overcome time.
“During these months of work and love, in which she was rendering her pupil ageless, Pellegrina became ageless with him.” (55) the story goes, telling the reader, how the months of work and love, that are really months of singing, are able to annull age. It is a story of the voice as able to overcome the oppositions between past and present, remembrance and non- remembrance being both here and there at the same time, annulling the very way we understand time. Emanuele finds his voice to be coming “from somewhere else, I know not from where”, says he. (56) It is a description of the voice as coming from beyond or as being able to possess.
I find this idea of the voice coming from somewhere disturbing. The idea of a voice as having its own life makes the reader doubt whether the voice belongs to Pellegrina, Emanuele or actually none of them.
Pellegrina is forced to leave. After a dramatic showdown, Emanuele has abandoned her and she has no more to do than continuing her wandering. Arriving (yet again) at a cross road she uses the advice from Niccolo and goes to the church, as she did the first day. The story ends here, in what she feels to be nothing “but a pause” from wandering (57), but what seems for me as a reader to be a full stop. “’You too, Niccolo,” she thought, “spoke the truth on that evening when we talked together. One can take many liberties with God which one cannot take with men. One may allow oneself many things toward Him which one cannot allow oneself toward man. And, because He is God, in doing so one will even be honoring Him.” (58)
This, as if Niccolo has foreseen what she later realises. A truth, she now acknowledges. Read in a religious context, is it a truth of charity?
The church could be read as a room for forgiveness, but what I find even more notifying is the fact that it is a silent mass. Where she finds peace is not in finding religion, neither in finding her voice but in finding silence. I don’t read the church as a religious place, it is of course, but more than that, it is a place of life and death, a chamber of endless echoes.
A silent mass. A church of no singing. “Without making any noise she sat down close to the door....” (59) Nomore searching for her voice, nomore driven forward by a goal or a force lying behind, but actually holding on to a moment of stillness and accept. It is the place where she first finds her voice and the place she goes when having lost it again. What kind of peace can be found there? Is it death? The words of Emanuele, like in anticipation: “’Once,” he then cried out, “I thought that I should die if I were to leave you. Now I know that I should die if I went back to you”. (60)
And in the words of her own: “And the voice of Pellegrina Leoni,” she concluded her long course of thought, “will not be heard again.” (61) Nevertheless, one will know from the story, how Pellegrina Leoni seems to be just one of many bodies that has captured her voice: “Do you know at whom you are throwing stones!” she went on. “A thousand men, a Pope, an Emperor, Princes, gondolieri and beggars, if I but lift my voice, will be here to avenge me on you, you fool.” (62) This quotation does not tell the reader whether they are lives from the past or lives to come. The voice will probably not die with Pellegrina. The voice seems able to possess different bodies, in order to continue living. But it needs a body to exist!
In this light, only being able to look forward, like Pellegrina, will mean just the same as only being able to look back, like Niccolo. Within this story, there seems to be no difference between past and present, remembrance and non-remembrance, leaving or staying. The only object that is enabled to cross these lines or maintain them in transparency, is the voice. Not just a voice, but a singing voice. A mise én abyme (63).
CONCLUDING REMARKS
What is voice? I asked. I did this work as a search and a try to have voice become visible. I searched within art and literature and I found it represented in very different ways. It was a process of unfolding voice, like a topoi, but within different contexts, across genres. I have discovered three different images on voice: the glass voice, the mute voice and the echo in order to find out how voice is represented in different ways.
Has it been possible? It has been an act of serendipity. Little by little to open up a cultural imagination on voice through analysis, and to see what it brought. I had the idea that one cannot really catch voice, and even though I still find it to be true, I also find that voice in general seeks a form. It has an afterlife. Voice is made visible as an object in art and literature. I find this comforting: that it will continue to come alive in different ways. I do not find it to be a motif that has an inherent meaning, rather it is a motif that many people have added meaning to when trying to describe it or make it visible. I leave it here. Like glass, memory and broken time. I leave it in time, space and history, like Bakhtin would say, but only as almost a topoi, knowing that when I leave it here, I leave it to be found somewhere else.
Authors note
One day in wintertime I woke up and I could not sing. Apart from writing, singing is the only thing I have been doing ever since childhood. I keep doing it because it gives me joy. I started to sing in a church choir when I was a child and I still do. I grew up singing. It is not a religious thing to me, coming from a school of atheism and creativity, this was not why I went to church. I wanted to sing. I sing for baptisms, weddings, confirmations and since I have grown older, I also sing for funerals. Singing is used for many rituals, also outside church. At home I often went around singing.
I had all the songs on my mind. Sometimes I kept repeating a few lines, because they were the only lines I remembered. To me it did not matter if I continued the song or echoed myself, it was the singing itself that mattered. A few times, like this specific one, I have lost my voice. Not definitively but within a period of time, because I had caught a cold. I could not speak, I could not sing, but little by little, it always came back to me.
REFERENCES
Oxford dictionaries, definition of voice
Dahl, Christian. In this essay he explains the history and concept of topoi. ‘Topos og Motiv’ in: Kultur og Klasse 123, Aarhus, 2017. P. 25-26
Curtius, Ernst Robert. In this essay he says: “A topos is something anonymous” and in addition, he also point at topoi in relation to art history, saying it is like “Art History without names”(my translations, p. 18). ‘Historisk Topik’ in: Kultur & Klasse 123, translated from German from: Literarästhetik des Mittelalters I-III, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, vol. 58, 1938, page 134-142 in the section ‘Begriff einer historischen Topik’, and more., Aarhus, 2017. P. 18-19
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. The chapter: ‘Afsluttende bemærkninger’ (Concluding remarks) from: Rum, Tid, Historie – Kronotopens former i europæisk litteratur, translated from Russian editions literaturno-kritiske stat’i, 1986 & Estetika sovetskogo tvortjestva, 1979, Forlaget Klim, 2006
Dahl, Christian. In this essay he explaines that “surprisingly many researchers of motif studies actually seems to care very little of the definitions of the two terms.” (my translation). ‘Topos og Motiv’ in: Kultur og Klasse 123, Aarhus, 2017. P. 23
Silver, Sean. ‘The Prehistory of Serendipity, from Bacon to Walpole’ in: Isis, vol. 106, the University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society, Chicago, 2015. P. 235
Podcast: ‘Eventyrernes Klub’. Hjernekassen på P1, 2018
Mavor, Carol. Aurelia, Reaktion Books, London, 2017. I have stolen this frase from the title of Carol Mavors essay: ‘Speaking in Glass’ from her book Aurelia, in which she also adresses the picture of Francesca Woodman: Talking to Vince. P. 127
Mavor, Carol. ‘Epiphanies in Glass’ in: The Encyclopedic Palace, Biennale Arte, Vol. I, Venice, 2013. P. 165
Andersen, Hans Christian. ‘The Nightingale’, translated from Danish (orig. published 1843). P. 2.
Ibid.
Svane-Knudsen, Ditte Holm: ‘Myte-tjek: Kan man smadre et glas med stemmen’ from: www.videnskab.dk, 28. February, 2016.
Benjamin, Walter. ‘Experience and poverty’ from: Atlas of places, essay XI, translated from German (orig. published 1933), 2018.
In his essay ‘On the Concept of History’ from 1942 the German literary critic Walter Benjamin adresses a painting by Paul Klee in which he sees a figure of an angel. This Angel of History (he calls it) has its back forward and is pressed toward future while staring back at all the katastrophes of past history that it sees repeat themselves endlessly, as if they one endless catastrophe.
Nancy, Jean-Luc. ‘Listening’, translated from French (orig. published 2002), Fordham University Press, New York, 2007. P. 29-30
Ibid. Translater’s note. P. xi-xii
Andersen, Hans Christian. ‘The little mermaid’, translated from Danish (orig. published, 1837). P. 1
Ibid. P. 3
Ibid. P. 5
Mavor, Carol. I have the idea of associating to thos shakeable christmas glass bowls from this essay by Mavor in which she adresses Walter Benjamin for having written poetically about these. ‘Epiphanies in Glass’ in: The Encyclopedic Palace, Biennale Arte, Vol. I, Venice, 2013. P. 165
Andersen, Hans Christian. ‘The little mermaid’, translated from Danish (orig. published, 1837). P. 1
Ibid. P. 4
Ibid.
In Shakespeare’s ‘The Winter’s Tale’ one of the characters, Hermione, who seemed to have been dead and has turned into a statue – in the end – comes to life again.
Andersen, Hans Christian. ‘The little mermaid’, translated from Danish (orig. published, 1837). P. 3
The Sirens are known from Homér’s: Odyssey, the story of young Odysseus who travels out on a long and adventurous travel to get home. He meets different hindrances, among these the sirens of the sea who are described as sea nymphs seducing sailors by singing. Homer: “Odyssey”. Around 700 B. C.
Andersen, Hans Christian. ‘The little mermaid’, translated from Danish (orig. published, 1837). P. 6
Ibid.
Ibid. P. 6-7
Ibid. P. 10
Ibid. P. 9-10
Ibid. P. 10
Keller, Hellen. The Story of my Life (orig. published 1903), published by George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., London, 1923
Nancy, Jean-Luc. ‘Listening’, translated from French (orig. published 2002), Fordham University Press, New York, 2007. P. 23-24
Dinesen, Isak (Karen Blixen). ‘Echoes’ from: Last Tales, Random House, New York, 1957. P. 159
Proust, Marcel. ‘Swann’s Way’, Combray I, in: In search of Lost Time (orig. published 1913), New Haven, Connecticut, 2013
Dinesen, Isak (Karen Blixen). ‘Echoes’ from: Last Tales, Random House, New York, 1957. P. 162
Ibid. P. 158
Ibid. P. 157
Ibid. P. 154
Ibid. P. 171
Ibid. P. 163
Ibid. P. 156
Ibid. P. 169
Ibid. P. 170
Ibid. P. 167
Ibid. P. 170
Ibid. P. 189
Ibid. P. 179
Ibid. P. 167
Ovid: ‘Narcissus’ & ‘Ekko & Narcissus’ in: Ovids metamorfoser, 8 A.D., Gyldendal, Copenhagen, 2005
Ibid. P. 153
Ibid. P. 173
Ibid.
Ibid. P. 177
Ibid. P. 183
Ibid. P. 190
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid. P. 185-186
Ibid. P. 189
Ibid. P. 187
I understand mise én abyme as an art historian word for describing a motif of endless mirroring.
Bibliography
Primary
Woodman, Francesca: ‘Talking to Vince’, photography, 1980
Andersen, Hans Christian: ‘The Little Mermaid’,
translated from Danish, 1837Dinesen, Isak (Karen Blixen): ‘Echoes’
from: Last Tales, Random House, New York, 1957
Secondary
Andersen, Hans Christian: ‘The Nightingale’,
translated from Danish, 1843Aoki, Mika: ‘Fluctuation of life’
from: Singing Glass, art work, 2010Armstrong, Isobel: Victorian Glassworlds,
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008Bakhtin, Mikhail M.: Rum, Tid, Historie – kronotopens former i europæisk litteratur, translated from Russian, Forlaget Klim, Aarhus, 2006
Benjamin, Walter: ‘Experience and poverty’ from: Atlas of places, essay XI, translated from German version 1933, 2018
Carson, Anne: ‘The Glass Essay’ from: Glass, Irony and God, New Directions, New York, 1994
Curtius, Ernst Robert: ‘Historisk Topik’ in: Kultur & Klasse 123, translated from German from: Literarästhetik des Mittelalters I-III, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, vol. 58, 1938, page 134-142 in the section ‘Begriff einer historischen Topik’, and more., Aarhus, 2017
Dahl, Christian: ‘Topos og Motiv’ in: Kultur og Klasse 123, Aarhus, 2017
Doig, Peter: The echo Lake, painting, 1998
Keller, Hellen: The Story of my Life,
published by George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., London, 1923Mavor, Carol: ‘Epiphanies in Glass’
in: The Encyclopedic Palace, Biennale Arte, Vol. I, Venice, 2013Mavor, Carol: Aurelia, Reaktion Books, London, 2017
Nancy, Jean-Luc: ‘Listening’,
translated from french, Fordham University Press, New York, 2007Ovid: ‘Narcissus’ & ‘Ekko & Narcissus’
in: Ovids metamorfoser, 8 A.D., Gyldendal, Copenhagen, 2005Proust, Marcel: ‘Swann’s Way’, Combray I, in: In Search of Lost Time, vol. 1, Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 2013.
Redon, Odilon: Silence, painting, c. 1911
(ed.) Ronnberg, Ami and Kathleen Martin: ‘Silence’ and ‘Glass’ in: The book of Symbols, Taschen, Cologne, 2010.
Svane-knudsen, Ditte Holm: ‘Myte-tjek: ‘Kan man smadre et glas med stemmen’ from: videnskab.dk, 28. February, 2016.
Siw Ranis (f. 1993) studerer Litteraturvidenskab ved Københavns Universitet. Siw har bidraget til idoart.dk siden 2014.
