If the statesman had this knowledge, and could teach what he knew, he would be like
Tiresias in the world below,--'he alone has wisdom, but the rest flit like shadows.'
Yet not the more Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt Cleer Spring, or shadie Grove, or Sunnie Hill, Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief Thee SION and the flowrie Brooks beneath That wash thy hallowd feet, and warbling flow, Nightly I visit: nor somtimes forget Those other two equal'd with me in Fate, So were I equal'd with them in renown, Blind THAMYRIS and blind MAEONIDES, And
TIRESIAS and PHINEUS Prophets old.
One of his last public appearances was a year ago at Siracusa's Greek theatre when he delivered a stunning monologue called Conversation on
Tiresias. A political activist throughout his life, Camilleri always urged young people to try to effect change and had memorable sparring matches with former bete noir Silvio Berlusconi, the media magnate turned centre-right politician, and the current darling of the right, League leader Matteo Salvini.
Greek mythology is also referenced through a character named
Tiresias. As for the second narrator, his ludicrous name is Thomas Corbillard (hearse).
But there will always be literature, film, television and even music to serve as our modern-day
Tiresias. And we can think about these things and do what we can to choose another direction, no matter how many people, real or imagined, preach about the end of our world.
Ray takes the part of Craven in this play, but most recently played the blind seer,
Tiresias, in Bertolt Brecht's version of Antigone at the Queens Park Arts Centre in Aylesbury.
Quando do interrogatorio de
Tiresias, Edipo vangloria-se de ter, nos piores tempos de Tebas, derrotado a Esfinge: "Foi em tais condicoes que eu aqui vim ter; eu, que de nada sabia; eu, Edipo, impus silencio a terrivel Esfinge; e nao foram as aves, mas o raciocinio o que me deu a solucao" (395-398).
This and other cards are laid by the cartomancer Madame Sosostris in Part I "The Burial of the Dead." The other two principal seers in the poem are the Cumaean Sibyl who wishes for death in the epigraph and the blind
Tiresias, a man who lived as a woman for many years, in Part III "The Fire Sermon." (10) Of these three, Sosostris's cards are of primary interest here, but attention is given to the other two as they have counterparts in the Dark Tower where their prognostications overlap with those of the cartomancer.