Proof that
inadequate, even childish measures, may serve to rescue one from peril.
To protect
himself from the Sirens, Ulysses stopped his ears with wax and had himself bound
to the mast of his ship. Naturally any and every traveller before him could
have done the same, except those whom the Sirens allured even from a great
distance; but it was known to all the world that such things were of no help
whatever. The song of the Sirens could pierce through everything, and the
longing of those they seduced would have broken far stronger bonds than chains
and masts. But Ulysses did not think of that, although he had probably heard of
it. He trusted absolutely to his handful of wax and his fathom of chain, and in
innocent elation over his little stratagem sailed out to meet the Sirens.
Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their
song, namely their silence. And though admittedly such a thing has never
happened, still it is conceivable that someone might possibly have escaped from
their singing; but from their silence certainly never. Against the feeling of
having triumphed over them by one's own strength, and the consequent exaltation
that bears down everything before it, no earthly powers could have remained
intact.
And when Ulysses approached them the potent songstresses
actually did not sing, whether because they thought that this enemy could be
vanquished only by their silence, or because of the look of bliss on the face
of Ulysses, who was thinking of nothing but his wax and his chains, made them
forget their singing.
But Ulysses, if one may so express it, did not hear their
silence; he thought they were singing and that he alone did not hear them. For
a fleeting moment he saw their throats rising and falling, their breasts
lifting, their eyes filled with tears, their lips half-parted, but believed
that these were accompaniments to the airs which died unheard around him. Soon,
however, all this faded from his sight as he fixed his gaze on the distance,
the Sirens literally vanished before his resolution, and at the very moment
when they were nearest to him he knew of them no longer.
But they--lovelier than ever--stretched their necks and
turned, let their cold hair flutter free in the wind, and forgetting everything
clung with their claws to the rocks. They no longer had any desire to allure;
all that they wanted was to hold as long as they could the radiance that fell from
Ulysses' great eyes.
If the Sirens had possessed consciousness they would have
been annihilated at that moment. But they remained as they had been; all that
had happened was that Ulysses had escaped them.
A codicil to the foregoing has also been handed down.
Ulysses, it is said, was so full of guile, was such a fox, that not even the
goddess of fate could pierce his armour. Perhaps he had really noticed,
although here the human understanding is beyond its depths, that the Sirens
were silent, and opposed the afore-mentioned pretence to them and the gods
merely as a sort of shield.
Franz Kafka
