Swan song

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"Swan song" is a reference to an ancient belief that the Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) is completely mute during its lifespan, but may sing one heartbreakingly beautiful song just before it dies. However, it has also been known since antiquity that this belief is false; "mute" swans are not actually mute during life – they produce snorts, shrill noises, grunts, and hisses – and they do not sing as they die. In particular, Pliny the Elder refuted the belief in A.D. 77 in his Natural History (book 10, chapter xxxii: olorum morte narratur flebilis cantus, falso, ut arbitror, aliquot experimentis, "observation shows that the story that the dying swan sings is false").

Nevertheless, the legend has remained so appealing that over the centuries it has appeared in various artistic works. Aesop's fable of "The Swan Mistaken for a Goose" alludes to it.[1] Ovid mentions it in "The Story of Picus and Canens."[2]

The well-known Orlando Gibbons madrigal (The Silver Swan) states the legend thus:

The silver Swan, who living had no Note,
when Death approached, unlocked her silent throat.
Leaning her breast upon the reedy shore,
thus sang her first and last, and sang no more:
"Farewell, all joys! O Death, come close mine eyes!
"More Geese than Swans now live, more Fools than Wise."

Chaucer wrote of "The Ialous swan, ayens his deth that singeth".[3] In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Portia declaims "Let music sound while he doth make his choice;/Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,/Fading in music."[4]

Tennyson's poem "The Dying Swan" is a poetic evocation of the beauty of the supposed song and so full of detail as to imply that he had actually heard it:

The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul
Of that waste place with joy
Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear
The warble was low, and full and clear; ...
But anon her awful jubilant voice,
With a music strange and manifold,
Flow’d forth on a carol free and bold;
As when a mighty people rejoice
With shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold...

By extension, swan song has become an idiom referring to a final theatrical or dramatic appearance, or any final work or accomplishment. For example, Franz Schubert's collection of songs, published in his year of death, 1828, is known as the Schwanengesang (German for "swan song"). It generally carries the connotation that the performer is aware of his or her imminent demise (or retirement) and is expending his or her last breath on one magnificent final effort. Anton Chekhov's one-act play, The Swan Song (1887), describes an aging actor who, while sitting alone in a darkened theatre, ruminates on his past.

In the book And Then There Were None, a record that tells the characters of their crimes in life is called Swan Song. Since said crimes were above the rule of law, the killer feels a need to use this as a fullfillment of his desire to punish the wicked in life.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Aesop (1998). The Complete Fables. Penguin Classics. ISBN 0-14-044649-4.  p. 127: "The swan, who had been caught by mistake instead of the goose, began to sing as a prelude to its own demise. His voice was recognized and the song saved his life." Annotation by Robert and Olivia Temple: "The premise of this fable is the odd tradition of 'the swan song.'" [1]
  2. ^ Ovid. Metamorphoses (Kline) 14, the Ovid Collection, Univ. of Virginia E-Text Center; Bk XIV:320-396: The transformation of Picus. University of Virginia. "There, she poured out her words of grief, tearfully, in faint tones, in harmony with sadness, just as the swan sings once, in dying, its own funeral song."
  3. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1896). Chaucer: the Minor Poems. Clarendon Press. , p. 86[2]
  4. ^ The Merchant of Venice," Act 3 Scene 2[3]

The Swan' Song By Sir Edward Firlington

The sound of ten thousand horns bellow up the wall, Lurching to the unexpected crowd. Though one may fell mighty and tall, The Swan Song could make any man fall.

The sweeping tone of a clarion call, Relinquished the minds of the citizens few. Though one may fell mighty and tall, The Swan Song could make any man fall.

And o’er the sound brought them all, Down to the ground due to said sound. Though one may fell mighty and tall, The Swan Song could make any man fall.

The tune of death began to enthrall, Those countless men one and all. Though one may fell mighty and tall, The Swan Song could make any man fall.

And then a mutter, much like a squall, Cut the attitude those were bound. Though one may fell mighty and tall, The Swan Song could make any man fall. But if one mistake was made at all, The trance men embraced if they can recall. Would be cut like the silk of a rotten pall, And realization would fall upon us all:

“A Swan song is no more than a call.”

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