The Sirens are familiar literary characters from Greek mythology; they are most recognized as one of the many perils Odysseus encounters in Homer's Odyssey. As Circe explains to Odysseus before he sets out for home, "

In order to attempt a full explication of Dante's Siren, the entire context of the encounter must be examined. At the end of Canto 18, the traveler tires and drifts into dreamy sleep. Just before dawn, the dream of the Siren disturbs his slumber upon the terrace of sloth. Prior to this, the traveler had found himself fading away into sleep, but was prevented when a group of repentants rushed by him. After conversing with some of them, however, his thoughts wander, and he succumbs to somnolencey. The traveler describes his train of thought, "a new thought started forming in my mind, / creating others, many different ones: / from one to another to another thought / I wandered sleepily, then closed my eyes" (Purgatorio 18.141-44). As his mind wanders from one frivolous thought to another, Dante the traveler capitulates to the false sense of release promised by the sin of sloth, which, according to Mazzotta, "is a term describing the somnolence, sickness, spiritlessness, and despondency of the mind...a contemplation of nothingness" (138). In this manner sloth becomes a gateway to other sins, just as it is only through his sloth that the Siren reaches the traveler. This contemplation of empty matters engenders a perilous idleness, which, in turn, leads to pursuit of exorbitant earthly pleasures and leads the soul down a baneful path towards death.

The New American Bible. St. Joseph Edition. New York: Catholic Book Publishing

This brings full circle what Mazzotta said of sloth, describing it as a "contemplation of nothingness." The contemplation of nothingness leads directly to sin and death under the visage of false earthly pleasures, as manifested in the figure of the Siren. In Canto 12 of the Paradiso, Dante the traveler finally fully realizes the degree of evil behind the Siren and her sweet song. After discoursing with St. Thomas Aquinas, champion of Scholastic thought and of the contemplation of Divine things, Dante hears the song that breaks forth from the sphere of the Sun, the realm of Christian learning, "song that in those sweet instruments surpassed / the best our Sirens or our Muses sing, / as source of light outshines what it reflects" (Paradiso 12.7-9). Dante the traveler here discovers that in the contemplation of divine things lies the path to ultimate truth. Completely polar from contemplation of nothingness, contemplation of Divine things, even of simple matters, avoids idleness, frivolity, and sloth. Thereby, while one contemplates Divine things, there exists a much lower propensity to succumb to the temptation of inordinate worldly pleasures. The sweet but short lived and fallacious song of the Siren is silenced, replaced by a song of truth, infinitely sweeter and eternally sung.

The reader finds that at this point in the Commedia, the traveler Dante still demonstrates strong signs of moral weakness. Though he has passed through Inferno and has witnessed the wages of sin, he has not yet rid himself of the tendencies to committing those same sins. Indeed, he falls almost immediately int

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Approximate Word count = 2059
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)