La Sirène ou le chant de l’inconnu

In the Renaissance, the music of the Siren retains much of the ambivalence which has characterised it ever since Antiquity. The Siren’s lure or the music of the spheres ? The answer lies in Renaissance cosmology and teratology but also in the representations of the Siren in emblem books and Renaissance drama. «What is the true nature of the Sirens’ song ?» asks Maurice Blanchot in Le Livre à venir. The eschatological function of this song mainly survives in the parallel between the Swan and the Siren, while the representations of the Siren on stage underline it as a deadly lure and a symbol of vanity. Yet, as a hybrid creature and a musical grotesque, the figure of the Siren can also be read as a metaphor. Her song is the song of the unknown — also a metaphor of the function of music in Renaissance drama.
Bardelmann Claire. La Sirène ou le chant de l’inconnu. In: Anglophonia/Caliban, n°13, 2003. Mythe et Littérature. Shakespeare et ses contemporains. pp. 125-135.