#60 Sat (8/20/22) - [OW] On the riddle of the Sphinx
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. (from The Book of Imaginary Beings, J.L.Borges)
If the answer, as suggested by De Quincey, to the riddle the Sphinx posed to Oedipus, was not as is commonly understood, Man, but instead Me; it would explain why no one else was able to answer it correctly. Did the Sphinx only pose the riddle in order to find Oedipus, the only person who could answer it, because it was tailor made for him specifically? Was the Sphinx an agent of Fate, set up in order to locate Oedipus and give him cause to enter Thebes in triumph and marry Jocasta? If that is the case, than the nameless throngs of Boeotia devoured by the Sphinx all died as mistakes, without any hope of understanding what they were being asked or of providing a suitable answer. This seems unjust and flies in the face of fairness, but then what about life (in ancient times or now) is fair?
A stranger hypothesis would be that the Sphinx, a supernatural creature, could possibly have created a riddle specially fitted to each person it encountered - a riddle the answer to which only that person receiving it could possibly know. In this case, each person is a key to a unique lock. What if the Sphinx only ever asked you to provide an answer which is essentially 'Me,' 'Myself,' or 'My Life.' How would this Spinx's riddles appear then - for no one approaching a riddle would imagine that they themselves could be the answer or the key. This might be the one accepted characteristic about riddles in general - that they are about anything but you. But as an observer of the world, if you are keen enough, you could detect what thing (also out in the world) this riddle refers to. You would have to have the insight that not only are you an observer of the world, but you are also one of the things in the world being observed - that you exist as a duality of perspectives. This is a rare insight. Both parties to the riddle are in essence colluding or collaborating to describe some feature found in the world, but not an obvious one. For the only way a riddle could be agreed upon, especially in the case were life hinges on the answer, would be that no one could argue that the answer, when revealed, is not true. It must be immediately seen to be the one and only possible true answer, such that the losing party couldn't contest it. The loser of the contest should willingly admit being bested when confronted with the true answer. But strangely, the Sphinx never gave the losers access to the true answer, or if it did, that answer died with them. How did they die? with a look of utter bafflement and confusion at an answer they could not possibly grasp, or with a look of resigned acceptance, even satisfaction, at seeing how well the key fit the lock.
If that is so, then this might be the most ingenious riddle of all, practically guaranteed to be unguessable.
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Denis Diderot commented that "The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned." He was referring of course to death. This could be taken as a kind of riddle. [Denis Diderot (1713–1784), French philosopher. Elements of Physiology, "Death," notes written 1774–1780, first published 1875; reprinted in Selected Writings, edited by Lester G. Crocker, 1966].
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