You have to see how ugly someone playing the aulós becomes. I agree with Athena on this. It doesn’t help anything. As a wind instrument, that ancient double oboe from the Greek past requires too much air to store and the player’s cheeks swell. Athena invented it, and when she tried it, she saw her face reflected in the water, she didn’t like it and threw it to the ground in contempt.
I wouldn’t do like Athena, of course, I wouldn’t throw him away full of anger because a goddess is courageous, powerful and is nothing more than a university professor without divine gestures. But also I would be more careful about the repudiation of the instrument because I know how this story continues in Greek mythology. Abandoning him without consideration, Athena despises what tarnishes her and leaves the plot open so that someone, anyone who meets him along the way, ignores who created him, uses him for themselves and learns to touch him even if his appearance clouds it. And that someone in history then has the enormous arrogance of believing that it is enough to move your fingers and blow your lungs out to be a good musician. That occasional instrumentalist has self-taught and minor knowledge, exhibits a knowing ability with no background, does not know what an orchestra is, does not have the experience of listening to those who composed or played before him. But because he ignores his ignorance, he publicly claims that he is better than even the god of music. And challenge that god who, for example, plays the lyre.
The god is Apollo. The challenge is a juried competition. And the result is clear: Apollo wins, who not only plays the sweet lyre with pleasure, but also sings in the competition. The loser is called Marsyas and for his boasts he is cruelly punished by hanging from a tree and being skinned alive: the mythology does not include human rights.
Marsyas was a satyr. In mythology, satyrs were minor creatures with instinctive behavior and a wild appearance: bearded, with small horns and pointed ears, dressed in a goat’s skin covering their backs. This myth taught the dangers of being a satyr and believing oneself to be a god and, in a less literal interpretation, warned of the arrogance of those who overestimate their abilities. In popular literature, the motif of someone who plays the flute and can deceive us refers to this same core of meaning: the defense of order against chaos.
The story of Marsyas and Apollo has been artistically represented several times since Antiquity; In European Baroque, they really liked to paint their chilling final scene. Those who contemplate these paintings may notice the subject hanging upside down and skinned; He can witness Apollo, who usually appears in the background with his lyre, impassive, handsome. You can look into the details: the tears of some farmers who see the punishment, the aulos on the ground… The fictions of mythology are similar to paintings in which every vision is an act of interpretation. The story of Marsyas has been explained with alternative meanings: Apollo wins because he had the jury on his side (and Marsyas is a poor satyr without caste protection), Marsyas’ victory could not be allowed because the power would have finally changed sides on Olympus…
There are many possible interpretations, but mine is clear. From this myth I stick to Apollo as a representation of mastery, a symbol of rigor in the face of events. In the paintings that depict the story I do not see Marsyas, no matter how much he is placed in the foreground, no matter how much his gaze draws me, no matter how much the melody of his strident instrument seems to float on the scene before the harmonious lyre. In Marsyas I see an agitator who wants to alter his environment by playing an unusual instrument that comes only from the lung and does not know the established reason of theoretical music.
The recent call for demonstrations by ultra-agitators in Spanish universities is a modern incarnation of this myth. Athena created a resource of intelligence, the University, which every Marsyas wants to take advantage of as an instrument of rebellion controlled by her hands, attempting to delight with proclamations a place that was born to nourish a profound and delayed intellectual cultivation. I focus on the beginning of the myth, because without the inattention to the little one, Marsyas would not have been promoted. These students listening to the hooligans’ flute are old enough and have years of experience in the education system to have learned that beneath the veneer of defiant rebellion lies only misinformation and emotional noise. Universities must encourage critical thinking, rigor and doubt; If our academics believe that the style of these agitators is intellectual freedom, it is because we have not taken care of the instrument we have created. And even some universities were so clumsy that they agreed to participate in the competition and allowed this music to be played in their corridors.
I have already said that I do not have the gestures of a goddess but at the University I have my sacred mountain, the University is the institution that gave me my place in the world and I work to defend it. That’s why I say, figuratively of course, that I would skin these Marsyas. It is up to us in this painting to remove the goatskins and show that beneath them are nothing but inferior creatures.
