The Sphinx of Hatshepsut

The Sphinx of Hatshepsut

Those who read Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch are likely to experience déjà vu on their first return to the Met. Or perhaps you were one of those who rushed out of the museum on those last days when people were fleeing the city. The Met might be regarded as more enduring than time itself, despite the vision created in the novel. In the aftermath of the pandemic, it seems imperturbable like Keats’ “Grecian Urn.” If it’s hard to get your moorings, taking the left turn at the front entrance and proceeding down through the classical wing is the perfect antidote, restoring a feeling of chronology in such a way that you find your niche--that is to say the coordinates of the almost predestined reality you call home. Confronting the Sphinx of Hatshepsut on way into the Temple of Dendur is a reminder of both fragility and permanence—in other words that along with dissolution comes restoration. "My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings; Look on my Works ye Mighty and despair!"

Read "A Taxonomy of The Goldfinch" by Francis Levy, HuffPost