Danial's

Full of Sound & Fury

To stand before the authority on future events in one’s life must be an awesome experience, more so if one’s fate were pronounced as being irrevocably sealed, condemning one to failure and doom, with no possibility of salvation. It is conceivable to speculate as to what might have been the outcome in the tragedy of Oedipus if at the outset the Oracle could have been differently interpreted, its advice ignored or taken in any selective manner - at, say, particular junctures not necessarily in the same way as is commonly recounted. Oedipus, the suggestible youth, might still have attempted murder of one parent and incest with the other only so that as a mature man, taking heed of the prophecy (perhaps, in accordance with the text, once it was disclosed to him), he would be driven to make himself faceless in revulsion at his own deeds, or in order to seem unknowing, to feign inconspicuousness. One could take out the prophecy altogether, focus on the mind of Oedipus as the epicentre of filial trepidations. One could imagine the actual, concrete problem to be the existence of irreconcilable differences between the parents who would be participating in driving their son over a precipice with a forcefulness he could not help but be conquered by. Oedipus, running away from a fading reality, stumbling on the surreal world of parental disaffection and estrangement, then wishing to establish himself as present – having hitherto been absent, and feeling the urge to do so through the sort of knowledge by which riddles are solved, by comprehending and resolving a conflict that was really out of his hands to mediate, would indeed be running a risk of being doomed to a heartrendingly tragic defeat. His choice of method of mediation would be determined by external forces. When you are caught in the middle of an argument of which neither side is comprehensible or agreeable, you may decide to remove one opponent and appease the other, though you still have to see the conflict through if the whole exercise is to make any sense at all. Thus Oedipus might somehow remove the more fearsome, less comprehensible parent figure, but this would only lead him to identify with the same, to replace the parent he caused to be stranded in the past, and to reclaim the status quo which was so plausibly renounced only to be reinstated and understood once and for all in the present. The only alternative would consist in his retreating into a hiatus and yearning to be reborn in a new, tension-free state of bodily and mental bliss. The Oracle’s prophecies are invariably fulfilled. Life, considered as a unique experience, as an existence lived and looked at by an individual, even if multiplied, is but a tragic circumstance in space. Religions proclaim the possibility of salvation for the soul, and their proclamations ultimately ring hollow. Salvation does seem meaningless if there are precise instructions on how it is to be attained. For timeless spiritual unity to come about, it must come as a free gift for all, unannounced, surprising as well by its being shared in an equitable fashion among all, as by the fact of its having always remained and continuing to remain outside the scope of speech. It is contrary to death, the common tragic fate of us all. Death is foretold, reported, discussed, forestalled as much as possible, explored as a process and imagined in its finality or as a metaphor. Yet it surrounds us, not as fulfillment, not even as judgment, but, as the finale to the unique experience of the individual, in utter isolation. Only in this way does it become death, absorbed and absorbing, but outwardly remaining the other’s experience. As far as we know, “there is no such thing as a natural death.”

posted by Danial @ 21:40