Teiresias’ss words proclaim knowledge of the interrelatedness of underworld (place of the dead) and the world of the living above ground in the past (birth), the present in which he is hateful), and the future (in which he will be curse-stricken). In the scope of the seer’s understanding, dimensions of time and space, domains of mortal and divinity, are unified. [D] In that single unified domain, cause and effect, subject and object seem also to be more tightly compressed, as Know-a-Foot will be struck by a monstrous-footed curse, as if origin and object of a curse were two aspects of the same thing. [Mw] [Aj]
If Oidipous still regards Polybos and Merope of Corinth as his parents, then Teiresias’s words must call them to mind, and with the suggestion of their curse, to prompt Oidipous to recall the reason for his decision never to return to Corinth. Oidipous should be making a correlation between Teiresias’s present statements and the circumstances of his Delphic consultation, and thus he should recognize that Teiresias’ss use of the present tense (“you’re hateful to your own”) implies that that prophecy has already been realized; his father is already dead and below the earth, his mother already his wife, his children his siblings, and he—or all the family–the source of Thebes’ pollution and the family’s ruin. And yet still he has not reacted. He seems impervious to the truths being set before him. Some incapacity, ignorance, or false belief must be impeding his understanding. [Mp] [Mpei] [Mpea]