The Pantomimic Voice

Abstract

Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as scholars have demonstrated, can be read in dialogue with Roman pantomime dance, and the tale of Echo and Narcissus is one of its most ‘pantomimic’ episodes. While others have focused on the figure of Narcissus in this vein, I turn instead to Echo, whose vocal mimicry can be seen as a mirror of the pantomime’s art, and whose juxtaposition with Narcissus seems emblematic of the body-voice relationship in pantomime. Echo’s desire for Narcissus engages with an existing lyric tradition of depicting the relationship between singing voice and dancing body in erotic terms. In such situations, the desire is fulfilled if the performers are both singing and dancing, uniting body and voice in performance. The thwarted union of Echo and Narcissus, however, embodies instead the dynamics of pantomime: the subordination or absence of the voice in favor of the body, and the connection created between dancer and audience.