Phalarian Cri

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Greek tyrant Phalaris (c. 550 B.C.) had a hollow bronze torture chamber in the shape of a bull.  A victim was stuffed inside to cook to death, but by the time the agonized screams emerged from the mouth of the hollow, reverberating bull, they had been transformed, as by the tubes of a trumpet, and they sounded musical and interesting.

 

What is a poet? An unhappy man who conceals profound anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so fashioned that when sighs and groans pass over them they sound like beautiful music. His fate resembles that of the unhappy men who were slowly roasted by a gentle fire in the tyrant Phalaris' bull—their shrieks could not reach his ear to terrify him, to him they sounded like sweet music. And people flock about the poet and say to him: do sing again; which means, would that new sufferings tormented your soul, and: would that your lips stayed fashioned as before, for your cries would only terrify us, but your music is delightful. 

 

Søren Kierkegaard, Diapsalmata, translated by Lee Milton Hollander

 

 

 

 

I was heavy then, and stupid, and distracted with the cries of tortured prisoners in the polished brass of that Phalarian bull, society...I could not hear the angels lift.

 

Elizabeth Barret Browning, Aurora Leigh