Riddle – The Envious Lobster

Answer to Guess Whom

Author unknown

Annotations by Celia hawley

Marsden Hartley. *Yliaster (Paracelsus)*. Oil on paperboard mounted on particleboard, 1932, Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Did you suppose, Madam Water, that I should not find out who you were? The very noise and uproar you make about yourself, is so characteristic, that it betrays you. Your fondness for display is quite inexcusable. It is seldom you take a step without making all around you hear of it. For myself, I delight to work secretly; and it is only when I am enraged by our frivolous sister, the Wind, that I openly rise in my might, and terrify the world.

You talk, as if you one had claims to majesty and beauty, but yourself. You never visited me in my deep, glowing, palaces, under Vesuvius and Ӕtna,—how then can you judge of my splendour? Travellers come from all parts of the world to look at my flaming brow, as I rise from the mountains, and make the earth quake around me; ask them if there is not beauty as well as sublimity in my upward motion? Iceland is my favourite retreat. Some say my father is buried there, and that he still heaves the island, by blowing his coals and working at his anvil. That is all a fable; but I love to stay there, just to show you how little I care for the most freezing reception you can give me. In that cold, northern region, wrapped up in your stiff dignity, it amuses me to see how quick you spit forth your indignation in boiling geysers, whenever I breathe upon you. If I were you, I would cultivate a better temper, before I boasted of my placid face, and a figure as flexile as the sister Graces. I regret being employed in such drudgery by man, as well as you; especially as we are generally obliged to do their work by fighting together.

I love to caper on Vesuvius; to gallop about among the clouds; to roar and roll under the islands, sometimes throwing them out of the ocean, from the hollow of my burning hand, and sometimes dragging them down to my caverns, with a might that makes the world tremble; but I do not love to struggle with you, in the slavery of distilleries and steam-boats.

But though lordly man forces all the elements into his use, he cannot prevent their sometimes rising beyond his power. When we do o’ermaster him I think you are about as much to be dreaded as I am. If you again are to claim superiority to me in that, or any other respect, I shall be as mad as

Fire.

Author Unknown. “Answer to guess whom.” The Juvenile Miscellany 4, no. 3 (July 1828): 367-69.

Contexts

To Americans in the 1930s, Mexico represented an ancient and deeply spiritual civilization much different than their own industrial one. Artists and writers visited and returned excited by the myths and rituals that permeated the everyday lives of Mexican people. Marsden Hartley, whose painting begins this page, made the trip in 1932 and returned interested in Aztec art’s landscapes and surviving remnants, as explained by the Smithsonian’s gallery label.

This page gives a brief overview of the four elements according to ancient Greeks and some present understandings and experiments.

Resources for Further Study

A brief article with illustrations introduces how geysers work.
The Encyclopedia Brittanica has a brief biography of Marsden Hartley
The Art Story has more information about Marsden Hartley’s work.

Contemporary Connections

This article gives an overview of the currently active volcanoes in Italy.
There are several good resources here for learning about Mt. Vesuvius and Mt. Etna, named “decade volcanoes” by the Deep Carbon Observatory for their activity and impact.

Œdipus and the Sphinx^[1]

By Sophocles. Translated By Alfred J. Church. Edited by Logan Marshall

Annotations by Ian McLAughlin

It befell in times past that the gods, being angry with the inhabitants of Thebes^[2], sent into their land a very troublesome beast which men called the Sphinx.^[3] Now this beast had the face and breast of a fair woman, but the feet and claws of a lion; and it was wont to ask a riddle of such as encountered it, and such as answered not aright it would tear and devour.

When it had laid waste the land many days, there chanced to come to Thebes one Œdipus, who had fled from the city of Corinth that he might escape the doom which the gods had spoken against him. And the men of the place told him of the Sphinx, how she cruelly devoured the people, and that he who should deliver them from her should have the kingdom. So Œdipus, being very bold, and also ready of wit, went forth to meet the monster. And when she saw him she spake, saying:

“Read me this riddle right, or die:
What liveth there beneath the sky,
Four-footed creature that doth choose
Now three feet and now twain to use,
And still more feebly o’er the plain
Walketh with three feet than with twain?”

And Œdipus made reply:

“‘Tis man, who in life’s early day
Four-footed crawleth on his way;
When time hath made his strength complete,
Upright his form and twain his feet;
When age hath bound him to the ground
A third foot in his staff is found.”

And when the Sphinx found that her riddle was answered she cast herself from a high rock and perished.

As a reward Œdipus received the great kingdom of Thebes and the hand of the widowed queen Jocasta in marriage. Four children were born to them—two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, and two daughters, Antigone^[4] and Ismené.

Old Woman With Shawl and a Walking-stick – Van Gogh

Now the gods had decreed that Œdipus should murder his own father and marry his own mother, and by a curious chance this was precisely what he had done. As a baby he had been left to die lest he should live to fulfil the doom, but had been rescued by an old shepherd and brought up at the court of Corinth^[5]. Fleeing from there that he might not murder him whom he believed to be his father, he had come to Thebes, and on the way had met Laius, his true father, the king, and killed him.

While he remained ignorant of the facts Œdipus was very happy and reigned in great power and glory; but when pestilence fell upon the land and he discovered the truth of the almost forgotten oracle^[6], he was very miserable, and in the madness of grief put out his own eyes.

Marshall, Logan., ED. trans. MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF all nations. philidelphia Pa: John c. winston company, 1914. http://gutenberg.readingroo.ms/2/0/7/4/20740/20740-h/20740-h.htm.

[1] This story is from Sophocles’ play “Œdipus Rex”, the first of three plays about Œdipus.

[2] Thebes (Thiva) is a city in modern-day Boeotia, central Greece. It is central in many Greek myths, including Heracles and Dionysus.

[3] Egyptian sphinxes feature male human heads and wingless bodies, while Greek sphinxes feature female heads and wings (OED).

[4] Antigone lends her name to the title of the final play in the Œdipus cycle.

[5] Famous as the recipient of Biblical letters from the Apostle Paul, Corinth is a city in south-central Greece on the Isthmus of Corinth.

[6] Oracles are instruments, agencies, or mediums which act as the mouthpiece for a god. The world also refers to the places that house such people or things, or pronouncements of them (OED).