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I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see At the violet hour
TiresiasThe Waste Land · III. The Fire Sermon
III. The Fire Sermon
Section 3 of 5
Tiresias watches the typist's joyless encounter with the young man carbuncular. Having experienced both male and female sexuality across millennia, Tiresias has "foresuffered all" — every degraded coupling in history. This is not voyeurism but exhausted prophecy.
Why This Matters
Eliot's own notes identify Tiresias as "the most important personage in the poem" — the consciousness that unites all the poem's voices.
visionprophecysuffering
Tiresias Appears to Ulysses During the Sacrificing
Johann Heinrich Fussli, 1785 · Public Domain