THE DEEP ONES: "The House of the Sphinx" by Lord Dunsany

"The House of the Sphinx" by Lord Dunsany

Discussion begins January 14.

First published in The Book of Wonder: A Chronicle of Little Adventures at the Edge of the World (1912).



ONLINE VERSIONS

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7477/7477-h/7477-h.htm#THE_HOUSE_OF_THE_SPHINX
http://www.sff.net/people/DoyleMacdonald/d_sphinx.htm

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?63032

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

The Book of Wonder
Time and the Gods
Over the Hills and Far Away

MISCELLANY

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mutantskeleton/sets/72157626901297092/detail/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Plunkett,_18th_Baron_of_Dunsany
http://greatsfandf.com/AUTHORS/LordDunsany.php
http://tinyurl.com/ouwew8q

Boy, they really knew how to sell a book by its cover in 1912, didn't they?

I'll be reading from a cover-less paperback of Over the Hills and Far Away.

I'll be reading from Time and the Gods (the omnibus edition published in the UK by Gollancz in their "Fantasy Masterworks" series).

Boy, it sure seemed like it must be an allegory when I read it this time. Is the Sphinx perhaps an actual madwoman of Dunsany's acquaintance? (Surely she is not the author Ada Leverson, nicknamed "Sphinx" by Oscar Wilde.)

The persistent feeling of not getting the riddle is very Sphinx-ish, of course.

The forest from which the narrator has come (and to which he returns) reminds me of the wood at the opening of both the Divine Comedy and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. In my studies on the latter, I proposed that "The dark forest at the beginning of Poliphilo’s dream is not a mnemonic locus; it is the silva, a trackless confusion representing the untrained memory, from which he eventually emerges." Some scholarship suggests that the same reading may apply to Dante.

>4 paradoxosalpha:

An allegory, for certain. I think the tale itself is the Sphinx.

I especially enjoyed the surrealistic imagery toward the end. First when the narrator seeks to escape out the back door, but not before he has to climb "from tower to tower till I found the door that I sought; and it opened on to one of the upper branches of a huge and sombre pine, down which I climbed on to the floor of the forest." Not as simple as escape as one would think!

Also in the last paragraph when the Sphinx seems to travel down to go up, climbing "horribly from abyss to abyss, came at last to higher things, and is wise and eternal still."

I'm reminded of Cocteau's films, not to mention Escher drawings.

And "the deed"? At the end, it is said that perhaps she "gazes at the deed," which seems to resolve the ambiguity for me in favor of the idea that "the deed" is in fact a contractual document rather than simply a thing done for which there is a consequence.

I'd never read this before, but agree it scans like allegory. I love Dunsany's way of writing of them: what cloak could disguise a deed, a deed completed that is, and not currently attempted? And that the Sphinx and Time would beget children which become the formers gods.

I would not have thought of the forest as "untrained memory" but it is very appealing, and the mouldering doors then an unavoidable result: memories and perhaps even impressions / speculations will appear, without any recourse or defense against them. But to pursue that reading, I wonder what then is a door that the narrator can leave by? It is a high door, and yet leads directly back to the wood.

>7 paradoxosalpha:

Hey - you could be right! The first time I read the story the "deed" really threw me off. The second time through, I ignored it and got through a little easier. After reading your theory, I copied the text into a Word doc and searched for "deed". Every instance could be interpreted as though the deed is in fact a piece of paper.

So, the line "I saw at once that there had been a deed, although a cloak did all that a cloak may do to conceal it" means that there is in fact someone's cloak only partially concealing the deed/document, be it on a table or tacked to a wall! Tricky!

>8 elenchus: But to pursue that reading, I wonder what then is a door that the narrator can leave by?

Well, to pursue that reading, forgetting? That also fits with the need to descend back into the wood from a consciousness figured in the towers.

I think the story is impressive in that it reads like both allegory and dream. (And I am not one of those who thinks that the two are interchangeable, although their points of intersection are important.) And the dream really has the flavor of nightmare -- one of those where it's not obvious why it's scary, but the dreamer is deeply frightened all the same.

I thought of forgetting, too -- though it's an interesting thing, to deliberately forget something, after the manner he seeks out and uses a door. I suppose there are readings of that: carelessness, substance abuse, reckless behavior. Things we do when we're avoiding a bad emotional memory.

But all of that put me in mind of another thing you brought up: consciousness, and how memory links to that, and what the forest would be in that sense, and how the feared "something" that the Sphinx prophesied would visit -- how that something visits, when it is consciousness that is under discussion. I really think the blend of dream and allegory, and memory and consciousness, is at the heart of it all.

Very reminiscent of Borges for me. But not yet clear on the model of Mind that Dunsany is allegorizing.

I confess that I found this tale to be utterly inscrutable - a riddle without a solution. If Dunsany's goal here was to create confusion in the mind of the reader, he certainly succeeded with me (to be fair, that does kind of seem to be the point)!

>7 paradoxosalpha:

No, I don't think that's correct. Consider the following sentence from the tale:

It appeared that they had slapped the Sphinx to vex her out of her apathy in order that she should pray to one of her gods, whom she had littered in the house of Time; but her moody silence was invincible, and her apathy Oriental, ever since the deed had happened.

One would not say that a deed in the sense of "a contractual document" happened, but one might very well say that a deed in the sense of "a thing done; an action or performance" happened. That's my reading of it, anyway.

>12 artturnerjr:

Art - technically correct, but I can accept that the contractual deed "happened" to those affected. Unless it's simply a different kind of "deed" in this instance. :-)

I definitely agree with you on the inscrutable nature of this tale. I really wonder as to Dunsany's intent!

From Wikipedia:

Lord Dunsany employed the talents of Sidney Sime to illustrate his fantasy short story collections, but The Book of Wonder is unique in that Sydney Sime drew the illustrations first, and Lord Dunsany wrote the tales around them:

'I found Mr Sime one day, in his strange house at Worplesdon, complaining that editors did not offer him very suitable subjects for illustration; so I said: "Why not do any pictures you like, and I will write stories explaining them, which may add a little to their mystery?"'1

CORRECTION: The quote is not from Joshi & Schwietzer's Lord Dunsany: A Bibliography, I misread the Wikipedia entry. It's from Simon Heneage & Henry Ford's "Sidney Sime - Master of the Mysterious", Thames and Hudson, 24 ISBN 0-500-27154-2 (1980). But still not clear where they derived that quote, presumably not from their own interview!

What is the illustration for this story, I wonder. I don't have time at present, but found an online gallery which may answer that question:
http://www.sidneysimegallery.org.uk/

>14 elenchus:

Here it is:



So the deed would appear to be a murder! I was wondering about that.

It's almost certainly that one, yes.

And with this explanation of the authorial process, I think I can dismiss the idea that the story is an allegory, no matter how much it feels like one.

Using the picture as a reference now, I suspect that the "deed" was in fact murder, and the corpse lies under the cloak. Thus it can be said to have "happened," and the Sphinx can also "gaze at the deed."

Perhaps not strictly an allegory, but I trust Lord Dunsany's imagination to come up with something as provocative and meaningful even within the strictures of a ready-made picture.

My work internet connection is blocking the illustration for now; I am very curious to see it once I get home.

Read this ones only a few years ago, but I'd forgotten it just about completely.

I took "deed" to refer sometimes to an action, sometimes elliptically to the result of that action - a corpse, say. The notion that an arch-inquisitor is out to avenge surely implies that the deed is a crime or sin.

Since we've discussed Dunsany's apparent attitudes to religion, note the curiosity of praying to gods with whom one has littered. How benevolent, and how powerful, is a god one has treated so likely to be? Is the denizens' hope in the gods as misplaced as theirs in the door?

ETA: Whoa, you guys are fast. There were only 12 posts in this thread when I started typing this!

>14 elenchus:

That the story was based upon the picture does shed more light on things!

Wonder if arch-inquisitor is not the Sphinx's conscience. Regardless of any other retribution, it's a suitable threat and fits in with the dream / consciousness / memory interpretation (which, dammit, I'm not ready to give up on quite yet).

I can see the final paragraph of the story in the picture: The abyss that yawns beneath the ladder, and the stairway that leads to higher things.

Not much to add... I note that, based on Sime's picture the Sphinx is a real sphinx (look at those talons!). And I wonder if referring to the dead body as "the deed" - referring to a murder victim as "the murder" - is an example of a specific rhetorical figure (no doubt with a Greek name) that Dunsany would have learned at school: one of the benefits of a classical education.

>23 housefulofpaper:

In some ways your description fits synecdoche, which properly speaking is taking the part for the whole. Such as "all hands on deck" by which is meant the sailors, whose hands are needed.

Seeing the illustration, now I'm home, Sime's original vision seems fairly allegoric itself. Whether or not he shared any of his inspiration with Dunsany, it helps explain the allegorical feel of Dunsany's description, though certainly there is a lot in the tale that isn't depicted by Sime.

>25 elenchus:

A feature that's in the picture but not the tale is the chain binding the sphinx's left wrist. Wouldn't that hinder any flight on her part? Or is it already broken - we don't see if it's actually attached to something.

And the implements on the floor in front of the Sphinx - a knife and a...pliers? Or is that a nutcracker? And what made those chicken-like footprints? Torture-killing by homicidal fowl-demon, anyone?

Seriously though, this has been a very interesting discussion!

>27 semdetenebre:

I wondered about the 'footprints', seeing them rather as implements themselves, and wondering what exactly they could be. It's tempting to think of them as tools of torture, but also wonder if they match anything used in rituals, like alchemy or Freemasonry.

The open book (ledger? note the quill and inkpot) above the Sphinx is very prominent in the picture, but doesn't appear in the story. I wonder.

Other portentous elements in the image missing in the text include the broken window of stained glass and the strongbox on the ledge over the door.

>28 elenchus:

Yes - the "footprints" could even be some kind of runes, either etched in or maybe they're small sticks laid together.

>29 paradoxosalpha:

And what appears to be some kind of organic matter spilling down the steps?

>19 AndreasJ: Since we've discussed Dunsany's apparent attitudes to religion, note the curiosity of praying to gods with whom one has littered. How benevolent, and how powerful, is a god one has treated so likely to be? Is the denizens' hope in the gods as misplaced as theirs in the door?

Well, the Sphinx isn't at all inclined to worship any of the beings that she has whelped. It's the others who think that she ought to, evidently not understanding her position antecedent and superior to the gods.

I realised this story put me in mind of another one, one of Kafka's parables, barely a page long.

http://www.kafka-online.info/an-imperial-message.html

The point of resonance for me is the idea that each can be read allegorically as an understanding of a person's Mind or Self, as the person interacts with the world or others in it. And perhaps, also, the nature of the person's link to another world, and how that is understood (or not) by the person. I don't believe either story is simply an allegory, since so much remains inscrutable. But the overall pleasure of thinking about these ideas, I derive from both.

>27 semdetenebre:

Torture-killing by homicidal fowl-demon, anyone?

Oh, man. That's the worst.

>33 artturnerjr:

It has been known to happen:

http://www.dvddrive-in.com/reviews/a-d/bloodfreak71721973.htm

can someone please help me out and explain what exactly the story is about? Just briefly pleaseee!!

can someone please briefly explain to me what the story is about?

I suspect that the evanescent elizaa12 was here trying to fulfill a school assignment.