Plato thinks that the power to drive onlookers mad should not be left to any random flutist; that the musician, like the orator, plays with dangerous forms of enchantment; and that the state should regulate the use of musical influences and contain them within a framework of sound medicine. That which is “musical,” however, is not the voice of the Sirens but rather Orpheus’s songs. The mermaid sirens, enemies of the Muses, have only one goal: to reroute, mislead, and delay Odysseus. In other words, they derail the dialectic, the law of the itinerary that leads our mind toward duty and truth.
Jankelevitch, Music and The Ineffable
J.M.W. Turner, The 'Fighting Temeraire'
tugged to her Last Berth to be broken up
(1839)
