para guardarse de las sirenas, Ulises se tapó los oídos con cera y se hizo encadenar al mástil. Algo semejante podrían, naturalmente, haber hecho desde tiempo antiguo los viajeros, con excepción de aquellos a quienes las sirenas atraían desde lejos, pero en el mundo se reconocía que ese recurso no podía servir para nada. El canto de las sirenas lo traspasaba todo, y la pasión de los seducidos habría hecho saltar prisiones más fuertes que mástiles y cadenas. Pero Ulises no pensó en ello, si bien quizá algo habría llegado ya a sus oídos. Confiaba por completo en los trocitos de cera y en la atadura de las cadenas y con la inocente alegría que le ocasionaba su estratagema marchó al encuentro de las sirenas.
Pero éstas tienen un arma más terrible aún que el canto: su silencio.
Aunque no ha sucedido, es quizá imaginable la posibilidad de que alguien se haya salvado de su canto, pero de su silencio ciertamente no. Ningún poder terreno puede resistir a la soberbia arrolladora generada por el sentimiento de haberlas vencido con las propias fuerzas.
Y, en efecto, al llegar Ulises, no cantaron las cantantes poderosas; fuera porque creyesen que a aquel adversario sólo podía vencérselo con el silencio, o porque la contemplación de la felicidad reflejada en el rostro de Ulises, que no pensaba sino en cera y cadenas, les hiciera olvidar todo canto.
Pero Ulises, para expresarlo así, no oía su silencio, creía que cantaban y que sólo él se hallaba exento de oírlas. Fugazmente vio primero las curvas de sus cuellos, la respiración profunda, los ojos arrasados en lágrimas, los labios entreabiertos, pero creyó que esto pertenecía a las melodías que se alzaban, inaudibles, en torno de él. Mas pronto todo se deslizó fuera del campo de sus miradas puestas en la lejanía, las sirenas desaparecieron ante su resolución, y, precisamente cuando mas próximo estaba, ya no supo de esos seres nada más.
Ellas , empero –mas hermosas que nunca-, se erguían y contoneaban, las chorreantes cabelleras ondulando libremente al viento y las garras abiertas sobre las rocas. No querían ya seducir, sino solo apresar, mientras fuese posible, el fulgor de los grandes ojos de Ulises.
De haber tenido conciencia, las sirenas habrían sido destruidas aquel día. Pero allí quedaron y sólo ocurrió que Ulises escapó de entre sus manos.
Aquí, por lo demás, se transmitido un agregado. Se dice que Ulises era tan rico en astucias, y tan zorruno, que las mismas deidades del destino no podían penetrar en lo más íntimo de su fuero interno. Aunque ello no sea ya concebible para el entendimiento humano, quiza noto realmente que las sirenas callaron, y opuso a sirenas y dioses, en cierta manera como escudo, el simulacro mencionado más arriba.
Franz Kafka
Proof that inadequate, even childish measures, may serve to rescue one from peril. To protect himself from the Sirens Ulysses stopped his ears with wax and had himself bound to the mast of his ship. Naturally any and every traveller before him could have done the same, except those whom the Sirens allured even from a great distance; but it was known to all the world that such things were of no help whatever. The song of the Sirens could pierce through everything, and the longing of those they seduced would have broken far stronger bonds than chains and masts. But Ulysses did not think of that, although he had probably heard of it. He trusted absolutely to his handful of wax and his fathom of chain, and in innocent elation over his
little stratagem sailed out to meet the Sirens.
Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence. And though admittedly such a thing has never happened, still it is conceivable that someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence certainly never. Against the feeling of having triumphed over them by one's own strength, and the consequent exaltation that bears down everything before it, no earthly powers could have remained intact.
And when Ulysses approached them the potent songstresses actually did not sing, whether because they thought that this enemy could be vanquished only by their silence, or because of the look of bliss on the face of Ulysses, who was thinking of nothing but his wax and his chains, made them forget their singing.
But Ulysses, if one may so express it, did not hear their silence; he thought they were singing and that he alone did not hear them. For a fleeting moment he saw their throats rising and falling, their breasts lifting, their eyes filled with tears, their lips half-parted, but believed that these were accompaniments to the airs which died unheard around him.
Soon, however, all this faded from his sight as he fixed his gaze on the distance, the Sirens literally vanished before his resolution, and at the very moment when they were nearest to him he knew of them no longer.
But they - lovelier than ever - stretched their necks and turned, let their cold hair flutter free in the wind, and forgetting everything clung with their claws to the rocks. They no longer had any desire to allure; all that they wanted was to hold as long as they could the radiance that fell from Ulysses' great eyes.
If the Sirens had posessed consciousness they would have been annihilatedat that moment. But they remained as they had been; all that had happenedwas that Ulysses had escaped them.
A codicil to the foregoing has also been handed down. Ulysses, it is said, was so full of guile, was such a fox, that not even the goddess of fate could pierce his armor. Perhaps he had really noticed, although here the human understanding is beyond its depths, that the Sirens were silent, and opposed the afore-mentioned pretense to them and the gods merely as a sort of shield.
Franz Kafka
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