Another penny drops

“In Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, the sphinx is a chimerical imagistic figure who poses a riddle to whomever chances upon her at the crossroads to Thebes. If her riddle is answered (by a correct interpretation), she dies, her death signaling the termination of an imprisoning unconscious phantasy, one that was presented as if by pantomime or even charades so as to induce a correct (verbal) interpretation to end the siege of omnipotent preverbal images who all the while are hoping that we have the answer that can free them from the parts they were forced to play. In other words, the unconscious contains a numinous dramaturge who directs different phantoms to play different roles in pantomime until someone "gets it."” (James S. Grotstein)

For many years I lived with the feeling of being “on the threshold”. For many other years (or were they the same ones?) my catch phrase was “I suddenly realised”. Practically everything I felt compelled to write down in my electronic or paper notebooks and diaries started with “ISR”, until the repetition felt comical. At the moment I am in a phase where I keep getting the feeling that I’m somehow “getting it”, getting glimpses of what I’m ‘really’ like, of my particular brand of excentricity.

Concrete example: I was trying to translate the French verb “troubler” into English, and rememberered the title of Musil’s novel Torless in French is “les désarrois de l’élève Torless” and thought aha, désarroi in English is what I need, “troubler” means “to cause “désarroi” - I’ll just google the book and find the English title – Young Torless – no, that’s the film, here it is – the Confusions of Young Torless.

Now, that book is a milestone in my mental landscape because it said something I found essential. Torless plucks up the courage to confront his maths teacher, to ask the burning question, what is it all about, what is there “behind” maths, and the maths teacher admits that he does not know and does not care. That’s what I remember about the book. That vital moment when the pupil asks the teacher what it’s all about and the teacher says don’t waste my time just do what you’re told. Imagine my surprise – nay, astonishment - as I read the google results and learn that the book is about sadism, homoeroticism… all lost on me. I read every word and the only thing I remembered was that abstract intellectualism is the atheist’s equivalent to blind faith.

I think my epistomephilic drive must have gone somehow haywire at a young age to protect me from emotional chaos. I am ready to admit now that I have great difficulty coping with emotions.