WELLMER, A. The Death of The Sirens and The Origins of Work of Art

The Death of the Sirens and the Origin of the Work of Art
Author(s): Albrecht Wellmer

Source: New German Critique, No. 81, Dialectic of Enlightenment (Autumn, 2000), pp. 5-19
Published by: Duke University Press
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The Death of the Sirens
and the Origin of the Work ofArt
Albrecht Wellmer
The story, as told in the twelfth book of the Homeric Odyssey, is well
known: Circe had warned Odysseus of the irresistible power of the
Sirens' song and had advised him, when passing by the Sirens to plug
his men's ears with wax, so that his men would not hear the Sirens' song
and would continue rowing. If tightly bound to the mast, Odysseus him-
self, although defenseless against the irresistible allure of the Sirens,
would nevertheless not be able to stop his men from rowing. This
arrangement would enable Odysseus to listen to the song of the Sirens
without paying the price for it - namely, to perish by giving in to the
temptation. For Adorno and Horkheimer, this episode becomes an alle-
gory of the "entanglement of myth, domination, and labor" in the ori-
gins of civilization, that is, of the dialectic of enlightenment itself.1 Their
text, however, is as ambiguous as it is suggestive, so that it becomes dif-
ficult to say what the real content of the allegory is. There are at least
two possible readings of this allegory, or perhaps better: two different
allegories, two stories to be told, two different layers of meaning, which
Adorno and Horkheimer, however, do not seem to distinguish from each
other. Moreover, there is a possible third reading, for which, although it
is hardly suggested by the passages about Odysseus and the Sirens them-
selves, some clues can be found in the broader context of the book. With
regard to Adorno's texts I have once suggested that one would need a
"magnifying glass" to distinguish different layers of meaning, which to
1. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New

York: Continuum, 1986) 34. Hereafter cited parenthetically within the text as DE.
6 The Death of the Sirens
the naked eye appear fused, or that these texts need a "stereoscopic"
reading, which would restore a latent three-dimensional image out of a
manifest two-dimensional one. I think the same is true of the Dialectic
of Enlightenment which, after all, provides the original source of ideas
for much of what Adomo has worked out in his later works; even the
scattered remarks on art to be found in this book contain, I would claim,
the basic material which Adorno has worked out in his late Aesthetic
Theory. The episode of Odysseus and the Sirens is part of this material.
The two allegories, or the two stories manifestly present in the text
are (1) the story of the simultaneous emergence of a unitary self, the
suppression of inner and outer nature, of social domination, and the
emergence of art as "beauty rendered powerless"; (2) a story about the
emergence of a patriarchal order and the accompanying need to put the
threatening power of female sexuality under control. In addition, the
third story, hardly perceptible in the text, is the story of the simulta-
neous emergence of a reflexive self, on the one hand, and of artistic
beauty and aesthetic pleasure respectively, on the other. These stories
are evidently different and, if distinguished, all three are of immense
complexity, so that, once we begin to read Adorno's and Horkheimer's
reading of the Sirens' episode stereoscopically, the suggestive and
poetic power of their reading might well dissolve.
I shall start with the two readings of Adorno's and Horkheimer's alle-
gory which are manifestly suggested by their own allegorical reading of
the Sirens' episode, and then try out the third reading I mentioned, a
reading which is only obliquely suggested by the wider context of the
book. First, I want to quote Adorno and Horkheimer at length. Odys-
seus, they say,
knows only two possible ways to escape. One of them he prescribes

for his men. He plugs their ears with wax, and they must'row with all
their strength. Whoever would survive must not hear the temptation of
that which is unrepeatable, and he is able to survive only by being
unable to hear it. Society has always made provisions for that. The
laborers must be fresh and concentrate as they look ahead, and must
ignore whatever lies on one side. They must doggedly sublimate in
additional effort the drive that impels to diversion. And so they
become practical. The other possibility Odysseus, the seigneur, who
lets the others labor for himself, reserves for himself. He listens, but
while bound impotently to the mast; the greater the temptation the
more he has his bonds tightened - just as later the burghers would
Albrecht Wellmer 7
deny the happiness all the more doggedly as it drew closer to them
with the growth of their own power. What Odysseus hears is without
consequence for him; he is able only to nod his head as a sign to be set
free from his bonds; but it is too late; his men, who do not listen, know
only the song's danger but nothing of its beauty, and leave him at the
mast to save him and themselves. They reproduce the oppressor's life
together with their own, and the oppressor is no longer able to escape
his social role. The bonds with which he has irremediably tied himself
to practice, also keep the Sirens away from practice: their temptation
is neutralized and becomes a mere object of contemplation - becomes
art. The prisoner is present at a concert, an inactive eavesdropper like
later concert-goers, and his spirited call for liberation fades like
applause. Thus the enjoyment of art and manual labor break apart as
the world of prehistory is left behind. (DE 34)
Adorno and Horkheimer interpret the measures taken by Odysse

his ship as an allegory of what will later happen in bourgeois class
ety, where both the oppressor and the oppressed are imprison
social roles by which happiness is denied to both of them: the wo
are reduced to a life of labor for the sake of mere survival, and by
same token they are deafened to the temptations of beauty; the ca
ist reduces his own life to the accumulation of capital and th
denies himself the pursuit of happiness: the experience of art, wh
may permit himself, will remain an inconsequential pleasure, a so
mere embellishment of a life devoid of any deeper significance, a
fixated on the perpetuation of a system of social domination. Con
quently, what could be meant by a critique of the "neutralization" o
Sirens' song, of its transformation into (mere) art, could only be a
cific deprivation of art, its reduction to the role of oiling the mach
of social reproduction - as it then becomes the object of Adorno's
Horkheimer's critique in the chapter on the culture industry. Wh
first sight appears as an allegory of the emergence of art - of the
tralization of the Sirens' song and its transformation into an obje
contemplation, that is, into art - now appears as an allegory of the
rivation of genuine art within the context of bourgeois society, it
jugation to the ends of a capitalist economy.
But what has all this to do with Odysseus and the Sirens? The h
ness which Odysseus denies himself is the happiness of perishing i
arms of the Sirens, it is a happiness unto death. To compare this t
bourgeois subject with its rigid and pleasure-denouncing self, howe
only makes sense if the myth of the Sirens is taken as a kind of mythi-
cal phantasy accompanying the formation of a male self, of a patriarchal
order - that is, ultimately as a collective male phantasy concerning the
life-threatening, anti-civilizing power of female sexuality. Actually, this
is precisely what Adorno and Horkheimer suggest at one point when
they say about the Sirens: ". . . with the irresistible promise of pleasure
as which their song is heard, they threaten the patriarchal order which
renders to each man his life only in return for his full measure of time"
(DE 33). At this point the episode of Odysseus and the Sirens begins to
appear as an allegory of the constitution of a male self with its specific
accompanying projections and anxieties concerning female sexuality and
the need to put it under control: the myth of the Sirens would be the
myth of Lulu. Circe had told Odysseus that the Sirens are sitting on
meadows; translations alternatively say "meadows full of grass" or
"meadows full of flowers"; the general connotation of the Greek word
leimon (which in the Greek text occurs without an adjective) seems to be
that of moisture - "meadow" in Greek colloquial language was also a
word for the female genital. The Sirens themselves say of their voices
that they are "sweet like honey." And then Circe again had told Odys-
seus that the Sirens, sitting on lovely meadows, are surrounded by the
rotten flesh and scattered bones of their victims. So erotic attraction, the
promise of happiness, and death are fused with each other in the myth of
the Sirens; but "death" does not mean here a Wagnerian "Liebestod," but
something ugly - rotten flesh and scattered bones, as indicated by Circe.
If the myth of the Sirens is taken - as Adorno and Horkheimer take it
in the sentence I quoted - as the expression of a collective phantasma
emerging with the constitution of a patriarchal order, the episode of
Odysseus and the Sirens would have nothing to do with the emergence
of art as art; it would not be about the transformation of the Sirens'
song into "mere" art, but about the patriarchal "domestication" of the
Sirens themselves, and would therefore appear as related to the authors'
discussion of the "domestication" of female sexuality in the context of
their interpretation of the Circe-episode: "As a representative of nature,
woman in bourgeois society has become the enigmatic image of irresist-
ibility and powerlessness" (DE 71-72). Odysseus, the man, has learned
to resist the irresistible power of the Sirens, to "keep the Sirens away
from practice"- that is, from interfering with his life of practice. To be
sure, this victory in the service of the preservation of an emerging male
Albrecht Wellmer 9
self also amounts to a self-mutilation: Odysseus "has irremediabl

himself to practice" and by the same token has renounced those
bilities of fulfillment which are promised by the Sirens' song. It
be noted, that the mast to which Odysseus had been (literally) tie
be read as a phallic symbol; it is the symbol of his dominance ov
Sirens. Henceforth he - the allegorical "he" - will visit the whor
get sexual pleasure, without the risk of losing himself. The threa
Sirens will have been transformed into either desexualized housewives
or into mere objects of inconsequential sexual pleasure, oil in the
machinery of social reproduction.
Tempting as it may be to further explore the continuities between the
myth of the Sirens and the myth of Lulu - maybe even for purposes of
a depth-hermeneutic or deconstructive reading of Adorno and Horkhei-
mer - at this point it might seem that I have lost track of Adorno's and
Horkheimer's allegorical tale. Although their text clearly tempts us to
the sort of reading I have proposed (all these temptations!), it seems
that I have lost sight of the theme of their tale - the transformation of
the Sirens' song into a mere object of contemplation, into mere art. I
have in the end only talked about the transformation of women into
objects of an inconsequential pleasure; the only thing resembling the
transformation of a powerful temptation into an object of contempla-
tion would at this point be the invention of pomos and peepshows. But
the allegory we try to decipher is about the emergence of musical art.
So let us go back to the real story.
Adomo and Horkheimer in fact suggest a different way of reading the
allegory, by indicating - before the story unfolds - what genuine art, that
is, art before its disempowerment in bourgeois culture, on the ship of
Odysseus would be. With the formation of an identical, male, goal-
directed self in the departure from prehistory - which, in Adorno's and
Horkheimer's reading, the Odyssey is about - a new form of temporality
emerges: the past becomes subjected to the future, put "at the disposal of
the present as practical knowledge" (DE 32). "The desire to rescue/pre-
serve what is gone as something alive instead of using it as a material of
progress is [from now on - AW] stilled only by art." (Later on the
authors will take the Homeric epos itself as an example of literary art in
this sense). However, after the sentence I quoted the authors continue:
"So long as art abstains from its claim to cognition and by this closes
itself off from practice, social practice tolerates it as it tolerates pleasure."
And this means that social practice will not tolerate art in its full, authen-
tic sense, but only as "disempowered" beauty; and it is this "disempow-
erment" of beauty that takes place on Odysseus's ship, when the power
of the Sirens' song "is neutralized and becomes a mere object of contem-
plation - becomes art," where "art" now means disempowered art.
But is there any other kind of art? Is not musical art, as the authors
explicitly suggest, the disempowered mythical song? But if musical art
is the transformation of the mythical song into an object of contempla-
tion, what is wrong with it? What is wrong with Odysseus? (And some-
thing seems to be wrong here.) Let me go back to the last sentence I
quoted; the authors immediately continue: "But the Sirens' song has not
yet been rendered powerless by reduction to the condition of art" (DE
32-33). It seems that what the authors mean by the "condition of art"
here is not art in its full, authentic, sense, but art in an already depraved
sense. For they now describe the song of the Sirens as if it were an
archaic model of their conception of art as a keeping alive of what has
gone, of art as remembrance, as cognition. The Sirens, they continue
quoting Homer, "know everything that ever happened on this so fruitful
earth ... all those things that Argos's sons and the Trojans suffered by
the will of the gods on the plains of Troy." Actually the Sirens explic-
itly promise Odysseus that if he accepts their invitation, he will after-
wards as a wiser man than he was before return to his homeland. Given
the context of the authors' reflection on art - authentic and depraved -
the Sirens' song appears here as an archaic model of authentic art, that
is of a beauty which has not yet been rendered powerless. At this point,
however, a new ambiguity begins to appear. If, as I have suggested ten-
tatively, the myth of the Sirens is a collective phantasma related to an
emerging patriarchal order, it is about the erotic attraction of women and
not about the attractions of "authentic" art. The promise of knowledge,
remembrance, and wisdom would then be related to the sexual plea-
sures promised by the song of the Sirens. And the main phantasmatic
element of the myth would be the deadly threat posed by the Sirens'
song. How, then, could their song be a kind of paradigm of authentic
art? The fusion of pleasure and cognition which the authors evidently
attribute to the authentic work of art cannot be the same as the fusion of
pleasure and cognition which is only promised by (and not contained in)
the Sirens' song - and this is independent of whether the promise is a
deceit - as the myth suggests - or not. Consequently, the song of the
Albrecht Wellmer 11
Sirens can neither be a paradigm of authentic art nor is there an

route from the Sirens' song to the artwork as an object of contempla
To make the story intelligible at all one has to take the myth
ously in its realistic, as opposed to its phantasmatic, dimension.
ing to the myth, the fusion of pleasure and cognition is only a d
promise in the Sirens' song. To be sure, a tempting promise it
"irresistible promise of pleasure" which marks the power of the
song is, at the same time, the promise of retrieving the pas
receiving an answer to all the unanswered questions, a promise
all questioning. The song of the Sirens incites a desire beyond a
sures and contains, at the same time, the irresistible promise to s
desire. But the only conceivable fulfillment of this desire is de
loss of one's self; the promise is a deceit.
What would be "realistic" about the myth if it is told in this
Remember Adorno's later "definition" of art as a "promise of ha
that is broken." Adomo, of course, thinks here of art as autonom
the artwork as an object of contemplation. The promise of happin
resides in the object of aesthetic contemplation itself, as if the p
the Sirens' song were still preserved in it. Of course, this is pr
what we should think of Odysseus listening to the song of the
Since Odysseus knows that the promise of the Sirens is a deceit,
had himself tied to the mast. But, of course, the promise he hear
the same as before and is as irresistible as it always was - after
desperately tries to get himself untied. So the song has not really
an object of aesthetic contemplation for him; it is still that which
him to give himself up to the allurement of the Sirens whom he
and hear. Can the promise of happiness, which Adorno speaks abo
respect to the work of art, then still be the same? It is hard to
after we have seen that Odysseus does not really have an aesthet
rience, since he is unable to aesthetically contemplate the song
Sirens. Adorno, however, evidently believes that the promise he
of is still the same - the same, that is, as in my "realistic" readin
myth. This becomes evident if we assemble all the concepts relate
"promise-of-happiness" metaphor in his Aesthetic Theory, like "
ance of the non-apparent" [Schein des Scheinlosen], "reconciliatio
illusion of the "presence of the Absolute" in the experience of gr
and so on. The happiness which is promised by the great work
would be a state of reconciliation, which can be characterized by
that fusion of "full" pleasure and "full" cognition which according to

the myth is promised by the Sirens. And now we can see why Adomo
and Horkheimer do accept some version of what I have called a "realis-
tic" reading of the myth of the Sirens: Odysseus was right to treat the
promise of the Sirens as a deceit, because this promise can be fulfilled
only after the history of civilization - with all its deformations of rea-
son and selfhood - has run its course. This condemns the history of civ-
ilization to be a history of renunciation - a history of "subjectivization"
and reification - in which only the work of art as disempowered beauty
can keep alive a promise of final reconciliation.2
However, my "realistic" reading of the myth of the Sirens was not
meant in this way. As I have tried to show, it hardly makes sense to say
that by the measures taken on Odysseus's ship the song of the Sirens
would have been reduced to an object of aesthetic contemplation. But
when would it have been "reduced" to such an object of contempla-
tion? Evidently at that moment when Odysseus had stopped trying to
untie himself and had begun to lose himself in the song of the Sirens,
deriving a pleasure out of his "contemplative" listening which he did
not know before, a pleasure contingent upon his taking an aesthetic dis-
tance toward the Sirens' song and forgetting his desire to merge liter-
ally and physically in the world of the Sirens. The fulfillment of this
latter desire, a desire beyond all measures - this is what my "realistic"
reading of the myth implies - could only be death, the dissolution of the
self. But then the story of the "neutralization" of the Sirens' song, of its
transformation into a "mere" object of aesthetic contemplation, is begin-
ning to appear in a new light. It is now becoming the story of how
beauty first appeared on the scene of human civilization, namely as the
correlate of a reflexive self which had learned to resist-and perhaps to
play with - its regressive desire for a state of unmediated wholeness
and undifferentiated immediacy, a desire for "the abolition of differ-
ence and distance," as Castoriadis has put it. Castoriadis has called this
desire for the abolition of difference and distance the "master of all
desires" which, according to him, is rooted in an "undifferentiated pri-
mal unconscious" as "an ineradicable phantasy of wholeness that tinges
2. As to a critique of this radically utopian horizon present in Adorno's and

Horkheimer's allegorical reading of the Homeric episode of the Sirens' song see Irving
Wohlfarth, "Das Unerh6rte h6ren. Zum Gesang der Sirenen," Jenseits instrumenteller
Vernunft. Kritische Studien zur Dialektik der Au/kliirung, eds. M. Gangl and G. Raulet
(Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 1988) esp. 256f.
Albrecht Wellmer 13
every particular desire."3 Regardless, I think it is commonplace

that for the later Adorno, a "fearless affirmation of non-identit
Colin Sample has put it, including an affirmation of non-identit
difference within the self, has become a decisive condition of ra
autonomy, and that genuine individuation for him would only be
ble through an (affective) "cathexis of non-identity,"4 of alterit
difference regarding others and the world. From this perspectiv
totalizing and objectifying character of instrumental reason as w
the compulsive unity of the rational self would ultimately appea
irrational - and this precisely is what the Dialectic of Enlightenm
about. That this story of the successive deformations of reason an
hood, however, in the end virtually leaves no route of escape ope
not due to a compelling historical and empirical analysis, but due
theoretical construction which through its account of the very ori
selfhood, rationality, and conceptual thought leaves no conceptual
for an unperverted reason and selfhood except in the sense of an
un-articulable utopian horizon of real history. Banned into this ut
horizon the idea of reconciliation becomes the impossible idea of
fillment of the Sirens' promise at the end of history. My "realis
reading of the myth, however, points in a different direction. So
return once more to Odysseus and the Sirens.
This time - the third reading of Adorno's and Horkheimer's alle
Odysseus is not the hero who renounces the prospect of happiness for
sake of self-preservation, but the hero, who - by having himself boun
the mast of his reflexive self with the help of his compani
renounces the regressive desire for the "abolition of difference an
tance" and, by the same token, discovers the possibilities of an a
human happiness as well as the exciting new pleasures of aesthetic
templation. These two discoveries go together: they both presupp
"fearless affirmation" of non-identity and distance, but they are n
same. For the song of the Sirens, which has become an object of
thetic contemplation, that is, of aesthetic delight, is experien
longer as a promise to still a desire for total fulfillment - for a
mate redemption - but rather as a piece of music which incites d
and keeps it alive within its own confines, that is, the confines
3. All quotes from Castoriadis are taken from Colin Sample, "The Affecti
ments of Autonomy: Adorno on 'Freedom to the Object'," unpublished manuscrip
4. Sample 18, 21.
distanced and reflexive aesthetic contemplation. It does not represent or

promise a possible future state of "total" happiness, but has rather
become an important part of the humanly possible kinds of delight, that
is of happiness as we can understand and experience it, provided things
go well. So the emphasis now is on what is new in the experience of
beauty, a delight which can come about only where the source of delight
has been separated from the object of desire, a delight, therefore, which
has become a reflexive, that is, an aesthetic delight. This delight is not a
"truncated" delight, as Adorno and Horkheimer would have it, namely
the correlate of an emerging self in fear of self-dissolution; as an aes-
thetic delight it is rather a new delight, resting on a condition of "dif-
f6rance," correlate of the reflexive self of an animal that has learned to
speak, that has been individuated by being socialized and thereby also
has learned to take a distance from the world and from himself. Desire
and the objects of desire will not have disappeared from this new form
of delight; they recur as part of that worldly stuff that enters into and is
transformed by the work of art. But the artwork itself has become an
object, not of desire but of contemplation, of a contemplation whose spe-
cific aesthetic and processual character may, I believe, still be ade-
quately - if only roughly - described by the Kantian formula of a free
play of understanding and imagination. Adorno and Horkheimer in their
allegorical tale cannot take account of this dimension in the formation of
an "identical" self, because they remain caught in the conceptual frame-
work of a subject-object dialectic which systematically conceals the very
conditions of the possibility of conceptual thought, of selfhood, of inter-
subjectivity, and even of domination (of inner and outer nature) - i.e.,
the conditions of the possibility of speech. Therefore they can see only
the potentials of horror, but not the potentials of liberation which are
opened up by speech - or rather, since they know about these latter
potentials but have no place for it in their conception of the concept and
of the self, the potential of liberation must recede into a utopian future.
Naturally, this is not the whole truth. If we consider the wider context
of Adorno's and Horkheimer's allegorical tale, we can, as one should
assume, find at least some support for what I have called the third read-
ing of the allegory. At one point the authors discuss the magical heri-
tage in art: "The work of art still has something in common with
enchantment: it posits its own, self-enclosed area, which is withdrawn
from the context of profane existence, and in which special laws apply."
Albrecht Wellmer 15
Then the authors go on to characterize the work of art in oppos

the magical ceremony by the artwork's "renunciation of influen
renunciation of influence "places the pure image in contrast to
existence, the elements of which it absorbs" (DE 19). At this poi
is no complaint about the "disempowerment" of the magical ce
the work of art rather emerges as something new, a product of
tion from the magical spell. In addition, toward the end of the
on "Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment" the Homeric ep
becomes a paradigm of the literary work of art which "reveals t
that separates (myth) from homeland and reconciliation (
"Homeland is the state of having escaped" (DE 78). The epos as t
of the formation of a rational self in its departure from a mythic p
tory now becomes itself an agency in the formation of a reflexive s
It is the self-reflection which brings violence to a halt in the mom

of narration. Speech itself, language in its opposition to the myth
song, the possibility of retaining in the memory the disaster that
occurred, is the law of the Homeric escape. It is not for nothing t
the escaping hero is again and again introduced as a narrator. ... T
pausing of speech, however, is the caesura, the transformation of wh
is reported into something long past, by means of which the sem
blance of freedom glimmers that since then civilization has not wh
succeeded in putting out.5
This evidently is an entirely new story not only about the emerge
the work of art, but also about the role of speech in the simultaneou
stitution of the artwork and of a reflexive self. The passage from w
have quoted is, in the context of the book, exceptional in its emp
the liberating potentials of speech as opposed to the authors' usua
sis on the "instrumental" nature of "identifying" conceptual thou
Homeric epos is now placed into a sharp opposition to the mythi
namely as the place of an emerging reflexive self, liberating i
5. DE 78-79; translation modified. I add quotation from the German ori

ist die Selbstbesinnung, welche Gewalt innehalten I~iBt im Augenblick der Erzihlung. R
die Sprache in ihrem Gegensatz zum mythischen Gesang, die M6glichkeit, das gesche
erinnernd festzuhalten, ist das Gesetz des Homerischen Entrinnens. Nicht umsonst wird
nende Held als Erzdihlender immer wieder eingeftihrt.... Das Innehalten in der Rede
Zasur, die Verwandlung des Berichteten in aingst Vergangenes, kraft deren der Schein
aufblitzt, den Zivilisation seitdem nicht mehr ganz ausgel6scht hat."
See Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der AuJklkirung, Ado
mmelte Schriften 3 (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1984) 98.
through speech and remembrance- from its immersion in the mythical

circle of enchantment, violence and disaster. The artwork - the Homeric
epos- is, moreover, seen as being itself an agency in the formation of a
reflexive self, not resulting - as "disempowered beauty"- from a sup-
pression of a desire for happiness, but rather opening up a new space of
freedom. And this space is filled by speech that is neither magical incan-
tation nor an instrument of domination. Consequently the transformation
of the Sirens' song into a work of art does not really occur aboard Odys-
seus's ship, but through the very epic "song" which sings about the
Sirens' song and Odysseus's overcoming of its irresistible power.6
,, . .
;??
......
......i
........
......
.......... .::::: : :
.......... ?-:ij~'iii~iii::?~?p s?'

...........-:
...........
Fig. 1
Finally
and En
episode
tion of
might
6. See R
(Spring
Albrecht Wellmer 17
their temptation. "The epic," they say, "says nothing of what happ
to the Sirens once the ship had disappeared. In tragedy, howev
would have been their last hour, as it was for the Sphinx when Oed
solved the riddle, fulfilling its command and thus disenchanting it
59). The speculation is confirmed by ancient sources - and m
Adorno and Horkheimer were aware of this. Although literary do
ments are available only from post-classical time, there is a fa
depiction of the episode on a vase from the early fifth century B
where one of the Sirens is depicted as falling headover into the se
the moment where Odysseus, tied to the mast, has passed her on hi
- a depiction which art historians have taken as an indication of a b
widespread already at that time, that a Siren had to die if a man su
fully resisted her. The death of the Sirens occurs at the moment at wh
they have lost their power. The three different readings of Adomo
Horkheimer's allegorical reading of the episode, which I have
posed, suggest three different interpretations of what this loss of p
and therefore what the death of the Sirens, would mean allegoric
According to the first reading - let me call it the "feminist" read
the loss of power would be the "domestication" of female - in par
lar female sexual - power through the establishment of a patriarc
order. The death of the Sirens would be the subjugation of women,
"domestication" either through the patriarchal institution of marri
by their expulsion - as mere objects of desire - to the fringes of s
(and, later on, it would be occasionally also their literal deat
witches). However, as we have seen, this reading of the allegory w
lead us away from an understanding of the origin of art. Accordin
the second reading of the allegory, the Sirens' loss of power woul
the "disempowerment" of their song's beauty, the transformation o
song into a mere object of contemplation, into art. This reading -
one most directly suggested by Adomo and Horkheimer - does, h
ever, as I have tried to show, not really make much sense; or rathe
only seems to make sense because in the text it is meshed wit
ments of the first story. So there remains the third reading - certa
"violent" reading of Adomo's and Horkheimer's text. The power o
Sirens' song here stands for a desire beyond all measures, a desire
total fulfillment, for the abolition of difference and distance, the
ter of all desires," a desire which can only be fulfilled by death, b
loss of self. The Sirens' loss of power would then be the always p
result of the formation of a reflexive self which had learned to affirm

difference and distance, had through this affirmation also discovered
new sources of delight, and had learned to deal with - and aesthetically
play with - its regressive phantasies and desires without succumbing to
them. The experience of artistic beauty would signify a new delight,
which such a reflexive self is capable to experience. Artistic beauty, as
Adorno and Horkheimer themselves indicate, emerges with the emer-
gence of human freedom. This, of course, is not to deny that a suppres-
sion of inner nature does play a crucial - and often painful - role in the
emergence of a reflexive self; but it is not this suppression as such
which marks the emergence of art, but a (liberating) transformation of
inner nature in the medium of speech and social interaction. So one
might now say that the death of the Sirens is the origin of the work of
art. As Tzvetan Todorov has put it: "The song of the Sirens must cease
for a song about the Sirens to appear."7
To be sure, in some sense this does not seem to be a happy ending - nei-
ther for the Sirens, nor for Adomo's and Horkheimer's text, and perhaps
not even for the interpreter, who has spoiled this text. However, as far
as the Sirens go, we need not really be concerned, for although Sirens
may die, the Sirens never die, neither in myth nor in reality. Moreover,
Adorno and Horkheimer appear to be right after all in suggesting that
the echo of the Sirens' song perennially continues to resonate in the life
of art, and that without this echo of an excessive desire, art would per-
ish, maybe together with the Sirens (and with all of humanity). If this is
what the authors suggest, it seems to be only a nuance away from what
they really say. However, I think this nuance marks a difference
"entirely" [ums Ganze], as Adorno once put it in a different context.
Furthermore, as to Adorno's and Horkheimer's text, we need not really
be concerned either; for their book seems to belong to those texts which
can survive even devastating critique (and my reading of a small por-
tion of the text might be seen as devastatingly critical). My reading of
their reading of the Homeric episode of Odysseus and the Sirens,
although at first sight it seems to rob their reading of its poetic power,
might suggest a different reading of the Dialectic of Enlightenment as a
whole: not as a theoretical treatise, that is, but as a collection of frag-
ments (which it is), of brilliant flashes of insight, of condensed meta-
7. Tzvetan Todorov, The Poetics of Prose (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977) 58; cited in
Salecl.
Albrecht Wellmer 19
phors and aphorisms, written at a moment when the real horro

history even surpassed those depicted and predicted by the autho
strengths of the book may be even intrinsically linked to its the
weaknesses. But then the book has to be guarded against a too li
that is a too theoretical reading - even if it be that of the authors
selves. Adorno certainly never revoked what he considered to be
central philosophical claims of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, an
is problematic in his brilliant later work can still be traced back t
is a problematic theoretical construction underlying considerabl
tions of this remarkable book. Certainly, the book remains a fasc
document of radical critical thought; but if we want to make a p
tive philosophical use of it, there seems to be no alternative to fir
ing it apart. Doing this and being able to rescue something p
from the ruins of the book would be a happy end for the interpreter

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The Death of the Sirens and the Origin of the Work of Art

Author(s): Albrecht Wellmer

1. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New

knows only two possible ways to escape. One of them he prescribes

Adorno and Horkheimer interpret the measures taken by Odysse

self also amounts to a self-mutilation: Odysseus "has irremediabl

Sirens can neither be a paradigm of authentic art nor is there an

that fusion of "full" pleasure and "full" cognition which according to

2. As to a critique of this radically utopian horizon present in Adorno's and

every particular desire."3 Regardless, I think it is commonplace

distanced and reflexive aesthetic contemplation. It does not represent or

Then the authors go on to characterize the work of art in oppos

It is the self-reflection which brings violence to a halt in the mom

5. DE 78-79; translation modified. I add quotation from the German ori

through speech and remembrance- from its immersion in the mythical

.......... ?-:ij~'iii~iii::?~?p s?'

result of the formation of a reflexive self which had learned to affirm

phors and aphorisms, written at a moment when the real horro

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