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Seduction and the Secret Power of Women: The Lure of Sirens and Mermaids
An exploration of humanity's age-old fascination with Sirens. Explains the Sirens; half-human, half-animal bodies as a metaphor for the psychological challenge that their myth has always embodied; Fully illustrated in color with works by Rubens, Bosch, Munch, Magritte, and others. Their celestial voices drove mast-lashed Ulysses nearly out of his mind with libidinous promises as they beckoned him ever-closer to paradise--or a rocky death. With womanly torsos and animal lower halves, usually birds or fish, Sirens have long been symbols of the lure of desire--the feminine, as seducer--beckoning men to mystery beyond their ken, or to disaster. This book is both a celebration of Sirens and an examination of the psychology of dichotomy--the diametrically opposed drives and inherent conflicts underlying this female archetype.Since antiquity, Sirens and their mermaid sisters have maintained an ongoing affair of the heart with humanity's greatest writers and artists. Sirens play important roles in the classical writings of Homer and Euripides, as well as in the modern works of James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, and many others. Matching these writings with vibrant work from such artists as Peter Paul Rubens, Hieronymous Bosch, Edvard Munch, and Magritte, Meri Lao has created a feast for the eye. Exploring our 3,000-year-old relationship with Sirens, Lao reveals the secret of the power in their song: it is the sound of the subversive, luring us from the orderly conscious world down to the depth of the world of dreams, and the harder we try to ignore that singing, the more we desperately want to hear it.
240 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1997
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May 20, 2017
This was a fairly slim though at times difficult read, a rather wide-ranging survey of sirens, both bird-women type Sirens but also the marine ones, mermaids. Some chapters were pretty easy reads, particularly those recounting instances of mermaids and sirens in literature or supposed real world encounters with them, while other chapters focusing on the philosophy and symbolism behind these mythic creatures could be a bit of a challenge at times (not that they weren’t worthwhile to read, but sometimes I found myself a bit lost in the more philosophical passages).
The first section, titled the Introduction, focused primarily on how Sirens were perceived in the ancient world, especially Ancient Greece. Lao discussed how Homer neglected to physically describe the Sirens, as “to have done so would have been superfluous because everyone knew then what later was forgotten: the Sirens were bird-women,” usually possessing not only the torso and head of a beautiful woman but also when their “irresistible chant” required the “musical accompaniment of the lyre, cymbals, or drums…human arms to hold their instruments.” The author discussed Sirens as they appeared when Orpheus overcame them while on board the ship _Argo_ as well as their perhaps better known appearance to bedevil Ulysses, their genealogical background (sometimes considered to be the daughters of the Muses, other times the stepsisters of the Muses). Sirens were not the same as the other “aquatic nymphs,” as the “sea-dwelling Nereids…the lake-dwelling Lymneids, the river Potomids, and the Naiads of the springs” while all belonging to “the same symbolic universe as the Sirens,” “did not differ physically from mortal women” while Sirens were always represented up until early Christian times as bird-women, “the vital difference.”
The author discussed how the symbology of things with a great degree of ambivalence was as the core of understanding the role of the Siren. Lao surveyed briefly the importance of birds or the ability to fly in several ancient civilizations with regards to death (be they Egyptian, Assyrian, or Roman), and how this motif of death and of the migration of the souls of dead, that transformative element, was closely tied into ideas of Sirens as winged or bird-women. Later when Sirens became more closely tied with water, the element of water had strong symbolic connotations; water can be “a blessing as it slakes the thirst of man, irrigates the earth, and becomes a source of life and abundance…[but] can also be destructive, causing inundation, shipwreck, drowning, and annihilation.” Though I had a hard time following where the author took this train of thought, clearly to Lao Sirens are the “dispensers of both death and immortality,” that they are both attractive and repulsive, good and evil.
Not just elemental forces of flight, the air, and water were ambivalent but the very nature of human women were mysterious, where in different myths the female nature of Sirens saw them obtain wings as either punishment or reward (such as the role of the Sirens in the myth of Demeter and her daughter, Persephone, something I was not familiar with).
Further along the train of thought about the ambivalent nature of Sirens, they represent change, of how the heroes of mythology had to abandon themselves and their history, figuratively if not literally hurling themselves into the deep, only then “emerging into a new life,” that Sirens serve to divert, preventing one “from returning to the same old beaten paths; to past experiences, nation, family, institutions.”
There is a lengthy section on the etymology of the word Siren, that it might stem from several different Greek words (perhaps seirios, meaning either incandescent or instead, liable to deteriorate, or maybe the word seraphin, which means essentially to burn or maybe instead from seira, which means snare, noose, cord, rope, or belt), or alternately stem from a Sanskrit word, or come from Sirius, the Dog Star.
The chapter closed on a discussion of how many Sirens there were (eight is common in Greek mythology but then so was three in some versions), the names of individual Sirens (examples include Aglaope or Aglaophonos “of the shrill voice,” Pasinoe “the persuasive,” and Ligea or Ligheia or Ligi “the clear voice”), and the various places Sirens were said to dwell (such as Anthemoessa, a flower-covered island near the Strait of Messina, at least according to Homer).
Chapter 1 was another historical survey of Sirens, divided into subsections dealing with Classic Sirens, Renaissance Sirens, The Sirens during the Classical and Romantic Periods, Reappearances since the Late Nineteenth Century, and Sirens in Literary Theory. A bit less of a philosophical and more of a literary bent in the chapter, the author provides discussion and large sections of quoted text discussing views of Sirens by Pliny the Elder (not especially convinced they existed), Ambrose of Milan (340-397, who viewed the Sirens in terms of temptations of sin and that instead of avoiding their charms by ears stuffed with wax, one should “listen only to the words of Christ and bind oneself to the mast of the cross”), Dante (who may have confused Sirens with Circe and instead of how most authors of the time damned them, instead consigned them to purgatory), John Milton (who featured Sirens in his work _Comus_), and William Butler Yeats (who wrote of how Sirens “are dexterous fishers and they fish for men…With dreams upon the hook”).
Chapter 2, Fish-formed Sirens, follows “the classic Sirens through to their last evolution” one that “would prevail over all others: the fish-formed Siren,” as the Sirens “became mermaids.” The author suggested in a paragraph that a translation error may in part be responsible for mermaids, as “[w]ing and fin, in Greek, are both designated by the same word, pterughion.” Also of interest to me was that the idea that mermaids had a fish-like lower portion wasn’t always the case, as a first-to-second century Roman lamp is known that shows not a fish’s tail but rather a dolphin’s tail and there may be links to dolphins because of an association with Sirens and Apollo, as Apollo held dolphins dear, as “the dolphin asserted itself by its playful character, its passion for music, and its gestures of friendship to those about to be overwhelmed by the sea.”
Also interesting in chapter 2 was the evolution of the accessories of Sirens, which evolved to include the instruments of the time (horns, lutes, and vielles) and “two new objects destined to become their inseparable attributes: the mirror and the comb,” with the symbolism of the mirror and the comb discussed. Also part of the evolution was that Sirens (now really mermaids) seduced not with music “but with their bodily presence alone.”
Chapter 3, An Anthology of Sirens, is a survey of late medieval and modern interpretations of Sirens. The author covers such topics as the French story of Melusine, the fourteenth century story of the “French Siren par excellence,” Baron Friedrick de la Motte-Fouque’s short story “Undine” (famously illustrated by artist Arthur Rackham in a 1909 edition, though the Undine was technically not a mermaid), mentions of Sirens in _Hamlet_, _The Comedy of Errors_, and _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (the sea-maids in the latter work), the mermaids that were in the story of Peter Pan, the “most famous Siren of all….the little mermaid of Hans Christian Andersen,” “The Man who Loved the Nereids,” part of _Oriental Tales_ by Marguerite Yourcenar (“They come out only at the tragic hour of midday; they seem immersed in the mystery of high noon…If the peasants bar the doors of their houses before lying down for their afternoon nap, it is not against the sun, it is against them; these truly fatal fairies are beautiful, naked, refreshing and nefarious as water in which one drinks the germs of fever”), and the mermaid of “Lighea” (translated into English, “The Siren”) by Giuseppe Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa, a creature that had a smile that “expressed nothing but itself, that is an almost animal joy, an almost divine delight in existence…This smile was the first of the spells cast upon me, revealing paradises of forgotten serenity.”
Chapter 4, Sirens and Science, is a survey of supposed encounters with Sirens (at this point really mermaids) in real life. We briefly revisit Pliny, who while doubting bird-women, “had no trouble admitting the existence of fish-formed ones…while the sea, according to the Roman naturalist, incessantly monstrifies.” Interestingly the idea mermaids are part dolphin comes up again (_De Rerum Natura_, written in 1249 by the Belgian author Thomas de Cantimpre discussed dolphin attributes and explorer Henry Hudson in 1608 noted two of his crew who had seen a mermaid with a dolphin’s tail). Other examples of mermaid encounters includes those of Christopher Columbus and P.T. Barnum’s “living mermaid,” really a stuffed imitation. There is a closing section on how manatees and dugongs may have inspired some mermaid tales.
Chapter 5, Modern Sirens, was brief. A favorite quote:
“These Sirens no longer divert but lead us along the road to consumption. No longer chanting melodies, they hawk products. Mute and beckoning, they join the fray. In their mirror, we see not our own depths but our magnified ego.”
Sirens are discussed in advertising products, cinema, and surprisingly in the concept of mechanical sirens, as the modern invention want us “to pause, observe, become aware of the situation, reflect for an instant, and if possible turn away from the path we have taken.”
This was an amply illustrated book with paintings, drawings, etchings, and lot of photography of statues, sculptures, modern art, and actual women portraying mermaids. For the most part if was fairly safe for work though not surprisingly there were a fair number of bare breasts. I wouldn’t have in any way described it as pornographic and many were fairly abstract or highly stylized images though others were not. At times it wasn’t light reading, especially in early sections dealing with philosophy, symbolism, and literary theory. The discussion of mermaids in movies was extremely light, mostly limited to the photographs provided (though there were quite a few for some reason the movie Splash’s mermaid didn’t make the cut). I loved the vintage advertisements with mermaids, those were often very nice.
The first section, titled the Introduction, focused primarily on how Sirens were perceived in the ancient world, especially Ancient Greece. Lao discussed how Homer neglected to physically describe the Sirens, as “to have done so would have been superfluous because everyone knew then what later was forgotten: the Sirens were bird-women,” usually possessing not only the torso and head of a beautiful woman but also when their “irresistible chant” required the “musical accompaniment of the lyre, cymbals, or drums…human arms to hold their instruments.” The author discussed Sirens as they appeared when Orpheus overcame them while on board the ship _Argo_ as well as their perhaps better known appearance to bedevil Ulysses, their genealogical background (sometimes considered to be the daughters of the Muses, other times the stepsisters of the Muses). Sirens were not the same as the other “aquatic nymphs,” as the “sea-dwelling Nereids…the lake-dwelling Lymneids, the river Potomids, and the Naiads of the springs” while all belonging to “the same symbolic universe as the Sirens,” “did not differ physically from mortal women” while Sirens were always represented up until early Christian times as bird-women, “the vital difference.”
The author discussed how the symbology of things with a great degree of ambivalence was as the core of understanding the role of the Siren. Lao surveyed briefly the importance of birds or the ability to fly in several ancient civilizations with regards to death (be they Egyptian, Assyrian, or Roman), and how this motif of death and of the migration of the souls of dead, that transformative element, was closely tied into ideas of Sirens as winged or bird-women. Later when Sirens became more closely tied with water, the element of water had strong symbolic connotations; water can be “a blessing as it slakes the thirst of man, irrigates the earth, and becomes a source of life and abundance…[but] can also be destructive, causing inundation, shipwreck, drowning, and annihilation.” Though I had a hard time following where the author took this train of thought, clearly to Lao Sirens are the “dispensers of both death and immortality,” that they are both attractive and repulsive, good and evil.
Not just elemental forces of flight, the air, and water were ambivalent but the very nature of human women were mysterious, where in different myths the female nature of Sirens saw them obtain wings as either punishment or reward (such as the role of the Sirens in the myth of Demeter and her daughter, Persephone, something I was not familiar with).
Further along the train of thought about the ambivalent nature of Sirens, they represent change, of how the heroes of mythology had to abandon themselves and their history, figuratively if not literally hurling themselves into the deep, only then “emerging into a new life,” that Sirens serve to divert, preventing one “from returning to the same old beaten paths; to past experiences, nation, family, institutions.”
There is a lengthy section on the etymology of the word Siren, that it might stem from several different Greek words (perhaps seirios, meaning either incandescent or instead, liable to deteriorate, or maybe the word seraphin, which means essentially to burn or maybe instead from seira, which means snare, noose, cord, rope, or belt), or alternately stem from a Sanskrit word, or come from Sirius, the Dog Star.
The chapter closed on a discussion of how many Sirens there were (eight is common in Greek mythology but then so was three in some versions), the names of individual Sirens (examples include Aglaope or Aglaophonos “of the shrill voice,” Pasinoe “the persuasive,” and Ligea or Ligheia or Ligi “the clear voice”), and the various places Sirens were said to dwell (such as Anthemoessa, a flower-covered island near the Strait of Messina, at least according to Homer).
Chapter 1 was another historical survey of Sirens, divided into subsections dealing with Classic Sirens, Renaissance Sirens, The Sirens during the Classical and Romantic Periods, Reappearances since the Late Nineteenth Century, and Sirens in Literary Theory. A bit less of a philosophical and more of a literary bent in the chapter, the author provides discussion and large sections of quoted text discussing views of Sirens by Pliny the Elder (not especially convinced they existed), Ambrose of Milan (340-397, who viewed the Sirens in terms of temptations of sin and that instead of avoiding their charms by ears stuffed with wax, one should “listen only to the words of Christ and bind oneself to the mast of the cross”), Dante (who may have confused Sirens with Circe and instead of how most authors of the time damned them, instead consigned them to purgatory), John Milton (who featured Sirens in his work _Comus_), and William Butler Yeats (who wrote of how Sirens “are dexterous fishers and they fish for men…With dreams upon the hook”).
Chapter 2, Fish-formed Sirens, follows “the classic Sirens through to their last evolution” one that “would prevail over all others: the fish-formed Siren,” as the Sirens “became mermaids.” The author suggested in a paragraph that a translation error may in part be responsible for mermaids, as “[w]ing and fin, in Greek, are both designated by the same word, pterughion.” Also of interest to me was that the idea that mermaids had a fish-like lower portion wasn’t always the case, as a first-to-second century Roman lamp is known that shows not a fish’s tail but rather a dolphin’s tail and there may be links to dolphins because of an association with Sirens and Apollo, as Apollo held dolphins dear, as “the dolphin asserted itself by its playful character, its passion for music, and its gestures of friendship to those about to be overwhelmed by the sea.”
Also interesting in chapter 2 was the evolution of the accessories of Sirens, which evolved to include the instruments of the time (horns, lutes, and vielles) and “two new objects destined to become their inseparable attributes: the mirror and the comb,” with the symbolism of the mirror and the comb discussed. Also part of the evolution was that Sirens (now really mermaids) seduced not with music “but with their bodily presence alone.”
Chapter 3, An Anthology of Sirens, is a survey of late medieval and modern interpretations of Sirens. The author covers such topics as the French story of Melusine, the fourteenth century story of the “French Siren par excellence,” Baron Friedrick de la Motte-Fouque’s short story “Undine” (famously illustrated by artist Arthur Rackham in a 1909 edition, though the Undine was technically not a mermaid), mentions of Sirens in _Hamlet_, _The Comedy of Errors_, and _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (the sea-maids in the latter work), the mermaids that were in the story of Peter Pan, the “most famous Siren of all….the little mermaid of Hans Christian Andersen,” “The Man who Loved the Nereids,” part of _Oriental Tales_ by Marguerite Yourcenar (“They come out only at the tragic hour of midday; they seem immersed in the mystery of high noon…If the peasants bar the doors of their houses before lying down for their afternoon nap, it is not against the sun, it is against them; these truly fatal fairies are beautiful, naked, refreshing and nefarious as water in which one drinks the germs of fever”), and the mermaid of “Lighea” (translated into English, “The Siren”) by Giuseppe Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa, a creature that had a smile that “expressed nothing but itself, that is an almost animal joy, an almost divine delight in existence…This smile was the first of the spells cast upon me, revealing paradises of forgotten serenity.”
Chapter 4, Sirens and Science, is a survey of supposed encounters with Sirens (at this point really mermaids) in real life. We briefly revisit Pliny, who while doubting bird-women, “had no trouble admitting the existence of fish-formed ones…while the sea, according to the Roman naturalist, incessantly monstrifies.” Interestingly the idea mermaids are part dolphin comes up again (_De Rerum Natura_, written in 1249 by the Belgian author Thomas de Cantimpre discussed dolphin attributes and explorer Henry Hudson in 1608 noted two of his crew who had seen a mermaid with a dolphin’s tail). Other examples of mermaid encounters includes those of Christopher Columbus and P.T. Barnum’s “living mermaid,” really a stuffed imitation. There is a closing section on how manatees and dugongs may have inspired some mermaid tales.
Chapter 5, Modern Sirens, was brief. A favorite quote:
“These Sirens no longer divert but lead us along the road to consumption. No longer chanting melodies, they hawk products. Mute and beckoning, they join the fray. In their mirror, we see not our own depths but our magnified ego.”
Sirens are discussed in advertising products, cinema, and surprisingly in the concept of mechanical sirens, as the modern invention want us “to pause, observe, become aware of the situation, reflect for an instant, and if possible turn away from the path we have taken.”
This was an amply illustrated book with paintings, drawings, etchings, and lot of photography of statues, sculptures, modern art, and actual women portraying mermaids. For the most part if was fairly safe for work though not surprisingly there were a fair number of bare breasts. I wouldn’t have in any way described it as pornographic and many were fairly abstract or highly stylized images though others were not. At times it wasn’t light reading, especially in early sections dealing with philosophy, symbolism, and literary theory. The discussion of mermaids in movies was extremely light, mostly limited to the photographs provided (though there were quite a few for some reason the movie Splash’s mermaid didn’t make the cut). I loved the vintage advertisements with mermaids, those were often very nice.
February 4, 2021
Es un estudio de las sirenas y su evolución, desde su “aparición” en las civilizaciones antiguas y los mitos griegos, hasta ahora en todas sus representaciones. Un símbolo lleno de misterio, ligado a la seducción, la tentación de los placeres, la muerte… Símbolo que ha sido objeto de infinidad de interpretaciones, mismas que le permiten actualizarse y seguir existiendo fuera de una mera fantasía. Cuando me lo regalaron me dijeron: “para que la próxima vez que alguien te diga que las sirenas no existen, tengas argumentos para decirle que sí”.
May 4, 2020
Libro stupendo. Peccato averlo dovuto leggere in inglese (e’ italiano) perché l’edizione italiana è introvabile
October 30, 2022
A brilliant literary history and analysis of sirens/mermaids. Indispensable for research and a great text in its own right.
October 31, 2012
Slim but gorgeous treatise tracing the mythology of the siren and mermaid figure through history, all the way through to pop culture and the modern sound of the car alarm. Beautifully illustrated, as a text it's sometimes a little dry (no pun intended) but a must-read for lover of mermaids, classical psychology and mythic feminism.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews