In Literature
The story of the syrinx is told in Achilles Tatius' Leukippe and Kleitophon where the heroine is subjected to a virginity test by entering a cave where Pan has left syrinx pipes that will sound a melody if she passes. The story became popular among artists and writers in the 19th century. The Victorian artist and poet Thomas Woolner wrote Silenus, a long narrative poem about the myth, in which Syrinx becomes the lover of Silenus, but drowns when she attempts to escape rape by Pan, as a result of the crime Pan is transmuted into a demon figure and Silenus becomes a drunkard. Amy Clampitt's poem Syrinx refers to the myth by relating the whispering of the reeds to the difficulties of language.
The story was used as a central theme by Aifric Mac Aodha in her poetry collection "Gabháil Syrinx".
Samuel R. Delany features an instrument called a syrynx in his classic science-fiction novel Nova.
Read more about this topic: Syrinx
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn’t.”
—Jean-Luc Godard (b. 1930)