Naples in Perspective

A last word from me on Naples – for the time being – can be found in the latest ssue of the excellent magazine Perspective...

https://perspectivemag.co.uk/letter-from-elsewhere-naples/

See Naples and Live – 14: Sirens, Sirens Everywhere...

 

Ever since I set out on An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague (see this blog March-October 2020), I seem to have been beset by Sirens.

Maybe it's just something that goes with following in the wake of Odysseus...

But Naples has a huge connection with the Sirens, and it's difficult to spend some time there without being aware of the fact.

In the National Archaeological Museum you can even interact with a digital Siren, a tiny but seductive virtual fish/woman who sings requests (see below).

©Nigel Summerley

Nearby, the museum also has this large-as-life Siren (below) complete with fishy tail but lacking any other appendages

©Nigel Summerley

According to legend, the Siren called Parthenope (see this blog – An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Parthenope – 13 February 2021) cast herself into the sea after failing to seduce Odysseus, and her dying body washed up on the beach in front of what was to become Naples.

The caryatid (below) comes complete with arms, fishy tail and everything else a Siren should have. She stands by the sea on Via Partenope and is part of the 17th-century Fontana dell'Immacolatella.

©Nigel Summerley

This Siren from the Palazzo Sanfelice (below) seems to make up in the fishy legs department for what she lacks in arms.

©Nigel Summerley

Breasts, of course, are a prominent feature in depictions of Sirens... and nowhere more so than at the Fontana di Spinacorona (below) which depicts Parthenope (in the more classically authentic half-bird, half-woman form) squeezing jets of liquid from her breasts to put out the fires of Vesuvius.

©Nigel Summerley

And last – and most contemporary – is this transport of delight spotted just across the bay from Vesuvius (which is seen reflected in the bus window). Only in Naples...

©Nigel Summerley

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Troy Story

 

One of the strangest books I've ever encountered has found its way into my possession.

In Where Troy Once Stood the Dutch writer Iman Wilkens puts forward his case that the fabled city of The Iliad was actually in what is now Cambridgeshire. I'm not making this up... but I don't know about him...

And when it comes to The Odyssey, he locates the Cyclops in the Cape Verde Islands, the island of Aeolus and the realm of Circe in the Netherlands, the Laestrygonians in Cuba, the Sirens and Scylla and Charybdis in Cornwall,  Calypso in the Azores, and Ithaca in southern Spain...

Will I be cancelling my trip to Ithaca (an island in Greece) in June to walk in the footsteps of Odysseus once more? Er, I think not... 

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Parthenope

 Fontana della Sirena - Piazza Sannazar, Naples

Odysseus had a tendency to fall under the spell of enchantresses – at least that was one of his excuses for being late getting home to Ithaca.

However, one alluring female not only found herself being resisted by him, but she was so distraught at her failure that she surrendered her own life.

She was Parthenope, one of the Sirens, who flung herself into the sea and was washed up dying on the shore of what today is the city of Naples. Greek settlers here, on the west coast of what became Italy, originally named their town after her.

Parthenope was half-bird and half-woman (as the Sirens were originally described). Her legend became entwined with the history of Naples, and there are now three fountains in the city that commemorate her.

The most unusual is the Fontana di Spinacorona whose "lactating" breasts actually spill water over Vesuvius below her. In their impeccable guide Secret Naples, Valerio Ceva Grimaldi and Maria Franchini recount that this 15th-century depiction of Parthenope was intended to have a calming and contemplative effect, but "it has always been popularly known as the 'fountain of the tits'."

Fontana di Spinacorona

Another Parthenope tribute is the Fontana della Sirena at Piazza Sannazar (at the top of this post) and the third is the more modern one at Napoli Centrale railway station (featured along with other Siren images from my 2020 odyssey on this blog at An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague  – Siren Land).

It was only in the Middle Ages that the image of the Sirens underwent a makeover with their emergence as half-woman and half-fish – and a merger with all the many legends of mermaids who lured sailors to their doom.

Over the centuries, depictions of the Sirens have become increasingly erotic, one example being the Fountain of the Sirens at Maratea, which I passed through last year, heading up the beautiful west coast of Italy, north to Naples. 

Fountain of the Sirens at Maratea

An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Islands

 

Monte Circeo, island of Circe Photo©Nigel Summerley

I make no apology for mentioning again the wonderful book Siren Land – because among author Norman Douglas's countless pointed observations is one on the nature of islands... and the fact that they are not always necessarily islands.

His comments chime with my experience of the sublime shapeshifter Monte Circeo, today a headland in southern Italy but, in the far distant past, probably an island.

Or perhaps not. And does it matter?

Douglas says: "I cannot help thinking that commentators of the Homeric cosmography take the 'islands' too seriously, and thereby involve themselves in needless trouble. Ancient navigators were inordinately fond of islands, and slow sailing without a compass may well turn an indented coastline or promontory into a group of them. This is plain from Sindbad the Sailor...

"People living on continents are more likely to locate marvels in islands – India and America were also 'islands'; so was Paradise, according to Lambertus Floridus; to say nothing of Atlantis – and the ingenious Pelliccia has written a book to prove that the whole Sorrentine peninsula was likewise an island in olden days. 

"He argues thus: the Sirens dwelt at Capri; Circe, the enchantress, lived on another island near at hand; therefore Sorrento must have been the island of Circe – falsifying geography and geology in order to vindicate a prehistoric sailor's yarn. What strange creatures we are, placing more faith in deductions than in facts..."

My own encounter with Monte Circeo (recounted in this blog – in An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague – 11: 15-21 September 2020) pretty much convinced me that this – not the nearby island of Ponza, and certainly not the Sorrentine peninsula – was the island of Circe. Even though it is not geographically an island.

But look from a distance at the shimmering beauty of Circeo in the setting sun, or at its hazy presence beneath a stormy sky, and all you will see is an alluring island...

Monte Circeo, island of Circe                                                 Photo©Nigel Summerley