The Song of the Sirens!

‘Come closer, famous Odysseus—Achaea’s pride and glory—

moor your ship on our coast so you can hear our song!

Never has any sailor passed our shores in his black craft

until he has heard the honeyed voices pouring from our lips,

and once he hears to his heart’s content sails on, a wiser man.

We know all the pains that Achaeans and Trojans once endured

on the spreading plain of Troy when the gods willed it so—

all that comes to pass on the fertile earth, we know it all!’

"Song of the Sirens" Leslie Peterson Sapp 16"x20" Collage painting on panel

So they sent their ravishing voices out across the air
and the heart inside me throbbed to listen longer.

Although this is one of the most well known episodes of The Odyssey, it is surprisingly short. If you want to know the context of the story and some analysis, you can visit cliffnotes.com here.

"Ulysse et les sirènes" Pablo Picasso, 1947

The goddess Circe, Odysseus’ sometime seductress, sometime ally warns him of the dangers of passing the Island of the Sirens.

The high, thrilling song of the Sirens will transfix him,

lolling there in their meadow, round them heaps of corpses,

rotting away, rags of skin shriveling on their bones …

Race straight past that coast!

She gives him a plan to safely pass, knowing that Odysseus himself will not be able to resist his own curiosity:

Soften some beeswax

and stop your shipmates’ ears so none can hear,

none of the crew, but if you are bent on hearing,

have them tie you hand and foot in the swift ship,

erect at the mast-block, lashed by ropes to the mast

so you can hear the Sirens’ song to your heart’s content.

But if you plead, commanding your men to set you free,

then they must lash you faster, rope on rope.

In the Victorian era, there was really only one way that a painter could depict nudity or sexual themes, and that was to base the painting on some kind of pre-Christian mythology. So this story of the Sirens was used again and again to show The Sirens as sexual temptresses, bent on snaring innocent seafaring men to their death.

"La Sirena" Giulio Aristide Sartorio, 1893

"The Sirens and Ulysses" William Etty, 1837

"The Sirens and Ulysses" Herbert James Draper, 1909 

The theme of woman as temptress is one that inspired Max Beckmann again and again. (He is one of my favorite painters, but sometimes his obsession with this is something I have to look past!) His painting gave me the idea of placing Odysseus in the foreground. I wished to place more emphasis on Odysseus’ ordeal, rather than the seductive forms of The Sirens.

"Odysseus and the Sirens" Max Beckmann, 1933

While I think that this story taps into a universal truth of temptation, I tend to think of it as a temptation of ego, rather than exclusively about sexual temptation. If you hear their words, they are not just seductive women. They flatter Odysseus’ ego, calling him “remarkable” or ‘famous”, “Achaea’s pride and glory” and a “great chief”. Plus they promise knowledge and wisdom, and they lie, claiming he will be able to leave once he gets his fill of information. But, of course, he would never get his fill, and would have simply wasted away, listening to their flattery, unable to let go of their ego. 

The Siren Vase, red-figured stamnos, 480BC-470BC

The Land of the Lotus Eaters

So off they went and soon enough 
they mingled among the natives, Lotus-eaters, Lotus-eaters 
who had no notion of killing my companions, not at all, 
they simply gave them the lotus to taste instead … 
Any crewmen who ate the lotus, the honey-sweet fruit, 
lost all desire to send a message back, much less return, 
their only wish to linger there with the Lotus-eaters, 
grazing on lotus, all memory of the journey home 
dissolved forever.

"The Land of the Lotus Eaters" Leslie Peterson Sapp 16"x20" Collage painting on panel

The Lotus Eaters is another brief but well known episode in The Odyssey, and takes place on one of the many islands that Odysseus and his crew stop at, and they barely escape. Not because of a fighting foe, but because a potential pitfall of basic human nature. 

Most of the time people interpret this scene with two meanings; either The Lotus Eaters people who are lost in drug addiction, or people who have rejected society’s requirement to work, or strive, to achieve, and they live in the moment, at peace and one with nature. There is a famous Tennyson poem about it. Here is a link to an essay by Mike Jay about how the The Lotus Eaters symbolizes a rejection of over work, progress, colonization, imperialism. 

"The Lotus Eaters" W. Heath Robinson

I have a pretty unconventional version of the Lotus Eaters in this series, in fact, you could say I took a flight of fancy to a meaning no one else, as far as I know has arrive at.

When I start working with an image, I often start with a google search of images, to see who else out there has painted the scene and how they interpreted it, how they dealt with the space, the positioning of the characters, etc. When I did a search for the Lotus Eaters I ran across some pretty unexpected images. 

Some were connected to The Lotus Eaters, a new wave band from the early 80’s. They were one of the very earliest bands that were ascribed a gay identity. 

 

Along the same lines I came across the a Yaoi graphic novel series called The Lotus Eaters. Yaoi is a genre of graphic novels and fiction from Japan that focuses on same-sex romances between boys (but produced for a female audience). 

From these things I made a leap from The Lotus Eaters being a symbol not only of the rejection of work and strife to being a rejection of the masculine compulsion to prove one’s masculinity. What if the incident is a fable for men’s’ constant anxiety to appear strong, capable, macho, and above all, not gay? What if the horror of being perceived as gay is enough to compel one another to never even touch on that isle for fear that once you taste it, you’ll never escape?

But I brought them back, back 
to the hollow ships, and streaming tears—I forced them, 
hauled them under the rowing benches, lashed them fast 
and shouted out commands to my other, steady comrades: 
'Quick, no time to lose, embark in the racing ships!’— 
so none could eat the lotus, forget the voyage home. 
They swung aboard at once, they sat to the oars in ranks 
and in rhythm churned the water white with stroke on stroke.” 

To me, this scene also has a great deal of humor to it. I love the image of grown up tough guys being dragged away, tears streaming down their faces, like children who don’t want to leave a playground. I think it is funny that these men, so adventurous and brave, would cry over something like that. I love that they simply forgot all about the important mission they are on, and didn’t care anymore.

I think Odysseus’ reaction is hilarious; “Quick! No time to lose! Let’s get the heck outta here before anyone else eats these flowers!” He knew that if too many of his men tasted the flower, his plans to return to Ithaca would be doomed.