THE ODYSSEY - CHAPTER 12 - THE SIRENS
Circe tells Odysseus before he leaves :
"First you will come to ...the Sirens who enchant all who come near them. If any one unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. There is a great heap of dead men's bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them. Therefore pass these Sirens by, and stop your men's ears with wax that none of them may hear; but if you like you can listen yourself, for you may get the men to bind you as you stand upright on a cross-piece half way up the mast, and they must lash the rope's ends to the mast itself, that you may have the pleasure of listening. If you beg and pray the men to unloose you, then they must bind you faster. "

Odysseus tells the story of the Sirens:
"I had hardly finished telling everything to the men before we reached the island of the two Sirens, for the wind had been very favourable. Then all of a sudden it fell dead calm; there was not a breath of wind nor a ripple upon the water, so the men furled the sails and stowed them; then taking to their oars they whitened the water with the foam they raised in rowing. Meanwhile I look a large wheel of wax and cut it up small with my sword. Then I kneaded the wax in my strong hands till it became soft, which it soon did between the kneading and the rays of the sun-god son of Hyperion. Then I stopped the ears of all my men, and they bound me hands and feet to the mast as I stood upright on the crosspiece; but they went on rowing themselves. When we had got within earshot of the land, and the ship was going at a good rate, the Sirens saw that we were getting in shore and began with their singing.

"'Come here,' they sang, 'renowned Ulysses, honour to the Achaean name, and listen to our two voices. No one ever sailed past us without staying to hear the enchanting sweetness of our song- and he who listens will go on his way not only charmed, but wiser, for we know all the ills that the gods laid upon the Argives and Trojans before Troy, and can tell you everything that is going to happen over the whole world.'

"They sang these words most musically, and as I longed to hear them further I made by frowning to my men that they should set me free; but they quickened their stroke, and Eurylochus and Perimedes bound me with still stronger bonds till we had got out of hearing of the Sirens' voices. Then my men took the wax from their ears and unbound me."




In Homer`s Odyssey (800 BC) the Sirens appear as creatures with a body of birds and a head of women. They don`t have much in common with the fish-tailed nymphs of the fairy tales.
When Odysseus reaches their island, he already has ten years of war in Troy behind himself, and he just had left the island of the sorceress Circe, who had turned his friends into pigs.He is in the 12th year of his adventures, still longing to get "home". This "home" might represent his destiny, his very own place in the world, reserved only for him to achieve it or not, "the law" of Kafka. Same as Kafka`s man waiting in front of the door Odysseus is in a passive role, thrown around by the waves of the sea arisen by Poseidon. Not even the idea of stopping wax into the ears of the sailors is his own- Circe tells it to him.
Odysseus gets to know all that was and will be by the singing of the Sirens, who are similar to the three Norns in Germanic mythology . There the 3 Norns: "fate", "what was" and "what will be". In the Odyssey there are, different to other Greek texts, only 2 Sirens, which tell what was and what will be.Why are there only 2 Sirens?
Maybe Homer wanted to break the human submission under an invincible fate. Odysseus is still depending on things he cannot control, but also he is "ingenious, inventive". Same as "Ecclesiastes" Odysseus has to see the horrible what was and what will be: "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again."

The final conclusion of Ecclesiastes is:
Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works.
Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment.
Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun.
Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest."


These sentences could come from Odysseus himself, I guess, and this is a sight of the world in a classical Greek way and in a way of Renaissance thinking also.

In the Siren chapter Circe also tells him about another "adventure" to come after he passes the Sirens:
"'Is there no way,' said I, 'of escaping Charybdis, and at the same time keeping Scylla off when she is trying to harm my men?'
"'You dare-devil,' replied the goddess, you are always wanting to fight somebody or something; you will not let yourself be beaten even by the immortals. For Scylla is not mortal; moreover she is savage, extreme, rude, cruel and invincible. There is no help for it; your best chance will be to get by her as fast as ever you can, for if you dawdle about her rock while you are putting on your armour, she may catch you with a second cast of her six heads, and snap up another half dozen of your men; so drive your ship past her at full speed, and roar out lustily to Crataiis who is Scylla's dam, bad luck to her; she will then stop her from making a second raid upon you. "

Odysseus is described as revolting against the rules of the immortals. But he has to go through the worst of all his adventures, as he states later, where all his friends are killed by Scylla and Charybdis.
After this, Odysseus reaches the island of the goddess Calypso, where he stays for 7 years, maybe in a state of "purgatory", before he can reach his goal, his enlightenment, coming to his own place, fighting the enemies living within. In opposite of his anchestor in mind, Gilgamesh, who tried to achieve eternal life and after a long journey came back to his own city resigned, Odysseus even abandons to become immortal, when the goddess offers it to him for staying with him. After all he had seen, he only had to be happy with a beautiful goddess forever without suffering lack of anything - what a possibility! But for Odysseus it is more important to get "home", because he knows, all is useless and vain without reaching HIS VERY OWN goal.
Odysseus even has to become beggar and to live among the pigs in a stall, before he can reach the final stage of repossessing his lost kingdom. This is similar to Kabbalistic thoughts, I guess.
The journey of Odysseus is a spiritual journey, and the classical Greek mind managed it to pack the spiritual journey into something very concrete, the adventures of a tricky soldier in foreign lands.