The Professor and the Siren

Senator Rosario La Ciura's experience with the Siren causes him to believe that he is superior to humans, including Paolo. In Rosario's first conversation with Paolo, Rosario mentions how his knowledge of Greek is exceptional compared to his other university colleagues. "Poor wretches, anyways; how can they sense that spirit if they have never had occasion to hear real Greek?" (64). Rosario has heard Greek spoken only from the Siren, and attests that this makes him superior because he has heard it first-hand. He sees himself as above Paolo and his colleagues based on the notion that he knows Greek better than they do, and this stems from his interaction with the Siren. As well, Rosario has never been with a woman because he is above human pleasure. "She had shown me the way towards true eternal repose, and also towards asceticism derived not from renunciation but from an incapacity to accept other inferior pleasures" (83). He has experienced godlike satisfaction from the Siren, and sees every other human as never being able to reach this type of satisfaction. Although he is human, he concludes that he is superior because other people have not had the experiences he had encountered in the three weeks with the Siren. This ultimately leads to him jumping into the sea because nothing in the human world can satisfy him as much as the Siren had, and he needed to reunite himself with her.