#57 Wed (8/17/22) - Oedipus and the Enigma, a poem by J.L.B. (El otro, el mismo, 1964))

Oedipus and the Enigma

Four-footed at dawn, in the daytime tall,
and wandering three-legged down the hollow

reaches of evening: thus did the sphinx,

the eternal one, regard his restless fellow, 

 

mankind; and at evening came a man

who, terror-struck, discovered as in a mirror

his own decline set forth in the monstrous image,

his destiny, and felt a chill of terror.

 

We are Oedipus and everlastingly

we are the long tripartite beast; we are

all that we were and will be, nothing less.

 

It would destroy us to look steadily

at our full being. Mercifully God grants us

the ticking of the clock, forgetfulness.

[Alan.S.Trueblood., tr.](The Sonnets, 95)

 

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OEDIPUS AND THE RIDDLE

At dawn four-footed, at midday erect,
And wandering on three legs in the deserted
Spaces of afternoon, thus the eternal
Sphinx had envisioned her changing brother

Man, and with afternoon there came a person
Deciphering, appalled at the monstrous other
Presence in the mirror, the reflection
Of his decay and of his destiny.
 

We are Oedipus; in some eternal way
We are the long and threefold beast as well—
All that we will be, all that we have been.
 

It would annihilate us all to see
The huge shape of our being; mercifully
God offers us issue and oblivion.
 

[John Hollander](SP early, 211, El otro, el mismo 1964)
 

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From The Book of Imaginary Beings:

 

THE SPHINX

 

The Sphinx of Egyptian monuments (called by Herodotus androsphinx, or man-sphinx, in order to distinguish it from the Greek Sphinx) is a lion having the head of a man and lying at rest; it stood watch by temples and tombs, and is said to have represented royal authority. In the halls of Karnak, other Sphinxes have the head of a ram, the sacred animal of Amon. The Sphinx of Assyrian monuments is a
winged bull with a man’s bearded and crowned head; this image is common on Persian gems. Pliny in his list of Ethiopian animals includes the Sphinx, of which he details no other features than ‘brown hair and two mammae on the breast’. 

 

The Greek Sphinx has a woman’s head and breasts, the wings of a bird, and the body and feet of a lion. Some give it the body of a dog and a snake’s tail. It is told that it depopulated the Theban countryside asking riddles (for it had a human voice) and making a meal of any man who could not give the answer. Of Oedipus, the son of Jocasta, the Sphinx asked, ‘What has four legs, two legs, and three legs, and the more legs it has the weaker it is?’ (So runs what seems to be the oldest version. In time the metaphor was introduced which makes of man’s life a single day. Nowadays the question goes, ‘Which animal walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three in the evening?’) Oedipus answered that it was a man who as an infant crawls on all fours, when he grows up walks on two legs, and in old age leans on a staff. The riddle solved, the Sphinx threw herself from a precipice.  

 

De Quincey, around 1849, suggested a second interpretation,* which complements the traditional one. The subject of the riddle according to him is not so much man in general as it is Oedipus in particular, orphaned and helpless at birth, alone in his manhood, and supported by Antigone in his blind and hopeless old age.

 

* The Sphinx's Riddle by Thomas De Quincey. 

 

 H.P. Lovecraft wrote a tale with Harry Houdini called Under the Pyramids, which featured a Sphinx-like Elder God imprisoned under the titular pyramids.