Kafka and the COVID-19 epidemic : Why the Sirens’ silence is more deadly than their song
Seeking to examine the implications of social distancing, isolation and the silencing of public spaces brought about by the COVID-19 epidemic, I offer an interpretation of Kafka’s short story ‘The Silence of the Sirens’ contrasting it to the Homeric original. In Homer’s story, Odysseus resists the temptation of the Sirens’ deadly song by having himself tied to the mast of his ship, while his oarsm
