The Sirens in The Odyssey

When I have time, I want to return to The Odyssey. It is said that Odysseus, in order to resist the Sirens’ temptation, had himself bound to the mast of his ship. What is especially interesting, however, is that in Homer’s epic, the Sirens’ song is never described as erotic, sweet, or overtly seductive. What they sing is this: “Come, Odysseus, we will tell you the whole truth of what happened at Troy.”

In other words, the Sirens’ temptation lies in their promise to reveal everything about the past.

Their song is less a sensual lure than a series of incantations striking directly at the psyche, forcing one to confront the parts of the self one has long avoided. The Sirens do not kill; rather, they trap people in the past, preventing them from moving forward. They embody all the old stories we tell about ourselves—old wounds, inherited values, the compulsive need to explain everything, the obsession with meaning, and the longing for or resentment toward who we once were.

So it is not so much that Odysseus is seduced by the Sirens, but that he is abducted by his own desire to look back. His heroic flaw is not greed, but a hunger for meaning—especially for meaning in a past he can no longer change. He binds himself to the mast so he can listen, so he can know. Yet the Trojan War is already over; nothing can be undone. Still, he wants to understand, because for him, knowing the truth feels like a way to control fate. And is this not a psychology we all share?

We are endlessly entangled with the past, absorbed in tracing causes and extracting meaning from everything that has happened, without realizing that we ourselves become the Sirens. We build a prison out of the pursuit of meaning. If we keep turning back to listen to their song, we will never reach Ithaca—never arrive at our inner home.

奥德赛中的海妖 有时间的话想读一下《奥德赛》。说是奥德瑟斯为了防止被海妖诱惑将自己绑在船只的桅杆上。

而有一个很有意思的点在于荷马史诗中，从来没有说过海妖的歌声是色情的、诱惑的或甜美的。她们唱的其实是：“来吧，奥德修斯，我们告诉你特洛伊发生的全部真相。” ——换句话说，海妖的诱惑在于告诉他过去的一切。 海妖的歌声实际上像是一个个敲击心灵的咒符，强迫人们面对自我逃避的那一部分自己。海妖不会杀人，但它们让人把自己困在过去里，无法前进，其代表了关于自己的一切旧故事、旧痛苦、旧价值感、对解释一切的强迫、对意义的执着、对过去自我的怀念与怨恨。

所以与其说是被海妖诱惑，不如说是被自己的回头欲望绑架。奥德修斯的英雄缺陷不是贪欲，而是对意义的饥渴，尤其是对他无法改变的过去的意义。

他把自己绑在桅杆上想要看过去，然而特洛伊战争已经结束了，他无法改变那些事。但他依然想理解过去，因为对他来说知道真相就是控制命运的一种方式——这种心理又何尝不是我们每一个人呢？ 我们总是纠结于过去、沉溺于寻找一切发生的缘由和意义，殊不知我们就是自己的海妖，给自己制造了追寻意义的牢笼。如果一直回头听海妖的歌，我们永远到不了 Ithaca，永远到达不了内心的归处。