ABSTRACT
In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud developed remarks of Oedipus Rex into a full-fledged presentation of the Oedipus complex. If Oedipus Rex is able to move modern man no less deeply than the Greeks who were Sophocles' contemporaries, the solution can only be that the effect of Greek tragedy does not depend on the contrast between fate and human will, but it is to be sought in the distinctive nature of the subject matter exemplifying this contrast. A theory worked out from clinical cases and contemporary dreams is 'confirmed' by a dramatic text from another era. But that text can provide such confirmation only to the extent that it is interpreted in accordance with the oneiric universe of today's spectators. Poets as different as Pound and Montale, Eliot and Borges, shared Mandelstam's perception of Dante as a contemporary voice. The same fascination resonates in Mandelstam's emphasis on the self-reflexive dimension of Geryon's canto from Dante's Infero.
