Re: A place where three roads meet -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 20:37:46 03/09/08 Sun
Author: Hwaet!
Subject: Re: A place where three roads meet
In reply to: JD Reed 's message, "A place where three roads meet" on 16:00:08 03/09/08 Sun

The three roads of rivalry are an apt use of Phokis, the place where three roads meet and where Oedipus kills Laius. It may be worth it to dig up some mythological symbolism and extend your connection further. Iocasta calls Phokis �a place where the Theban Way / Divides into the roads toward Delphi and Daulia� (Scene 2; Fitts/Fitgerald 39). It is difficult not to attach symbolism to at least two of these roads in light of your explication. One road of rivalry, you say, goes between Oedipus and Creon; the road from Phokis to Thebes physically goes between Oedipus and Creon. Another rivalry connects Oedipus with Apollo, just as the road from Phokis to Delphi geographically connects Oedipus with Apollo�s Oracle. The remaining road runs to Daulia, also called Daulis, and the remaining rival is Tiresias. Tiresias, I think, is properly from Thebes, and I risk irresponsible conjecture in linking him to Daulia, but I can try, if only as an experiment. Apollodorus (writing 150 years after Sophocles�and actually probably Pseudo-Apollodorus) tells us that Daulis was the birthplace of Tereus, who forced himself on his sister-in-law, Philomel:

Tereus had by her a son Itys, and having fallen in love with Philomela, he seduced her also saying that Procne was dead, for he concealed her in the country. Afterwards he married Philomela and bedded with her, and cut out her tongue. But by weaving characters in a robe she revealed thereby to Procne her own sorrows. And having sought out her sister, Procne killed her son Itys, boiled him, served him up for supper to the unwitting Tereus, and fled with her sister in haste. When Tereus was aware of what had happened, he snatched up an axe and pursued them. And being overtaken at Daulia in Phocis, they prayed the gods to be turned into birds, and Procne became a nightingale, and Philomela a swallow. And Tereus also was changed into a bird and became a hoopoe. (The Library 3.14.8, trans. J.G. Frazer)

A connection to Tiresias may lie in the birds. Tiresias reads bird entrails in his augury, implying a supernatural quality to them, and Philomel, Procne, and Tereus are supernaturally turned into birds. Granted, the connection, if it is one, is literary; it is not mythological.

A second literary connection between Tiresias and Daulia is at least interesting. Eliot fans will recognize the Apollodorus excerpt as the source of some of �The Wasteland��s allusive fragments, such as �so rudely forced,� �twit twit,� �jug jug jug jug jug,� et al, I think found mostly in section II: A GAME OF CHESS, and section III: THE FIRE SERMON. Meanwhile, the role of Tiresias is key to the artistic unity of �The Wasteland,� Eliot�s poem and other modern works that incorporate classical myth actually extend that same mythology, participating in it no less than the classical authors (see Eliot�s essay �Tradition and the Individual Talent�). Technically, I suppose, this allows us the mythological connection between Tiresias and Daulia, but because Sophocles is writing in the 4th century B.C. and not 1922, the link remains literary at best.

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