The Sweet Song of Dante Alighieri's Siren Among the various tools Dante Alighieri employs in the Commedia, his grand imaginative interpretation of life after death, scenes involving figures and beasts from classical mythology provide the reader with allegories and exempla effectively linking universal human themes with Christian thought and ideology. Among these, the figure of the Siren, found in Canto 19 of the Purgatorio, exists as a particularly sinister and moribund image. Visiting Dante in a dream upon the heights of Mount Purgatory, the Siren attempts to seduce the sleeping traveler with her sweet song. Dante finds himself on the brink of giving in to her deadly charms when Virgil, through the intercession of a heavenly lady, …show more content…
These seductive creatures however, as seen in the piles of decaying bodies upon the shores of their island, are truly creatures of death. Vernant further asserts, "they are death, and death in its most brutally monstrous aspect: no funeral, no tomb, only the corpse's decomposition in the open air" (104). Thus, the reader finds that the traditional mythological aspects of the Siren-overwhelming temptation, pleasures of the flesh, and ultimately death-are vital to understanding its presence in the Commedia. In order to attempt a full explication of Dante's Siren, the entire context of the encounter must be examined. At the end of Canto 18, the traveler tires and drifts into dreamy sleep. Just before dawn, the dream of the Siren disturbs his slumber upon the terrace of sloth. Prior to this, the traveler had found himself fading away into sleep, but was prevented when a group of repentants rushed by him. After conversing with some of them, however, his thoughts wander, and he succumbs to somnolencey. The traveler describes his train of thought, "a new thought started forming in my mind, / creating others, many different ones: / from one to another to another thought / I wandered sleepily, then closed my eyes" (Purgatorio 18.141-44). As his mind wanders from one frivolous thought to another, Dante the traveler capitulates to the false sense
Often, we cannot see the good until we have experienced the bad. Dante Alighieri, a poet who makes himself the main character in his Divine Comedy, finds himself lost in a dark wood at the start of The Inferno. Though he sees a safe path out of the wood towards an alluring light, he is forced to take an alternate route through an even darker place. As the ending of the pilgrim Dante’s voyage is bright and hopeful, Alighieri the poet aims to encourage even the most sinful Christians to hope for a successful end. Thus, Dante the pilgrim goes to hell in The Inferno to better understand the nature of sin and its consequences in order to move closer to salvation; his journey an allegory representing that of the repenting Christian soul.
Some people have one inanimate object in their lives that they find so enticing that they are incapable of withstanding. One object that lures them into a deep trap not giving them any chance to resist. In Margaret Atwood’s “Siren Song” as well as Homer’s The Odyssey the one inanimate object all men cannot seem to resist is a Siren calling them in. In “Siren Song” we see a portrayal of this irresistible lure by one Siren’s song as merely a taunting boredom, while in The Odyssey the Siren is seen as a toxic desire. Both these poems portray these characteristics of the Siren through point of view, tone, and imagery.
In Dante’s Inferno, part of The Divine Comedy, Canto V introduces the torments of Hell in the Second Circle. Here Minos tells the damned where they will spend eternity by wrapping his tail around himself. The Second Circle of Hell holds the lustful; those who sinned with the flesh. They are punished in the darkness by an unending tempest, which batters them with winds and rain. Hell is not only a geographical place, but also a representation of the potential for sin and evil within every individual human soul. As Dante travels through Hell, he sees sinners in increasingly more hideous and disgusting situations. For Dante, each situation is an image of the quality of any soul that is determined to sin in
The characterization in The Siren song is subtle, yet creates apparent characters with specific desires and goals. Without knowing the true facts of a siren, the poem specifies that the siren has a sinister secret to unveil to someone. They are willing to barter this secret for their freedom from a particular island, surrounded by other cruel beings like them. They would like to sing them a song, one that has sent others to their deaths. If you know the true nature of the sirens, you would likely know that these hopes and desires are all to create the illusion of someone to save, instead of someone who would bring you to your immediate. Their goal is to tempt you into throwing yourself overboard to hear their “secrets.”
In verse 25, Dante describes the choir of anguish to be "like a wound" with a simile. Next, by using a metaphor, he describes the fate of the adulterous sinners and their punishment as being battered eternally by the winds and storms of hell, as they were figuratively battered by the winds of passion in their lives on earth. He describes with a simile how "as cranes go over sounding their harsh cry, / leaving the long streak of their flight in air, / so come spirits, wailing as they fly" (v 46-48). Finally, he makes use of another simile to iterate how after Francesca tells of her tale of love, Dante faints and falls, "as a corpse might fall, to the dead floor of hell" (v 140).
Dante’s work Inferno is a vivid walkthrough the depths of hell and invokes much imagery, contemplation and feeling. Dante’s work beautifully constructs a full sensory depiction of hell and the souls he encounters along the journey. In many instances within the work the reader arrives at a crossroads for interpretation and discussion. Canto XI offers one such crux in which Dante asks the question of why there is a separation between the upper levels of hell and the lower levels of hell. By discussing the text, examining its implications and interpretations, conclusions can be drawn about why there is delineation between the upper and lower levels and the rationale behind the separation.
The characters in Greek Mythology have multiple interpretations. Among these characters include the dangerous, yet gorgeous Sirens, bird-women who sit on a cliff singing bewitching songs that captivate the minds of innocent travelers and entice them to their deaths. In Homer’s The Odyssey and Margaret Atwood’s “Siren Song,” both poets provide different representations of the Sirens. Homer portrays the Sirens as irresistible in order to establish men as heroes, whereas Atwood depicts them as unsightly and pathetic so she can prove men are foolish and arrogant using imagery, diction, and point of view.
This is when we first hear him articulate his desire as being something that is awaken from within him but he also says it can only happen by the right person, saying; “...while praising my lady I should make plain how Love is awakened through her, and not only awakened where he is sleeping, for where he is not in potentiality she, by her miraculous power, caused him to be.” (XXI, 1). Dante is describing his soul to be inactive before Beatrice came into his life and since he first saw her it’s as if his spirit, holy spirt, was revived. This Love takes him on the path through his life and every time he saw Beatrice he would then have visions of divine nature.
The siren is one of the most widely used “monsters” today. By definition they are beautiful yet dangerous creatures, who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island. These creatures are described as an irresistible mixture of woman and bird. Sirens, or otherwise known as “muses of the
In applying this image to a female, and especially to a female playing a role in the realm of relationships gives the idea new meaning. To think of a woman as a siren is to impose the notion that she lures men into a trap to play with them, almost as a cat would toy with a mouse. Atwood's siren describes her song as, "…The song that forces men / to leap overboard in squadrons / even though they see the beached skulls," (ll 4-6). With those words, Atwood describes exactly the effect that this songstress has on her victims. It is as if those men that are lured into her clutches are well aware of the consequences of their involvement with her - as they can very well see the "beached skulls" - yet they cannot resist the temptation she presents. Just as the seafarers were to be broken on the rocks of the island inhabited by the sirens, the men that involve themselves with this modern-day siren will also be destroyed. The song remained the same over the centuries, lethal and beautiful as ever.
In Purgatorio Cantos XIX-XXII, Dante and Virgil are making their way through the terraces of the purgatory. It starts off with Dante having a dream about a woman. Dante describes her as having crossed eyes, crooked feet, crippled hands, pale, and she stutters when she speaks. Realizing that he can control his own dream, Dante decides to make her into his fantasy lady. He “loosens” her tongue, fixes her limbs so she can stand straight and adds color to her complexion. It runs out he has created a Siren. She begins to sing about the things she has done in her lifetime including seducing men to their death like she did with Ulysses. Before she can finish her dreadful song, another woman appears. She is alert and saintly. Her appearance causes the Siren to stop her song mid-track. This new woman asks Virgil the identity of the Siren so Virgil shows up in the dream and rips off the Siren’s clothes. It turns out that her beauty was just on her face because the Siren emits a rotten smell from her stomach causing Dante to regret his attraction for this
Dante’s Inferno begins in a dark forest, a place of confusion, because he lost his way on the “true path”. Seeking an escape, Dante finds a hill where the sun glares down on him. This light seen in Dante’s Inferno symbolizes clarity as the sun represents God. After encountering three beasts and turning back to the murky forest, Dante crosses paths with the great Roman Poet, Virgil. Virgil is an aid and guide to Dante to Heaven, the ultimate Paradise. He warns Dante he must pass through Hell and Purgatory in order to reach his salvation in heaven. Virgil is depicted as nature or human reason perfected by virtue. It is strongly emphasized that Virgil can only take Dante so far in his journey by guiding him to heaven. Much like St. Thomas Aquinas’ reasoning, nature or human reason can only bring you so far in the journey to God. As Virgil and Dante approach the mouth of Hell, Virgil preaches to Dante about a woman in Heaven who took pity upon Dante when he was lost in hell. The woman Virgil speaks of is Dante’s departed love Beatrice. After Dante hears that Beatrice is heaven he now sheds the fear of traveling through Hell and Purgatorio.
Dante is truly a great poet. When he describes a place, he goes truly deeply than what’s on the surface. In Purgatory, when Dante and Virgil are walking through the gateway, Dante describes each step when walking in. “Once there, Dante and Virgil have to climb three steps to ascend to the gate (Purg. IX, 76-77; Sayers 1955b) which is guarded by an angel. These three steps signify the confession of sin, contrition for sin and satisfaction for sin”. He first describes the first step by saying, “We came to the first step: white marble gleaming/ so polished and so smooth that in its mirror/ I saw my true reflection past all seeming” (IX 94-96). In these first stanzas to the entrance of Purgatory demonstrates the color white as hope and desire of improvement. This is very
“I came to a place stripped bare of every light and roaring on naked dark like seas wracked by a war of winds” (Canto 5 inferno), this when Dante goes into the second circle of hell and watches as the lustful are swirl around in this never-ending storm of lust. Dante is using this point of view to try and give a realistic vibe to the readers. He talks to Francesca and Paolo two lovers who were murdered after found having affair against Francesca husband Giovanni Malatesta. After talking to them Dante is starting to get a sense of how real his journey is, he is feeling overwhelmed Dante falls to the ground and pass is out. “And while one spirit Francesca said these words to me, the other Paolo wept, so that, because of pity, I fainted, as if I had met my death. And then I fell as a dead body falls.”(139-142)
When alluding to the leopard in line two, Dante refers to it as "she" and uses "lithe" to describe its movement, indicating a strong sense of the feminine. Also, the usage of "quick of foot" and "blocking the path," shows a feeling of rapidity which creates a serious situation like a sudden attack. From the allegorical level, it is not hard to find out the moral of a female leopard: the dangerous but attractive desire of lust. In the next line, Dante expresses his fear of this leopard by saying "more than once she made me turn about to go back down". Here the leopard cuts Dante's way towards light, which is a signal of God’s love and the way to peace, and makes him return by the way he came, so he becomes frustrated. Another emergency starting with "But not so much that the next sight wasn't fearful" follows immediately. The second beast appears as a fierce lion. His “roaring with hunger” is so severe that “the air appears to tremble,” revealing a slaughterous animal nature and symbolizing great power in an allegorical plane. Apparently, the lion has a huge appetite for human, so Dante almost feels like dying at this point. What is worse, a grim she-wolf comes into sight. The reference to her “leanness seemed to compress all the world’s cravings” and she “had made miserable such multitudes” contributes to an intense longing for everything, which is concluded as another human