Sunflowers and Giants

Extract

Riddles are out of fashion. They have sunk to an idle fourth form exercise. The classics, ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ or ‘When is a door not a door?’ hardly kindle enthusiasm. Even the more promising ‘Why is a mouse when it spins?’ with its answer ‘The higher the fewer’ cannot take one far. The Mad Hatter and Mr Salteena had one or two up their sleeve, but they were both in their own way rather questionable company, and nowadays riddles do not figure in polite society. Still less does one meet them in poetry. Yet this is strange, for they once flourished in our literature, rhyming riddles whose remnants survive in nursery jingles—‘Long legs, crooked thighs, Little head and no eyes.’ Every mind with a bent towards poetry has in it something that engenders riddles, and the recognition of these and the attempt to solve them are among a writer’s most important tasks. The Sphinx in the mind propounds her dark saying and waits in her cave for the answer,

‘. . . that Theban Monster that propos’d Her riddle, and him, who solv’d it not, devour’d’, showing that inability to answer may have serious consequences.

It is convenient to collect Milton, and Thebes, here, for they are part of my riddle (which I set, not officiously for you, but for myself). It was set me two years ago, one gusty Sunday afternoon in September on a farm in the Hudson Valley. I had been invited to spend the day there, whiling away the brief uneasy week before the opening of an academic year.