The invention of the mermaid: sea miths and winged figures in the imaginary history of the mediterranean

Abstract

The mermaid is one of the most famous Mediterranean myths, both in literature and in the arts. As a cultural macro-category that "explained" an experience of reality, the myth of the mermaid has been so transformed over the centuries and cultures that it has barely maintained the link with the celebrated Homeric episode. In "The Invention Collective", depicting a creature that could have been part of the fantastic zoology of Borges and Guerrero, René Magritte represents an “upside-down” mermaid. Significantly out of the water, the mermaid has human, female legs and the rest of the body of a fish. Already Diderot, in his "Pensées détachées", had already reported on the horror caused by an inverted mermaid. With the exception of the nomenclature of some sea mammals, mermaids do not exist. However, as Agamben suggests, speaking of the "Nymphs", they are "real", since they represent, as can be seen from the title of the painting by Magritte, a "collective invention", that is, a concept constructed to demonstrate the origin of mysterious aspects of reality. The "collective" invention of the mermaid’s myth, as Diderot and Magritte had observed, represents a reversal of the mythological narrative. In the perspective inaugurated by Diderot and Magritte, and through examples taken from works by Giraudoux, Tanizaki and D'Arrigo, we would like to argue that the modernity of the mermaid’s myth resides in the ambiguity and duality of its half figure.