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Unread 10-15-2015, 12:27 AM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: San Diego, CA, USA
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Yes, wonderful!

The following also seems relevant--to me, if to no one else. Below is a link to an image of Apollo (the civilized, cultured superego), sedately playing his cithara, while the satyr Marsyas (the rude and nude id) gets down with the aulos flutes thrown away by Athena (the central figure). When Apollo and Marsyas had a music contest judged by the Muses, Apollo was in danger of losing until he changed the rules: according to one version of the myth, he required each competitor to play his instrument upside down; according to another version, he required each competitor to sing while accompanying himself on his instrument. Either way, after Apollo rigged the competition to favor his own way of making music, he won the right to have Marsyas flayed alive...which is clearly a metaphor for the overly harsh and dismissive critique we sometimes see on the Met boards.

(Warning: nudie picture)
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythol...rsyasNAMA.html

M. A. Griffiths wrote the following poem after receiving one too many critiques (in another online workshop) advising her to trim all her "unnecessary" modifiers, regardless of what this did to the meter and flow of the piece:

Marsyas

My song was ripped and flayed
when they cried ‘strip it bare’.
Behold its keening bones;
the muscles bleed elsewhere.

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 10-15-2015 at 12:39 AM.
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