Sphinx grotto

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The sphinx grotto as the dwelling of the sphinx on the cliffs of a rock with the sphinx found its expression not only in art and literature as a motif, but also as a designation of geological structures such as grottos by the sea or on a rock wall. In both cases there is a reference back to the mythology of Egyptian and Greek antiquity.

The Sphinx Grotto in Art and Literature

Park design

Sphinx grotto in the park on the Ilm in Weimar

The (Greek) Sphinx or the (Egyptian) Sphinx has the role of a guard in temples or grottos , punishing everyone with death who is unable to solve a given puzzle. She is the guardian spirit of the temples and the dwellings of the dead in Egyptian and Greek mythology , and in Greek mythology also inhabits one on the way to Thebes in Boeotia . This can also often be found with references to Freemasonry, to a certain extent as a place of a mystical initiation, but can also serve to put the visitor in a mood of pausing, without a reference to Freemasonry being given when such a place is set up. According to Susanne Müller-Wolff, this is what the Sphinx grotto at the Leutra spring in Weimar in the Park on the Ilm means. According to Wolfgang Huschke, the importance of the grotto as a park element was “entirely in keeping with the sensitive spirit of the time, to put the viewer in a melancholy mood”. According to legend, this place in Weimar is said to have been the preferred residence of the composer Franz Liszt . There is a picture of the painter Franz Gustav Arndt , who belongs to the Weimar School of Painting , in the Liszt House in Weimar , which refers to a musical work by Liszt, the Consolation's (Consolations). A detail in the left background could be understood as grotto-like and thus refer to the legend that the Sphinx grotto is said to have been Liszt's preferred place of residence. But that's not what is meant here!

Painting and graphics

This motif was not only used in park design such as in Weimar, but also a. also in graphic arts. Even the Weimar Sphinx grotto was u. a. has been repeatedly recorded graphically by Georg Melchior Kraus and Konrad Horny . The French painter and draftsman Gustave Moreau chose a sphinx with a poet in a grotto as a motif for a watercolor with gouache on paper (1840–1898) with the title: Sphinx in a grotto (poet, king and warrior) , which located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art . Moreau, who can be attributed to symbolism , shows here in a correspondingly symbolic way that neither power and strength (warriors), nor power (king), nor wisdom and art (poet) are able to escape the inevitable fate. In Moreau's work, the sphinx was a repeated motif. One example is his work Oedipus and the Sphinx . Here, however, Oedipus solves the riddle, whereupon the Sphinx plunges into the abyss. In Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' version from 1808 in oil on canvas, however, Oedipus is shown leaning on a stone in front of a grotto, from which the winged sphinx looks at him and probably also poses the riddle.

  • Sphinx in the grotto (poet, king and warrior) by Gustave Moreau

  • Oedipus and the Sphinx by Ingres

literature

This motif has also left its mark on fiction. For Charles Foley , the Sphinx grotto was even the title of a novel.

The Sphinx grotto in the topography

There are numerous grottos near Le Pouliguen on the Côte d'Amour ("Love Coast"), which is also called Côte Sauvage ("Wild Coast"). One of them is called “Grotte du Sphinx”, which means the Sphinx grotto. In any case, mythology found its way into the place name. That is probably not the only place where this seems to be the case. Not far from Lake Geneva on the French side there is a Grotte de la Mule , or mule grotto, which is also called the Sphinx Grotto because it is located on the so-called Sphinx Wall on the Salève . This mountain, only 6 kilometers away from the Swiss city of Geneva , is considered to be its "local mountain". In the cave itself there is a stone structure called the Sphinx. This designation is not limited to Europe, but is also used in Far East Asia. In Vietnam near Tonkin in the bay Vịnh Hạ Long there was a structure called le Sphinx et la Grotte de la Surprise , of which there are also postcard views. These are certainly not all caves known as the Sphinx grotto that exist.

Tonkin old postcard. Baie d'Along - Le Sphinx et la Grotte de la Surprise

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Susanne Müller-Wolff: A landscape garden in the Ilmtal: The history of the ducal park in Weimar. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-20057-2 , p. 152 f. Note 39.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Huschke : The history of the park in Weimar (= Thuringian archive studies, vol. 2, edited by Willy Flach ), Weimar 1951, p. 66.
  3. ↑ The painting is out of focus overall. The painting does not come from Liszt's original holdings, but was added in 1956. The subject of the picture goes back to the Consolations piano pieces from around 1849/50. The inspiration for the title probably came from the collection of poems of the same name by Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve from 1830. It bears the inv. [Stamp] 125/1956 .
  4. ^ Charles Foley: La Grotte du Sphinx , Ernest Flammarion, Paris 1933.
  5. ↑ http://de.tourisme-lepouliguen.fr/images/prestataires/carte-grottes-le-pouliguen-813901.jpg
  6. ↑ https://www.la-salevienne.org/CPA-max.php?Indcart=135