hings, 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. Though ultimately drowned out by the mellifluous tones of heavenly souls, Dante's Siren remains a powerful figure within the Commedia. A classical mythological character, the Siren's traditional attributes of the deadly temptress provide symbolic ground for the convergence of things human and things divine. The thesis of this paper, then, is that Dante uses the figure of the Siren, a simultaneous reification of seduction and death, to demonstrate to the reader, to things. Generally, he demonstrates the dangerously alluring prospect of turning down a sinful-and thereby deadly-path towards greed, gluttony, and lust, after succumbing to the seemingly benign idleness of sloth. More particularly, the poet demonstrates the traveler Dante's own process of realizing the full extent of his weakness, turning to Heaven for aid, truly repenting his sins, and, after all this has been accomplished, finally being granted a vision of the eternal and unadulterated happiness experienced by those souls, now in Heaven, who avoided traveling the path of the enticing but deadly Siren. Works ConsultedAlighieri, Dante. The Portable Dante. Trans. Mark Musa. New York: Penguin BooksUSA Inc., 1995.Homer. The Odyssey of Homer. Trans. Richmond Lattimore. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991.Mazzotta, Giuseppe. Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge. Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1993.Musa, Mark. Introduction. The Portable Dante. By Dante Alighieri. New York:Penguin Books USA Inc., 1995. ix-xxxvi.The New American Bible. St. Joseph Edition. New York: Catholic Book Publishing Co., 198...
