Teiresias

“ The rest of the history of Teiresias is known to all as a tradition: the number of years it is recorded that he lived, how he changed from a woman to a man, and that Homer in the Odyssey [34] represents Teiresias as the only one in Hades endowed with intelligence.
9.33.3 At Haliartus there is in the open a sanctuary of the goddesses they call Praxidicae (those who exact punishments) . Here they swear, but they do not make the oath rashly. The sanctuary of the goddesses is near Mount Tilphusius. In Haliartus are temples, with no images inside, and without roofs. ”

“ And as thou doest these things, entreat the dead, and promise that when thou shalt come again to Ithaca, thou wilt offer a barren heifer, even the best thou hast, and that thou wilt sacrifice to Teiresias alone a black ram, the goodliest in the flock. And after thou hast made thy prayers to the dead, offer up a black ram and a black ewe. Then will come many spirits of the dead, but suffer them not to drink of the blood till thou shalt have spoken to Teiresias. ”

“ Enter Teiresias. He is an old man and blind, leaning upon a staff and moving with slow stateliness, though wearing the Ivy and the Bacchic fawn-skin.
Teiresias.
Ho, there, who keeps the gate?—Go, summon me Cadmus, Agênor's son, who crossed the sea From Sidon and upreared this Theban hold. Go, whosoe'er thou art. See he be told Teiresias seeketh him. Himself will gauge Mine errand, and the compact, age with age, [Pg 15] I vowed with him, grey hair with snow-white hair, To deck the new God's thyrsus, and to wear His fawn-skin, and with ivy crown our brows. Enter Cadmus from the Castle. ”

“ Then Teiresias, "strong in the might of truth," denounces that infatuation and blindness of heart which is far worse than the loss of eyesight. His own mind and reason are clairvoyant, while Œdipus is ignorant of his own birth, ignorant of the sin in which he is living. Fatal—continues the prophet, using a bold metaphor—is the harbour in which the king has moored his barque, lulled by a vain security, and terrible is the storm which shall soon break upon himself and on his children. ”

“ The old blind prophet Teiresias, and the aged king Cadmus, always secretly true to him, have agreed to celebrate the Thiasus, and accept his divinity openly. The youthful god has nowhere said decisively that he will have none but young men in his sacred dance. But for that purpose they must put on the long tunic, and that spotted skin which only rustics wear, and assume the thyrsus and ivy-crown. ”

“ When they are going to sacrifice to him as to a hero, smoke of itself rises up out of the grave. This occurrence, then, I have seen happening. The Thebans show also the tomb of Teiresias, about fifteen stades from the grave of the children of Oedipus. The Thebans themselves agree that Teiresias met his end in Haliartia, and admit that the monument at Thebes is a cenotaph. ”

“ We feel beforehand that the man who speaks thus will, when his eyes are opened, submit to his self-imprecated doom. It now remains to detect the murderer. Thinking that his faculty of divination may be useful, Œdipus has already sent for the blind seer Teiresias. Teiresias is one of the great creations of Sophocles. Twice he appears, once in this play, once in the Antigone, each time in conflict with infatuated kings. He is so aged, and the soul within him is so fixed on things invisible, that he seems scarcely human. ”

“ The House of Hades never allows its inhabitants to pass out.
And yet all this is hopelessly contradicted by the votive offerings that the poet, by what can only be called an oversight, makes Odysseus promise to all the dead, and particularly to Teiresias, upon his return home (Od. x, 521–6; xi, 29–33) . Of what use would it be to the dead to receive the offering of a “barren cow”,75 of “treasures” burnt upon the funeral pyre; or how could Teiresias enjoy the slaughtering of a black sheep far away in Ithaca—when they are all confined to Erebos and could not taste the offerings made to them? ”

“ In this weird scene Odysseus is summoning the shade of Teiresias from the under-world. He has with his sword to keep off the host of spirits, including that of his own mother, whom the spilt blood has attracted—and the hero is himself terrified at the awful spectacle.
What adds to the interest of such a passage is that to the ancient Greeks this was no imaginary picture but a statement of actual facts. It will be observed that the dead live in a dark land, “desolate of joy.” ”

“ Alternating between glib unwisdom and coarse mockery, between violence and a pretence of moral austerity, he understands only the sorriest motives; thinks the whole thing feigned, and fancies the stranger, so effeminate, so attractive of women with whom he remains day and night, but a poor sensual creature, and the real motive of the Bacchic women the indulgence of their lust; his ridiculous old grandfather he is ready to renounce, and accuses Teiresias of having in view only some fresh source of professional profit to himself in connexion with some new-fangled oracle ”

“ There was a certain nymph of Thebes named Chariclo, especially dear to Pallas; and this nymph was the mother of Teiresias. But once when in the heat of summer, Pallas, in company with Chariclo, was bathing her disrobed limbs in the Heliconian Hippocrene, it happened that Teiresias coming as a hunter to quench his thirst at the same fountain, inadvertently beheld Minerva unveiled, and immediately became blind. For it is declared in the Saturnian laws, that he who beholds the gods against their will, shall atone for it by a heavy penalty. ”

“ Over and over again with every accent of irony the one moral is enforced—sometimes with sheer brutality as in the tract on Mourning.
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Menippus asked Teiresias in the shades what was the best life. "He was a blind little old man, and pale, and had a weak voice." He said: "The life of ordinary people is best, and, wiser; cease from the folly of metaphysics, of inquiry into origins and purposes; spit upon those clever syllogisms and count all these things idle talk ”

“ Teiresias is called ἄναξ, a lord or prince [362] . We do not know that Calchas fought as well as prophesied, but it may have been so, since Helenus, the son of Priam, and Eunomus, the Mysian leader, were seers or augurs not less than warriors. But the most instructive specimen of this order among the Greeks is the Suitor Leiodes [363] , who was also θυοσκόος, or inspector of sacrifices, to the body of Suitors. Now Ulysses had, in consideration of a ransom, spared Maron the priest of Apollo at Ismarus [364] . ”

“ Next he slays a ram and a black ewe, bending their heads downwards into the grave.71 37 Then the bodies of the animals are burnt, and round the blood collect all the souls, who flutter about it, kept at a distance by Odysseus’ sword72 till Teiresias has first drunk. Here the drink-offerings constitute undoubtedly a sacrificial offering devoted to the dead and poured out for their satisfaction. The poet indeed does not think of the slaughtered animals as a sacrifice; the tasting of the blood is simply intended to restore to the souls their consciousness ”

“ But she persisted, called in the aid of her lovely smile, and spoke with certain low and husky intonations he had always liked.
“But now, Bernard, I feel clearly that the Thérèse who stamps out her cigarette because a spark will set the undergrowth on fire, the Thérèse who liked to count the pines, and look after her resin:—the Thérèse who was proud to marry a Desqueyroux, to hold a place in one of the best families of the district, glad at last to settle down, as the phrase goes;—that Thérèse [Pg 203] is as real as the other, and as alive: No, there was no need to sacrifice her to the other.” ”

“ He likes to contemplate by Himself these little fruits of our virtue. They console Him.
You are quite wrong, Marie, if you think that Thérèse walks eagerly along the way of Sacrifice: her weakness is still very great, and every day some new and wholesome experience brings this home more clearly. Yet Jesus delights to teach her how to glory in her infirmities. [2] It is a great grace, and I pray Him to give it to you, for with it come peace and tranquillity of heart. When we see our misery we do not like to look at ourselves but only upon our Beloved. ”

“ On the evening of the election Thérèse might well have rejoiced that henceforth she could speak freely to her "little Mother," and, as of old, pour out her soul. But sacrifice had become her daily food. If she sought one favour more than another, it was that she might be looked on as the lowest and the least; and, among all the religious, not one saw less of the Mother Prioress.
She desired to live the life of Carmel with all the perfection required by St. Teresa, and, although a martyr to habitual dryness, her prayer was continuous. ”

“ Theria did not sit with the council, but her advice was paramount. As former priestess of Apollo and seer of a vision, she exercised a power which as mere woman she could never have attained.
And strangely enough, her poet quality did not suffer in this public activity, but, as is frequent with the Greek, rather thrived and flowered in it.
Late in the winter her first child was born. The colonists thought it was misfortune that the child should be a girl. But Eëtíon took this dispensation of the gods with good heart. ”

“ Then she must give her oracle as best she might not knowing the question—trusting that it must in some way concern the fate of Greece.
She would pray for that storm which was to help the Athenian ships. Baltè’s word showed her the way.
Theria might doubt the voice of her Golden God, she might almost doubt the existence of Apollo. But the things of Nature—the sea, the mountains, the winds—these she could see or feel. These to her were persons, clear-imaged, well known, and having much power. They were gods nearer to men in whom all men must believe. To these Theria still could pray. ”

“ Oh, darling Theria, you cannot be made like that! I must save you!”
“You have saved me,” she said, childlike. “I was afraid and you have made me unafraid. Because you love me, just because you love me. Oh, Eëtíon. Death lies both ways. For the Persians will kill us if they get into Hellas. Only the god can keep them back. I must pray to the god. I must pray to the god. I know he will hear me. Must I not go when I know that? Oh, Eëtíon, help me—help me to go!”
He took her face between his hands, gazing into the brave depths of her eyes. ”

“ Thérèse answered. "It is so sweet to call God, 'Our Father!'" . . . and tears glistened in her eyes. Another time she said, "I cannot well see what more I shall have in Heaven than I have now; I shall see God, it is true, but, as to being with Him, I am that already even on earth."
The flame of Divine Love consumed her, and this is what she herself relates: "A few days after the oblation of myself to God's Merciful Love, I was in the choir, beginning the Way of the Cross, when I felt myself suddenly wounded by a dart of fire so ardent that I thought I should die. ”

“ Thus Eros brushed his wings across Theria’s fancy and flew away. No business of his was this. But youth was here—fearful impressibility: A breath, and youth is changed.
Who shall say that when in after years this boy sang of a woman and gave her a new type of nobleness the image of this proud sweet maid of Delphi did not float before him and make his creation real?
And as for Theria, the encounter was a peep outward into the world. From this time she became more aware of the hurry of development outside in the awakening land of Greece. ”

“ A child set free in fairyland? Oh, Theria was more than that. A soul set in heaven, if ever heaven came down to earth; and, in sooth, it sometimes does. Theria’s soul leaped up from its depths. Suddenly she could not see for the tears which filled her eyes. She brushed them away impatiently. She must not waste one moment of her seeing.
Right at hand stood the Athenian Gift after Marathon—statues of Athenian gods and heroes standing so friendly, mortal with immortal together in their portico.
“Ah, Athena, thou art dreaming of thine own hill in Athens,” she cried, moving closer. ”

“ Long after he had shut the door Thérèse had remained lying on the sofa smoking cigarettes, and staring at the great letters of blackened gilt, fixed to the balcony opposite: then she had torn open the first envelope. No: it could not be that sweet little fool, that light-headed little Convent girl who had conceived these words of flame. It could not be that chilly little heart,—for such it was, and Thérèse ought to know!—which had poured forth that Song of Songs, that long ecstatic lamentation of a woman possessed, of a body almost stricken down with joy, from the first encounter. ”

“ She tried to recapture her imaginings of the night; and, indeed, at Argelouse the day was almost as quiet and as dark as the night. In these days, the shortest in the year, time disappears under the pall of rain, and one hour melts into the next; dusk passes into dusk in unalterable silence. But Thérèse had no desire for sleep, and her dreams became more and more vivid; she searched her past methodically for forgotten faces, lips that she had loved from afar, vague forms that casual encounters, or the chances of the night, had brought into contact with her young body. ”

“ How could she lie and wait for sleep beside this great carcass whose snorings sometimes turned to choking agony? Thank God, he no longer came near her,—he thought love-making the most dangerous of all activities for his heart. The cocks of dawn brought the farms to life. The Angelus of Saint Clair tinkled in the east wind; Thérèse’s eyes at last closed. ”