Thinking Outside The Box 2: The Sphinx

 

 

” The riddling Sphinx compelled us to let slide

The dim past and attend to instant needs.”

********

“Well, I will start afresh and once again

Make dark things clear…”

 

Sophocles, from “Oedipus the King”.

Thinking Outside The Box

 

A Thought Experiment.

 

” … It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That protects us from so naively accepting as valid a ‘blurred model’  for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.”

 

Erwin Schrödinger, “Die gegenwärtige Situation in den Quantenmechanik (The present situation in quantum mechanics), Naturwissenschaften (translated by John D Trimmer in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society) – (the “cat” Thought Experiment).

Bacchus In The Vineyard

 

“I call upon loud-roaring and revelling Dionysus,

Primeval, double-natured, thrice-born, Bacchic lord,

Wild, ineffable, secretive, two-horned and two-shaped.

Ivy-covered, bull-faced, warlike, howling, pure,

You take raw flesh, you have feasts, wrapt in foliage, decked with grape clusters,

Resourceful Eubouleus, immortal god sired by Zeus

When he mated with Persephone in unspeakable union.

Hearken to my voice, o blessed one

And with your fair-girdled nymphs breathe on me in a spirit of perfect agape.”

 

Invocation Of Dionysus, from the Orphic Hymns.

Persephone I

 

“Tu mi fai remembrar dove et qual era

Proserpina nel tempo che perdette

La madre lei, ed ella primavera.”

 

“You make me remember where and what

Proserpina was, in the time

When her mother lost her, and she lost spring.”

 

Dante Alighieri, “Purgatorio”, Canto 28.

 

Ivan Opens The Box Given To Him By The Little Sister Of The Sun

IVAN OPENS THE BOX GIVEN TO HIM BY THE LITTLE SISTER OF THE SUN

“What must be, must,” says the Sun’s little sister; “Though she is more likely to eat you than you are to save them. You shall go…”

From “Old Peter’s Russian Tales”, Arthur Ransome, 1916

There are many, many versions of this story. Usually the hero – or heroine – is given a range of magical objects by some powerful helper; in at least one version – I think it is a Grimm’s one, but I can’t find it – it is a mysterious box, only to be opened in the hour of direst need…

SHE

 

 

SHE

 

sea is a womb

sea is a womb

dip and flow the small boat.

 

rock and rock

rock the black black

 

gold lace a-glitter

and rocks – the

rocks scrape her timbers

 

beneath the carved wave

lie monsters clawing at her base

 

From “She”, by C. Murray.

Available shortly from Oneiros Books.

The Princess

“She picked him up with two fingers, carried him upstairs, and set him in a corner. As she was lying in bed, he came creeping up to her and said, ‘I am tired, and I want to sleep as well as you do. Pick me up or I’ll tell your father.’

With that she became bitterly angry and threw him against the wall with all her might.”

From “The Frog King”, the Brothers Grimm, 1857 edition.

Fear Death By Water

FEAR DEATH BY WATER

“Here, said she,

Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,

(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)

Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,

The lady of situations.

Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,

And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,

Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,

Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find

The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.”

 

T S Eliot, from “The Waste Land”.

 

I am not sure whether I am entirely happy with this piece. So I am leaving it as it is, for now.

The Castle of Crossed Destinies

THE PAGE OF CUPS

 

“From this arid sphere every discourse and every poem sets forth; and every journey through forests, battles, treasures, banquets, bedchambers, brings us back here, to the centre of an empty horizon.”

 

– Italo Calvino, “The Castle of Crossed Destinies” (Il Castello dei Destini Incrociati) 1973.

Brave New World

 

 

Final version, from previous post.