235. THE TIME IS NOW: Compare this to the impatience of Marvell over his Coy Mistress (note 141), the “good time” Albert is expected to want (line 148) and the bartender’s call to “hurry up it’s time” (lines 141-169), all essentially happening at once.
242. INDIFFERENCE: Compare this to the rape of Philomela, whom Tereus rendered unresponsive and indifferent by cutting out her tongue (note 99). See also the indifferent chess players, waiting for a knock upon the door (line 138).
243: FORESUFFERANCE: Tiresias, who had “perceived the scene, and foretold the rest” (see line 229), now reminds us, with a word that may be newly coined, that he perceives only by virtue of having “foresuffered,” or first experienced. See note 218. In Ovid’s tale, his experience was as an “umpire”between the sexes; however, Eliot suggests at note 218 that Tiresias, having suffered both sides, is more important than a mere spectator: he “sees... the substance of the poem,” and unites all of the characters.
245. THEBES, BELOW THE WALL: See Algernon Charles Swinburne, Tiresias (1885):
“I, Tiresias the prophet, seeing in Thebes
Much evil...”
See also Homer, Odyssey 11: 561-565 (ca. 800 BCE, tr. A. T. Murray, 1919), where Odysseus tells his crew,
“Ye think, forsooth, that ye are going to your dear native land; but Circe has pointed out for us another journey, even to the house of Hades and dread Persephone, to consult the spirit of Theban Tiresias”;
246. WALKING AMONG THE DEAD: See Dante*, Inferno 20:34-42, where Tiresias, being one who sees the future, is consigned to walk backwards in the eighth circle of hell:
“See, he has made a bosom of his shoulders!
Because he wished to see too far before him
Behind he looks, and backward goes his way:
Behold Tiresias, who his semblance changed,
When from a male a female he became,
His members being all of them transformed;
And afterwards was forced to strike once more
The two entangled serpents with his rod,
Ere he could have again his manly plumes.”
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* see note 0.1
