The introduction begins with an initial definition of “femme fatale” and an historical overview that underscores the global circulation of the archetype. The chapter explains how the femme fatale and the way that we relate to the character is the effect of illusion and enchantment that is intimately tied to modernist aesthetics. At issue are questions about the metaphysics of operatic narratives and what they unearth about the femme fatale. Close readings of contemporaneous literary works by Pierre Louÿs (La femme et le pantin), Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam (L’Ève future), Émile Zola (Nana), and Franz Kafka (“Das Schweigen der Sirenen”; “The Silence of the Sirens”) demonstrate the various ways in which femmes fatales create transtemporal, transcontinental, transmodal, and transdiegetic systems of linkage.