La freccia e il cerchio
anno 5, numero 5, 2014
pp. 153-155

Laura Faranda
“Paint sound”. The nymph Echo, parable of a voice

   Every story has its beginning and every voice has its presence. This statement suits the story of Echo, the loquacious nymph of Ovid’s tale. She spoke ceaselessly for hours in front of Hera, Zeus’ bride. With her neverending sermones Echo managed to distract the goddess from the Lord of Olympus’ elopements with the Oread nymphs of the mountains.
   Endowed with excellent rhetorical skills, Echo had probably learnt from Pan, her lover and companion on the mounts, how to use the enchanting power of sound. It is said that Echo had two daughters from Pan. They became worthy custodians of the sensual knowledge of their mother, a nynpha vocalis: Iynx instilled in Zeus the love for the virgin priestess Io; Iambe, the other daughter, a mythical personification of iambic poetry, hosted Demeter, desperate for the loss of her daughter Persephone, and «joking ceaselessly, managed to cheer up the goddess».
   In the ovidian version, the presence of Echo’s voice seems to be inseparable from the power of a body which is able to engender, narrate and seduce at the same time. And as the myth “masks” history, our journey through mythology is going to be dense of significance. Our task is to review the narrable spaces which made Echo a personification of absence. These spaces turn her voice into an echolalic recall performed by a body which disappears and ceases to have material existence, along with the progressive and symbolic deconstruction of the female body.
   In order to go on, it is necessary to evoke Ovid’s version of Echo’s metamorphosis: a venerable goddess and bride is seated on Olympus’ throne waiting for her (absent) husband; a loquacious nymph tries to entertain her thus concealing god Zeus’ elopements. But the goddess soon discovers the deceit and begins to plan how to give the nymph an examplar punishment:

«Your tongue, so freely wagged at my expense, shall be of little use; your endless voice, much shorter than your tongue.» At once the Nymph was stricken as the goddess had decreed; and, ever since, she only mocks the sounds of others’ voices, or, perchance, returns their final words.

   Once Hera’s vengeance is accomplished, Echo’s voice is turned into a sort of acoustic mirror and can just repeat the last words of a phrase eavesdropped between the peaks of the mounts or the screams of a traveller. In other words, her voice represents the mortification of a body condemned to an only-responsive function, completely deprived of its expressive and communicative potential.
   At this point of Ovid’s narration Narcissus appears. When Echo, almost trapped in the lonely mountains, glimpses him for the first time, her body still alive and trembling is immediately pervaded by desire: 

The more she followed him the hotter did she burn, as when the flame flares upward from the sulphur on the torch. Oh, how she longed to make her passion known! To plead in soft entreaty! To implore his love! But now, till others have begun, a mute of Nature she must be. She cannot choose but wait the moment when his voice may give to her an answer6.

   As her voice completely lost its expressive autonomy, Echo can just repeat the last words of Narcissus’ speech, trying to establish an impossible dialogue. The “conversation” goes on like this:

«Who is here?» and Echo, «Here!» replies. Amazed, he casts his eyes around, and calls with louder voice, «Come here!» «Come here!» she calls the youth who calls. […] He tries again, again, and is deceived by this alternate voice, and calls aloud,
«Oh let us come together!» Echo cries, «Oh let us come together!» Never sound seemed sweeter to the Nymph.
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