Anne Carson . Geer mother I ony, and For father and God Introduction by GUY DAVENPORT | A NEW DIRECTIONS BOOKCory © 192,199,198 by Anne Cason Coyne © 195 by Gey Davenport Al igh rer. Ect or ri page uct i espe, ging, fale tccroon ocr, ato is bok may reed af of {pay mar cone meson sadn phowocpying snd rng. ot 1 aya sre a eal ter, thot pen in Win ‘ean te ube. Adaowlgnens: Gal cmon mat the tor and piers mpm whch sme oe poms in hs book tapered Amoco ‘hay Roum Now Fone Reach, Ravan, an Thais. "Cried eon ofthe Fl of Ree peat The Daca Ant (aC ews, Troe, 1995). Manca in he Unio Se of America New Diets Hoos epee fe pop. Ft publ New Dene Paperbok 88 in 195, Ped sacs Canady Peg Books Cd Lined Liteary of Congres Cataloging i-Puiaton Data (Caron, Arm, 1950- ‘Gla nd Gat Ange Can dct by Gy Dacor fae SBN 0811213001 ak pape) SISSSA7IO7GSS_ 1995 aed 930637 {New Dion Rooks we pb for Janes Laughlin typ New Dron Dusan [0 Fig Avene, New Yok 10017 FOURTH PRINTING ‘TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ‘The Glass Esay “The Trth About God TV Men ‘The Fall of Rome: A Traveller's Guide Book of Isis “The Gender of Sound 55 107 no‘THE GENDER OF SOUND Tis in large part according to the sounds people make that we judge them sane or insane, mal or female, good, ev, trustworthy, depres- sive, marrageable, moribund, likely or unlikely to make war on us, ltl beter than animals, inspired by God. These judgments happen fast and can be brutal. Aristotle tells us tha the highpitehed voice of| the female is one evidence of her evil disposition, for creatures who are brave or just (ike ions, bulls, roosters andthe human mae) have large deep voices." If you hear 2 man talking in a gente or bigh- pitched voice you know he is 4 kine "eatamite”)? The poct Acistophanes puts a comic turn on this cliché in his Ebtesiaowsa: a5 the women of Athens ate about to ingltrate the Athenian asembly and take over politcal process, the feminist leader Praxagorareas- sures her fllow female activists tat they have precisely the right kind ‘of voces for this ask. Because, a8 she says, “You know that among the young men the ones who turn out to be teste talkers are the ‘ones who get Fucked a lt."> ‘This joke depends ona collapsing together of two diferent aspects ‘of sound production, quality of voice and use of voice. We will find the ancients continually a pains to asocate these two aspect under 1 gencral rubric of gendet. High vocal pitch gocs together with talkativeness to characterize a person who is deviant from or deficient in the masculine ideal of sel-control. Women, eatamites, eunachs and androgynes fll nto this eategory. Their sounds are bad to hear and make men uncomfortable. Just how uncomfortable may be mea- sure bythe lengths to which Aristotle is willing to goin accounting, fo the gender of sound physiognomically; he ends up ascribing the lower pitch ofthe male voice tothe tension placed ot a mas val chords by his testicles functioning as loom weights In Hellenistic and Roman times doctors recommended vocal exercises to cure all ‘sorts of physical and psychological ailments in men, on the theoey thatthe practice of declamation would relieve congestion in the head and correct the damage that men habitually do to themselves in daily life by using the voice for highpitched sounds, loud shouting oF 19120 ANNE CARSON nts cain cbt todo we. This heaps not on he whole eemmendd Sieh bem energie Sepcaia ciety pen ree ae iiviemimie eetenaioemen Soir chne were foe aeatactypey ovat oer Speman Eris anon ucenaeeoe eatin eyee lat Srey teem Ensim ateretrstcags Sina ieni bcedirea seat ieee peas mee merge hate cette sca ink he ie ound ike those other Honourable Me Seiciemrenoe sare aia ed ‘Guero te Huh Hone’ OF Canons in 191, he at SOE Misi came gece Sericotee Sip ee were Seiten aia cece Hier Eiartnan ctaraa See Meee ene earl che rs pre est iam eerncemr Sactacceecya ee art Svar ae Bae Tact oe via ar oy oe Senin ere Set eStecnea ph ine mat i ete So iptchek cet ae tease fSisee atte ecto gt Smovacea i creer Sie seee tao saree Seyret ee Gt ee ei ca Aen ars Shiite ‘THE GENDER OF SOUND wa Aphrodite which is so concrete an aspect of her power that she fan wear it on her belt as 2 physical object of lend it to other women (Iiad).18 There is the old woman of Eleusinian legend Tambe who shricks obscenities and throws her skit up over her hhead to expose her genitalia There is the haunting garality of ‘the nymph Echo (laughter of Tambe in Athenian legend) who is desribed by Sophokles as “the girl with no door om her mouth” (Phioee) 18 Prting a door onthe female mouth has been an important projet of patriarchal cure from antiquity t0 the present day. Its chic? tactic isan ideological association of female sotnd with monstost slsorder and death. Consider this description by one of her biog phers ofthe sound of Gertrude Stein Gerere was cary, She used to roar with aught, out loud. She fd langh like a Bectesk She loved bet These sentences, with their artful confsion offctual and metaphor «al levels, cary with them it seems to me a whiff of pure fear Tis a fear that projeets Gertrude Stein across the boundary of woman al ‘human and animal kind into monstrosity. The simile “she had s laugh like a beefiteak” which identities Gertrude Stein with cattle is (eh lowed ar once by the statement “She loved bee?” indicating that Gertrude Stein ate cattle. Creatures who eat their own kind are gu larly called cannibals and regarded as abnormal. Gertrude Stein's ‘other abnormal artibutes, notably her lage physical size and les bianism, were emphasized persistently by critics, biographers and journalists who did not know what to make of her prose, The mur ginalization of her personality was a way to deflect her writing rom literary centrality. she is ft, funny looking and sexualy deviant she ‘must be a marginal talent, isthe assumption. ‘One of the literary patriarchs who feared Gert Stein most was [Emest Hemingway. And itis ineresting to hear him ell the sory of hhow he came to end his friendship with Gertrude Stein becatse he ‘ould not tolerate the sound of her voice. The story takes place in Paris. Hemingway tell i fom the point of view ofa disenchanted ‘expatriate ust realizing chat he cannot afterall make a life for himself amid the alien culture where he is stranded. One spring day in 19242 ANNE CARSON Hemingway comes to call on Gertrude Stein and is admitted by the maid: “The msiseran opened the door before Hang and told met come snarl wat Mus Sten wold be down a ny moment. Iwas before ‘on bu the maiderant poured megs of nae, pur kin ay band and winked happy. The colo liquid fee good on my tongue and twas still m my mouth when heard someone speaking to Ms Stein ar Ihadaever herd one perton speak to another: aver, anywhere ctr. Then Mis Stein's ois came pleading and bogging, ‘Saying, “Don't, psy Dont. Don please don. Pave don, pus.” Teallowed the dik and pur te glass down on the abe ad seared forthe door. The maitservant shook her finger at me and "Dow’ go, Shell be ight down “Tave to gos” Tsidand red not to her any more a et a it vasa going on andthe ony way Tcoukl noc ea itwas to be gone. Twa bd wo hear and the answers were wore, That was the way it inished for me, stupidly enough... . She ‘otto lok ke « Roan emperor and that was ie ify ike your rane ook Rain epee "inthe id ene or made fends again in order not wo be stl or ‘ghtous Bat all rer ake Es pan tyne ny heart no i my bead. When you cannot make fiends any moee in {your head i the wort, But fe wae moce complicated thin that!” Indced its more complicated than that. As we shal se i we keep -Emest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein in mind while we consider another vignette about man confronting the female voice. Tis one is from the 7th century BC. I is alyric fragment of the archaic poet Alkaios of Lesbos. Like Emest Hemingway, Alkaios was an expat ae writer. He had been expelled from his home city of Mitilene for politcal insurgency and his poem isa lonely and demoralized lament fiom exe. Like Hemingway, Allaios eptomizes his feelings of alen- ation inthe image of himself as a man standed in an anteroom of high culture and subjected to a disturbing din of women's voices fiom the room nest doot: wretched 1 ‘xt with wilderness a my oe Tenging to hear the sound ofthe Assembly ‘THE GENDER OF SOUND 123 being elle, © Ageia, snd the Conc ‘What my father and the fier of my fate grew old enjoying — long these cess who wrong one another— fom this Tam oust an ele a the fae finges of thing, ke Onomakes here all slone Ihave st up my howe in the wolthicker, 1 dwell keping my fet outside of eis where the Lesbian women in dee contests for bey ome and go wit taling robe na al sound reverberate an otherwordly echo of womens awfl yay shricking (alee) - pois... ofidros . «6 8 reas Ey ho noioaw Exe yooteruey Ingocar does two 4 sagulto)nevas CAyyeodatba al plas x dene ak néee905 adem atyrlehriead tyovtes ned wanda Xv (aaaontnar aodiver 8 byw Ghd votrwy dxehfanox (ge toyeriau’, ds 8° Onmardéng, real] ofos timo Rexauuins t ‘ov [n}6hzwov- do 3@ 12 mds 0 [Job f Buoy F Owen 1. foe T- 1. nox t eos ha foal 1 peta tang 86005 Be T TC ovibot wats 16 Olena ua Bers Ey 2805, Sexe Alepilades oxwénes géay sae Botnet, na BE BOF ye Yeorsatayovain 20 Teas Saniyas trwotas «814 ANNE CARSON “This apoom of radical lnetness, which Allaos emphasizes with an cxymoron “All lone (oa) Thave setup any housek en)” ine say at verse 10), bu thi wording would make litle sense o 2 Zabecentiry BC ci, The vet (ea) is made from the noun ks, ‘which denotes the whole restonal complex of spaces, objects, kins men, servants, animals, rituals and emotions that constitute life ‘within a fai within ps. A man allalone cannot consist an ib ‘iis’ oxymoronicconiton is reinforead bythe kind of rex tures that surround him. Wolves and women have replaced “the fathers of my fhe.” The wolf ia conventional symbol of mar- inal in Grek poeuy The wos an oul He ives beyond the Sroundary offal culated and inhabited space marked os the pais in thc Wank 0 mas and ale 1 perm ("he unbounded”) ‘Women, nthe ancient view, share this tertitory piriually and mex phorially invita of 3 “natural” female affinity forall that i a, formes ad in need ofthe cing hand of man. So for example in the document cited by Arte thar goes by the name of The Py- Atagorean Table of Oppoites, we Sd dhe attibutes caving, dark, Secret, ei, cvermoving, not slfcontained and lacking 1 Own boundaries aligned with Female and set over against staih, ight, hhones, gd, stable selontained and em bounded onthe Male sid (Arto, Meeps) do not imagine that these plates or tei hieechizaton is snows t you, now that ssi historians and feminists have spent the last Cen or fifteen years codifving the various arguments With, which ancene Greck thinkers convinced themselves that women telong toa ferent race than men. But i ners me that the radical others ofthe female is experienced by Alkais, a alo by Ere Flemingway, in the form of women's voices uttering sounds that men ind bad fo hea Why i emale sound bad to ear? The Suna tht Allo hears is tha F the loa Lesbian women who are ondcting beauty contests and making the ar reverberate with their yeling, These beauty contest ofthe Lesbian women are known tus fiom a notice im the Tadic schoia which indicates they were an stnal event performed probably i honour of Hera. Allaios men ‘ons the beauty contests inorder o remark on thee prodigious noise level and, by s0 doing, draws his poem int a ingcomspositon. The ‘THE GENDER OF SOUND 15 poem begins with the urbane and orderly sound ofa herald summon ing male citizens wo their rational civic business in the Assembly and the Council. The poem ends with an otherworldly echo of women shricking in the wolftickets, Moreover, the women are uttering a particular kind of shriek, the lay, This is a etual shout peculiar .o Females.” Tes 2 highpitched picrcing ery uttered a certain climactic ‘moments in tal pacice (atthe moment when a victim's throat is lashed during sacrifice) ort climactic moments in rea life (eat the birth ofa child) and also a common feature of women's festival. “The olayga with is cognate verb laze is one ofa family of words, inching ellen with its cognate vers lize and alla with ts cognate verb alalaza, probably of Indo-European oxigin and obviously of ‘onomatopocie derivation 2! These words do-not signify anything except their own sound. The sound represents a ery of either intense pleasure or intense pun. ®® To utter such crisis a specialize female funetion. When Alkaios finds himself surrounded by the sound ofthe ‘lly be is telling us that he is completely and genuinely out of bounds, No man would make such sound. No proper civic space would contain it unregulated. The female festivals in which such ritual eries were heard were generally not permitted to beheld within the city limits bur were relegated to suburban area like the moun tains, the beach or the rooftops of houses where women could dis: por themselves without contaminating the eas or civic space of men. To be exposed to such sound is for Allaios 2 condition of politcal nakedness as alarming as that of his archetype Odysseus, ‘who awakens with n0 clothes on in a thicket onthe island of Phiakia inthe sitth book of Homer's Ody, surrounded by the shrieking of ‘women. “Whar hullabaloo of females comes around mel” Odysseus exclaim? and gocs on to wonder what sore of savages or super natural beings can be making such a racket. The savages of course ‘tum out to be Nausikaa and her giefriends playing soccer on the ‘iverbank, but what is interesting in this secnario is Odyseu auto- ‘matic association of disorderly female sounel with will space, with savagery and the supernatural, Nausikas and hee fiends ae shortly compared by Homer to the wild gicls who roam the mountains in attendance upon Artemis, a goddess herself notorious for the Sounds that she makes—if we may judge from her Homeric epithets. Artemis is called teladine, derived from the noun blader which126 ANNE CARSON mens fod arng nie asf wind or hing wate othe tam Ot a Aremi io cl com which ly ‘fotgiacd oman “se who pour forth rows” (fom fearing “ica but could just aswell come fo the excamatory sound # indica she who pou fo they TOP ‘eck wom oe aha ll po ere ot nme wo pour fonh unegultel cic of any Kind within the eve we Replowstcanin fm nod mas noch ‘Paar dens tay ts diferent ae found. Veal continence {sGhcwcmal ferret masculine ve of opbranme(pradenc, ‘Stine of mind, moderation, temperance, eleontoP) that oF {onze mest patel thinking on eal or enedional mater. voonnasaspecs equ sito ck the dering principle of Spiraea formulas the double andar scan nace tr to colleague “A thinking man sis vm esatrandcon- fre and beans his own absolution, but the wera = = = does othe the mesure of tic nerf She can only cfs Keeps ‘thin the its of moray, following what seceyhas eased fring» So too, ancent dscns ofthe vitue of spree ‘Toomey tay apie nn, word as # ‘Sen denon tha fr men?” Fonte plese is. coxxten- sre emake etc to male dietion and aly means mote than chy. When it does mean mor, the alusion i often to {band & husband exhorting his wife or conebine to mplrayre i Tl tomean ‘Be gle" The Pythagorean heroine Tinyche who bid ertonge rater an ay th wong thing pal in tothe mle rule In general he women of csi {fete ca secs given fo Gorey and unconolld onto found to shelang, wang, sobbing, hil lament, loud Iugh- tee areas of pun oF of plese and erptons of emotion in fer As Earp put i "or iis woman's inborn pleasure ‘fray fave her cure emcons coming up to her mouth aot ato hr tongue” drm) When 3 man ets is current toxins come up to his mouth sed ou throgh hs tongue he s there emis as Herken of the Tahini agonies {ond himself “cbing ike ag wheres before {used 0 follow yd couse wouter npn am dco ‘THE GENDER OF SOUND 17 Iris fandmena sumprion of thse gender sereorypes that a san in his proper condition of payne shoul be abe wo soca fhimel fom his own cmotone and to contol thei sound. Ii Corey assumption that man's ope ci esponbity owas stoma isto contol her ind ore nso 8 she canoe con it evel Weseea summary moment of ich masclne benevolence in omer’ Ospy in Book 22 shen the old woman Eure emer the cing fall to fnd Od)xes caked lood and sounded by {Tadautots Furyhlea its her ead and opens er moth te at Sloge: Whereupon Odyseus reaches cut 4 hand and doses het trout saying, thom “ts nor permitted or yout cream st tow. Repice inwardly. «2 Closing women's moutis was the objet of complex array of leglation and convention jn predasial and casi! Greece, of ‘wich the best documented examples are Solo’ sumpruary ls and the core concept is Sophoklr blanket statement, “Since i the ome [good order] of omen. The sumpruary laws enacted by Solon nthe eh century BC had as theif, Plarch els, "0 Erbil al the disorderly and barbarous exes of women i the feta processions and finer ter The main eoponsblity for fimeral lament bad belonged to women fom erst Geck tines ‘Alea in Homer’ Tid we se the female Trojan eapives in ‘Achille camp compelled to wai over Patoklon Ye lnwgivers of the oh and Sth crake Solon wee at pins to esc hese Fenaleoutpourigs to minima of sound ard emoxional ips “The oficial theo ofthe lnwgivers i intact eter clenoance bad son 5 poll diese (no) and peas the need {opr cr spaces oftachplltion, Sound ten egret ‘naan of purteation a well sof polon. So for example the Inver Charonas, who lk! down i forthe Gy of Katana it Sy. pref hs gal code wth ceremonial public ahs This took the form ofan incantation meant oceans the citzen bey of ‘iliden or caminal intent and prepare acc space forthe gal Its cha olowed. Tn is aw cove Carona ike Solon, was once wo regulate female nie and red ater othe tal finer! iment Laws were posed peng the lation tine, ra ‘io, personnel, choreography, musical conten and vel conten of the wom fneral lament onthe gros that these “ars and128 ANNE CARSON barbaric sounds” were a simul “order an linc” (ax Phi ‘arch pots) Fra sound was judged ware in erainess and (0 ee deter a certain circularity in the reasoning here. If women’s public uerance is perpetually colo thin cll nttons {ke dhe lament f women ate regu resigned othe expe sion of onrational sounds ike the ag snd aw emotion i ge srl then hes ala natura tren of the female to sheng, svaling, weeping, cmortonal display and orl dno canoe Belp but beim ef fuliling propery. But celery is not the most ingenious thing about ths resoning. We should look» ite more clos atthe ilclogy thar under male abhorrence of female Sound. And it become important a hs pinto dings wound fon ngage. "oc the formal denton of human nate prefered by patriarchal caine is one bed on aiculition of wound AB Artode sym any ‘nial can make noses to riser pleaoe or pin i what ier nis man frm best, and ization rom the wldemes, isthe {Se of atonal arcu opecch: lags)” Prom sucha prsepion Sr bmmanty Goll sree Fas foe what ones nan ge When the feof Alesander Graham Bll, woman who fad Been fend in chldhood nd ew how to prea bu nox how to ak fey well ake him to each er gn Language, Aletander replied, “The se of sgn language is pemicos, Forte only way by which Langage can thorough aed iby sing i for the comma ‘ation of thought withow aration iar anyother language" ‘Aoander Gram Beli, whom chad mate the day ater he {atone the telephone, neve id erm sgn langage. Or any oer language. ‘What is ic that i pernicious about sign language? To a husband like Alesander Graham Bell, sto a patriarchal social order like that of classical Greece there is something disturbing or abnormal about the tse of sign ro transcribe upon the outside ofthe body a meaning from inside the body which does not passthrough the contro point ‘of lag, meaning whichis not subject to the mechanism of dissocia- tion thar the Greeks called sophrayne or self-control. Sigmund Freud applied the name “hysteria” to this process of transcription when i ‘occurred in female patients whose tics and neualgis and convul- THE GENDER OF SOUND 19 sions and paralyses and eating disorders and spells of blindness could be read, in his theory, as a direct translation into somatic terms of psychic events within the woman's body.» Freud conceived his own therapeutic tak asthe rechannellngof these hysterc signs into ratio- nal discourse #9 Herodotos tells us ofa priestess of Athene in Pedasa who did not use speech to prophesy but would grow a beard whenever she saw misfortune coming upon her community!) Herodotos doesnot register any surprise at the “somatic compliance” (as Freud would call t) ofthis woman's prophetic body nor call her condition pathological. Bue Herodotos was a practical person, less concerned to dscover pathologies in his historical subject than to ‘congratulate them for putting “othemess” to cultural use, And the anecdote does give us a strong image of how ancient culture went abour constructing the “otherness” of the female. Woman is that ereanure who puts the inside on the outside. By projections and leakages of all kinds—somatc, vocal, emotional, sexual—female ex- pose or expend what should be kept in. Females blurt out a direct. translation of what should be formulated indirectly. There i a story told about the wife of Pythagoras, that she once uncovered her am ‘while ou of doors and someone commented, "Nice arm,” ro which she responded, “Not public property!" Plutarch’s comment on this story is: “The arm of a viwous woman should not be public prop erty, nor her speech nether, and she should as modestly guard against exposing her voice to outsiders a8 she would guard against stripping off her clothes. For in her voice as she is blabbering aay fan be read her emotions, her character and her physical condi tion.™? In pit of herself, Putarch’s woman ha a voice that acts ike a sign language, exposing her inside facts. Ancient physiologists fom Aistode through the early Roman empite tell us that a man ean |know ftom the sound ofa woman's voice private daa lke whether ot ‘not she is menstruating, whether or nor she has had sexta exper cence. Although these are useful things to know, they may be bad to hear or make men uncomfortable: What is pemicious about sign language is that it permits a direct continuity berween i sie and outside. Such continuity is abhorrent to the male nature. ‘The masculine vire of sophrogme oF self-control aims to obstrct this continuity, to dissociate the outside surface of man fom ‘what is going on inside him. Man breaks continuity by inteposing132 ANNE CARSON perception thatthe mouth of her uterus closes upon the seed. This ‘losed mouth, and the god silence of conceprion tacit protects and signifies, provides the model of decorum forthe upper mouth as Well Sophoker frequently cited diam “Silence isthe kama of women” has its medical analog in women’s amulets feom antiquity which Picture a uterus equipped with a lock at the mouth. ‘When itis not locked the mouth may gape open and let out ‘unspeakable things. Greek myth, literature and cult show traces of ‘cultural anxiety about such female ejaculation. For example there i the story of Medusa who, when her head was cut of by Perseus, gave birth to a son and 2 Bying horse through her neck > Or agai that restless and loquacious nymph Echo, surely the most mobile female in Greek myth. When Sophokes calls her “the gir with no door on hher mouth® we might wonder which mouth he means. Especially since Greek legend marris Echo off inthe end ro the god Pan whose ‘ame implies her conjugal union with every ving thing, ‘We should also give some consideration to that bizarre and vari- ‘ously exphined religious practice called aischrolgyia. Ai means “saying ugly thing.” Certain women’s festivals included an ingerval in which women shouted abusive remarks or obscenities or dliny jokes atone another. Historians of religion casi these rituals fof bad sound either as some Frazerian species of feriity magic or 352 typeof coarse but cheering buffoonery in which (as Walter Burkert says) “anagonism berween the sexes is played up and finds e- lease." Bur the fact emains tha in general men were not weleome at these rials and Greek legend contains more thn afew cautionary tales of men castrated, dismembered oF Killed when they blundered ino them. These stores suggest a backlog of sexual anger behind the bland fice of religious bufloonery. Ancient society was happy t0 have women drain off such unpleasant tendencies and raw emotion into 4 leakproof ritual container. The stategy involved here is 2 kathartic ope, based on a sort of peychological division of labour between the sexes, such as [pseudlo]Demosthenes mentions in are ference to the Athenian ritual called Cine. The ceremony of ‘Gines took place on the second day of the Dionysian festival of ‘Anthestria Te featured a competition berween celebrant to drain fan oversize jug of wine and concluded witha symbolic (or pechaps not) act of sexual union between the god Dionysos and a representa THE GENDER OF SOUND 133 tive woman of the community. It is this person to. whom De- _mosthenes refers, saying “She isthe woman who discharges the un speakable things on chal ofthe city "=" {Les dwell for amoment on this ancient female task of discharg: ing unspeakable things on behalf ofthe city, and on the structures thatthe city sets up to contain such speech, Aritual structure like the aihrolagia raises some diffcule questions of definition. For it collapses into a single kathartic activity two different aspects of sound production. We have noticed thie combi hatory tactic already throughout most ofthe ancien and some ofthe ‘modem discussions of voice: female sound is bad to hear bath because the qualty ofa woman's voice is objectionable and because woman veo yt aha ed Wen te are blue rome important questions about the distinction between essential and constructed characteristics of human nature recede into circularity, Nowadays, sex diference in language is topic of diverse research and unresolved debate. The sounds made by ‘womien are said to have different inflectional patterns, different "anges of intonation, cfferent sytactic preferences, cifeent seman ic fields, diferent diction, dfferee narrative textures, different be havioural accoutrements, ‘fferent contextual pressures than the sounds that men make Tantalizing vestiges of ancient evidence for such difference may be read frome, passing references in Ari {ophanes to a “woman's language” chat a man can leam or imitate if the wants to (Themophoriazaua) or fom the conspicuously Ono ‘matopocic construction of female ris like eal an female names like Gorgo, Baubo, Echo, Syrinx, Eileithyia®” Bur in general, no clear acount of the ancien facts an be extracted from strategically blurred notions lke the homology of female mouth and female geni- tals, or tactically blurred activities lke the ritual ofthe ached ‘What does emerge isa consistent paradigm of response to otherness (of voice. It sa paradigm that forms itself a katharse, As such, the ancient Greck ritual of nizhalgia bears some tes blance tothe procedure developed by Sigmund Freud and his cok. league Josef Breuer for treatment of hysterical women, In Cie ‘Studies on Hysteria Preud and Brewer use the term *Katharss® and also the term “talking cure” of this revolutionary therapy. In Freud theory the hysterical patients are women who have bad memories ot130 ANNE CARSON Iagas—whose most important censor is the rational articulation sound Every sound we mat «bt of autobiography. thas a toally priate ois tector publi A peo ide projet {the ote The cmap of tc projections aso pat Sica cure thar (as me ave seen) divides many iat to {periesthow who can cemor thence and thow who eannoe in onder expr some ofthe mplstions of this vison les consider how Dian epics the two speci in hi eay"On Take "To exemplify the female speci in its eof sound Piarch tl the sory ofa pcan wit who tated by et husband The Poiitcan makes upa crazy story and ells it his wife secret Ely one moming. “Now kes your moth cose sbout is” he tran hex The wie intel relates the secret vo het mais. ant "Now kesp your mouth coed about his she tele ma ‘ran, who iedl relates ico the whole town and before trelmoming he polician imel receives sown tory back gain. "och cnt any ing, Tehran a ken sons and protsine meses in oe ott his wif at One Might ets cackd or lay vel by filing ae with lor wane thm with wacr™ Fare pied anecote wid acy shout ‘tucaline pec ac Irv deserpion of endo Solon med ‘achat Anacharsis who had dined with Solon and was testing afer dinner, ‘war sce pressing his let hand on is sex pat and his igh hand ‘his mouth for he belived thatthe tongue requires amore power fare. And be wa ght Ie wold nx be easy coun ab many ‘men ket through incontinence in amore pleatres cites ad pte ruined through eveltion of secret In assesing the implications of the gendering of sound for 3 so- ety lke that ofthe ancient Greeks, we have t take seriously the ‘connexion Plutarch makes berween verbal and sexual continence, between mouth and genitals. Because that connexion turns out to be very differen mate formen than for women, The masculine vitae ‘of self cemsorship with which Anachasis responds to impulses from inside himselfs shown tobe simply unavailable to the female nature. ‘THE GENDER OF SOUND ro ach ein iat nse ay ht pert lege tsi ofthe go Apollo wins pts Lacs mea tare {gol fiw wor and snc xeon nt oe hu of at ‘se mouths Now whens woman raf the mouth thee Bt Inte at take han wat won he mage ofthe aly wera wih which Parc concn st ane one of cone monet gure in att ier forte epresnaton of male Sy. “ha fa etc of thi operon (ely oof fel sei bave een sed gh by ete sce tinge” ks ps iets there meaty ofc marer Ir a om of aco Grek a Roman theory and ston dsm tars worn har wo nota ‘The ee though wh ol acy tes pcan he oer though which seal acy sp ate Boh dene ye ‘ed arn Gra ain Lo) wi tion of aero Ino frente upper moat om lover mouth Both evo tnt eal mt composed te baby sock hn ect, eo a an) Bath meu pom elec slow Canty hich gud by pe at ae Wc fee Soe The cet imal writes pp) 0 only homologs ms bt als pred tedeatonn © pet an lr moti cen exo ee tlfarctn. They ee wth nr, do any oc and ch its, smpme of pysieged tcyewion tosea spe a lover mutes tha on ho cag of ent urs ieee ia rant orf woe hat oo toc vou eerie rn eof mse tt esos Cite 1 wor nc eg lhe oe w depen Wh igh uv: bese as ot bet ced pon by the ul bow Riis sesh Ipigenc geno non) Th ange ae Sd ned teat See fe false a par pojeion of resale anges oc icwer moh One's wonans seal i begs the ie of be tos fe neve comply ned agun—exet on on con theme wir pa nhs wea on pero Setar dcr he ema tha | woman ers dy ‘Sul ieee At the monet of coeptn, he Fees ‘bet Src ales the woman har sang ok a1st ANNE CARSON ug eexonstrapps ine them polton Freda Breuer 1 Gemcto fbe w ara off hi ig be tomer unr hypo speak nt Se pace ee meee soe Oe ofr ot ee ‘Srcbelty Fe an afi nly cle ike ses snoder nso speaking Engh alough she war Vines another wr wha end csp argon" Baral ae cena chanced tyre pcan in connected maine and atonal xeon of thuirhyanc symptoms, Whereupon, bo read and Breer dai, the omens danpenr—clase by this spe Kata lof {taining of he at sod of trpesable igs. eres hw Jn! crests hs ineracton wth he pene vr gos by he peony Anna O. ert jeg oes am sarees eee ai eet isiafanasaniteatetanaay soe See ae eee Se eae een ari Wher we cl it chirncy sveping 0 cgi oil - sc to isn elo ng ag e+ he ue aatgm of response obo Ait nie faa peer ino a many nee ngs Parca ore ke sweetened pcan scons toc nee only she ong of ted sound in polteay appropiate voncncs eth he opper and celowerenalemouth appar sandannsd of ch ono ig aon Fred mn ym oe 0 Ce So» ‘tr that Jost Bre haf spd is sac raoship “tin, Bsa wy ae an Res rac of song onan pontve rane of na {Sy sal mnie" Nord 1992 Gd ead el nse toa league what aly happened beeen Brescrand Aa O- Ir waren the crag of is en itervew wih hr that reser toured Ann spare in et onthe oor contorted by ab ‘THE GENDER OF SOUND 135 omin pin, Whe hk er what vas wrong she over ht Siew sour ge inh hic Kenans entoneoe 2 Fred als sa cael Bett al take pene a Cae Stn ria om 88101898 an ed aah abandon colabring wth ed ent tinge me Sim when boheme mouths uy wo speak thease Tes omfg an enburing to hve to as Cine atone ound proce y sem, Let scone oe nse tap ny flair mated nursing. Theis onpoftracos sauce ao ‘Sis Minorand netsh cenny BC whch top eee body inan ming srtstcuted erm Ea oftine eee ‘oman who com fst nothing br he ve ct Tae two mots se welded together nat ines el es ‘hich exch er aati cto, Merete ‘hetwomouts seers The wp mouth rang ce a the boom fhe sts bey. loner or gta hao ‘pen on op ofthe hen eongraphe en tha mona Ate kt wonan nas Bao wh figure Grek pe orn emer te ot woman ante (ne Deets ny andi ‘copa si ft al ot erga Bana as 4 one gin: coring fo the non hd ted Synonym kis which dette me sera het ‘tnd devs om baba he ocmtopcr Grek weed Be tgs bk The mic ation ofBausis song oc Lee od woman ln, Has sete end oat ‘wot ero pling cath to eve hea a ao shouting ot obsne ngage orks. The svg Hao roves ne logy kr sad ofthe naps Re eae fal apse maya come oe icles ial en Sed te mayne (he pling of cng eine ndtnd hain 2nd lor gst cs peal Curva pon crane to change rea thay eet ter of an apo uta, So Purch dsb ti cite ‘apna gary women beseged cc ode Oe Comyn hey walan pulp the coving spe inspec singe ® Pitch pas th ac oe ‘Speouessanimtnceofime nis cnt Ba woo gy136 ANNE CARSON ae ot tre le prt ute another extn The abo sees sonic ott Soaae aren eetonaens Sepmbacrataaine beget eee eee wanda annem ere eee evens Seca SSE tage yeni teres eer tame teeey micewwecanew esate Sate poten teeth ark Sri geans Saar nrmine Savane mamma carga em ton emer ns ea anne weemeainers Beek hinted Soe eects Sooo ees serge oearermen sees Sn enemy eee eea See ee ee oe ee Seceacre actions ree eece eens iaraie mesererwene Sno rerio amen Sore as eet aes a er Sree nce ener Seoseey ee Sear pie tue cart mre ee =a eee ‘THE GENDER OF SOUND 137 kind of human self than one based on dissociation of inside and ‘outside. Or indeed, another human esene than sel Endnotes 1 Povo, 072 2 lpm, On nice ines 1.18 and 299; Dover. (A38) 1,75, W. Gras (1930) 401, Im ae ad ‘lesen ator omg me fo peor chaps fe hot Voir he Munro one Bunda eee fran i the nd Sop Maly es Sp sa Presentation in Ancient Rome. cand ae 3. Romo ee 113-14 4. io, One Coot of inal 7870-708 5. Onin Gana 9547 6: A Raph Te Ose, Oca 7197, 2.8 Roget Arc (9t) 3 § 1. Hme 956) 309 58 Vere (191,117 9 mse 7 3 10. Om, 4278 1 Aston, omen 1213-1214, 12 Hee finde pai 9-36 12 tng tate 14, On abe ne M. Oke (195, 85-90 and tens 15: Pouce is Te. Med. Lahn (985,504 1 E Henge (90), 11, 1a fe one 1 Arion Mes, 98602 20,5 Fare (1919) 4°53 smb he perict e 3B ome (907,58 2. Germs O08, 28 sad 8 2 ose'tn on. 108. 25.5 Gene (983, 249-250 flowing Ech (910, 48 26, Later o Seren ce! by Groh (1980, 96 27H Non (980 ps 1022 399)138 ANNE CARSON 28. Bg, Sophos, Aji, 586. 29, Lumblichos, Lif of Fehrs, 31, 194 30. Andomaae, 9-5 31 1070-8, 32, of 22. 105-6. 133, Ged by Arsoue, Polis, 1, 1260330 Py % 4% Tht 125 and 24, {x fm Many Kats ha he out ‘nay dc son onthe pig aoe, rtng em de Tork ti Wc Wal infec ihe pace ‘ahve ae nen en fea vm why a ly eps eo tered rave anayofcame anced oy tbe tT and ‘Siete cng srl emp” vy. Pa ise 538. Ts se ame pu A.B. eed he Sc Swe sate, Rosy ase 171 29. $ eda rar (163). 40. We fut tr exh nll pom mi a fremont dapper when we a uscd a agg ey Airc tnt bythe pede nd when neha foc Cen pope ea faire eo wd" Fea oso oy tt he pos ‘Sp tind yest alin ong le ay uth pot” Uhl, 6283) ats 1B Lp yap, 7 = Min, 28 Gon, 65 1B. Alea ay of dna Salt 6 Sh 7. Dig en 3A arn an. Arg (1980, 97-100 A Hac (poy 24-29 an 44 On Tine 7= Moy S07. 1S 7 gS 1 Ane ath che 16. Thelope a te pron ar bint dow 7 {is clbe oy wfling nn of onl pinoy sod Eon ning ster meiclomp cf hc ea wea supe dove Gen (19907 Han (190) 05-327 SEs ism ass 48, post, Dna of Wane, 2197, 83105 (Li Gi, On te ‘THE GENDER OF SOUND 139 fins ofthe Pars, 15.3; Hanson (1990), 321-329; Oende (1990), 104-105, Siss (1990), 5, 53-66, 7, 166-168 49. Galea, On Generation, 182-3, Hanson (1990), 328. 50: Soranos, Gaia: 14.23; Ginn, 122 SL. Aikiylos, Agamemnon, 244; Hanson (1990), 829-832; Hanson and Armserong (1986) 52. Agamemnon, 244, 58. Soranos, maki, 144; Cpu Medium Gracermm, 4.31.91 (I berg): Hanon (1990), 315, 821-322. ‘54, Hesiod, Theyony, 280-281; Wason al. (1978), 120, 55. “The Greek evidence points moet conspicuously tothe absurdity and buffonery of the whole ali there ea conscious descent othe wet clases and the lower parts of the anatomy. = =: W. Butert (1988), 108. 56, Baipides, Ban: M, Dtinne and J-P. Verant (1979), 184-186; Zein (1982), 146-153, 57. On the Anthetria see Patke (1977), 107-113; Burkert (1985), 29, 58. 5978, 158, Se Ale (1978) Cixous (1981); Gates (191); expeily 6-84; Ingaray (1990); Kramarae (1981); Tako? (1975), Sapie (1989); Spender (1985). 60, Aristophanes, Themoplaricamn, 192,267 (1, See ako Zein (1985) on the feminization of the mae in Greek veage. 62, Fre and Breer (1966), $17, 29, 63. Ibid, 30. 4, Ibid, 40 01 65. Gay (198), 67, 166. Olener (1990) and pats, (67. H. Diels made the idenifetion (1907); on Baubo sce father AN. Athanaskis (1976); Burkee (1985), 368, Dever (1983), Gn (1974), 168, 171; Lobeck (1829), Olender (1990) 68. Olender suggests another explanation, ssoited with marsing an in fant: (1990), 97-99 and references, 9. Grat (1974), 169, 195; Oknder (1990), 93-95, 70. On the Vrte of Women, 59 = Moral, 532640 ANNE CARSON Bibliography Ade, M. K. (1978), Sx Difirecs in Hama Speck, Hamburg. ‘Aesiou, M (1974, The Ritual Lament in Grek Tradition, Oo, ‘Ander, S. 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