Sirens

Sounds that beguiled the ancients and haunted the 20th century

Penelope and the Suitors (c. 1509), by Pintoricchio. National Gallery, London. Photo by the author.

First you will reach the Sirens, who bewitch all passersby. If anyone goes near them in ignorance, and listens to their voices, that man will never travel to his home, and never make his wife and children happy to have him back with them again. The Sirens who sit there in their meadow will seduce him with piercing songs.

From Book 12 of The Odyssey, by Homer, translated by Emily Watson (2017)

The sound of sirens

The sirens are getting very loud and frequent. It can be hard to focus on my work.

Although I live in a relatively quiet suburb of Tokyo, I hear a lot of ambulances pass along the street outside with their sirens bouncing insistently between the buildings. And it’s not just the sirens, but the voices. One of the ambulance crews will usually be warning drivers to pull over or thanking them for doing so via a loud speaker. It’s all very polite, but forms a carefully curated cacophony that can be mildly annoying during the day and somewhat disturbing at night. 

At least they’re not fire engines, which are louder. Though, as it happens, most ambulances in Tokyo are stationed at a fire station, not at a hospital, as I’ve seen in other parts of the world. 

But I almost never hear police sirens here. In London—or even in Devon—I used to hear them every day. Perhaps that tells us something about the relative crime rates in the two countries. 

However, the ambulance sirens are certainly getting more frequent here. That’s not just my impression: there’s been an increase in the number of ambulance callouts this year. The main reason is the heat. Like some other places in the world, Tokyo’s summer temperature broke records last year and seems on course to do the same this year. 

There’s been an increase in the number of cases of heatstroke, with many of them involving older people. Japan has one of the oldest populations in the world, and the hotter summers are taking their toll. In my area, we’ve been warned not to call for an ambulance unless it’s a real emergency (a message you sometimes get in the UK, too), to try to help out overstretched ambulance services. 

The hotter climate is also generating another kind of siren:

“‘Sirens are blaring across all major indicators … Some records aren’t just chart-topping – they’re chart-busting. And changes are speeding up,’ the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said of last year’s intense global heat.”¹

The sirens and their songs

It was a hot June day in London when I visited one of my favourite places, the National Gallery in London earlier this year. So I was glad to wander the cool halls of the Gallery’s lower floors, looking for some old favourites from the 15th or 16th centuries.

As it happens, I didn't find many old friends but made some new ones, which was just fine. One of them was the glorious painting above by Pintoricchio, Penelope and the Suitors, based on Homer's Odyssey. It’s a vivid work, full of detail and points of interest.

A brief recap of the story shown: During Odysseus’s absence, Penelope is besieged by suitors. She refuses to consider their advances until she has finished weaving a shroud. At night, she unpicks what she weaves by day.

Without anyone knowing, Odysseus has returned; he’s shown entering the room incognito via a door on the right. 

A detail from Penelope and the Suitors which shows Odysseus tied to his ship’s mast so that he could listen to the sirens’ songs without jumping to his doom.

Through the window, though, we can see other scenes from the Odyssey. In particular, we see Odysseus tied to the mast of his ship by his comrades so that he can listen to the beautiful song of the sirens without succumbing to their attraction and throwing himself into the water. There is a filmic feel to this scene, and I can almost imagine that Penelope has seen that image outside the window.

I first read about this story at school. Back then, I didn’t think of the sirens as mermaids. Perhaps this is in part because there is no etymological link between sirens and mermaids, as there is in, say, Spanish, where mermaids are sirenas.

If I’d known that mermaids and sirens shared a common name in some European languages, I might have been quicker to see these famous lines from TS Eliot’s famous poem, The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock, as an allusion to the Odyssey:

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

The sirens of the 20th century

Sirens aren’t always the sweet sound of a song, of course. Apart from the development of the sirens from the emergency services mentioned above, sirens have taken on other meanings.

In the early part of the century came the sirens in the work of Edgard Varèse, such as Ionisation (1929–1931). This is a work I’ve known and loved for many years, but the sirens (the score calls for two sirens, one high and one low) still unnerve me. 

Then came the persistent, unsettling sound of sirens in the well-known sci-fi film based on HG Wells’ book, The Time Machine (1960). In one episode of the film, the sirens call the Eloi to their doom at the hands—and in the boiling cauldrons—of the Morlocks.

Of course, the sirens of war haunted the 20th century from the late 1930s onwards. In England during the Second World War, sirens would sound to warn of Nazi bombing raids over the major ports and cities. My mother, raised in the southern port of Portsmouth, was dispatched to the relative safety of the cathedral city of Salisbury early in the war. She stayed until its conclusion, and I’m not sure if she ever heard any sirens there.

All day I dream about sirens

“Siren” can also mean a temptress and this sets off alarm bells ringing about the embedded misogyny in the term.

Maybe I’ve got it wrong, but recently I’ve begun to mistrust works created by men about sirens/mermaids. Certainly, it brought out the worst in Tennyson; The Mermaid must surely be one of his most dismal efforts (for his sake, I hope so anyway). I would normally quote a line to illustrate my point. But I’m feeling merciful and will spare you. The brave among you can take a peek here. 

Fortunately, there are alternatives to the male versions of mermaids and sirens; for example, there’s Margaret Atwood with her witty take on sirens here. But best of all, as I recently discovered, there’s the wonderful poet Domenica Martinello and her amazing book, All Day I Dream About Sirens (2019). It’s worth reading about how she came to write it here. I’ll just mention that, yes, a well-known vendor of caffeinated beverages is a focal point in the book, which you can find out how to buy here (the book, not the coffee). 

The title poem, wittily abbreviated to ADIDAS, contains some of the best lines in the book, and a few of them will give you a glimpse of her energy, the angle, and perhaps her anger:

If you are the siren you're the Madonna of mermaids: about to ruffle some feathers. If you are the siren this isn't new. History-laden, a copywriter's muse. If you are the siren you are somebody's handmaiden, Persephone or Howard Schultz. Go forth toward the comments section.

That last line isn’t from me, of course, but in any case, I encourage you to do just as the poet says. 

At last, it feels as if the exclusive rights to controlling the mermaid/siren poetry franchise have been taken out of male hands. 

Silencing the sirens

Ambulance sirens can bring hope rather than inspire unease, and their absence can be almost sinister.

When, on the morning of November 2022, I found my mother had passed peacefully away in the night, I called an ambulance.

I remember no flashing light, no siren—and certainly no hope of relief. I didn’t need the well-mannered, professional crew to confirm that she had passed. With their heavy boots, hi-vis jackets, machines, and walkie-talkies, they were the visible but inaudible sign of a silent death. My mother would at least have been grateful for the lack of drama.

Meanwhile, in the heat of the Tokyo summer, the sirens continue to wail outside my window. Odysseus’s sailors blocked their ears with wax so they could continue working without deadly distraction. Perhaps I need to do the same. 

1. Quoted in the Guardian, here.