Sphinx
21 January 2008
A novelist always wants the reader to wonder why - or who, or when, or how. When the reader is enticed into wondering, they become imaginatively engaged in the story.
In fact, they begin to travel with the characters - weighing up their options as if they mattered - which of course they do, in the fictional world.
Oedipus was on a journey when he came upon the sphinx. The sphinx posed Oedipus a number of riddles, including the famous one about the creature that goes on four legs in the morning, two at midday and three at night.
I've used riddles and codes in my fiction ever since I became a novelist. In Eskimo Kissing, the plot is driven by a need to investigate the past. In Crucifix Lane, my central character steps into the future.
The faded documents and imperfect recollections of the protagonists of Eskimo Kissing play a similar role to the mysterious runes in Crucifix Lane. And, of course, to the indecipherable hieroglyphs in Labyrinth. Hopefully, they want to make you - the reader - work out the solution to the riddle too ...
Oedipus worked out his solution. The day - morning, noon and night - is a metaphor for a lifetime. At first the baby crawls, then the adult walks, then old age insists on a stick - four legs, two legs, three legs.
The best known tellings of Oedipus' story are in the tragedies of Aeschylus who lived 2500 years ago. The sphinx of Egypt - which still stands on the ceremonial route to the Great Pyramid at Giza just outside Cairo - is much older. It has the form of a huge beast with the head of a man.
Researching
medieval books for Labyrinth, I came across many images of such a creature
in books of hours and the like. The image was
more likely to be the body of a lion with the head of a woman. And the medieval
sphinx wasn't much of a riddler - more a devourer, like our image of the dragon
...
Now, as it happens, the image of the sphinx is in the back of my mind. And I'm wondering if somehow, somewhere, there is a story in it for me.
I
wonder where I will next find a Sepulchre.
