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Arts & Communication The riddle of the sphinx revisited

entire canvas is marked by extreme horizontality. The modern Western sense of meaningfulness fail to inspire
intimate caress of the androgyne and the sphinx suggests an Anthropocene morality, which will have to be based
that Khnopff believed that he had reached the level at which on an explicit awe for our mesocosmic relationality (the
the mind is in balance with matter, ethics are in sync with field of complex interactions in the Critical Zone in
esthetics, the paint is fully inhabited by divine knowledge, between our inner selves and the universe at large). As we
and the original Edenic condition has been restored. If this are fundamentally mesocosmic creatures and co-creators
is a valid reading, it is a tragic one. For it would mean that of the Critical Zone, a layer in between (meso) the inner
Caresses reintroduces an ancient Oedipal self-assuredness Earth and outer space, we need to find the meaning of life
in the theme. In a way, it would be undoing the Symbolist in striving for the best possible Critical Zone interactions.
experiment by stating that its final goal has been arrived In Facing Gaia, Latour 32(p[277]]) calls the story of the
at. Or, as in Khnopff’s motto On n’a que soi: “One only has Anthropocene “a truly Oedipal myth.” Latour does not
oneself.” 29(p25) Once again, a hero has claimed it was all done refer to the riddle-solving hero, a universal incestuous
by “his mind alone.” drive, or a tension between desires and socially acceptable
A similar kind of arrogance was characteristic of conduct. He rather refers to a sustained and even cultivated
Péladan as well. His seemingly unshakeable self-esteem blindness for one’s actions. Latour 32(p[277]]) calls this our core
was part of his charm to his Parisian audience, but it also challenge as dwellers of the Anthropocene, for “unlike
facilitated his rapid downfall. Paris quickly grew tired of Oedipus, who was blind to his own actions for so long,
him; the 1896 edition of the art salon was no success, and as we face the revelation of past errors, we must resist the
the last edition in 1897 was canceled before the opening. temptation to blind ourselves anew: We must agree to look
Péladan’s status collapsed, never to be restored, and in at them head-on, to be able to face what is coming toward
1918, he died as a ridiculed and broken man. 27 us with our eyes wide open.”
Péladan’s tragic case is indicative of esotericism in 6. Finding inspiration in Caresses: Three
general. The guru trap is wide open for all who think that Anthropocene Oedipus complexes
their personal greatness makes it easy to solve the riddle
of finding an alternative morality or meaningfulness. One of the wonderful things about Caresses is that, even
Madame Blavatsky’s self-image as the one portal to a after describing it in terms of obstacles to an Anthropocene
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long-lost primordial wisdom, Henry Steele Olcott’s road morality, it can just as well be read as offering relevant
shows in which he proclaimed himself to be an enlightened inspiration for a possible Anthropocene morality based on
Buddhist master, 30(p[100]]) or Péladan parading in Paris under an ecological awareness of our relational nature.
his mystic title Sâr Merodak, are just a few of the more We could, for instance, imagine that Caresses depicts the
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infamous examples. A similar trap was set for the new moment in which Oedipus has solved another riddle of the
artists, like Khnopff, all too readily thinking they could take sphinx – not the antique riddle nor an esoteric version of it,
over the role of traditional priests or meditation teachers, but an Anthropocene riddle that arose in Khnopff’s days,
as if making a mysterious work of art could replace the even though it was not heard yet. We could even imagine (as
hard, complex, confusing, and lifelong work of individual is usually the case with Symbolist paintings) that the entire
and communal moral self-transformation. painting itself is a sphinx, ambushing passing-by spectators
Apart from the pedantry, another factor of the failure and threatening them with its riddle: “What do you make
is that, in spite of its rhetoric, the esoteric alternative is of this?” With “this” being the painting but also our current
simply not alternative enough. It offers little more than a Anthropocene condition. The stakes are just as high as in the
mirror image of the official rational Western self-image. By antique myth, as the question is indeed a matter of life and
and large, they are built on the same “Axial” blueprint on death in the most literal sense. For without a proper answer,
which most of our traditional philosophies and religions we will perish. We could also imagine (as is usually the case
are based. This Axial blueprint roughly boils down to with Oedipus and the Sphinx) that this time too, the answer is
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looking for meaningfulness in the privileged (rational or “the human being,” and that this is what Caresses conveys: the
esoteric) link between one’s personal “true” inner self and painting asks us to think about what “being human” means in
a universal absolute truth. In this micro-macrocosmic our Anthropocene days, and that – just like the oldest depiction
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matrix, to which Schuré, for instance, referred above, the of the theme (Figure 2) – Caresses offers a number of clues for
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Critical Zone is not considered a field of meaningfulness imagining an ideal Anthropocene human being. I will discuss
in itself. It merely serves as a background against which these clues in terms of three alternative Oedipus complexes.
the real story of humanity’s itinerary to transcendent The Freudian Oedipus complex served to disentangle
perfection unfolds. Both the official and the esoteric intimate relations: notably, mother-child relations should
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Volume 3 Issue 3 (2025) 8 doi: 10.36922/ac.5868