The
swan song (greek: κύκνειο
άσμα) is
a metaphorical phrase for a final performance, work, appearance given
just before retirement or dying. Derived from the legend that a swan
is mute all its life but moments before its death sings a beautiful a
unique song.
This
belief, (that the swan sings only before death), has been debatable
even in antiquity, but in art and literature has been a constant
theme.
In
Aesop’s fable "The Swan and the Goose", a farmer mistook
a swan for goose and he was about to kill it when the swan started to
sing and he realized his mistake. Ancient philosophers have talked
about the last act of the beautiful fowl too. In Phaedo by Plato, Socrates says that, although swans sing in early life, they do not do so as beautifully as before they die while Aristotle in the History of Animals says that swans "are musical and sing mostly at the approach of death". Also in theatre this notion is pretty established. In Agamemnon (Aeschylus), the queen Clytemnestra compares Cassandra who has died to a swan who has sung her last wail.
From ancient greek writers to Ovid and from Shakespeare till today, the swan song remains the phrase that portays best and commonly the final and usually emotional performance given by a person before any kind of an end...
