A play watched to the endCypressWineMilkThe naming of a grief
Invocation Approach
Tone
Grave and attentive
Address
MelpomeneSingerMuse of Tragedy
Relationship
The song that holds what is unbearable
Warning
She does not console and does not promise relief
Resonance
Those sitting with grief and the makers who stage it
Symbols
The maskThe clubThe cothurnusThe cypress
Mythology Summary
Melpomene is one of the nine Muses named by Hesiod (Theogony 77-78), daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, and her name is connected with singing and with the song that accompanies the dance. The assignment of tragedy to her is post-Hesiodic, made in the Hellenistic and Roman handbooks, and the tragic mask and club of Heracles belong to that later iconography. The Muses were worshipped as a college at Helicon and in the Thespian Mouseia (Pausanias 9.29-30), while tragedy itself was staged at Athens in the civic festivals of Dionysus.
Modern Practice
The Muse of the unbearable made singable: invoked by writers of tragedy, and by anyone who has to hold a grief long enough to give it a form. The practice is not catharsis as a promise but form as a discipline - the chorus keeps singing while the thing is still true.