The Siren's Song from The Odyssey - What Did The Sirens Sing?

[00:00:19]Welcome to your next FastTrack module, Mysteries of the Odyssey.

[00:00:24]We're first going to look at one of the most famous, most adapted, and least understood episodes in all western literature.

[00:00:32]The sirens.

[00:00:34]As you may recall, Adysius tells the Fiatans of this strange encounter.

[00:00:40]The witch Cersei had warned him about the sirens. Their song may sound sweet, but no one who hears them has made it out alive. She also gives him a strategy. If he wants to hear their song, he can plug his men's ears with wax and have them tie him to the mast.

[00:01:00]Adysius follows her instructions and hears them sing. They call him by name.

[00:01:06]They claim those who listen are delighted by their music. They also promise that listeners go on their way with greater knowledge.

[00:01:15]They claim to know everything that happens on Earth and specifically refer to knowledge of what the Greeks and Trojans suffered in Troy.

[00:01:23]Adysus explains that he did as expected strain at the ropes, demanding to be released.

[00:01:31]The crew followed instructions and tied him tighter, making him the first man to ever hear their song and survive.

[00:01:39]As readers, we are left with a glaring narrative gap and many unanswered questions. Adysius goes into detail about the warning and the strategy. He quotes the sirens word for word as they lure him to the island. Come here, renowned Adysius. We know all that the Greeks and Trojans suffered in Troy.

[00:02:02]But then he tells nothing of what he actually heard. He skips that entire section. He gives the sirens a big buildup. Wait for it. The song. He hears their voices. They lure him to listen.

[00:02:18]He's tied to the mask, so yes, he can listen. Here we go. He hears something amazing and tells his men to release him.

[00:02:28]Then they pass through the area, untie him, and sail on to the next adventure.

[00:02:34]The fatians listening to his story probably wondered the same thing that has puzzled scholars and philosophers for over 2,000 years. What did the siren sing?

[00:02:45]The only man alive who heard their song doesn't say.

[00:02:51]We are now going to explore several leading theories that try to answer this. Though the entire episode is less than a single page long, we do have clues. So, let's see where they lead.

[00:03:04]Theory one can be called the expanded Iliad or the trap of Cleos.

[00:03:09]This interpretation can be considered the most traditional.

[00:03:13]The sirens sang exactly what they advertised, an epic poem about Troy. But not just any poem. They sang an expanded perfect version of the Iliad with Adysius at the center.

[00:03:31]This is the academic territory staked out by the classicist Petro Puchi.

[00:03:36]In his work Adysius Polyropos, Pooie argues that the sirens represent epic poetry itself.

[00:03:46]In ancient Greece, who normally sings of heroes, epic adventures, and the Trojan War? The BS.

[00:03:54]Where did the bards gain the knowledge they sing of? from the muses who like the sirens know everything.

[00:04:01]Homer is a bard. At the beginning of both the Iliad and the Odyssey, he calls to the muses asking for stories to sing.

[00:04:10]In the case of the bards, knowledge is transferred through a process.

[00:04:16]The muses have the information, but they don't share it with just anyone.

[00:04:22]They share it through carefully selected bards who use their own judgment to select the right time to tell the audience.

[00:04:31]We also know how important is to the Greek warriors. They can live forever through their epic deeds if their glory is celebrated in song.

[00:04:42]You may recall how Odysius reacts to Deodicus the fatian bard. He asks the bard to sing of the Trojan horse, his own triumph. Hearing his own exploits come to life again in song may have been more cla than he could bear.

[00:05:00]Puchi's theory is that the sirens offer Adysius the ultimate claos. They sing of his intelligence, his suffering, and his triumphs as if an entire playlist is dedicated to telling and retelling his glorious deeds.

[00:05:17]If one song by Demodicus makes him weep, imagine how the sirens would affect him.

[00:05:24]Demodicus doesn't know what details Adysius likes to hear. He doesn't even know that the stranger is Adysius. If the sirens know everything, they will know how to flatter him. What information he may not even know yet that he could find enthralling.

[00:05:43]and they don't channel their knowledge through a bard, but sing directly to him like muses gone rogue.

[00:05:52]The danger here is not physical seduction, but seduction of his ego and his yearning for chaos. If Adysius succumbs to this song, he drowns in his own legacy.

[00:06:05]To survive, the hero must physically restrain himself and reject the very epic poem he is the star of.

[00:06:13]He must choose life over art and forward motion versus stories of the past.

[00:06:20]In another sense, he must choose nost over chaos. He will never have his homecoming or reclaimed identity if he gets stuck in the past. A second theory takes the opposite approach and can be thought of as the anti-liad.

[00:06:37]What if the sirens weren't singing about glory at all?

[00:06:41]What if they were singing instead of the horrors of war? The theory shifts our focus from literary criticism to psychology and trauma. The sirens don't promise to sing of what the Greeks achieved. They promise to sing of what they suffered. This approach draws heavily on the philosopher Simone While who famously define the Iliad not as a poem of heroes but as the poem of force.

[00:07:08]the mechanical dehumanizing way war turns living people into objects.

[00:07:15]If we apply Wells lens along with the trauma studies of Jonathan Shea and the literary criticism of Rachel Bespelof, the siren song becomes terrifying.

[00:07:27]They aren't delivering claos.

[00:07:30]They are singing the unvarnished, unglamorous truth of the war.

[00:07:36]In this model, the song has three devastating variations.

[00:07:41]The brutal reality.

[00:07:44]In this version, they sing of the dissentry, the screaming horses, and the rotting corpses stripping away the claos.

[00:07:55]The lament of the women. Here they sing the laments of Huba and Adramaki, forcing Adysius to hear the civilian cost of his glory.

[00:08:07]the guilt of the survivor. Crucially, the Iliad ends before Adysius loses his actual friends.

[00:08:15]The sirens in this variation sing the post Iliad truth.

[00:08:21]The death of Antilicus, the suicide of Ajax, driven to it by Adysius's own ruthlessness, and the murder of Palamedes framed by Adysius.

[00:08:35]If any of these is the song he hears, it's clear why he doesn't repeat a single word to the Fatians.

[00:08:44]It would shatter his identity and negate his claos.

[00:08:50]As we'll now see, we also should consider a different question.

[00:08:56]What if someone in this story is lying?

[00:09:00]Anomaly one, the liar paradox.

[00:09:04]The sirens say, "Whoever draws near us goes away delighted, knowing more than he did before."

[00:09:11]But what does Cersei say?

[00:09:14]Cersei says, "There is a meadow by the Siren's Island filled with the heaps of bones of rotting men, with the skin shriveling on them." Wait a second.

[00:09:25]Which is it? Do you go away delighted, or do you get your skin shriveled?

[00:09:31]They cannot both be telling the truth.

[00:09:34]that we have collectively decided without a shred of evidence that the sirens are deceitful monsters while choosing to take Cersei absolutely at her word.

[00:09:45]Let's remember who Cersei is. A literal witch who uses her sweet voice to lure men, drug them, and turn them into pigs.

[00:09:55]She's a documented manipulator of men's realities.

[00:10:00]Yet, when she makes an accusation against her competitors on the next island, we collectively assume she's telling the truth.

[00:10:09]What if the sirens are telling the truth and Cersei is lying? What if there are no bones in the meadow?

[00:10:17]If Cersei is lying, it means he isn't protecting Adysius from monsters, but is doing something else. Perhaps she is micromanaging his journey, inventing a danger to ensure he sticks to the script and doesn't get distracted.

[00:10:32]Perhaps there's something she wants him to hear, which is why she suggests the tide to the mast idea. As you can see, one riddle leads to another.

[00:10:44]The second anomaly can be called the omniscience problem.

[00:10:49]Let's look at the sirens themselves.

[00:10:52]They make a big claim. We know all things that come to pass on the earth.

[00:10:57]They're claiming total omniscience.

[00:11:01]If they know everything, though, their behavior in this scene doesn't seem to make sense.

[00:11:07]As the ship approaches, the sirens see with their own eyes that Adysius is already tied to a mast and the crew has wax jammed in their ears.

[00:11:18]And if they are truly omniscient, they would already know Cersei had tipped him off.

[00:11:24]If they know everything, why don't they address the ropes, the wax, or Cersei's warning?

[00:11:31]They act like they know none of this and just sing a personalized version of their sales pitch to a guy who is visibly tied to a pole.

[00:11:42]Is their claim of omniscience an exaggeration?

[00:11:46]Or are they bound to a script which may contain secret knowledge or they themselves are oblivious to the present reality? Again, riddles within riddles.

[00:11:58]Anomaly 3 can be called the turnaround anomaly.

[00:12:03]This final anomaly is a challenge to the more romantic notions of the siren song.

[00:12:09]Let's replay the moment the ship passes the island. The wind dies down. The spell breaks. Adysius signals his men to untie him. He is free. He is rational.

[00:12:22]He has his wits about him.

[00:12:26]One possible objection to the grand theories is that Adysius never attempts to hear the song again.

[00:12:32]If the siren had sung his personal glorious Iliad packed with claos, Adysius might have said, "Men, drop the sails. Turn the ship around. We're going to sail back and forth past the island a few more times."

[00:12:48]Even if he didn't trust them, he had the beeswax, he had the ropes. He could have done the exercise again. This time, he'd know he can just turn around and listen more. So no need to strain or yell at the crew.

[00:13:03]He does none of this. He sits down and he keeps sailing toward Ithaca. Perhaps the siren song was not prophetic or even very interesting at all. We know that it is enchanting.

[00:13:18]So maybe that's just it. Delusions fueled by a magical song that fall flat the second he is out of earshot.

[00:13:26]In the end, perhaps Adysius doesn't tell the Fiatians what the sirens sang for the simple reason that it isn't worth telling. One variation of this would be a strictly literalist interpretation.

[00:13:41]They offer knowledge just as they promise, not ego gratification, not guilt, and not an epiphany. Just knowledge that one can assume sounds more interesting while under the effect of an audiary spell.

[00:13:56]Or perhaps he learned something so startling that he dares not tell anyone ever. Nobody knows.