All things would be visibly connected if one could discover at a single glance and in its totality the tracings of an Ariadne’s thread leading thought into its own labyrinth.
– Georges Bataille
I’m not sure when I became intrigued by the labyrinth, that real world counterpart to our inner space, external corollary to the thrilling but baffling inner tangle within us. Maybe it was when my friend Daniella and I discovered that mind-boggling book House of Leaves in the college bookstore about a filmmaker who moves into a house that sprouts literal and intellectual labyrinths.
Maybe it was when I started taking philosophy classes in college and saw what this particular structure has meant to thinkers over time. Or maybe it was when I realized at whatever age it was that I had a mind, and then tried to use it to study that very same mind, and became self-referential.
Perhaps philosophers link labyrinths to thought structures because of this eerie sense we have: we inhabit something that seems patternless but if we could only rise above ourselves and take a look, we’d suddenly get it.
Ariadne’s thread, then, becomes our attempt to comprehend this labyrinth of consciousness we find ourselves wandering. And Ariadne, as the one who gets it, becomes the philosopher/artist/writer spinning her “thread”—not Theseus who merely steals it for his own heroics and then abandons her on an island.
What would thought’s labyrinth even look like? Note that in the Bataille quote above the labyrinth isn’t thought itself—more like the container for our rampaging consciousness. This all begs the question: if our inner questioning chaos is a labyrinth, who built it?
Ovid describes Daedalus not only as architect but as artist capable of imbuing stone with uncertainty. It’s hard to imagine a more marvelous endgame for art. Daedalus uses this gift to enclose the monster.
More than anything else, we are curious to explore the labyrinth. We strive to make friends with Mr. Minotaur, about whom we have been told so many horrific stories.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Another reason the labyrinth fascinates me is because of the monster at its center, at the center of us all. Remember that the minotaur is an unwanted child, the unacceptable offspring of our own selves, our own minds. But this is the part that for a writer is the most crucial to seek out.
It often feels to me that the monster chase scene is reversed: as a writer, I don’t run from the monster but towards it, beg it to haunt my labyrinth. The monster is the story, the inspiration, the beating heart of narrative.
Walter Benjamin treated the city as labyrinth navigated by the flaneur which, in my model, would place the monster at the center of the city: the reward for our literal and intellectual wanderings.
The monster is not a deterrent; it’s the whole point, the much desired outcome of the hero/ine’s journey that is writing. The writer/artist/philosopher is our guide not only to the labyrinth but, most critically, to the monster. The writer is the one who navigates the labyrinth, encounters the monster, and lives to tell about it.