Riding Seaward on the Waves

This issue of FMR, which includes an article on glass marine invertebrates, ends with a tribute to aquatic creatures which are every bit as odd: the Sirens. We think of them as mermaids, half-fish half-woman; but Homer thought of them as half-bird. In either case, they are enigmatic beings, if, as Aristotle states, an enigma consists of combining contradictory, incompatible things: a definition that seems to foresee the free associations of the Surrealists. Maurizio Bettini’s essay revolves around a question that the Emperor Tiberius delighted in posing to his court grammarians: What song did the Sirens sing? There is no answer; one may only imagine that their song must have been comparable to their unresolved, ambiguous anatomy, unfettered by the constraints of reason – verging
on the darkly seductive realms of the loss of self, madness and schizophrenia.