In the city of Gordium, there was a knot. Gordium was the Capital of
Phrygia, and lay near where Ankara lies today. In this city was
also an ox-cart. An ox-cart of which an oracle had once spoken, on
which an eagle had once landed, and in which a peasant had once ridden
and been made king for it. You get the
drift. On the shaft of this ox-cart, the knot was tied. It was
perplexing. It was confounding. It was mind-boggling. Let's just say it
was really really really difficult to untie. Well, ladies
and gentlemen, this was the fabled Gordian Knot, and who-so-ever untied
it, so legend said, would become king of Asia.
Well,
in 333 BC Alexander the Great made his way down the Persian Royal
Road, and happened upon Gordium, and with it the Gordian Knot. Now
Alexander, being a man of great ambition, tried to untie the Gordian
Knot. And failed. Alexander, being also a man's man, drew his
sword an cleft the knot in two, thereby untying it. It must have
worked, seeing as how Alexander went on to conquer Asia
minor.
Something may be referred to as a Gordian Knot if it seems to be without a solution
our sorrow is not that of the soul
our knot not the gordian
but the shoelace
which comes undone
and we know not how to tie it.
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Translated excerpt from
Børnehave by Klaus Rifbjerg.