Seduction and the Secret Power of Women

Their celestial voices drove mast-lashed Ulysses nearly out of his mind with libidinous promises as they beckoned him ever closer to paradise - or a rocky death. With womanly torsos and animal lower halves, usually birds or fish, Sirens have long been symbols of the lure of desire - the feminine, as [...]
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Their celestial voices drove mast-lashed Ulysses nearly out of his mind with libidinous promises as they beckoned him ever closer to paradise - or a rocky death. With womanly torsos and animal lower halves, usually birds or fish, Sirens have long been symbols of the lure of desire - the feminine, as seducer - beckoning men to mystery beyond their ken or to disaster. This book is both a celebration of Sirens and an examination of the psychology of dichotomy - the diametrically opposed drives and inherent conflicts underlying this female archetype.Since antiquity, Sirens and their mermaid sisters have maintained an ongoing affair of the heart with humanity's greatest writers and artists. Sirens play important roles in the classical writings of Homer and Euripides, as well as in the modern works of James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats and many others. Matching these writings with vibrant work from such artists as Peter Paul Rubens, Hieronymous Bosch, Edvard Munch and Rene Magritte, Meri Lao has created a feast for the eye.Exploring our 3,000 year-old relationship with Sirens, Lao reveals the secret of the power in their song: it is the sound of the subversive, luring us from the orderly conscious world down to the depth of the world of dreams and the harder we try to ignore that singing, the more we desperately want to hear it.This book explains the Sirens half-human, half-animal bodies as a metaphor for the psychological challenge that their myth has always embodied. It is fully illustrated in colour with works by Rubens, Bosch, Munch, Magritte and others.