The Lure of the Siren’s Song

The sirens were fabulous winged creatures in Greek mythology, half woman, half bird, who lived on a flower filled island protected by very high cliffs and a dangerous rocky shoreline. Ancient accounts are not clear whether the sirens could fly but because they never left their island it is assumed that were incapable of flight. They were said to be the daughters of the storm god Achelous. They played the lyre and sang songs so irresistible and enchanting that ancient mariners who sailed past their island would lose their minds and were either lured to jump into the turbulent waters of the sea and try and swim towards them or they would steer their ships towards the sirens and in so doing smash their ships to pieces on the rocky shores of their island. Either way drowning or destruction was inevitable. Those few souls who safely made it ashore would eventually starve to death because the sirens were unable to provide food and sustenance for them.

Homer the epic Greek poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey writes about the ordeals Odysseus faces trying to return home to his wife and son living on the island of Ithaca. After fighting for ten years in the Trojan War, Odysseus sails home with his men. He has heard about the deadly charm and power of the siren’s songs and voices. Odysseus instructs his men to plug their ears with beeswax and to tie him firmly to the mast of the ship so that he can hear the sirens’ song and live to tell the tale. He instructs his men to leave him tied to the mast no matter how much he begs and curses them to release him.

The ship sails past the island and Odysseus hears the lyrical song of the sirens. The words are even more enticing than the melody. The sirens promise to grant him infinite knowledge, great wisdom and a quickening of the spirit if he goes to them. He goes mad with longing and desire. His heart aches and the great warrior is ready to sacrifice everything he holds dear. He is ready to accept their false promise of eternal truth and then die if he must. His comrade Achilles faced a similar choice. Live to a ripe old age and be forgotten or die a young hero’s death and be remembered and immortalized for thousands of years.

Odysseus curses his men, he screams at them. He threatens them. He orders them to untie him immediately! The sailors see his agitation and anguish but with ears blocked they do not hear his pleas. The ship quickly passes the treacherous shores and sails to calmer, safer and less turbulent waters. Eventually Odysseus is untied by his men. He emerges from this heartbreaking and harrowing experience enriched; sadder but infinitely wiser.

Homer’s Odysseus is a timeless and very human character, unquestionably brave yet deeply flawed. He is at times a conflicted wanderer of dubious morals rather than a boring moral saint, who wants to experience the temptations of the world yet somehow still manage to eventually emerge virtuous from his many ordeals. As some have suggested we find Odysseus attractive because of his vitality and adaptability. He exercises his freedom of choice and seeks out possibilities for action. He desires engagement with the world and all it holds or promises. This touches our humanity and draws us to him.

The genius of Homer is that he creates such wonderful and complex characters. The poet also makes the sirens more alluring by making them appeal to the spirit and not the flesh. For the sirens like the sphinx were mantic creatures, knowing both the past and the future. Homer writes: “Once he hears to his hearts content, sails on, a wiser man.”

In more recent times Franz Kafka wrote The Silence of the Sirens in 1917. He says the following about our modern affliction:

“Now the sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence. It is still conceivable that someone (like our hero Odysseus) might have escaped from their singing, but from their silence, certainly never.”

To the artist silence and indifference are infinitely crueler than the engagement that criticism brings.

So the sirens have passed down the ages as symbols of temptation. But they have also been redeemed in modern times as more positive symbols signifying warning and caution, the twin-tailed mermaid-like siren of Greek mythology even appearing on the Starbucks Coffee company logo.

On a final note, the Greeks never content to grant such awful powers to any creature let alone these winged nymphs and forever aware of hubris and nemesis, created some worthy rivals and antagonists to claim our favour and ultimately our allegiance. Hera the jealous and vindictive Queen of the Gods and wife of the promiscuous Zeus, God of Kings and King of Gods, decides she’s had enough of the femme fatale sirens. Hera spent much of her considerable energy and power pursuing, punishing and persecuting any potential rivals and especially the many mistresses and bastard offspring of her husband.

Hera also had a flair for reinvention. She would immerse herself in a magical spring near Argos to restore and renew her virginity. It appears she visited the spring often. Hera goes on a charm offensive and persuades the reluctant and reclusive sirens to enter a singing contest against their more fancied and less deadly sisters, the muses. The delightful muses immediately take up Hera’s challenge to eclipse the sirens. Blessed by the gods with great flamboyance and enormous talent, they sing and dance like never before with wild abandon and carefree exuberance. They win the contest, silence the sirens and capture our hearts forever!

Costas Ayiotis
Pretoria