Sirens story as in poem has no beauty nor purity in it. Really. Sirens are not described and promises to give him knowledge, mostly about Trojan war. Nothing beautiful or pure about that.
And I think that some painters liked to paint naked women and customers liked those paintings without it being necessary disparaging. The line between "lecherous" and "beauty or purity" is mostly the one of framing - whether you are determined to see it as good or bad.
Nevetheless, it is a projection of own ideas into old story, because we want to see ourselves in the oldest known poems. People want our civilization to spring from that, so they project onto it. It is not like every sirens painting painter would read the poem, they heard the story as part of their education and imagined the rest.
> Sirens story as in poem has no beauty nor purity in it. Really. Sirens are not described and promises to give him knowledge, mostly about Trojan war. Nothing beautiful or pure about that.
I wasn't claiming they were. Just that that seemed to be the classical framing of them. I can see how luring in sailors with beautiful song could be transferred onto luring with physical beauty and how that could map to classical femininity, but the relation does not affect the original meaning.
> The line between "lecherous" and "beauty or purity" is mostly the one of framing - whether you are determined to see it as good or bad.
I don't think it is. Lechery is linked to sexual gratification, basically voyeurism. I'm essentially saying I don't think these paintings existed for sexual purposes. Beauty is more of an aesthetic appreciation, or can be used as a symbol for higher values (and ugliness as a symbol for moral ugliness).
> It is not like every sirens painting painter would read the poem, they heard the story as part of their education and imagined the rest.
This is why moral tales are a good framework for thinking, rather than always giving you the answer. They give us symbols with which to reason, and so much of our conversational reasoning is performed using metaphors and idioms.
> I can see how luring in sailors with beautiful song could be transferred onto luring with physical beauty and how that could map to classical femininity, but the relation does not affect the original meaning.
That has more to do with artist then original poem. Sirens promiss knowledge, in particular knowledge of who did what and how who ended during trojan war. Odysseus is tempted to learn what happened to his friends during war. The classical feminity of Christian culture is not the same thing as story in original poem. It changes meaning a lot, into a different story. Projection and replacement of original knowledge/war info into "classical feminity" is the sort of thing I was talking about.
As for beauty, I don't see much difference. Or rather, I don't find it important for anything except value judgement of painter. If painter used sirens as excuse to paint nude sirens out of sense of beauty, my original point applies the same. The poem does not really have higher values there anyway. It has less to do with poem itself and more to do with what artists wants to paint for his own reasons.
> This is why moral tales are a good framework for thinking, rather than always giving you the answer.
Why do you think Odysseus is moral tale? It does not read like moral tale. Whatever moral tales are seems irrelevant to original poem. This one is even the part of story told by Odysseus himself when he is trying to please audience instead of by neutral narrator. The poem is pretty clear about Odysseus not being completely reliable narrator. Odysseus lies or pretends to be someone else often, so treating whatever he says as moral tale strikes me as odd.
And I think that some painters liked to paint naked women and customers liked those paintings without it being necessary disparaging. The line between "lecherous" and "beauty or purity" is mostly the one of framing - whether you are determined to see it as good or bad.
Nevetheless, it is a projection of own ideas into old story, because we want to see ourselves in the oldest known poems. People want our civilization to spring from that, so they project onto it. It is not like every sirens painting painter would read the poem, they heard the story as part of their education and imagined the rest.