The Riddle of the Sphinx (a Postcard from Ulysses to Telemachus)
When I was a boy, my father told me the story of Oedipus and the Sphinx. He probably told it to you as well. I have realized something important about that story, Telemachus: it fails to convey the tone of the answer to the riddle. The Sphinx asked each contender, “What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, then three legs in the evening?” Do you really think the greatness of Oedipus lay in his knowing the ostensive answer? Any yapping puzzle hound could have gotten it, any bloodless thought monger, any squinting bean counter. But they would have stood on the meniscus of the fundamental fluid of Life, a surface created in part by the tension of words and their logic. It took Oedipus to break through that flimsy skin, plunging toward a groundless ground. He stood tall, and with a tone of tragicomedy replied, “We do that . . . we humans . . .” The Sphinx devoured anyone who did not see that they were already devoured. When Oedipus answered, the Sphinx threw itself off the cliff–laughing.