OEDIPUS THE KING

Translated by Robert Fagles

Sight and Blindness

Annotate the following passage for what it reveals to us about the symbolic significance of sight and blindness in Oedipus. Point out places where sight and blindness are represented and explain any irony at work and anything else you find interesting, compelling, or confusing about how sight and blindness work in this play. You can also make the other kinds of annotations we've been working on, such as pointing out a detail and explaining what you think it means in relation to the text as a whole or on a deeper level, asking questions about elements of the text that are confusing, or making connections to other course materials or personal experience.

Leader

Here is the one who will convict him, look,
they bring him on at last, the seer, the man of god.
The truth lives inside him, him alone.

Oedipus

O Tiresias,
master of all the mysteries of our life,
all you teach and all you dare not tell,
signs in the heavens, signs that walk the earth!
Blind as you are, you can feel all the more
what sickness haunts our city. You, my lord,
are the one shield, the one savior we can find.

We asked Apollo—perhaps the messengers
haven’t told you—he sent his answer back:
“Relief from the plague can only come one way.
Uncover the murderers of Laius,
put them to death or drive them into exile.”
So I beg you, grudge us nothing now, no voice,
no message plucked from the birds, the embers
or the other mantic ways within your grasp.
Rescue yourself, your city, rescue me—
rescue everything infected by the dead.
We are in your hands. For a man to help others
with all his gifts and native strength:
that is the noblest work.

Tiresias

How terrible—to see the truth
when the truth is only pain to him who sees!
I knew it well, but I put it from my mind,
else I never would have come.

Oedipus

What’s this? Why so grim, so dire?

Tiresias

Just send me home. You bear your burdens,
I’ll bear mine. It’s better that way,
please believe me.

Oedipus

Strange response . . . unlawful,
unfriendly too to the state that bred and reared you—
you withhold the word of god.

Tiresias

I fail to see
that your own words are so well-timed.
I’d rather not have the same thing said of me . . .

Oedipus

For the love of god, don’t turn away,
not if you know something. We beg you,
all of us on our knees.

Tiresias

None of you knows—
and I will never reveal my dreadful secrets,
not to say your own.

Oedipus

What? You know and you won’t tell?
You’re bent on betraying us, destroying Thebes?

Tiresias

I’d rather not cause pain for you or me.
So why this . . . useless interrogation?
You’ll get nothing from me.

Oedipus

Nothing! You,
you scum of the earth, you’d enrage a heart of stone!
You won’t talk? Nothing moves you?
Out with it, once and for all!

Tiresias

You criticize my temper . . . unaware
of the one you live with, you revile me.

Oedipus

Who could restrain his anger hearing you?
What outrage—you spurn the city!

Tiresias

What will come will come.
Even if I shroud it all in silence.

Oedipus

What will come? You’re bound to tell me that.

Tiresias

I will say no more. Do as you like, build your anger
to whatever pitch you please, rage your worst—

Oedipus

Oh I’ll let loose, I have such fury in me—
now I see it all. You helped hatch the plot,
you did the work, yes, short of killing him
with your own hands—and given eyes I’d say
you did the killing single-handed!

Tiresias

Is that so!
I charge you, then, submit to that decree
you just laid down: from this day onward
speak to no one, not these citizens, not myself.
You are the curse, the corruption of the land!

Oedipus

You, shameless—
aren’t you appalled to start up such a story?
You think you can get away with this?

Tiresias

I have already.
The truth with all its power lives inside me.

Oedipus

Who primed you for this? Not your prophet’s trade.

Tiresias

You did, you forced me, twisted it out of me.

Oedipus

What? Say it again—I’ll understand it better.
Tiresias. Didn’t you understand, just now?
Or are you tempting me to talk?

Oedipus

No, I can’t say I grasped your meaning.
Out with it, again!

Tiresias

I say you are the murderer you hunt.

Oedipus

That obscenity, twice—by god, you’ll pay.

Tiresias

Shall I say more, so you can really rage?

Oedipus

Much as you want. Your words are nothing—
futile.

Tiresias

You cannot imagine . . . I tell you,
you and your loved ones live together in infamy,
you cannot see how far you’ve gone in guilt.

Oedipus

You think you can keep this up and never suffer?

Tiresias

Indeed, if the truth has any power.

Oedipus

It does
but not for you, old man. You’ve lost your power,
stone-blind, stone-deaf—senses, eyes blind as stone!

Tiresias

I pity you, flinging at me the very insults
each man here will fling at you so soon.

Oedipus

Blind,
lost in the night, endless night that nursed you!
You can’t hurt me or anyone else who sees the light—
you can never touch me.

Tiresias

True, it is not your fate
to fall at my hands. Apollo is quite enough,
and he will take some pains to work this out.

Oedipus

Creon! Is this conspiracy his or yours?

Tiresias

Creon is not your downfall, no, you are your own.

Oedipus

O power—
wealth and empire, skill outstripping skill
in the heady rivalries of life,
what envy lurks inside you! Just for this,
the crown the city gave me—I never sought it,
they laid it in my hands—for this alone, Creon,
the soul of trust, my loyal friend from the start
steals against me . . . so hungry to overthrow me
he sets this wizard on me, this scheming quack,
this fortune-teller peddling lies, eyes peeled
for his own profit—seer blind in his craft!
Come here, you pious fraud. Tell me,
when did you ever prove yourself a prophet?
When the Sphinx, that chanting Fury kept her deathwatch here,
why silent then, not a word to set our people free?
There was a riddle, not for some passer-by to solve—
it cried out for a prophet. Where were you?
Did you rise to the crisis? Not a word,
you and your birds, your gods—nothing.
No, but I came by, Oedipus the ignorant,
I stopped the Sphinx! With no help from the birds,
the flight of my own intelligence hit the mark.
And this is the man you’d try to overthrow?
You think you’ll stand by Creon when he’s king?
You and the great mastermind—
you’ll pay in tears, I promise you, for this,
this witch-hunt. If you didn’t look so senile
the lash would teach you what your scheming means!

Leader

I would suggest his words were spoken in anger, Oedipus . . . yours too, and it isn’t what we need. The best solution to the oracle, the riddle posed by god—we should look for that.

Tiresias

You are the king no doubt, but in one respect,
at least, I am your equal: the right to reply.
I claim that privilege too.
I am not your slave. I serve Apollo.
I don’t need Creon to speak for me in public.
So,
you mock my blindness? Let me tell you this.
You with your precious eyes,
you’re blind to the corruption of your life,
to the house you live in, those you live with—
who are your parents? Do you know? All unknowing
you are the scourge of your own flesh and blood,
the dead below the earth and the living here above,
and the double lash of your mother and your father’s
curse
will whip you from this land one day, their footfall
treading you down in terror, darkness shrouding
your eyes that now can see the light!
Soon, soon
you’ll scream aloud—what haven won’t reverberate?
What rock of Cithaeron won’t scream back in echo?
That day you learn the truth about your marriage,
the wedding-march that sang you into your halls,
the lusty voyage home to the fatal harbor!
And a crowd of other horrors you’d never dream
will level you with yourself and all your children.
There. Now smear us with insults—Creon, myself
and every word I’ve said. No man will ever
be rooted from the earth as brutally as you.