Thoughts on { Sirens | Herman Melville / Franz Kafka / Charles Baudelaire / Horace / Ambrose Bierce / Nikos Kazantzakis

Henri Matisse, Sirènes, 1968

“There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath…”

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale, 1851

“Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence… someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence, certainly never.”

Franz Kafka, 1883-1924

“The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.”

Walter Savage Landor, 1775-1864

From Satan or from God, what matter? Angel or Siren,
What matter, if you make – fairy with velvet eyes,
Rhythm, perfume, light, o my only queen –
The universe less hideous, each moment less strained?

Charles Baudelaire, from Hymn to Beauty, 1857

“You must avoid sloth, that wicked siren.”

Horace, 65 BC –  8 BC

“The masses do not see the Sirens. They do not hear songs in the air. Blind, deaf, stooping, they pull at their oars in the hold of the earth. But the more select, the captains, harken to a Siren within them…and royally squander their lives with her.”

Nikos Kazantzakis, 1883-1957

“SIREN, n. One of several musical prodigies famous for a vain attempt to dissuade Odysseus from a life on the ocean wave. Figuratively, any lady of splendid promise, dissembled purpose and disappointing performance.”

Ambrose Bierce, 1842– c. 1914

Also:
Days [ ) Fear of shallow living | Anaïs Nin, 1950