In the Labyrinth

Sirens IV: Reinventions

As The Innamorati is set in the mid-1500's of Renaissance Italy, I knew that there would be historical changes in the images and meanings of the Siren from antiquity to the Renaissance. I was counting on it, actually, knowing that in Italy at least, there has been a continuous tradition of the Siren and that all her variations--from the earliest to the Renaissance versions of the Siren would continue to exist side by side. Italian culture is such that even now, satyrs and saints sit down at the same table to dine and rather than replacing one idea with another, both operate in a kind of friendly joust. (Most of the time, anyway.) The multifaceted interpretation of the Siren is what made Erminia possible in the narrative -- she is at once an ancient creature and a contemporary to her Renaissance neighbors without any anachronisms. She is quite like the Commedia masks as well -- evoking the ancient traditions and cults of the Greek and  Roman dramas while transforming just enough through the centuries to remain in current fashion. I would like recommend reading all of Siegfried de Rachewiltz's De Sirenibus -- there are so many insights into the Siren that I just can't add here. Also, I was aware that once I was full of enough content and ideas for Erminia, I stopped taking notes and just read. 

Notes from De Sirenibus IV:

Medieval Sirens: Translation problems by the early Greek Church Fathers: saw the Sirens as a type of mournful ostrich (??) sometimes a jackal, an evil ghost, or night owls with mournful voices..."they are certain demons, cruel and wild ghosts...for the Greeks say that the Sirens have sweet voices, but are deceitful beings." Alexandrian translators seem to want to connect the Homeric Siren to other much older themes of lament such as the destruction and capture of Jerusalem by Saladin: "The Siren wails among the people for the killing of orphans, the peacock in the rushes laments the young dead."  St. Jerome (A.D. 340-420) in his Latin translations of the Bible also took liberties with Hebrew demonology. And while he amended the transposing of Siren over female ostriches, he did put the Sirens in their Babylonean "hideouts of voluptuousness" alongside the dragons, the howling ostriches and other shaggy creatures. " In the end, however, after consulting bestiaries, he decided to lift a description of a basilisk, the deadly crested serpent. (68-69)

Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 160--c.215) Pagan Wisdom and Christian Interpretations: Clement endeavored to explain the Christine doctrine to his followers in images that were known to them -- and he used Greek myth and literature: "Come, I shall show you the Logos, and the mysteries of the Logos, and I shall explain them to you in images that are known to you. " His interpretations are daring metaphors. Here the Sirens are the voice of Greek wisdom: "It seems to me most of those who themselves Christians resemble the companions of Odysseus, for they approach the Logos without a feeling for a more refined culture: they sail past not past the Sirens, but past the rhythm and the melody of Greek culture, they seal their ears with a refusal of learning, because they know they would not find the way home, if once they listened to the Greek wisdom."  Odysseus for Clement, is the man tied to the mast of faith while hearing the wisdom of the pagan world.(70)

And Clement continues -- comparing the Siren's song to the voice of God: "Their song is so powerful that those who hear it are drawn to them almost against their will. The voice of God in the Scriptures forces those who hear to believe it and to obey without proof, just as the voice of the Sirens compels one to follow it almost against their will. "  But, having made the comparisons between Christians and the journey of Odysseus, Clement also preaches hell and brimstone from the pulpit, (and quoting from Homer for the benefit of the congregation who would otherwise never have read it) returns the Sirens to "she strangles man, distracts him from the truth, takes his life. She is a trap, an abyss, a pit, a devouring monster. She is an island of destruction, heaped with bones and corpses. On her sits an attractive wench, Lust, and delights with her worldly music...She praises you sailor, calls you honored. but let her feed upon the dead: A wind from heaven comes to your aid, sail past pleasure, sail past song, it causes death."  For Clement, the example of the Siren would also become the lure of heresy a warning for those who dabbled too deeply in pagan writings. (71-72)

The Sirens voice and the poet are linked in the concern over the influence of pagan literature and music. The poet Boethius (480-524) railing against the "sweet lie of poetry" in the antiquities, calling the Muses (and by extension the Sirens) "mereticulas" (prostitutes) -- a sort of internal battle between voices. Boethius calls the Sirens of elegiac poetry  "scenicas meretriculas" -- showy prostitutes. The Siren song gains corporeality, transferring the Siren from song/bird to the female body, signifying the dangers of excess and lust. (80)

Boccaccio (1313-1375) creates the first draft of The Genealogy -- a compilation of mythology from ancient to contemporary sources compiled into a general poem and fifteen books and was written in Latin. He establishes Demogorgon as the original pagan god, then goes through the all progeny and descendants which fills about 12 books. Book XIV contains a defense of poetry. It is a massive attempt to reduce all of classical mythology into a system, and it revealed Boccaccio's admiration for the erudition of past scholars and no doubt his desire to be counted among them.  (162-163)

Boccaccio's description of the Sirens is a wonderfully weird combination of the scholarship of the ancients (who provided allegorical significance to the Sirens) and a Calabrian "scholar" Leonzio Pilato, who in addition to translating the Odyssey was also a primary source of oral traditions concerning ancient folklore. In the end Boccaccio pulls from all of these varied sources to create an image of the Siren that is an uneasy mixture of bits of scholarship and popular folklore from the ancients to the early Renaissance and which place her firmly in the harlot's camp. (165)

Petrarch's (1304-1374) poetry offers a re-purification of the Sirens  returning her to role of Muse. Petrarch, influenced by a neo-Platonic inheritance and emerging tradition of courtly love, creates a new poetic avatar in the Siren. The Siren returns as a celestial muse and fate in the character of Laura-Amor, the subject of Petrarch's poem.  (Sonnet: 61) "When Love inclines her beautiful eyes toward earth/collects her straying breath into a sigh with her own hands, then frees them in her song so clear/angelic, gentle, and divine.") The Siren's voice, rather than sending him heavenward, draws him back to earth. Though the poet is so moved by the sound of her voice that he is willing to die right there and then, Laura the Siren is paradoxically not an agent of death, nor even transcendence...but rather embodies that divine power which holds him captive in earthly existence. (Sadly, Petrarch would later in his life renounce women after Laura's death and would regard the Sirens in their Christianized rather than Platonic versions.)

One of my favorite poets of the Italian Renaissance -- Aretino Pietro, who was something of a wild whore-mongering poet and who penned the infamous "I Modi" (The Ways -- a depiction of 16 pornographic illustrated poems which are terrific) decided to write something rather splendid in collection of love poems to another's man's wife named Angela Serena. All of the images revolve around the angelic Siren and the neo-Platonic ideal of her place in the harmony of the music of the spheres. Most famously, is the illustration at the top by Titan of one of the stanza -- the shaggy-headed shepherd staring at the Siren, seated on her cloud, surrounded by stars recapturing the theme of the fallen body longing for transcendental love of perfection represented by the Siren which will redeem it from the flesh. --a rustic moth yearning for a star." (156-157)

Art: V. Mottez, "Ulysses and the Sirens," Tintoretto, Illustration of Pietro Aretino's Stanza Six of The Siren".

Notes From De Sirenibus Part I,  Notes From De Sirenibus Part II, Notes From De Sirenibus Part III, Notes From De Sirenibus Part IV

Excerpts From The Innamorati: Eminia the Siren I,  Erminia's Song II, Erminia and Two Poets III, Erminia's Embrace IV

Excerpt from The Innamorati: Erminia's Embrace

In this "climatic" scene, Lorenzo begins by fiercely resisting to recall the poet in himself while Erminia fights to liberate Lorenzo from his denial and at the same time, satisfy Orpheus' demand that she must first make Lorenzo a poet again before he returns the Sirens' voices to them. Her plan -- something along the lines of death, rebirth and homeric sex.

 

Lorenzo just kept shaking his head and shouting, "No!" With a desperate twist of her wrist, Erminia freed one hand and, grabbing Lorenzo by the lock of white hair, jerked his head toward her face, and planted her mouth over his.

It was unfair and she knew it.

Even a frozen poet must thaw a little in a siren's embrace. Erminia's kiss, like her voice, was unique; salty with the saliva of the ocean and acidic with the vinegar of exile. From the tip of her tongue, Erminia deposited words on the roof of Lorenzo s mouth and he swallowed them as a man dying of thirst sucks at the dew. He stopped struggling and Erminia laid her other hand against his cheek, while her fingers threaded through the lock of white hair. Lorenzo closed his arms around her waist and held her tightly.

Erminia pulled her head away, gently breaking the kiss. Lorenzo's eyes remained closed, his lips parted. She waited for him to open his eyes.

He did, slowly. But there was no joy in them. A terrible sadness lingered in his dark pupils, and she read his disappointment as he gazed at her, taking in the contours of her rough face.

"I am not Cecilia," she said.

"No," he sighed heavily. "And you are very ugly. Yet, you make me feel so strange." He rolled off Erminia and lay in the sand gazing up at the dusky afternoon sky.

Erminia chuckled. "Bread has a hard, brown crust, Lorenzo. But inside, it's soft, white, and pure. You feel strange because you look at my face and you see the crust. In my kiss, you can taste what's hidden inside."

Lorenzo slapped a hand to his forehead. "I don't understand anything any more. I must be going mad.""

"A beginning at last!" Erminia answered.

"It feels like the end." Read more >>>

 

Notes From De Sirenibus Part I,  Notes From De Sirenibus Part II, Notes From De Sirenibus Part III, Notes From De Sirenibus Part IV

Excerpts From The Innamorati: Eminia the Siren I,  Erminia's Song II, Erminia and Two Poets III, Erminia's Embrace IV

Sirens III: The Names They Were Called

One of the more interesting developements in the legacy of the Sirens comes after Homer has installed them in his epic poem as "malleable" figures. Having appeared as characters with an ambiguous history, others soon arrived to fill in the gaps of knowledge with inventions of their own. It is in this process of rounding out the Sirens that each century seems to imbue them with an extended patrimony, a more complicated history, a love and hate relationship (typical for male scholars centuries after their apprearance still afraid of their potentially destructive power) to this band of Sirens. And poets, philosophers, historians begin by giving them names so as to see them as individual personalities, rather than nameless bird/mermaid/women/temptresses on the shore of a small island of bones and corpses. And along the way the Sirens travel far from Homer's original island -- and become characters and actors in a wide variety of myths and rituals.

Notes from De Sirenibus, de Rachewiltz III

Hesiod, in his efforts to systamatize mythology (make it logical to himself at least) claims to have discovered the island of the Sirens on his map -- off the west coast of Italy: Antemoessa, "rich in flowers." The continuing confusion between determining the Sirens were "soul catchers" or muses such that Pindar compliments the girls of Thebes "who singing is like that of the Sirens." There is also a wonderful conusion in 8th century B.C. comparing the Sirens' song to those of funeral dirges and by the end of the 4th c BC the foreign enchantresses of the Odyssey had become the respectable personification of the lament for the dead...and they became in their female head and bird shapes as funeral monuments. The highpoint of this "Kitsch" is reached by Alexander the Great who "over the grave of his beloved Hephaestion, raised hollow Siren-figures in which were hidden the musicians who were to make lamentation." (51)

Plato frees the Sirens from the funeral parlor and relocates them into outer space to intone the music of the spheres and assist souls and the fates arriving in a very elaborate cosmos. (52)

The malleable sign of the Siren could be easily detatched from its context and made to function in a new one -- due to Homer's ambiguity as to their actual narrative -- which appeared to give them a lot of freedom and poets/authors/and others to experiment with them. A sort of "cargo cult of the sirens spreads through out the Hellenic World: 

Legends of the time have the Sirens commit suicide after being defeated by the music of Orpheus (while other credit Odysseus for having caused their death). Their bodies washed ashore and their has been a fierce competition as to has the true relics of the Sirens: Naples, Posidonia, Terina. (53)

Siren Names -- all of which suggest the ambiguous relationship between humans and Sirens, alternating from a fear of and an adulation of the Siren's unique position. Each century seems to rediscover her and her function as needed. 

Southern Tyrrhenian coast of Italy: Parthenope ("the virginal"), Leucosia ("the white goddess") and Legia ("she of the bright voice.")

The Greek Sirens: Himerops ("she whose voice awakens desire"), Thelxinow ("the enchantress"), Aglaope ("she of the glorious voice") and Peisinoe ("the seductive." ) (54-55)

And they start showing up in everybody's tale: they are now the daughters of the river-god Achelous with the body of a dragon fish and horns -- and the Sirens were born from the blood from one of his horns, lost during a battle with Heracules. They show up in the Argonautica, singing out to the argonauts until Orpheus shuts them down his lyre. (He is almost always seen as the enemy of the Sirens -- the male voice of seduction versus the female voice. )  The Sirens show up briefly in the Persephone tale in Roman times, transformed into bird forms by Demeter for failing to protect her daughter from the rape and abduction. Ovid suggests they asked for the transformation into birds that they might search for their ravished companion. (56-57)

And then the silly reductionists:  Virgil imagines them a rocky cliff of death (created when Orpheus -- damn that man -- defeated them. Again, the sing-off! And parenthetically how important the ownership of poetry and song, fair in the mouth of a man, and foul (bad pun) in the mouth of women. Explicators and ccommentators with little imaginations wanted the Sirens to be rationalized and were bothered by the idea of they were omniscient, why didn't they see their downfall in advance. Naturalists wondered what kind of bird they were. And Pliny the Elder moved them to India where they lulled men with their charms and then tore them to pieces. (57-58)

And lastly, in a 12th century commentary on the Odyssey by Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica, demoted them even further to "flute plaing whores who robbed travellers of their money." (59)

Art: Louisa Buck, The Sirens

Notes From De Sirenibus Part I,  Notes From De Sirenibus Part II, Notes From De Sirenibus Part III, Notes From De Sirenibus Part IV

Excerpts From The Innamorati: Eminia the Siren I,  Erminia's Song II, Erminia and Two Poets III, Erminia's Embrace IV

 

 

Excerpt from The Innamorati: Erminia And Two Poets

This is was fun scene to write as it provided me a chance to get back at that wretched Orpheus after reading all the mythological shenanigans he did to harm the Sirens and get away with it. Well, only to a certain extent. There was that unfortunate incident with the maenads, but even from that Orpheus managed to bounce -- at least his head did, as it was placed on a pedestal and given the power of speech. Orpheus was to serve a long time as an oracle of sorts. Erminia arrives at the maze with the purpose of trying to convince the head of Orpheus to give the Sirens back their voices, even though she failed to remain silent for ten years. She finds herself escorted by Orpheus' servant Ipnos -- a bratty piece of work with three faces that all seem to talk at once. Ipnos has dragged the poet Lorenzo into the maze, very much against his will to meet with Orpheus. Lorenzo, once a brilliant poet, has turned to the law, rejecting all forms of metaphorical language because of the guilt he feels for having possibly murdered his beloved wife. I laughed through this whole scene. I couldn't help myself. Lorenzo is a stammering wreck trying to deny the existence of his fantastic companions, Orpheus the great poet is crude and rude, and Erminia for once knows how to hold her tongue and strike a bargain.

Ever since Ipnos had pulled him over the wall of the maze, Lorenzo had been trying to choose which face to confront when he spoke to the querulous servant. But it had been impossible. Whenever Lorenzo spoke to one face, it gazed elsewhere while the other two faces regarded him keenly. And when Lorenzo switched his attention to a different face, then that face would ignore him and he would discover that the first face was now taking an interest in the conversation. Ipnos was one man, Lorenzo told himself firmly. All Lorenzo had to do was figure out which face was the real one.

But Ipnos hadn't disturbed Lorenzo's peace of mind half as much as Erminia. She should not have captured his attention at all. After all, she was ugly, a single black brow across her forehead shading her eyes, her hair an unwashed mat of snarls.

But there was something in the scent of her that made Lorenzo light¬headed, something in the glance of her piercing blue eyes that made him feel vulnerable. Every time she spoke, his throat constricted with an unbearable sadness. Her voice tore through the seams of the lawyer's facade, threatening to expose the poet beneath.

 

 No. It was not a facade. It was the truth! He had studied law in Bologna. He was no longer a poet. That conceit had been drummed out of him seven years ago. He had no use for metaphor. Poetry had died with Cecilia and the lie she had made of their marriage. He stole a glance at the heavy-bodied woman beside him. If only he didn't have to hear her voice or travel in the wake of her scent, it would be easier.

"Was she beautiful?" asked Erminia, brushing her tangled hair out of her eyes.

"Who?" Lorenzo asked, staring at the ground beneath his feet as they walked in an effort to ignore the discomfort she caused him.

"Whoever she was that brought you to this state," answered Erminia. "It had to be a woman." Read More >>>

 

Notes From De Sirenibus Part I,  Notes From De Sirenibus Part II, Notes From De Sirenibus Part III, Notes From De Sirenibus Part IV

Excerpts From The Innamorati: Eminia the Siren I,  Erminia's Song II, Erminia and Two Poets III, Erminia's Embrace IV

Homeric Sirens II: Enchanters of All Mankind

I am trying to remember that moment in writing The Innamorati -- constructed mainly around the characters of the Commedia dell'Arte-- when I decided I needed the Siren Herminia to join the cast. I cannot now conceive of the novel without her -- but neither can I recall conceiving the necessity of her in the story either. The very ambiguity of her nature fills her with so many possibilities. She is the ultimate outsider, not a pilgrim, not human, but dependent on the company of humans on a pilgrimage. An incredibly dangerous and potentially destructive creature at home on the sea, she is a mute servant on land, serving a ten year stretch of silence. As a Siren her song is everything, but if she speaks one sound, she loses the opportunity to retrieve the voices of her sisters from Orpheus. And of course, her curse lies in her inability to deny the power of her nature. While the rest of the pilgrims stumble through the maze, Erminia is not subject to its magic and moves through it easily to arrive at her specific destination: the head of Orpheus holding forth on a pedestle in a hidden in a cave in the maze. And it is there she encounters the poet who is dead to his own words, bound up in knots -- and in a most unlike way, the siren must unbind his song inorder to free herself. Here are more notes from de Rachewiltz's  De Sirenibus  on the Homeric Siren and I see in them the ripples of Erminia's character come to life. 

Notes From De Sirenibus II:

 Connecting Circe and the Sirens further when Hermes warns Odysseus of her enchanting drugs. The Sirens' bewitching is definitely an act of magic, closely related to Circe's bewitching potions and is performed exclusively through the sweet melody of their singing."  Circe describes this danger as essentially a danger which threatens domesticity: "that man...has no prospect of coming home and delighting his wife and little children as they stand about greeting (XII, 42-43) The Sirens' song thus represents a danger to the mind and memory and therefore, social order. And a man without memory or social order is ineffect dying, becoming "boneheaps of men now rotted away, the skins shrivel upon them." (XII, 45-46) 

"The flowery meadows of the Sirens' island  evoking the meadow by the streams of Okeanos, the dwelling place of the dead." The island appears to be a permanent habitat of the Sirens, they are tied to it, since they do not attempt to move toward the beach, but direct their "sweet song" to Odysessus to draw him near to a "windless calm."  The Sirens occupy a place at the extreme end of nature-culture opposition, underscored by the "boneheaps of men now rotted away." The Sirens are death not mediated or ritually modified in any way by culture." Levi-Straussian -- their shriveled corpses "cooked" but not "eaten."  At least, Circe changes her victims into pigs which she does eat -- but the Sirens lay waste. 

"The concept of lashing, binding, knotting: "The emphasis on bondage and lashings is not without significance for the Sirens' name evokes binding enchantment. (Seirenes derived etymologically from "cord" (Greek) or "song" from Phoenecia -- it suggests Homer's audience would have seen the Sirens as "the binding ones." Again, the relationship to Circe -- mistress of knots (which she teaches Odysessus)...The song of the Sirens is a binding song -- deranging, maddening, will-destroying -- binding the mind and withering the victim. 

"The Sirens' song is murderous precisely to the extent that it tends to dissasociate the realm of language from the realm of action...And here we encounter the central enigma of the Sirens...an essential paradox...the perils of unhumanized, unacculturated Nature and at the same time the skills most valued in the social and sacred economies of Greek culture, those arts of language and of song, which the Sirens share with the bard...The Sirens could represent a concept of song as a natural power which has its source in nature -- not a human invention, but rather bound up with the deepest energies of the cosmos.

"Karoly Marot associates both Muses and Sirens with Ukranian water-queens which at night rise to the surface of the sea to sing. The notion of all songs as magic songs, and the role of the poet as listener..a divinely inspired mediator between the real, of the sacred and the human....they appear to be associated with the unmitigated forces of Nauter; on the other hand they seem to embody the seductive lures of Culture-- the pleasures of poetic artifice...the enchanting lies that sweet melodious language can lead us to mistake for truth." 

Notes From De Sirenibus Part I,  Notes From De Sirenibus Part II, Notes From De Sirenibus Part III, Notes From De Sirenibus Part IV

Excerpts From The Innamorati: Eminia the Siren I,  Erminia's Song II, Erminia and Two Poets III, Erminia's Embrace IV

Photograph: "Noyer le Passe. Embrasser l'avenir"  ("Drowing the Past, Embracing the Future") by Thanh-Nguyen

The Sirens of Homer's Odyssey I

Homer offers one of the earliest descriptions of the Sirens in The Odyssey. It comes as Odysseus is leaving Hades, having gotten advice from just about all of the shades in his past. Circe makes it clear that there are still significant obstacles to his journey home and offers suggestions as to how to hear the "joy" of the Sirens' song without losing himself, his men, or the ship on the rocky shoals of Anthemoessa where a certain death awaits them. (You can find the text of this passage here Od. Book XII, lines 36-58, translation by Richard Latimore)

From SDR* on the "Siren problem:" There is no definitive evidence of their mythological origins which has allowed numerous and often contradictory representations of the Sirens. They do not seem to have a geneological tradition of a well-known or myth which has allowed variations of their form (birds, maidens, mermaids) and narrative meanings:

"It was precisely because neither the singer of the tales nor his audience knew much about the Sirens that Homer was able to turn them into such suggestive and ambivilent presences, endowed to the utmost degree with the power of vagueness. This is ultimately the reason why Homer chose characters like Circe and Kalypso from the vast pantheon of minor female divinities which populate Greek mythology, for it gave him the freedom he needed to suit them to his story rather than having to suit his story to a clearly defined, pre-existing character." 

"One should keep in mind that the section of the Odyssey known as the Wanderings...probably drew on a vast array of folktale motifs which were adapted, combined or expanded in order to suit the Nostos ** and the character of Odysseus. One should not expect to find any direct correspondence between any given episode...and a particular type of folktale, but rather a fragmentation of various folktales and a condensation of different motifs into what became in the long process of oral composition and transmission -- a new organic tale."  (Ok, this passage from SWR reads like my entire writing process! )

 Connections to Circe, Goddess of Knots, Weaving, and Song. 

"Circe's song and her weaving are an integral part of her character and denote her divinity: singing and weaving are her "habitual" mode of being; it is what she does when mortals are not caught in her web. There is no question that her song -- inextricably tied to her weaving--acts as a lure for her unsuspecting victims....Circe's song, like that of the Sirens, is a deceptive bait and that it represents an alluring and comforting temptation...the Sirens' song too is perceived as a feminine temptation....Throughout Greek mythology, magic song -- like weaving--apears to be a feminine prerogative, distinguishable from the more instrumental music of Orpheus or the narrative of the bard. Circe's song, like Kalypso's, is "song accompanied by the loom," and the medieval mermaid accompanying her song with a comb seems to be a descendant of this alluring combination. "

 *De Sirenibus: An Inquiry into Sirens from Homer to Shakespeare by Seigfried de Rachewiltz, Garland Publishing, Inc.New York, 1987.

**And I like this reference to the word describing the theme of Odysseus' journey (and all others like him who combine heroism and a long sea journey.)  "Nostos (Ancient Greek: νόστος) is a theme used in Greek literature which includes an epic hero returning home by sea. It is a high level of heroism or greatness. This journey is usually very extensive and includes being shipwrecked in an unknown location and going through certain trials that test the hero."

Notes From De Sirenibus Part I,  Notes From De Sirenibus Part II, Notes From De Sirenibus Part III, Notes From De Sirenibus Part IV

Excerpts From The Innamorati: Eminia the Siren I,  Erminia's Song II, Erminia and Two Poets III, Erminia's Embrace IV

Excerpt From The Innamorati: Erminia, the Siren

I am working on a series of posts on my research on the sirens -- all of which went into creating the character of Erminia, the siren in The Innamorati. I decided to provide something from the novel as an opportunity to see how the research transforms into character. So here is the chapter where she is introduced. 

Erminia picked her way carefully between the rocks and gnarled tree roots of the path as she made her way down a steep slope to the sea. Behind her, the hills rose into pleated crests lined with cedar, oak, and pine. The gorse bloomed bright yellow amid the green leaves in the dawn light. The sky was streaked pink, striped with scudding clouds chased by an ocean breeze. The last fingers of the night's mist clung to the trees.

She smiled, breathing in the fresh taste of the sea. She was tall, big-boned at the wrists, and heavyset across the shoulders. Her face was long and square, her black hair a matted tangle of curls and snagged twigs. Beneath dark eyebrows, her eyes were surprisingly light, shifting from grey to sapphire. Erminia moved confidently down the switchback trail, unafraid of the steep slope or the hazards it presented. Long muscles in her thighs bunched as each calloused heel dug into the path for balance until she reached a rocky coastline where boulders worn into smooth slabs tumbled into the water. Erminia stared hungrily at the waves churning and breaking over the rocks, casting plumes of white foam into the air.

She inhaled through her parted lips and held her breath. In that mouthful of sea-damp air, she tasted every shore the sea had touched. And from the taste of it, she exhaled visions of what had dipped into the water: the bitter olive pits tossed into the sea farther up the coast; the peppery trail of spices carried on a ship into Genoa; the fear-sweat of horses confined in the hold of another ship. With each breath Erminia took and released, something else materialized in the air her head: a canvas sail, torn and mended; a sailor's wool sweater rank with lanolin from the sheep; old wine bottles; the cast-off beak of an octopus; a basil-seasoned mussel shell. Read More>>>

 

Notes From De Sirenibus Part I,  Notes From De Sirenibus Part II, Notes From De Sirenibus Part III, Notes From De Sirenibus Part IV

Excerpts From The Innamorati: Eminia the Siren I,  Erminia's Song II, Erminia and Two Poets III, Erminia's Embrace IV