Abstract
The visual and emotional impact of the Sphinx, the paradigmatic monster, extends beyond the time limits of Act II of The Infernal Machine, stirring an unsettling question. If this innocent-looking girl is none other than a monster in disguise, what lurks beneath the appearance of the other human characters in Cocteau’s interpretation of the Oedipus myth? A closer investigation shows that Tiresias, Jocasta, and Laius (whose ghost appears in Act I) belong to the monster category as well. Tiresias does so literally, Jocasta and Laius metaphorically.
policeman, to Therese/Tiresias’ husband: Madam or Mister, I am madly in love with you. And I want to be your husband.
husband, sneezes: But can’t you see that I am a man?
policeman: I can nevertheless marry you by proxy.
husband: That’s silly. You could better make children…. Come back this evening and see how nature will give me children with no need of a woman.
—Apollinaire, The Breasts of Tiresias1
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Notes
Guillaume Apollinaire, Les Mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tiresias), in Oeuvres Poétiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1965), 895, 897.
Paul M. C. Forbes Irving, Metamorphosis in Greek Myth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 72.
Arlette Lafont, “Autour des Mamelles de Tirésias,” La Revue des Lettres Modernes, no. 123–126 (1965): 8.
See also Annabelle Melzer, Dada and Surrealist Performance (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1994), 122–135;
Claude Schumacher, Alfred Jarry and Guillaume Apollinaire (New York: Grove Press, 1985), 141–156.
The poem is included in Correspondance Guillaume Apollinaire Jean Cocteau, ed. Pierre Caizergues and Michel Décaudin (Cahors: Jean-Michel Place, 1991), 47.
Jacques Brosse, Cocteau (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 84.
Judith G. Miller, “Jean Cocteau and Hélène Cixous: Oedipus,” in Drama, Sex, and Politics, ed. James Redmond (Cambridge University Press, 1985), 206.
Jean Touzot, Jean Cocteau, Le Poète et ses doubles (Paris: Bartillat, 2000), 124–127.
Mitsutaka Odagiri, Écritures Palimpsestes, ou Les théâtralisations françaises du mythe d’Oedipe (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), 167, 171.
Segal, Charles. “Oedipus through the Ages,” Review Article, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 7, no. 2 (Fall 2000): 221.
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© 2008 Irene Eynat-Confino
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Eynat-Confino, I. (2008). Laius, Tiresias, and Jocasta. In: On the Uses of the Fantastic in Modern Theatre. Palgrave Studies Theatre and Performance History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230616967_4
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