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The most direct path from A to B is a straight line. The most indirect path from A to B is likely to be a labyrinth. Not to be confused with a maze, which has several dead ends, a labyrinth is a unicursal voyage that leads from a point outside the design towards the center… [...]
Thank you for compiling this information.
I also prefer to think of Minos’s labyrinth as unicursal; I figured carved galleries could make it possible to back-track and get lost despite the one-way course. The metaphorical solution you’ve compelled me to consider is more interesting and my difficulty with this will amount to a simple question. I’ll give some context first so that perhaps you can help me even if my question isn’t clear.
I use Minos’s name above because my interpretation relates in this case to the Greek myth (Homer aside), even though the labyrinth receives much more enriching attention elsewhere (as you point out). I enjoy thinking of Minos’s labyrinth as a house of shame to conceal the person-bull-ification of the king’s dishonorable transgressions. This seems to fit with the labyrinth representing a path of non-linear time to a center outside of time since memory winds its way to the source of shame, that is, the past is made convoluted to conceal the humiliating punishment of Poseidon (the act of punishment happened in the past, but the humiliation exists outside of time). The ramifications of Minos not confronting his monstrousness are the continued sacrifices of foreign youths. Theseus, then, acts a redeemer as he does in Borges’s “House of Asterion.” (As an aside, when it comes labyrinths and literature, Borges is an even more impressive Daedalus.)
My question is, how does a thread help a soul if it can only go straight? By straight do you mean something other than an infinite line or circumference around the earth?
Thanks again for your time,
p.