OEDIPUS: What is troubling you? Why are your eyes so cold? TEIRESIAS: Let me go home. Bear your own fate, and I’ll bear mine. It is better so: trust what I say. OEDIPUS: What you say is ungracious and unhelpful to your native country. Do not refuse to speak (17). At this stage of the play, Oedipus acts as an the ideal leader. His concern for his people fuels his dedicated pursuit of the knowledge necessary to solve the problem. He presses Tiresias for the truth, motivated by altruism: “There is no fairer duty than that of helping others in distress.” By contrast, Tiresias is worn and exhausted by the knowledge he carries. It so troubles him, that he put the knowledge out of his mind – only to be reminded when Oedipus asks after it. He is determined to spare Oedipus from the burden of knowing the truth and is willing to suffer alone: “No; I will never tell you what I know. Now it is my misery; then, it would be yours” (18). For Tiresias, knowledge of the truth (and this truth in particular) is a source of suffering. He understands Oedipus’ ignorance as affording him immunity to knowledge that, otherwise, would ruin him. When Tiresias does reveal the truth to Oedipus – his murder of his father and marriage to his mother is the source of the religious pollution – the king is unable to accept it. As his immunity is compromised, he resists the truth with angry, charged rhetoric, deflecting responsibility through personal attacks. No longer the wise, dutiful, civic-minded pursuer of truth, Oedipus spirals: Wealth, power, craft of statesmanship! Kingly position, everywhere admired! What savage envy is stored up against these, if Creon, whom I trusted, Creon my friend, for this great office which the city once put in my hands unsought – if for this power Creon desires in secret to destroy me! He has brought this decrepit fortune-teller, this collector of dirty pennies, this prophet-fraud – Why he is no more clairvoyant than I am! (21). Crucially, the only characters present in this scene are Oedipus, Tiresias, and the chorus leader. Oedipus is not making sweeping political claims or attempting to maintain his reputation. He is suffering a profoundly intimate crisis of identity. He is unable to reconcile the devastating truth to himself. Instead, he actively resists it, forging a new “immunity” out of blame and vitriol. First, he insists the information is false, denying it vehemently. Then, he creates a counter-narrative in which a “lie” has been concocted by his enemies out of envy over his status and power. He accuses Creon of attempting to claim the throne that he rightfully won despite being an outsider to the city. Finally, he discredits the source of information, Tiresias. This is especially 47
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