Oedipus and the Sphinx

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• Numerous images from the following decades (and centuries) follow this basic visual pattern. Although occasionally sitting, Oedipus mostly stands pondering before the Sphinx, who sits across from him atop columns or pillars, sometimes on altar- like shapes of varying heights or up on rocks. He always looks her in the eyes, whether he finds himself at her eye level, whether he is higher than her or she higher than him. This frontal gaze is significant and deserves special attention; for it is through this frontality that Oedipus determines his position with regard to the inhuman and the superhuman. Thus, using his gifts of understanding, he alights upon the riddle’s solution, “man.” From this point forward, the idea of Oedipus’ frontal position across from the Sphinx will continually reente... (查看原文)

  波士顿驴 2025-02-16 21:34:02

• As a threshold characterized by a threshold figure, the “Sphinx- story” narratively marks “what the story is about” in the version of the Oedipus myth as it is handed down and canonized, so to speak, by Sophocles: it presents—according to Greek notions— a scandalously liminal being, perceived as a socially intolerable existence at the threshold. What the Sphinx’s monstrous presence makes clear, then, is that she is a metafigure for Oedipus’ entire condition. He is perhaps not as conspicuous as she, but his existence similarly infects the Greek world order with a deviant, disturbing, marginal element. (查看原文)

  波士顿驴 2025-02-16 22:24:07