The Teiresias Scene in Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus

Abstract

The Teiresias Scene in Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus Lowell Edmunds Rutgers University In the third of his "Lettres à M. de Genonville" (1719), Voltaire discussed several "fautes de vraisemblance" that he found in Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus. One ofthe worst was Oedipus' failure to make any connection between what Teiresias tells him and what he himself has earlier heard fromApollo. Voltaire's criticism, reaffirmed or challenged again and again up to the present, has dominated discussion of the Teiresias scene. In all ofthis discussion, so far as I know, the principle of verisimilitude has remained intact. But much in the scene suggests that this principle was not the correct one in the first place. The opening This paper has its origins in a talk given at a conference, "Teaching Sophocles: The Three Theban Plays," held at Loyola University, Northwestern University, and the University ofChicago 23-25 April 1999. The theme ofthat talk is alluded to in note 41 below. In a discussion after the talk, David Sansone asked me a question that caused me to reread and rethink the Teiresias scene, and this paper is the result. I presented the part of this paper on competing forms ofknowledge to audiences at Baylor University and at the University ofTexas in Austin on 16 and 17 September 1999; I am grateful to interlocutors in those places for helpful comments. I thank Branko van Oppen for help with the Dutch articles that I have cited and also Professor Peter Green, the editor ofthis journal, and the anonymous reader. EDMUNDS: THE TEIRESIAS SCENE35 exchanges between Oedipus andTeiresias create an absurdistatmosphere in which one ofthe characters has come at the bidding ofthe other but then refuses to answer his questions. An impasse is established at the outset. Its source is the traditional incapacity ofthe ruler to accept the subordinate's knowledge ofthe outcome (§1). Further, the metatheatrical dimension ofthe character ofTeiresias thwarts any simple expectation ofverisimilitude (§2). Metatheatricality, contraryto opinions stillwidely held, is not alien to Greek tragedy but is in fact the tendency ofone of its fundamental conventions. The Teiresias scene contains indications of this convention (§3). Another element in the scene that ought to disturb the principle ofverisimilitude is anachronism (§4), which can be considered a poetic device like any ofthe others that the tragedians had at theirdisposal andcan therefore be interpretedas such (Easterling). But these theatrical aspects ofthe scene are not all that has been lost in the controversy over verisimilitude. Oedipus and Teiresias represent competing forms ofknowledge that provide reader or spectator with a cognitive framework for the rest of the tragedy (§5). These forms of knowledge have been neglected. Both the theatrical and the thematic issues I have mentioned come together in the final speech ofTeiresias (§6). Teiresias' finalword in the scene, f??????, is the same as his first. It focalizes the theme ofknowledge that is fundamental in this scene (§7).§1 Teiresias' Opening Words: An Impasse Is Established The encounter in which Oedipus taunts Teiresias with his failure to solve the riddle of the Sphinx prompts one to think back, for a moment , to those distant days ofthe murder (561), the Sphinx, the advent of Oedipus, and his marriage to the widowed queen. What was the sequence ofevents? Laius, king ofThebes, was murdered. TheThebans made no investigation because theywere preoccupiedwith the Sphinx.1 Oedipus arrived at Thebes, solved her riddle, and freed the city ofthis 1 128—31 (Creon). Creon later says that a due investigation was conducted but without result (567). Créons statement seems to contradict die earlier one. Kamerbeek (1967) ad loc. denies discrepancy. Bollack (350, on lines 566—68) states that here it is a matter ofan investigation conducted by the city, while at 128—31 it was a matter ofan heir's formal undertaking ofvengeance. 36SYLLECTA CLASSICA 1 1 (2000) menace.2 The city then gave the vacant kingship to Oedipus as a gift (384; cf. OC 525-26; 986-87). No one in the play says so explicidy, but it must have been a reward for ridding the city ofthe Sphinx. What other reason would have induced the Thebans to make Oedipus their king? The marriage to Jocasta was the "legal" form by which Oedipus assumed...