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The Primitivist Critique of Modernity: Carl Einstein and Walter Benjamin

In the "Sirens" episode in Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus, relying on nothing more than the wax in his sailors' ears and the rope binding him to the mast of his ship, was able to hear the sirens' song without being drawn to his death like all the sailors before him.² Franz Kafka, finally giving the sirens their due, points out that their song could certainly pierce wax and would lead a man to burst all bonds. Instead of attributing Odysseus' survival to his cunning use of technical means, which he calls "childish measures,"³ Kafka attributes it to the sirens' use of...