The Irrational

Sphinx Triumphant on Tomb Marker
This shows the Triumph of the Sphinx – her cruel and irrational power over human life, one of the key themes in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. She was often represented on the tombs of young men, as here. She is the most formidable enemy Oedipus has to face at Thebes.

An archetype such as this is central to the tragic vision of not only the Greek dramatists but also that of Shakespeare and Webster and their contemporaries. And it persists – you will find it equally in Jung’s thinking about the forces of the Irrational – (‘Once the Unconscious touches you, you are it.’ ), as in the figure of Tiresias, still a prophet as he was in Oedipus Rex, still haunting the scenes of human failure in Eliot’s Waste Land

And I Tiresias have foresuffered all… I who have sat at Thebes below the wall / And walked among the lowest of the dead.