6 – Myths and Legends
A short conversation stimulator on the deep philosophical stuff in the play...
Oedipus Factor
Apart from the obviously significant religious message that "you can't escape your fate" it's important to realise :
1. Oedipus wasn't as innocent under Greek law as he might appear under English or Roman : (non est actus reus nisi mens sit rea - there is no guilty act without a guilty mind). To the Greeks the act counted, not the motive.
2. The murder of Laius wasn't a crime per se - in fact it was any Greek's duty to harm his enemies (as well as helping his friends). And as far as he knew at the time Laius was an enemy - by insulting Oedipus he had made himself one.
3. Family was everything in Greek culture. (Compare the Godfather films of Francis Ford Coppola to get the flavour of the intensity of family feeling.) Thus the worst conceivable crime was to kill one's father; the second worst was to sleep with one's mother. (More than just an incest taboo is involved here.) No Greek could imagine a worse 'double' than Oedipus'. Mass murder as in Dunblane or a serial killer such as Fred West would have been far less abhorrent. Modern cult use of the word 'motherfucker' could only happen in a culture where the power of the family is waning fast.
4. Oedipus - the greatest of men, the solver of riddles - can only solve the riddle of his own origins by revealing a truth too awful to bear.
5. The power of the curse - Oedipus, having cursed the murderer of Laius - feels he must carry out the sentence on himself.
Freud's famous 'Oedipus complex' may or may not make sense to psychologists, but it has no bearing on understanding the myth.(It is based on Jocasta's remark to her husband that many men have dreamed about sleeping with their mothers. But in any case, Oedipus did not intend his actions - and thus felt no desire for his mother.
My own feeling about the story is that Oedipus is an inspiration for mankind: he must find out the truth at whatever cost, and then accept the full responsibility for the knowledge he has discovered. Knowledge + pain is better than Ignorance + bliss.
Oedipus is thus the patron saint of philosophers, scientists, poets and artists – of all truth seekers. Bit like Mulder and Scully in the X-Files, Oedipus knows the ‘truth is out there’ but unlike them doesn’t expect his eyesight restored for the next episode.
Daedalus and Icarus
Just as the pigeon tries to imitate the hummingbird at the feeder, so man yearns to fly. In dreams, flying is symbolic of our wish to attain the unimaginable heights of our abilities—to rise above human clumsiness and the mundane to take wing to heavenly achievements. Flight symbolizes our deepest yearning to succeed, to overcome or weakness and to be unfettered by human frailty.
Daedalus was an inventor who created the subterranean maze for King Minos of Crete. Every year the maidens of Athens were sacrificed to the bull that lived beneath the island palace. The maze was created as a means of fortification to the island so that invading militia would be trapped and confused. Similarly, the fortress at Terezin, built during the Napoleonic Wars, also has an underground maze which was designed to trap the invaders and confuse them.
However, Daedalus became trapped by his own trap, the snake biting back on its own tail. How ? Why? He became caught like the spy who has learned too much. As the designer of the maze, he was not trusted by Minos not to reveal the secret. Knowledge frees us, but if we learn too much, it also traps us, making us victims of our own understanding. Where do old CIA spies go? How does a spy tell his wife that for twenty years he lived a lie? True some intelligence officers do make fine novelists: Ian Fleming and Le Carre; but what happens to all the others?
There are limitations on what is socially acceptable to know about your neighbor—or intimate friends. Listening at doors is strongly discouraged and oftentimes we find out what we least want to know. Knowledge implicates.
But the myth is also about escape—the longing and yearning that man has to escape from the known; to escape from his constrained environment; to flee confinement. If we know too much about a thing, it becomes psychologically repressive and burdensome, so that we yearn to forget, to escape the past. Mazes appear in nightmares, the symbols of anxiety, of confusion and of being trapped into dark places of psychological torture. Few dreams are as terrifying as those of wandering through a maze of halls in dim lighting, searching frantically for the exit, but not finding it. Read Kafka if you want to drive yourself crazy. Take up an issue regarding Freedom of Information if you want to find out the frustrations of government bureaucracy. Just try to de-classify a document.
For Daedalus, escape was imperative. His plan was risky, fraught with dangers because his materials, he knew were faulty. Wax melts and no one had ever recorded a successful flight before. There were too many what-ifs, but his situation was desperate. So often we read the story thinking, how clever an inventor without considering the extremity of his despair. What kind of person risks his life with a contraption of wax and feathers? Surely with all the materials available, he could have made something more reliable like Leonardi's invention. But, he risked it all, including his son who didn't have the intelligence to keep out of the sun—and thereby lost his most treasured possession.
And indeed, there must be terrible trade-offs and compromises for those who try to escape their own knowledge whether scientists, war criminals, soldiers suffering from combat fatigue or spies-- Certain things do catch up with a man, even if he is a president. It's virtually impossible for man to transform himself into a bird; how do you sort out all the lies? Imagine trying to live two parallel lives with one side of the face never admitting its existence to the other. How can a person forget his past or re-invent himself as an altogether different animal? What does a spy do when he retires? Sits on the front porch writing acrostics and inventing stories of wars he never fought or paper-chases that he never ran?
So many questions are raised by this myth regarding man's nightmares forcing him to flight and seek his place among the stars.
I hope after reading my findings you will be able to apply these to the play and then realize or that weird and wonderful stuff is makes a little more sense.
Oedipus Factor
Apart from the obviously significant religious message that "you can't escape your fate" it's important to realise :
1. Oedipus wasn't as innocent under Greek law as he might appear under English or Roman : (non est actus reus nisi mens sit rea - there is no guilty act without a guilty mind). To the Greeks the act counted, not the motive.
2. The murder of Laius wasn't a crime per se - in fact it was any Greek's duty to harm his enemies (as well as helping his friends). And as far as he knew at the time Laius was an enemy - by insulting Oedipus he had made himself one.
3. Family was everything in Greek culture. (Compare the Godfather films of Francis Ford Coppola to get the flavour of the intensity of family feeling.) Thus the worst conceivable crime was to kill one's father; the second worst was to sleep with one's mother. (More than just an incest taboo is involved here.) No Greek could imagine a worse 'double' than Oedipus'. Mass murder as in Dunblane or a serial killer such as Fred West would have been far less abhorrent. Modern cult use of the word 'motherfucker' could only happen in a culture where the power of the family is waning fast.
4. Oedipus - the greatest of men, the solver of riddles - can only solve the riddle of his own origins by revealing a truth too awful to bear.
5. The power of the curse - Oedipus, having cursed the murderer of Laius - feels he must carry out the sentence on himself.
Freud's famous 'Oedipus complex' may or may not make sense to psychologists, but it has no bearing on understanding the myth.(It is based on Jocasta's remark to her husband that many men have dreamed about sleeping with their mothers. But in any case, Oedipus did not intend his actions - and thus felt no desire for his mother.
My own feeling about the story is that Oedipus is an inspiration for mankind: he must find out the truth at whatever cost, and then accept the full responsibility for the knowledge he has discovered. Knowledge + pain is better than Ignorance + bliss.
Oedipus is thus the patron saint of philosophers, scientists, poets and artists – of all truth seekers. Bit like Mulder and Scully in the X-Files, Oedipus knows the ‘truth is out there’ but unlike them doesn’t expect his eyesight restored for the next episode.
Daedalus and Icarus
Just as the pigeon tries to imitate the hummingbird at the feeder, so man yearns to fly. In dreams, flying is symbolic of our wish to attain the unimaginable heights of our abilities—to rise above human clumsiness and the mundane to take wing to heavenly achievements. Flight symbolizes our deepest yearning to succeed, to overcome or weakness and to be unfettered by human frailty.
Daedalus was an inventor who created the subterranean maze for King Minos of Crete. Every year the maidens of Athens were sacrificed to the bull that lived beneath the island palace. The maze was created as a means of fortification to the island so that invading militia would be trapped and confused. Similarly, the fortress at Terezin, built during the Napoleonic Wars, also has an underground maze which was designed to trap the invaders and confuse them.
However, Daedalus became trapped by his own trap, the snake biting back on its own tail. How ? Why? He became caught like the spy who has learned too much. As the designer of the maze, he was not trusted by Minos not to reveal the secret. Knowledge frees us, but if we learn too much, it also traps us, making us victims of our own understanding. Where do old CIA spies go? How does a spy tell his wife that for twenty years he lived a lie? True some intelligence officers do make fine novelists: Ian Fleming and Le Carre; but what happens to all the others?
There are limitations on what is socially acceptable to know about your neighbor—or intimate friends. Listening at doors is strongly discouraged and oftentimes we find out what we least want to know. Knowledge implicates.
But the myth is also about escape—the longing and yearning that man has to escape from the known; to escape from his constrained environment; to flee confinement. If we know too much about a thing, it becomes psychologically repressive and burdensome, so that we yearn to forget, to escape the past. Mazes appear in nightmares, the symbols of anxiety, of confusion and of being trapped into dark places of psychological torture. Few dreams are as terrifying as those of wandering through a maze of halls in dim lighting, searching frantically for the exit, but not finding it. Read Kafka if you want to drive yourself crazy. Take up an issue regarding Freedom of Information if you want to find out the frustrations of government bureaucracy. Just try to de-classify a document.
For Daedalus, escape was imperative. His plan was risky, fraught with dangers because his materials, he knew were faulty. Wax melts and no one had ever recorded a successful flight before. There were too many what-ifs, but his situation was desperate. So often we read the story thinking, how clever an inventor without considering the extremity of his despair. What kind of person risks his life with a contraption of wax and feathers? Surely with all the materials available, he could have made something more reliable like Leonardi's invention. But, he risked it all, including his son who didn't have the intelligence to keep out of the sun—and thereby lost his most treasured possession.
And indeed, there must be terrible trade-offs and compromises for those who try to escape their own knowledge whether scientists, war criminals, soldiers suffering from combat fatigue or spies-- Certain things do catch up with a man, even if he is a president. It's virtually impossible for man to transform himself into a bird; how do you sort out all the lies? Imagine trying to live two parallel lives with one side of the face never admitting its existence to the other. How can a person forget his past or re-invent himself as an altogether different animal? What does a spy do when he retires? Sits on the front porch writing acrostics and inventing stories of wars he never fought or paper-chases that he never ran?
So many questions are raised by this myth regarding man's nightmares forcing him to flight and seek his place among the stars.
I hope after reading my findings you will be able to apply these to the play and then realize or that weird and wonderful stuff is makes a little more sense.
posted by Dave at 6:10 pm
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