Tiresias and the Oedipal Legacy
Before I advance my argument, let me offer a brief biographical sketch of Tiresias, the ancient Greek mystic. The origin story told by Ovid in Metamorphoses begins as follows: Tiresias comes across two snakes copulating on Mount Kyllene in Peloponnese. Somehow upset by the inter-coiled snakes, Tiresias kills the female snake with his staff. Hera, the Goddess of women, marriage and fertility is furious. As a Goddess well known for acting upon impulse, she turns Tiresias into a woman in body and mind as punishment. But the curse may have been a blessing in disguise. By all accounts, Tiresias adjusts well to life as a woman. Tiresias marries, has three daughters, becomes a renowned prostitute and priestess. Seven years later, Tiresias encounters two mating snakes again. Having learned Hera’s lesson, Tiresias leaves them be and his masculinity is magically restored. We are to assume that by respecting not only the female snake but the act of copulation itself – a Feminine dimension – Tiresias frees himself from Hera’s spell.
But all was not well for long. Hera and her husband Zeus were fighting over who – man or woman – experiences more sexual pleasure in lovemaking. Zeus insists it is the woman while Hera insists it is the man. Being unable to reach consensus they consult Tiresias who is said, in the myth, to have experiential knowledge of both masculine and feminine sexual pleasures. Tiresias answers to the Olympian court: “Of ten parts a man enjoys one only, but a woman enjoys the full ten parts in her heart” (Hard, 1997: 171). Hera was incensed by the Tiresian testimony and again moved to fury. She strikes Tiresias blind. Zeus takes pity on Tiresias but cannot undo his wife’s spell. Instead, the masculine-god gives Tiresias the gift of prophesy, second sight, and long life. Over the course of his long-life, Tiresias faithfully serves the Greek god Apollo. The blind-seer relays Apollo’s words to the Lacanian letter. From a Lacanian perspective, we may infer that Tiresias, like a good analyst, attends to the particularity of the word and to the speaker’s discourse.
In fact, Tiresian wisdom is known and respected throughout the Theban kingdom. His counsel is sought by king Oedipus and king Creon but both refuse Tiresian guidance and suffer for it. Tiresias is, as a result, troubled by the impossibility of his job as prognosticator. Tiresias knows that hostility, denial, ignorance, and projective-identification on the part of the kings incite war. After telling Creon that, in order to save his kingdom, he must sacrifice his own son, Tiresias laments to the king’s daughter:
… Anyone who practices the art of prophesy is a fool. If he reveals offensive things
he will reap resentment from all who hear his omens;
but if, out of pity for those who come to him, he lies,
he wrongs the gods. Only Phoebus should
tell the gods’ will to men, for he has no one to fear (Euripides, 1994: 111).
Exasperated by the plight of Oedipus and his refusal to see in Oedipus the King, Tiresias says, “How terrible – to see the truth when the truth is only plain to him who sees!” (Sophocles, 1984). Tiresias discourages Oedipus from pursuing the truth – that he is the enemy he seeks (the one who killed his royal predecessor) – because he is cognizant of the tragedy awaiting King Oedipus who learns too late in life that he is not who he thought he was. Oedipus is not son of King Polybus and Queen Merope, but son of King Laius (whom he has killed) and Queen Jocasta (whom he marries). Tiresias knows that knowledge of patricide and incest will be too much for Oedipus and Jocasta to bear. But Oedipus, like a petulant child, insists upon knowing a truth he cannot handle. Upon hearing the truth he gouges his eyes out with his mother’s broach.
For the psychoanalytic record, Tiresias is also never wrong. Let us consider his oracular resume and demonstrated capacity to handle male protagonists in crisis: in Homer’s Odyssey, Tiresias tells Odysseus how he may navigate treacherous waters en route home from the battle of Troy. In Euripides’s Phoenician Woman Tiresias foretells that Oedipus’s sons will ultimately kill each other in their warring anger and greed. In Antigone, Creon the King is less than thrilled to hear from Tiresias that he must withdraw his indictment against Antigone to save his family. Like Oedipus before him, the King cannot accept Tiresian wisdom until it is too late; as a result his loved ones die and the Kingdom falls.