The making of a myth: On Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's Siren

Figural landscapes

In order to delve into the analysis of the story using the above coordinates, it is necessary to consider the circumstances of the characters’ encounters, which play a figural role. In his textual universe, Tomasi di Lampedusa establishes a peculiar nexus between the space (particularly Sicily and the ‘Caffè di via Po’ in Turin) and the interior and exterior characteristics of the characters, ²³ all of them drawn on a well-established cultural and literary tradition. In detail, the first encounter between Corbera and La Ciura involves the notion of katábasis, or descent into the otherworld. The ‘Caffè di via Po’ is depicted as a dark, mysterious and ‘demoniac’ netherworld (Zago, 1987: 51). Entering the café is compared to descending into Limbo (‘La sera discesi al Limbo’ (S: 404) [‘that evening I went down to Limbo’ (PS: 81)], ²⁴ while the place is referred to as ‘Ade popolato da esangui ombre’ (S: 401) [‘Hades peopled by bloodless shades’ (PS: 78)], ²⁵ ‘Inferi di via Po’ (S: 408) [‘The infernal regions of Via Po’ (PS: 86)], and ‘erebo pieno di ombre e […] di catarri, […] luogo geometrico di vite fallite’ (S: 410) [‘ghost filled and […] catarrh-ridden Erebus, this geometric site of failed lives’ (PS: 87)] ²⁶ on various occasions. Whilst the topos of descent into the underworld foreshadows the encounter between the two men, the evocation of a timeless and mythical land of gods anticipates the encounter with the siren. In the cold and distant city of Turin, La Ciura and Corbera reminisce about their island, Sicily, as a land inhabited by gods during a seemingly endless month of August: ‘Gli Dei vi hanno soggiornato, forse negli Agosti inesauribili vi soggiornano ancora’ (S: 407) [‘The gods have sojourned there, may do still in inexorable Augusts’ (PS: 84)]. At night, while the soul is lost within the vortex of the sky, the body remains alert, fearful of the epiphany of demons. The narrator specifies:

l’incanto di certe notti estive in vista del golfo di Castellammare, quando le stelle si specchiano nel mare che dorme e lo spirito di chi è coricato riverso fra i lentischi si perde nel vortice del cielo mentre il corpo, teso e all’erta, teme l’avvicinarsi dei demoni. (S: 407) ²⁷

The choice of the term ‘vortex’ in the rare meaning of ‘celestial vault’ and ‘sky’ is noteworthy. This term was used in ancient cosmogonies, and seems to recall Lucretius’ De rerum natura, which is indirectly referred to in other passages of the novella. ²⁸ Moreover, through the use of flashbacks and prolepsis ²⁹ , employed liberally throughout Il Gattopardo, La Ciura tells of how his spellbinding surroundings prepared him for Lighea's arrival:

il sole, la solitudine, le notti passate sotto il roteare delle stelle, il silenzio, lo scarso nutrimento, lo studio di argomenti remoti, tessevano attorno a me come una incantazione che mi predisponeva al prodigio. (S: 421)

Significantly, Lighea appears at the peak of summer, when an eruption at Mount Etna worsened an already unbearable heat wave. ³⁰ The summer heat produces a kind of quiet exhilaration in La Ciura, and the sun is lyrically described as a shining yet brutal donor of energy:

Il caldo era violento anche ad Augusta ma, non più riverberato da mura, produceva una prostrazione bestiale ma una sorta di sommessa euforia, ed il sole, smessa la grinta sua di carnefice, si accontentava di essere un ridente se pur brutale donatore di energie, ed anche un mago che incastonava diamanti mobili in ogni più lieve increspatura del mare. (S: 429)

The appearance of the siren at the height of summer in La sirena is part of a traditional description of the encounter between humans and sirens, evident in the works of various writers, ranging from Homer's Odyssey to Roger Caillois' I demoni meridiani (1937). ³¹ Interestingly, the tradition is also supported by the probable etymology of the word ‘siren’ from séirios, meaning ‘Sirius’, the dog star, which indicates the summer peak and was often employed to signify the sun, as it belongs to the semantic field of ‘burning’ (Bettini and Spina, 2007: 96). ³² It is fitting that sirens were traditionally depicted as creatures that dried up the will and energy of humans, inviting them to sleep and sloth, to a cupio dissolvi, and that they were associated with the idea of acedia [Horace used the expression ‘improba Siren’ in Saturae II, iii, 14 (see Horatius, 1952)]. Thus, sirens were included among the group of meridian demons, who seduce humans and eventually have erotic encounters with them, resulting in madness, paralysis and aphonia (Caillois, 1999: 44–53). ³³ The sirens were symbolic of lifelessness and abandoning life to death. With this in mind, it is reasonable to assume that Tomasi di Lampedusa's siren is a meridian demon; however, she only apparently acts like one. Indirectly denying the Homeric myth of Ulysses, Lighea tells La Ciura not to believe the legend that sirens kill humans: ‘Non credere alle favole inventate su di noi: non uccidiamo nessuno, amiamo soltanto’ (S: 422) [‘Don’t believe the tales invented about us; we kill none, we only love’ (PS: 100–101)]. Then Lighea invites La Ciura to satisfy his desire for rest by joining her in the sea:

Io ti ho amato e, ricordalo, quando sarai stanco, quando non ne potrai proprio più, non avrai che sporgerti sul mare e chiamarmi: io sarò lì, perché sono ovunque, e il tuo sogno di sonno sarà realizzato. (S: 425) ³⁴

At this point, it is worth remembering that the longing for sleep or death is identified as a leitmotif in Il Gattopardo. The motif not only relates to the sorrowful traits of summer, ³⁵ repeatedly ascribed to Sicilians and intertwined with an intimate desire for dissolution and immobility, as exemplified by the dialogue between Don Fabrizio and Chevalley, ³⁶ but it also describes Don Fabrizio's character. The yearning for death, for example, is represented by Don Fabrizio's passion for astronomy, which encapsulates an inner desire for eternity and ataraxia. This is evident in his ‘wooing’ of the morning star Venus:

Venere stava lì, avvolta nel suo turbante di vapori autunnali. Essa era sempre fedele, aspettava sempre Don Fabrizio alle sue uscite mattutine, a Donnafugata prima della caccia, adesso dopo il ballo. Don Fabrizio sospirò. Quando si sarebbe decisa a dargli un appuntamento meno effimero, lontano dai torsoli e dal sangue, nella propria regione di perenne certezza? (G: 222)

The idea of annihilation of the self in the universe has narrative implications in the novella, more explicitly than in the novel. This is particularly evident in the representation of the various semantic manifestations and differing forms of katábasis. Ultimately, it signifies contact with the ‘autre’. In this regard, the idea of katábasis is associated with the marine element that pervades the novella, as seen in La Ciura's encounter with the siren and his eventual death in the sea. La Ciura states that the sea grants both death and immortality (‘mare che dà la morte e l’immortalità’ (S: 408) [‘sea that grants death together with immortality’ (PS: 85)]), and through the siren's words, the sea is endowed with the traits of darkness and origination (‘cieco muto palazzo di acque informi, eterne, senza sussurri, senza bagliori’ (S: 426) [‘blind mute palace of formless waters, eternal, without a gleam, without a whisper’ (PS: 103)]). ³⁸ As is well known, the sea traditionally symbolises death, rebirth and regeneration, fons and origo. ³⁹ This aspect, which is also part of general cultural consciousness, ⁴⁰ has been explored by an array of scholars in the 20th century. For instance, in Gaston Bachelard's phenomenology of the imagination, water is said to have feminine and maternal qualities, as it nourishes life. According to this reading, water can be interpreted as a reverie of mother nature's milk (see Bachelard, 2007: 98–111). ⁴¹ Alternatively, Romanian mythologist Mircea Eliade suggests that water is the source of all the possibilities for existence. In La sirena, Lighea herself is portrayed as a symbol of pre-individual life and formless existence, and, as a result, embodies the characteristics of the sea itself:

Sono tutto perché sono corrente di vita priva di accidenti; sono immortale perché tutte le morti confluiscono in me da quella del merluzzo di dianzi a quella di Zeus, e in me radunate ridiventano vita non più individuale e determinata ma panica e quindi libera. (S: 425–426) ⁴²

As Lighea is assumed to contain all life and death − and all deaths are implied to merge into the immortality of nature − she is described as being pure existence without form, reflecting the elementary and undifferentiated aspects of the sea, which is commonly accepted as a ‘uroboric’ symbol. The possibility that Lighea symbolises the sea is also emphasised by her name and a passage in the novella. According to literary sources such as Lycophron's Alexandra (v. 726) and a scholiast of the Odyssey (Scholium V), Lighea is one of the names of the sirens in Greek mythology, and it means a ‘pure, acute, clear, piercing sound’. ⁴³ Not coincidentally, Lighea's melodic voice assimilates into the marine soundscape, which strongly ties in with her mixed and ambivalent traits:

Parlava e così fui sommerso, dopo quello del sorriso e dell’odore, dal terzo, maggiore sortilegio, quello della voce. Essa era un po’ gutturale, velata, risonante di armonici innumerevoli; come sfondo alle parole in essa si avvertivano le risacche impigrite dei mari estivi, il fruscio delle ultime spume sulle spiagge, il passaggio dei venti sulle onde lunari. Il canto delle Sirene, Corbèra, non esiste: la musica cui non si sfugge è quella sola della loro voce. (S: 422) ⁴⁴

To briefly digress, the notion of katapontismòs (leaping into the sea and transforming into something else) is one of the thematic affinities that readers can identify between La sirena and Cesare Pavese's Dialoghi con Leucò. Although Tomasi di Lampedusa seems to indirectly reference Pavese's dialogues in the title of La Ciura's work (‘una raccolta di saggi italiani Uomini e dei che era stimata opera non soltanto di alta erudizione ma di viva poesia’ (S: 404) [a collection of essays, in Italian, Men and Gods, which was considered a work not only of high erudition but of true poetry (PS: 81)], ⁴⁵ it is difficult to prove that Tomasi di Lampedusa was aware of the title Pavese initially intended for Dialoghi con Leucò in the late 1950s. ⁴⁶ Nevertheless, comparing La sirena with Pavese's work contributes to understanding some of the key motifs in Tomasi di Lampedusa's novella. In Pavese's collection of enigmatic and lyrical dialogues between mythological figures, heroes and gods, the leap into the sea draws on the myth of Ino-Leucothea, which inspired Leucò's character, a ‘figure of transit and regeneration’ (see Pontiggia, 2021: 17–19; Cavallini, 2013a: 10–11). Furthermore, the motif of katapontismòs, ‘the leaping into the ocean’, is displayed in Schiuma d'onda [‘Sea Foam’], a dialogue which stages a conversation between Sappho, the ancient poetess who committed suicide by falling from a white rock (leukas pētre) into the sea, and Britomartis, a nymph who leapt into the sea while fleeing from Minos.

As with Pavese's short piece, in which the sea is described as an entity in which ‘everything dies, and comes to life again’ (Pavese, 1999: 49) [‘tutto muore e rivive’ (Pavese, 1989: 47)], and as a symbol of the maternal, the unknown, death and otherness, La Ciura's encounter with the siren symbolises ‘marine regression’, and his katapontismòs stands for the longing to return either to an unconscious state or to the origin of life. ⁴⁷ This conveys the idea of a passage from life to death and subsequent regeneration (see Mancini, 2010: 9–12). Finally, it is worth recalling that in Il Gattopardo Don Fabrizio significantly perceives death as the crumbling of individuality and its reconstruction in a different form elsewhere:

e per lui, avvezzo a scrutare spazi esteriori illimitati, a indagare vastissimi abissi interiori, essa [la perdita di vitalità] non era per nulla sgradevole; era quella di un continuo, minutissimo sgretolamento della personalità congiunto però al presagio vago del riedificarsi altrove di una individualità […] meno cosciente ma più larga: quei granellini di sabbia non andavano perduti, scomparivano sì ma si accumulavano chissà dove per cementare una mole più duratura. (G: 223–224)

The transformation of either La Ciura or Don Fabrizio can be traced back to the Lucretian motif of the eternal flow of nature, and it contributes to tracking the ‘presence’ of De rerum natura in the novella, as is suggested by Corbera's words on the island: ‘Così parlammo della Sicilia eterna, quella delle cose di natura’ (S: 403) [‘So we spoke about eternal Sicily, nature's Sicily’ (PS: 84)].

Ligheia and the tradition of sirens

At this stage, a detailed examination of Lighea's depiction is required. This will reveal an aspect of the semantic mythology of sirens, as recreated by Tomasi di Lampedusa, as well as further levels of association between the supernatural story of Lighea and the professor, and the unknowable pre-individual state and the unconscious. ⁴⁹ First of all, it is worth noting that Lighea is depicted as an adolescent (‘quell’adolescente’ (S: 421) [‘the girl’ (PS: 99)]), ⁵⁰ her face being as smooth as that of a sixteen-year-old woman. Indeed she is described as having ‘il volto liscio di una sedicenne’ (S: 421) [‘a smooth sixteen-year-old face’ (PS: 99)] and ‘lineamenti d’infantile purezza’ (S: 421) [‘features of a childlike purity’ (PS: 99)]. In addition, Lighea's superhuman smile is described as expressing a kind of bestial joy in existence and a kind of divine bliss:

sorrideva […] Non era però uno di quei sorrisi come se ne vedono fra voialtri, sempre imbastarditi da un'espressione accessoria, di benevolenza o d'ironia, di pietà, crudeltà o quel che sia; esso esprimeva soltanto se stesso, cioè una quasi bestiale gioia di esistere, una quasi divina letizia. Questo sorriso fu il primo dei sortilegi che agisse su di me rivelandomi paradisi di dimenticate serenità. (S: 421)

Lighea's expression is reminiscent of the ecstatic and ironic smiles of the archaic Greek sculptures whose photographs were hung on the walls of the professor's studio (‘La stanza balenava dei loro sorrisi estatici ed insieme ironici, si esaltava nella riposata alterigia del loro portamento’ (S: 413) [‘The room was alight with their ecstatic yet ironic smiles, exalted by the relaxed arrogance of their bearing’ (PS: 91)]), particularly of the smiling figure of korē from the Acropolis, which, at the end of the novella, is mentioned as having remained in pieces. ⁵¹ Thus, the attribute ‘forgotten’ can be justified to the serenity evoked by the siren's smile. The similarity between Lighea's smile and the smiles of the mysterious maiden figures depicted in the statues suggests an identification between them, ⁵² as well as leading to an excursus on the specific features of the myth of the siren. Tomasi di Lampedusa's depiction of the siren as a korē, a young girl, can be associated with the ancient imagery of sirens which shares affinities with the parthenoi, as well as with Demeter and Korē-Persephone who reappears from the underworld every spring. ⁵³ This similarity further underscores the link between sirens and underworld, and, by extension, the cult of the dead. ⁵⁴ Returning to the traditions of sirens as described in various Classical literary texts, such as Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica IV, ⁵⁵ Hyginus’ Fabulae, ⁵⁶ Ovid's Metamorphoses, ⁵⁷ and Claudian's De Raptu Proserpinae, ⁵⁸ the sirens were the young companions of Korē-Persephone, ⁵⁹ and their metamorphosis into birds was connected to her abduction by Hades. Traditionally, both the sirens and Korē-Persephone were depicted as girls in blooming meadows. ⁶⁰ Fittingly, the association of Korē-Persephone and the sirens with flowers and vegetation symbolised the variety of the forces of nature and the cycle of death and rebirth. This aspect is also related to the symbology of Aphrodite, who is represented as a young maiden accompanied by Eros and Himeros (see Mancini, 2017: 94). ⁶¹ Devotion to Aphrodite and Persephone coexisted in the cult practices connected to the feminine sphere of nuptials and women's transition from unmarried to married life. ⁶² Within this cult, sirens were identified with the parthenoi because their hybrid bodies represented the boundary between the spheres of infancy and womanhood.

Returning to La sirena, La Ciura tells of how Lighea is hailed as a ‘Wise Mother’:

Quella ragazzina, quella belvetta crudele era stata anche Madre saggissima che con la sola presenza aveva sradicato fedi, dissipato metafisiche. (S: 427)

and as a part of the primordial source of all culture, wisdom and morals ⁶³ :

essa faceva parte, tuttavia, della sorgiva di ogni coltura, di ogni sapienza, di ogni etica e sapeva esprimere questa sua primigenia superiorità in termini di scabra Bellezza. (S: 425)

As postulated by criticism, the epithet used by La Ciura is to be ascribed to the archetype of the Great Mother who expresses the forces of nature as well as the primordial wisdom that precedes all categories of rational thought. In his analysis of the Great Mother, Erich Neumann highlights the connections between the archetype of Great Mother and the sirens, as also evidenced by various archaeological and anthropological sources. ⁶⁴ Furthermore, like nature, the Great Mother is ambivalent: she can be either nourishing and protective, or hostile and devouring, taking ‘everything that is born back of it into its womb of origination and death’ (Reale, 1986: 30). ⁶⁵ In psychoanalytic terms, the Great Mother ties the psyche down to the undifferentiated. Consequently, in La sirena the return to the pre-logical realm of the undifferentiated is also created by the allusions to the Great Mother archetype and the return to her arms, as depicted in katapontismòs and marine regression.

Furthermore, even Lighea's animal traits, repeatedly highlighted throughout the text, can be traced back to the Great Mother archetype. Lighea has dog's teeth (‘dentini aguzzi e bianchi, come quelli dei cani’ (S: 421) [‘sharp little white teeth like a dog's’ (PS: 99)]), and eats raw fish with childlike pleasure:

Essa non mangiava che roba viva: spesso la vedevo emergere dal mare, il torso delicato luccicante al sole, mentre straziava coi denti un pesce argentato che fremeva ancora; il sangue le rigava il mento e dopo qualche morso il merluzzo o l’orata maciullata venivano ributtate dietro le sue spalle e, maculandola di rosso, affondavano nell’acqua mentre essa infantilmente gridava nettendosi i denti con la lingua. (S: 424)

Just as the siren is traditionally a semi-divine being that merges animal and human qualities, Lighea is a creature that synthesises both beast and goddess. Tomasi di Lampedusa has thus transferred the siren's semi-divine nature to this characteristic of her hybridity. As can be inferred from the novella, Lighea's hybrid nature is most evident in her smile (‘esprimeva soltanto se stesso, cioè una quasi bestiale gioia d’esistere, una quasi divina letizia’ (S: 421) [‘this expressed nothing but itself, that is an almost animal joy an almost divine delight in existence’ (PS: 99)]), ⁶⁷ during sexual intercourse (‘in quegli amplessi godevo insieme della più alta forma di voluttà spirituale e di quella elementare, priva di qualsiasi risonanza sociale, che i nostri pastori solitari provano quando sui monti si uniscono alle loro capre’ (S: 423) [‘in those embraces I enjoyed both highest forms of spiritual pleasure and that elementary one, quite without any social connotations, felt by our lonely shepherds on the hills when they couple with their own goats’ (PS: 101)]), ⁶⁸ and in the powerful immediacy with which she speaks:

Era una bestia ma nel medesimo istante era anche una Immortale ed è peccato che parlando non si possa continuamente esprimere questa sintesi come, con assoluta semplicità, essa la esprimeva nel proprio corpo. Non soltanto nell’atto carnale essa manifestava una giocondità e una delicatezza opposte alla tetra foia animale ma il suo parlare era di una immediatezza potente che ho ritrovato in pochi grandi poeti. (S: 425)

After all, La Ciura's dog Eaco is itself assimilated to a divinity, ‘Questo, Corbera, per chi sa comprenderlo, rassomiglia più agl’Immortali, malgrado la sua bruttezza, delle tue sgrinfiette’ (S: 412) [‘This creature, Corbera, in spite of his ugliness is more like the Immortals, to one who can understand such things, that any of your little bitches’ (PS: 90)]. Lighea's aforementioned comparison to a dog reaffirms this idea. ⁶⁹ On this account, one cannot help but recall that in his Letteratura francese, Tomasi di Lampedusa significantly expresses a positive view of instincts: ‘Positivamente egli [Molière] è interamente dalla parte degli istinti, che sono e non possono essere altro che il bene’ (LF: 1358) [Positively he [Molière] is entirely on the side of instincts, which are and cannot be anything other than good]. ⁷⁰ Once again, primordial life forces such as instincts and drives, which can be assimilated into the unconscious, represent qualities that generally characterise female symbolism associated with the Great Mother archetype.

Lighea's assimilation to both Great Mother and beast leads back to Dialoghi con Leucò, particularly the figures that embody the wild and the regenerative power of the Great Mother and the pótnia thêrôn, the mistress of animals. Examples of these figures can be found in dialogues such as La belva [‘The Lady of Beasts’], Schiuma d'onda, In famiglia [‘In the Family’], Le streghe [‘The Witches’] and L’uomo lupo [‘The Werewolf’]. ⁷¹ In Schiuma d’onda, for instance, Venus is depicted as presiding over the entire domain of nature, resembling the Mother Goddess in her ambivalence. ⁷² Venus, whose character never appears and whose name is never explicitly pronounced, is assimilated to the essence of the sea, symbolising metamorphosis and reductio ad unum (‘E tutto quello che si macera e dibatte nel mare, è sua sostanza’ (Pavese, 1999: 50) [‘And everything that is torn and tortured in the sea is her substance and her breath’ (Pavese, 1989: 54)]). Furthermore, in Pavese's dialogues, including Le streghe, La belva and L’uomo-lupo, the Great Mother archetype emerges in her aspect of pótnia therȏn, or ‘mistress of the beasts’.

The parallel with Dialoghi con Leucò not only rests to the idea of interdiscursivity centred on the thematic and mythological affinities between Pavese's and Tomasi di Lampedusa's works, but also to the hypothesis that both writers drew more or less intentionally on the same cultural background. While Pavese's interest in archaic Mediterranean mythology from an ethnological and anthropological perspective is apparent in Dialoghi con Leucò, ⁷³ there is no substantial evidence to suggest that Tomasi di Lampedusa was interested in either ethnology or mythology. ⁷⁴ This is the case despite his documented extensive reading list. ⁷⁵ Possibly the psychoanalytic activities of his wife, Alexandra Wolff, influenced his approach to the works of Jung and Jungian scholars. ⁷⁶ Thus, based on mere supposition, one must contrast the numerous and widespread references to a ‘psychoanalytic culture’, such as, for example, the references to the ‘Freudian irrational’ (LI: 1237) [l’irrazionale freudiano] and the unconscious; the Freudian quotation ‘Man soll sich immer vor der Geschicklichkeit seines Unbewussten wundern’ (LF: 1800) [We should always marvel at the skill of our unconscious]; the importance given to one's own subjective impressions and sensations in relation to the facts; the idea of ‘background forces that are remote, implacable, unconscious and uncontrollable’ (LI: 1142) [uno sfondo di forze remote, implacabili, non coscienti e non controllate]; and the recognition of the existence of ‘an outer life and an inner life that continually gushes from the depths of the unconscious in all its wild disorder’ (LI: 1246) [di quella esteriore e soprattutto di quella che continuamente zampilla dalle profondità dell’inconscio in tutto il suo selvaggio disordine], in Letteratura inglese and Letteratura francese, and to a certain extent in Il Gattopardo (see Vitello, 1987: 377–416, particularly 397–398). ⁷⁷ By adopting an expression of Jacques Le Goff, Palermo psychoanalyst Matilde Vigneri uses the term ‘psychoanalytical culture’ to refer to the diffusion of psychoanalytic concepts, such as ‘the discovery of the drive world and the sexual sphere, the revelation of the unconscious dynamics, the investigation of the mythological value of dreams and the psychic vicissitudes that direct human relationships’(see Vigneri, 2019: 24). These concepts have transformed western society since the early 20th century and have left a mark on its culture. ⁷⁸ I believe that the concept of ‘psychoanalytical culture’ fits Tomasi di Lampedusa's work. ⁷⁹

Returning to Dialoghi con Leucò, as Lia Secci and Giuseppe Pontiggia have highlighted, Pavese's mythology of the Great Mother and Pótnia is influenced by a decadent fascination with the primitive, the bestial and the instinctive. This fascination belongs to the ‘conceptual complex’ of the Romantic and decadent myth of Belle Dame sans Merci, the bête implacable et cruelle (see Secci, 1970: 248; Pontiggia, 2021: 34–35, 115). This myth was particularly prevalent in the works of Gabriele D’Annunzio and Charles Baudelaire. Whilst Baudelaire had a deep influence on Pavese's personal imagery of women (see Pertile, 1970), both poets were much esteemed by Tomasi di Lampedusa. ⁸⁰ It is feasible that the decadent myth of the feminine converges in Lighea's description, linking the mythical core of Pótnia Therȏn with the imagery of the femme fatale. Notably, shifting attention to Il Gattopardo, Don Fabrizio’s death is conveyed through an erotic metaphor involving a beautiful woman approaching him. This woman is a belle dame sans merci, and she is described as more beautiful than when she appeared to him as a star: ⁸¹

una giovane signora […] Era lei, la creatura bramata da sempre che veniva a prenderselo: strano che così giovane com’era si fosse arresa a lui; l’ora della partenza del treno doveva esser vicina. Giunta a faccia a faccia con lui sollevò il velo e così, pudica ma pronta ad esser posseduta, gli apparve più bella di come mai l’avesse intravista negli spazi stellari. (G: 234–235)

However, as we can read in La sirena, Lighea is not a ‘bête’, but a ‘petite bête’, a ‘belvetta’ (S: 427) [wild beast (PS: 105)] ⁸² : the diminutive may indicate not only the siren's young age, but also that her adherence to decadent feminine imagery is not total, in the same way that the myth of Ulysses is not fully embraced. In fact, as has been emphasised repeatedly in these pages, intertextuality only appears as a faint trace in Tomasi di Lampedusa's story, and the combination of familiar and new elements creates the novelty of La sirena.

Finally, it is worth noting the significance of the motif of initiation and revelation of a wisdom which is attributed to the siren, La Ciura, Corbera, and eventually to the readers of the novella. ⁸³ This reaffirms the idea of a system of correspondences between the three characters. ⁸⁴ Indeed, Lighea grants La Ciura a deeper wisdom, allowing him to experience Classical literature vividly and sensually. Notably, La Ciura claims to have undergone his own initiation (‘Pochissimi sono coloro che sanno’ (S: 411) [‘Those who really know are so few’ (PS: 89)]), by readjusting a famous expression from Plutarch’s Isis and Osiris 354 F (‘questo era ed è, e sarà (accentuò fortemente) Rosario La Ciura’ (S: 413) [‘and this, fellow-countryman, this was and is and shall be (he accentuated strongly) Rosario La Ciura’ (PS: 91)]), and asserts that the living spirit of ancient Greek has not been revealed to his colleagues at university: ⁸⁵

Lo spirito vivo di questa lingua scioccamente chiamata ‘morta’ non è stato loro rivelato. Nulla è stato loro rivelato, d'altronde. Povera gente, del resto: come potrebbero avvertirlo questo spirito, se non hanno mai avuto occasione di sentirlo, il greco? (S: 405)

Moreover, La Ciura's work is compared to poetry, and his knowledge is said to border on the necromantic, like Prospero's in Shakespeare's The Tempest:

Ciò che lo aveva sempre distinto dagli altri pur eruditissimi colleghi era il senso vivace, quasi carnale, dell’antichità classica […] più alto rappresentante di questa sapienza delicata, quasi necromantica. (S: 404)

Correspondingly, La Ciura underlines that he chose the young Corbera to be the custodian of his story because, unlike erudite scholars, his knowledge of the Ancient Greek world is instinctive and combines a balance between reason and the senses:

Forse della realtà greca sei forse più conscio di loro; non per coltura, certo, ma per istinto animalesco. […] sei riuscito a compiere la sintesi di sensi e ragione. (S: 417)

All of this highlights the importance of transmitting knowledge related to the senses, intuitions and inclinations. It is also worth mentioning that some scholars, including Basilio Reale and Andrea Vitello, have interpreted Lighea in Jungian terms as the Anima. ⁸⁶ Closely related to the Great Mother archetype, the Anima belongs to the Archetypal Feminine, which expresses the transformative and dynamic elements of femininity, and acts as a mediator. The Anima is both man's guide and muse, leading him back to his inner world. ⁸⁷ It is therefore evident that Lighea's Anima function operates on both La Ciura and Corbera. Ultimately, La sirena can be considered the result of the Anima's effect in Tomasi di Lampedusa’s writing.

Metamorphoses

Giovanni Macchia's Il principe di Palagonia. Mostri, sogni, prodigi nelle metamorfosi di un personaggio (1978) helps to shed light on another aspect of La sirena and introduces some final considerations on Tomasi di Lampedusa's novella (Macchia, 1997). In brief, Il principe di Palagonia details the life of the seventh Prince of Palagonia, Ferdinando Francesco II Gravina Cruylas e Alliata, who adorned his villa in Bagheria with monstrous sandstone statues during the 18th century. ⁸⁸ A critic of the triumph of science and rationality, the Prince of Palagonia is portrayed as a guardian of nature's enigmas and its cycle of life and death. Being a descendant of a siren himself, he shares the dual and metamorphic nature of his stone monsters, which are both beast and human. To clarify the Prince's lineage, the narrator tells the story of a mermaid's lover from Achim von Arnim's novel Povertà, ricchezza, colpa ed espiazione della contessa Dolores (1810) [Armut, Reichthum, Schuld und Buße der Gräfin Dolores] (see Macchia, 1997: 1121–1136), ⁸⁹ subsequently comparing the Prince of Palagonia to professor La Ciura. Much like La Ciura, the Prince of Palagonia is cut off from society, isolated and alone. Both men teeter on the edge of sanity, haunted by the past: ⁹⁰

E non si sa davvero se sia un pazzo, un visionario, che ha la mente sconvolta da un eccesso di cultura, per essersi immedesimato con i fantasmi, di cui ha vissuto e da cui non è riuscito a liberarsi e che non lo hanno lasciato più vivere, un altro personaggio siciliano moderno: il grande, illustre professore di greco, anch’egli celibe e solitario, del più bel racconto di Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa Lighea. (Macchia, 1997: 1133)

In La sirena, the legend of Undine is only referenced very briefly through the titles of books in the professor's library: Ondine by Giraudoux, Undine by La Motte-Fouqué, and a work by H. G. Wells, presumably The Sea Lady, all of which La Ciura abhors (‘Hai ragione Corbera, sono un orrore. Vi è poi un romanzetto che se lo rileggessi mi farebbe venir la voglia di sputare per un mese di fila’ (S: 414) [‘You’re right, Corbera, they’re a horror. And among them there's a short novel that would make me want to spit for a month on end if I re-read it’ (PS: 91–92]). ⁹¹ Although the man's horror might lead the reader not to consider the stories as the novella's source of inspiration, it must be noted that the imagery related to La sirena adapts the Nordic legend of Undine, as represented by Giraudoux and La Motte-Fouqué, within a Mediterranean setting and in connection with the archaic world of Greek mythology. ⁹² It is not a coincidence that in Il principe di Palagonia it is suggested that Tomasi di Lampedusa's perspective of Sicily is similar to that of Romantic German writers:

si riconosce ancora una volta che la Sicilia vista in questo straordinario racconto di Tomasi di Lampedusa è la Sicilia dei romantici tedeschi: è la Sicilia, la Grecia che fermenta nella fantasia di quei poeti visionari, da Hölderlin ad Arnim. (Macchia, 1997: 1136)

Overall, in Il Principe di Palagonia, monstrosity is depicted as an everlasting metamorphosis of nature (‘Tutto quanto, la terra, il mare, l’aria, possono produrre, uomini, quadrupedi, uccelli, pesci, piante, tutto quanto cresce, nei climi più diversi, si trovava lì, avvicinato e mescolato, senza criterio di scelta, senza gusto’ (Macchia, 1997: 1098) [Everything that the ground, the sea, the air can produce, such as human beings, quadrupeds, birds, fish, plants, everything that grows in the most different climates, was there; everything was thrown together without taste or reason]), ⁹³ while the whole of Sicily is depicted as a land of monsters. By alluding to Trinacria, the winged female head surrounded by three legs and snakes for hair, which became a symbol for the island, and also through the reference to Antonino Mongitore’s Sicilia ricercata nelle cose più memorabili (1742–1743), Sicily is described as the ‘land of marvels', ‘a scattered island surrounded by strange and monstrous marine creatures’ (Macchia, 1997: 1178–1180). ⁹⁴ In Il Principe di Palagonia, the topos of monstrosity as a mark of Sicily is related to the description of Mount Etna which is considered a metonymy for the whole island. Sicily is viewed as the land of antithesis and as an antithesis itself, imbued with both paradisiacal and infernal traits while representing the mysterious powers of nature. ⁹⁵ Deformity, chaos, uncertainty, fragmentation, disharmony, multiplicity, disintegration and metamorphosis all constitute the immutable aspects of nature, ultimately alluding to the eternal death and re-birth of both animate and inanimate creatures:

La visione di un vulcano ci immerge in un dualismo entro cui l’uomo è sbattuto, nel dissidio degli elementi che lottano per sopravvivere e la neve lotta col fuoco, la morte lotta con la vita, e quella stessa morte è vita e fecondità. […] la Sicilia, terra di disastri perpetua, morta, involta nella ruina, nella sua confusione, nel suo disordine, immagine del caos eppure una terra splendida di vita, fertilissima, feconda, tra lussureggianti giardini di limoni e aranci. (Macchia, 1997: 1082–1083)

Such a vision of Sicily, as well as the dichotomy between chaos and order, leads us back to Tomasi di Lampedusa's La sirena. Given their hybrid nature, sirens exhibit signs of the primeval confusion of life forms, enriching the list of monstrosities, while also representing metamorphosis. In La sirena, some traits of the symbolism of sirens and Sicily reflect the suggestion that chaos and nonsense ultimately rule over the lives of men, as well as the idea of transformation. However, a privileged image that reflects the impermanence and absurdity of the human condition can be traced. In La sirena, as well as in Ricordi d’infanzia [Places of My Infancy], and more extensively in Il Gattopardo, the image of specks of dust twirling aimlessly inside a sunbeam translates the idea of chaos and metamorphosis. While in Ricordi d’infanzia, Tomasi di Lampedusa's recollection of childhood memories, specks of dust are connected to the description of the sun's power to enchant and rouse the writer's soul and imagination, ⁹⁶ in both Il Gattopardo and La sirena the motif has a negative connotation, as it evokes feelings of confusion, derangement, nonsense and pettiness. ⁹⁷ In La sirena the image plays a role in Corbera's narrative strategy, and is used to depict feelings of inferiority in the presence of the famous professor. ⁹⁸ The motif represents a literary topos, providing evidence of an underlying subtle discourse with other writers. In addition to Lucretius’ renowned passage in De rerum natura II, vv. 114–122:

Contemplator enim, cum solis lumina cumque / inserti fundunt radii per opaca domorum: / multa minuta modis multis per inane videbis / corpora misceri radiorum lumine in ipso / et velut aeterno certamine proelia pugnas / edere turmatim certantia nec dare pausam, / conciliis et discidiis exercita crebris; / conicere ut possis ex hoc, primordia rerum / quale sit in magno iactari semper inani (Lucretius, 2019: 49–50)

Beyond that, in La sirena, it is the relic from the krater that ultimately alludes to the fleeting nature of all things, human and otherwise. ¹⁰¹ On a background of disillusionment, resignation to death, chaos and corruption created by the reference to the fact that the professor's picture of Kōre has been cut to pieces (‘la fotografia era stata tagliata a striscioline’ (S: 428) [‘the photograph had been cut into strips’ (PS: 107)]), and his library has been donated to the University of Catania and is rotting away, the relic of the krater stands out.

I libri furono depositati nel sottosuolo dell’Università ma poiché mancano i fondi per le scaffalature essi vanno impudridendo lentamente. (S: 428)

Indeed, the relic has become a keepsake full of memories, and it could be taken as the final symbol of the contrast between impermanence and eternity. In its fullest extent, by recalling Corbera's storytelling, it suggests that the deep meaning of a life can be condensed into a few days, weeks, months or years, as in La Ciura’s defining encounter, and while emphasising the idea of concentration of time, the reduction impinges on the fragmentary narrative structure (a deficient structure) of the novella as well as the novel. ¹⁰² Tracing an idea from Alexandra Wolff, ¹⁰³ it should be added that in Il Gattopardo the Amphitrite fountain at the garden of Donnafugata, contemplated with feelings of regret and nostalgia by thoughtful Don Fabrizio, not only connects to the elderly La Ciura's account, but the promise of a pleasure that could never turn to sorrow emanating from the fountain, the waters and the moss-covered stones

‘dall’intera fontana, dalle acque tiepide, dalle pietre rivestite di muschi vellutati emanava la promessa di un piacere che non avrebbe mai potuto volgersi in dolore’ (G: 77)

A possible conclusion

In summary, the characters and the space of La sirena are defined within a web of significations that refers to an autre that assimilates the supernatural of myths with the unknowable aspects of the unconscious and the indeterminate. Not only does the relationship between the elements prefigure this autre, indirectly revealing a deeper meaning, but the ‘waste’ and ‘residue’ produced by the allusions also form a system that leads to a super-sense. To use a metaphor, the writer creates a fabric woven from an alluded and virtual super-sense. If the comparison with the fabric is pertinent to the idea of a weave of words and meanings, it should be noted that such an image outlines an enlargement of the semantic space. The hybridity of Lighea's body, her semi-divine and semi-bestial nature, her association with ancient Greek kōre, the references to the rites of passage − from life to the afterlife −, the Archetypal Feminine, the eternal and metamorphosing Sicily of cosmogonies and De Rerum Natura, the descent into otherworldly spaces, the plunge into the sea, are all the threads of the fabric. Thus, it is increasingly apparent that the motif of chaos constitutes a metaphor for metamorphosis, resolving the contrast between mortality and eternity, and describing imagery of the otherness where death is seen as reconnection to the whole. ¹⁰⁵

However, as for the metaphor just mentioned, the threads are made of words. As a final point, I wish to highlight that, unsurprisingly, La sirena is the work Tomasi di Lampedusa was most fond of, if one heeds Francesco Orlando's words (Orlando, 1996: 78). ¹⁰⁶ La sirena is Tomasi di Lampedusa's most enigmatic, opaque and indirect work. Thus, it is clear that the ironic strategy on which the dialogue between La Ciura and Corbera is built in the first part of the novella, as well as the lyrical register of the professor's account, the allusiveness, and the writer's personal reuse of sirens’ myths and traditions, lead back to the literariness of the novella. After all, La sirena is similar to a mythological story in its narrative value within the circumscribed and limited space of the text. Thus, one need not ask whether the professor's account is true or not: Tomasi di Lampedusa's novella is comparable to D’Annunzio's ‘favola bella’ [beautiful tale]. ¹⁰⁷ Myth, as a narrative form, explores the world of origins and the phenomena of nature, facilitates the connection with the human unconscious, and represents the world as a subjective, emotional and psychic experience. By harking back to this deepest essence of myth, Tomasi di Lampedusa's act of narration can be interpreted as the conversion of death to life (see Coco, 2017: 5–8, 113–125). ¹⁰⁸ In conclusion, not only does the imagery of the eternal flow of the phenomena of nature come to life in La sirena, but the very act of storytelling by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa transforms death into life through the story of a professor's love for a siren: ‘A seachange into something rich and strange’ (S: 419). ¹⁰⁹