Theseus vs. the Minotaur in political labyrinths
Ana Paula Arendt- há 2 horas
- 12 min de leitura
Theseus vs. the Minotaur in political labyrinths
Ana Paula Arendt*
“The man who does not read has no advantage
over that man who cannot read”.
Mark Twain
Most of my readers are probably familiar with the myth of the Minotaur's labyrinth, one of the richest legends of Antiquity. For those who haven't read it yet, the Greek legend that made Theseus a hero should not be confused with the Greek legend that made Perseus a hero. This one, the protagonist of the Argonauts, is the husband of Medea, a jealous, vengeful and complicated woman. Theseus, on the other hand, is the love of Ariadne, a more idealistic and romantic girl, the daughter of the King. This is how the heroes of Antiquity are distinguished: more by the women they love than by their names or specific virtues.
Well, back to the story: there are several versions. One of them: there was a labyrinth in Knossos, on the Greek island of Crete, near the palace of King Minos. The labyrinth was built by the king to house Asterius, a being with the head of a bull and the body of a man. Asterius was the son of an Oceanid Greek goddess and a white bull. How did this happen? Well, King Minos had made a promise to Aphrodite, or to the gods, to sacrifice a white bull if he were confirmed on the throne of that island, as he was in conflict with his brothers over the succession. He managed to be confirmed in the position. However, overcome with admiration for such a beautiful, white bull, he did not have the courage to fulfill the promise. As punishment, Aphrodite ordered the Oceanid goddess, daughter of Poseidon, to hide in a wooden bull and copulate with the white bull: thus the Minotaur was born. After all, King Minos took the Minotaur as his son, by Aphrodite's will. His son, however, was a monstrous being who brought problems: he devoured virgin girls and boys and killed them; he was insatiable. That is why King Minos ordered the construction of a labyrinth to hide him, so that the young men and women would not die inadvertently at the hands of the monster. With a labyrinth, it would be more difficult to find him, and it would also be difficult for the Minotaur to escape the labyrinth, thus preserving Knossos. To remain in office, a king must act to preserve his subjects, the city.
Of course, every Greek legend has an enormous wealth of meanings that go beyond the images narrated. In fact, we may be talking about a powerful man who, vain and too attached to himself, to his animal instincts and his sexual performance, began to idolize his unbridled sexual desires. The bull was an offering to the gods, it was placed on the altar before being sacrificed, and the animal thus represents the sexual impulse, something that must be sacrificed to a divine purpose, to the domain of the reason that distinguishes man. And, at the same time, the sexual impulse would be the fruit of his chastity: since the bull is white and pure. The result of all this is a strange being, who thinks like an animal but has the body of a man. So, let's say, the girls are attracted to the king, the powerful politician, who engenders an irrepressible sexual impulse in his chastity; so that he can turn to carnal intercourse with them. He has the mind of an animal, he gives in to desire. But when the girls surrender themselves into the hands of the powerful man, they are devoured and killed – then, after satisfying his instincts, he is no longer interested in them, and moves on to the next victim. He needs more and more young women. Or men.
King Minos begins to demand that a certain number young human beings, young men and women, be sent every year to satisfy the Minotaur's appetite in his labyrinth. Well... It is, let's say, the psychoanalytic representation of the power drive, of the man with predatory sexual behavior, of the man who, in order to remain in power, feeds on the naivety of young people, and who seeks various subterfuges - the labyrinth - to hide his cruelty and predatory nature from society and from himself. As for the annual sacrifices that he then decrees... If he did not create decrees to institutionally satisfy his animal instincts, he would lose his throne. The staging of power with victims in human sacrifices is necessary for an inhumane king who is irrational and guided by instincts, in order to maintain the throne. Otherwise, people would not be afraid and would come to depose him for his idiosyncrasies, preferring a ruler who valued human attributes, rationality and thoughtfulness.
But then Theseus, our hero, wants to defeat the Minotaur. In the third year of sacrificing innocent young people, he can no longer bear to see it. He has his own reasons, not just fame: the hero is the human being who keeps human virtues within him, who is revolted by the sacrifices of innocent people, by the unreasonableness: he is a complete human being. And he decides to invest himself with these virtues, assuming a leading role in putting an end to the evil in question, which is why he is a Greek hero.
Arriving on the island of Crete, determined to put an end to that evil, he falls in love with the daughter of King Minos, Ariadne, a beautiful, pure girl. In a labyrinth that only the Minotaur is accustomed to, he devours his victims with ease because they are frightened by the unknown and get lost in the labyrinth. Theseus would be just another victim of the monster, killed quickly and deliberately by the beast, if he had allowed himself to be frightened, by getting lost in the labyrinth. But: Ariadne also falls in love with the hero. His human motives make him an irresistible match. She then has the idea of giving him a ball of wool – in some versions, it is a golden thread – so that he can guide himself and know his way through the labyrinth, and back to the city. This way, without getting lost, he would not be afraid; and he would preserve the courage and wisdom needed to fight the Minotaur.
Once again, the story has many possible interpretations, thanks to its psychoanalytic contours.
The most common is perhaps the fight against animal instincts in view of the greater happiness of honoring a commitment. Thus, Theseus does not give in to his own instincts, keeping the golden thread of the commitment, the marriage with Ariadne. Let's say, the golden ring on Theseus' hand makes him glimpse the greater happiness of having Ariadne, someone who loves him, as his favorite, and thus strikes the instinct.
But I bring the legend into another context, to our current reality: many of us are revolted by the predatory male behavior, often sexist, that men with greater power use against women: they feed off them by making them victims, they seek to aggrandize themselves with power over someone weaker. They easily place their louder and stronger masculine voices above those of a more subtle nature, they seek to gain greater stature by making them silenced… Or they devise plots to conquer their political space and obtain from them the pleasure of political triumph, to later display them to their peers as a political trophy.
So sexist men want to profit from women. Then some virtues man would come and fix the problem. Is that all? The problem, recognized by this Greek legend, is the problem of those who get lost in the labyrinth while fighting the Minotaur: a man, revolted by the realization of such a vile reality, by taking upon himself the duty of fighting the cruelty of the stronger over the weaker, ends up succumbing to this reality. Lost in a labyrinth, on a confusing path that is difficult to locate, he can no longer see where he is: he ends up succumbing to the same behavior as the Minotaur, and is thus devoured by it. We see that as a truth, it happens very much often with men who set out to combat misoginy and machismo; some of them end up adhering to the farce, when they realize that they can derive benefit from it, an increase in personal power. The so-called peer cooperation to keep independent women down, and without an equal share in the economy’s wealth.
So this is the difference between a man and a hero: the hero, by force of fate, gains an advantage: he has a woman who loves him, to save him from confusion. In the case of the Minotaur's labyrinth, Theseus will not lose his human or heroic attributes, he will not succumb to the force of animal instincts lost in a tangled paths: he has Ariadne's thread, and remains a hero by the merit of retaining the golden thread of her feelings for him.
Beyond that, Ariadne is the king's daughter. Yes, a king stops his predatory behavior when he remembers that he has a daughter: when governing, when exercising power, he remembers that he cannot apply his predatory logic indiscriminately, because if he did, and set that as an example, it would mean acquiescing to the predation of his daughter. It is the golden feeling of a good father for his daughter, that prevents a man from predatory behavior with other women. Because in his heart, he does not want to see his predatory behavior widespread, as the natural consequence of this would be that the daughter would be exploited, killed or humiliated, sooner or later…
It is the thread of such a feeling of love that makes Theseus, the man who wants to preserve humanity and civility, leave the confusing labyrinth of instincts and return victorious to the city, to urbanity. Theseus defeats the Minotaur with a single blow. Then the human feeling prevails, of not devouring the other, but respecting the life, the dignity of the other. After the sexual act, of entering the confusing path of instincts, let's say, he leaves the labyrinth without having acquiesced to the preponderance of predatorism: he continues to love and respect Ariadne. And laurels to the hero.
But also laurels to King Minos: it is the redemption of paternity. The king cannot allow his daughter to be exploited, and politically killed.
Now: I brought this entire narrative to the readers for a reason. I was listening to the interview with Julio Cortázar from a few decades ago. This is Cortázar's reading of the minotaur legend.
“Existe la versión oficial del mito, Teseu es el heroe que entra en el labirinto y busca a ese monstro espantoso que es un minotauro, que devora a jovenes rehenes y se lo mata, y sale como el grande héroe. Yo vi eso totalmente al reves. Yo vi en el minotauro yo vi al poeta, al hombre libre, al hombre diferente, y por lo tanto el hombre que la sociedad, el sistema, encierra imediatamente, mete, a veces se lo meten en las clinicas psquiatricas, a veces lo meten en un labirinto, en ese caso eran laberintos, era un laberinto. Entonces Teseo, en cambio, es el perfecto defensor del orden, que va ahí a matar el poeta”.
(Translation: “There is an official version of the myth: Theseus is the hero who enters the labyrinth and seeks out that hideous monster, the Minotaur, who devours young hostages and kills them, and emerges as the great hero. I saw it completely the other way around. I saw in the Minotaur the poet, the free man, the different man, and therefore the man whom society, the system, immediately locks up, confines, sometimes puts him in psychiatric clinics, sometimes puts him in a labyrinth; in this case, it was labyrinths, it was a maze. So Theseus, on the other hand, is the perfect defender of order, who goes there to kill the poet.”)
As far as we know, this view could not be compatible with the poetic life, with the ethos of being a poet: for it would be necessary to ignore the harm caused to the dead, to the young women held hostage by the Minotaur, as a consequence of the Minotaur continuing to satisfy his instincts. The poet does not kill or devour young women to satisfy his instincts, with cruelty. A poet could not ignore human suffering, which is also his suffering… If he ignored the human suffering that follows the devouring and killing of young women, he would be a strange creature, a Minotaur: never a poet.
However, we are seeing many poets choosing to surrender to this labyrinth: they prefer not to see what they are causing, the predation and consumption, the suffering of the victims. They prefer to hide in a very confusing place, with many paths and few exits, where it is not possible to say for sure what is what… The machist, the misogynistic man, chooses not to see the suffering of the woman he consumes and devours. He doesn’t even see a problem in making more victims every year: because he is too focused on himself and his thirst for power, pleasure, and the animal instincts that dominate him. We would have to completely ignore the death and suffering of the young women sacrificed by the king of Minos and consumed by the Minotaur, in order to argue that would be poetry… And in doing so we would have become as cruel, ugly, and indifferent as the Minotaur… No, poetry cannot be cruel, ugly, or indifferent: it would cease to be poetry, something that elevates and deepens our spirit, and it would become something else, that debases and makes us lose the human soul.
In the same way, one cannot do good politics by humiliating and devouring the reputation of women, or of young people, as we see in some far-right movement that feeds on subordinates, making them scapegoats who. Then once sacrificed, they intend to stop the impetus of the thirst for justice, satisfying the thirst of the masses. It is a politics that debases the welfare of people governed, that does not always have the common good in mind, and lives off games that serve to devour others.
In this interview, Cortázar is Minos: he wants the white bull, he says that the instinct that escapes civilization is poetic, something pure. The result of this is a monster, the minotaur that he engenders. Hundreds and hundreds of people on social media, including poetry pages, are taking this interview of his as a brilliant act of creation, of rebellion... Everyone will be consumed by the minotaur, by unreasonableness, sadly. Then we must be like Theseus: keep the golden thread of true love and escape this labyrinth of instinct for power, preserve the poetry of the misfortune that justifies violence; kill the minotaur with a single blow, to save those who get lost every year in the labyrinth, in a macabre ritual. Stick in the sword. Monster! Pull out the sword and let it bleed politically to death. Ugly beast…
Also from where we are, Citizens working in building a civilization, we can see senators who have entered a Minotaur’s labyrinth. Who doesn’t remember the senators who killed the Minotaur with a single blow, with a notable feeling of joint repudiation? It was when someone tried to silence and disrespect Senator Simone Tebet, she was attacked by a government minister, during the Parlamentary Investigation Committe of the Pandemic: they stabbed misoginy with a magnificent blow: “Ah, he’s not a man, but just a boy!”. Afterwards we saw the political blood of the unfortunate guy gushing, now without any credibility.
But political life repeatedly reiterates conflicts that have been overcome. Sometimes it leads to dead ends: it is a complicated labyrinth.
Now the senators, once again, have found themselves facing the Minotaur within, they were before the beast guided by political instinct, seeking to make articulate use of power to devour a victim, by emptying the adversary of her dignity. The Constitution should be the golden thread that would bring the senators back to safety, from this labyrinth to our city. They should come back before they could be destroyed and devoured: by surrendering themselves to political instinct, by accepting aggression as an indulgence. It would be appropriate to strike an effective blow against the inner monster that argues legitimate to lash out authorities and enemies with discourtesy and superiority. Much better than Cortázar’s suggestion is the phrase attributed to Gabriel García Márquez, echoed by Pope Francis, when he met with former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff: “a man only has the right to look down on another in order to help her get up.”
But the labyrinths don't end there. From the top of this lofty mountain where we stand, which makes us see so far, wanting to save all men from political tragedy and unhappiness... Observe with me, also, in the public sphere, Gisele Bündchen's current husband, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu teacher, in photos in which he appears being easily defeated by her, on the tatami. Then, the model appears recommending recipes on the internet, like a good domesticated housewife, millionaire, priestess of well-being, on the cover of a French magazine. The triumph granted to the woman, intentionally at first, is transformed into the definitive triumph of the man in the end. Or is it possible for a woman to defeat a jiu-jitsu teacher on the tatami and remain the object of his desire? Or is there no such thing as definitive triumph? Maybe yes. But then our favorite model's new husband appears alongside a controversial right-wing political figure who likes to display the heads of women who are the protagonists of their own lives, among his hunting trophies. And next, take a look at the brother of Gisele Bündchen's former jiu-jitsu teacher, also a jiu-jitsu teacher, in photos being easily defeated by Ivanka Trump on the mat. What should we think of this? There are those labyrinths that, to kill the minotaur and save the man, they make it not “hard” level: they make it “Harvard” level. There must be some Theseus out there who will save all those young people.
Some people say that I am an idealist and a romantic, but I don't know if I am so sure of that, no. Not in every subject... But the Brazilian Constitution and every constitution certainly are, the principles that we have achieved as a consensus, those we carry with us. Maybe this makes us idealists and romantics at some point. The certainties I have: there are well much more than 200 years of friendship, and we must uphold a certain sense of divine justice, fighting tragedy and unhappiness; and the greater the distance from power, better the life.
* Ana Paula Arendt is a poet, political scientist and diplomat.
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