Tiresias and King Oedipus

Oedipus, king of Thebes, unwittingly kills his father and marries his own mother and thus calls down upon his supposedly innocent head the curse of the gods in the form of a virulent plague, epidemic and destructive, which neither King nor commoner fails to regard as a punishment for some dark and hidden crime. Tiresias, the blind prophet of the king, is summoned and when compelled by the Kings tells the shocking truth that he, the King himself, is the plague-spot. Unknowingly, he has married his own mother and thus committed the sin of incest. Such is the conspiracy of circumstances that the King is slowly, but irresistibly, driven to the realization of this horrible truth. Nothing remains for the king but the duty of expatiation, self-mutilation, self-exile, self-abasement and a prolonged penance, which eventually result in spiritual calm and inner illumination.

Tiresias is bi-sexual; he is blind but has the gifts of prophecy and immortality. Various stories are given to account for these characteristics. According to one story, this wise Thebian soothsayer in his youth once saw the goddess struck him blind but since his mother was a friend of hers, she bestowed upon him the gift of prophecy as a compensation. According to another story, Tiresias saw two snakes copulating and disturbed them with his stick, and the snakes in wrath transformed him into a woman. Seven years later, he again disturbed another pair of snakes copulating, and was transformed into a man once again. Thus he had experiences both as a man and a woman. Later on, he was questioned by Jove and Juno as to whether Man is more passionate or Woman. He declared that woman is more passionate. At this Juno was angry and struck him blind, but Zeus or Jove compensated him by conferring upon him the twin gifts of prophecy and immortality.

Tiresias, both of the past and the present, is the central figure in Eliot’s The Waste Land. Freud’s theory of Oedipus complex or mother-fixation is named after King Oedipus.