Little Hermit Sphinx

by Leonor Fini: Monster or victim?

The sphinx appears in many myths and artworks.  This half-lion, half-human creature (sometimes with wings) is often female and in the best-known story asks a riddle that King Oedipus must answer correctly or else be killed. 

In many incarnations, the fantastical sphinx is dangerous, murderous and sexually alluring. 

By contrast, in Leonor Fini’s painting of 1948, the sphinx is childlike and seems to be sad and alone.  When I met this strange young girl-creature, it took a while to understand her desperate situation and, in the end, I lost my fear and wanted instead to help her.

Here is my encounter with the little hermit sphinx.

Little Hermit Sphinx by Leonor Fini, 1948

You are not much more than a child, little sphinx. You live alone, close to the ground, contemplating the aftermath of death.  I see an empty eggshell, a bird’s severed beak and the shoulder bone of a larger animal. There is a human lung hanging above you.  Did someone fail to answer your riddle correctly? Are you a murderer, monstrous little sphinx?  But how sad you look! This is not the expression of the habitual killer.  Perhaps you kill for food?  If this is a matter of survival, then I will try to forgive you. 

Or have I misjudged you completely?  Maybe these deaths are not your handiwork at all.  Perhaps you have returned to find body parts strewn about and left by whoever, or whatever, has killed them. You are not the deadly sphinx of the nineteenth-century painters, the beautiful and dangerous femme fatale.  You are small and young, vulnerable and contemplative. This scene of devastation saddens you terribly.

What has happened here? Whose lung is that? It is hung high above you, too high for you to reach, which supports the possibility that an intruder came to kill and then displayed the trophy.  Was it your friend who was killed? How long have you been alone, little sphinx? Are you desolate at the death of your companion?

Your body is low to the ground, and your disability means you can never sit on the black chair behind you, so perhaps this is not your home at all.  I see that your hand is a paw, for you are indeed, like the sphinx who questioned Oedipus, half-woman and half-lion. Your full breasts contradict the childlike sweetness of your face and, like everything in this scene, it is disquieting to see.

The cell you occupy is in ruins.  Paint has come off the walls and the wooden beam is rotting overhead.  You will not be able to fix this, little sphinx. Plants and debris festoon the doorway and make the outside, inside. There is a bell, again too high for you to reach, so once there must have been a door.  This place has been ransacked and left.  The occupants were killed and you have returned to mourn. There are dead leaves in your hair: a sign of grief.

What next, then, little sphinx? Being a hermit here is not practical for the long term.  You are not fitted to the proportions of this dwelling, which is ruined anyway as a shelter and full of sad memories. It is time to leave.  To start again.  Come now, and put these unhappy times behind you.  Killing, war and destruction will go on and on, but you are young and strong and you must seek out those who are kind and ready to accept you. 

Leave these bleached bones, these stinking repulsive organs and this decomposing vegetation.  Come out into a green day and live in the sunshine, little sphinx.