[Milton-L] Reading Samson Agonistes
Paul Miller
pm9 at comcast.net
Sat Mar 1 23:36:57 EST 2008
Ah how sweet the aroma of sanity wafting from Milton l thanks to Derek Wood!
Paul Miller
So Hills amid the Air encounterd Hills
Hurl'd to and fro with jaculation dire,
That under ground, they fought in dismal
shade --- Paradise Lost
----- Original Message -----
From: "Derek Wood" <dwood at stfx.ca>
To: "John Milton Discussion List" <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2008 4:29 PM
Subject: [Milton-L] Reading Samson Agonistes
rom: milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu on behalf of Alan Rudrum
Sent: Sat 23-Feb-08 9:32 PM
To: John Milton Discussion List
Subject: Re: [Milton-L] RE: Samson's prayer for revenge
"The fundamental flaw in Wood's book is his misunderstanding and consequent
misuse of biblical material" ....It seems reasonable to point out that
intellectual integrity requires us to engage with responsible criticism of
our work, rather than to ignore it.
Like Carey, [Irene] Samuel describes Samson as vengeful. Certainly in the
biblical account, Samson prays "that I may be at once avenged of the
Philistines for my two eyes" (Judges 16:28); but in Milton's poem the
Messenger relates that "he stood, as one who pray'd / Or some great matter
in his mind revolv'd" (1637-38). The word "revenge" is used four times in
Samson Agonistes, three times by Manoa and once by the Chorus, never by
Samson.
________________________________
[1]
<https://webmail.stfx.ca/exchange/dwood/Drafts/RE:%20%5bMilton-L%5d%20RE:%20Samson%27s%20prayer%20for%20revengr.EML/1_text.htm#_ftnref1>
Derek N.C. Wood, 'Exiled from Light': Divine Law, Morality, and Violence in
Milton's Samson Agonistes, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001, 51.
_____________________________________________________________________
Brief Reply
[My first attempt to send this is probably speeding through Orion about now.
If you have the misfortune to receive both, please delete the first. This
second 'edition' is the authoritative one.]
Dare one reply to an Olympian thunderbolt? I read Alan Rudrum's
early publications in the sixties and didn't realise how young this
brilliant scholar was then. I read his review of my book at the time it
appeared and at first was tempted to answer it. I thought it was
well-written and readable like everything he writes. Also,I noted the
poisonous, little barbs of personal insult in it, as there are in much of
what he writes nowadays. Does any one answer reviews? Since I had fully
answered all his criticisms in my book, I decided not to take a second bite
at the cherry. However, here I am conjured to reply.
He notes I omitted half a verse of Hebrews, (not relevant to the point I was
making, by the way) and, as a result, he describes me as not being able to
read the Bible That half-line said that the Old Testament heroes are
perfected by 'us' and now, with us, can enter into God's rest. What on earth
showed this supposed inability to read The Good Book?
There is no doubt in my book about Samson's being a hero of faith. His faith
is not in question: but there many questions about the ethic by which he
chooses to use his strength . There is an index of Biblical citations in my
book for any one who wishes to examine them.. For his part, Rudrum is a
careless reader of Milton's text: there are six mentions of 'revenge' in
Samson, as I said, not the four he has noticed. The two he missed are quite
important as I will show (SA 484, 1462, 1468,1591, 1660, 1712). Also, he
doesn't seem to understand how Miltonic allusion and echo function. (One of
our best commentators on these, John Leonard, shows how richly an allusion
may refer to all the details of the passage alluded to, including its
context). Biblical imitation is different from ordinary fictional imitation.
Where the messenger is uncertain what Samson is doing (thinking or praying)
the 17th C. Christian reader knew. The Word of God had told him through the
inspired divine redactor: it was a prayer, and the prayer was for
revenge.The powerful intertextual echo in 'prayer' directs us to the
original story text. Milton could easily have avoided this and omitted the
echo but he didn't.. A moment before this Milton had invented Manoa's ransom
news: the finest Philistine lords, the most 'generous' and 'civil' and
magnanimous, had 'enough revenged'. Milton invented this and placed it just
there deliberately. Their humane, compassionate nature is juxtaposed almost
immediately with the hideous scream of three thousand people being crushed
to death by Samson. We had also just been told that the lords who persisted
in 'revenge and spite' were 'wondrous harsh' and the most committed idol
worshippers, Milton's emphatic invented comments on revenge are carefully
placed near Samson's horrifyng slaughter. Manoa finds his son's revenge
'dreadful' (1591), and is satisfied his son is 'fully revenged' (1712); the
chorus rejoices at the thought of 'heaps of slaughtered' (1530) and the
messenger is in shock at the horror he has seen (1542). Milton hammers away
at the fact of Samson's revenge and the revolting nature of it. The play
records a variety of attitudes to revenge, ranging from the triumphalist
gloating of the Israelites to the kinder, forgiving spirit of some
Philistines. A Letter to Hebrews has a powerful reminder that Vengeance
belongeth unto me... saith the Lord (10 v.30), following a celebration of
brotherly love, that acts as comment on Samson' behaviour (if I've
understood the Bible correctly).
Dr. Rudrum graduated in the sixties and seems to be locked into
sixties' readings of Milton and their offspring. F.M. Krouse's book in 1949
was trashed by Parker, then the greatest living Milton scholar. Nonetheless,
that book shaped Samson criticism from 1950 to about 1980. The key idea was
regeneration. Milton critics were still smarting from Johnson's remark that
the play lacked a middle. Now critics tried to show that each of Samson's
visitors effected a stage forward in his spiritual cleansing.. All sorts of
Christian concepts were invoked: conversion, grace, repentance, the World,
the Flesh and the Devil etc: till Samson emerged as the purified champion of
God. He was pure, he was non-pareil, because he was a Hero of Faith. It was
'forgotten' that Doctrina Christiana had described the stages of
regeneration and Samson had passed through them before the play began.
Arguing for this exemplary saint led some of the best scholars into the
strangest justifications of his brutal mass genocide:
Radzinowicz: "[t]he exemplary in Samson Agonistes illustrates the mercy of
God; Samson's final act in effect is to 'spread his name / Great among the
Heathen round.' The knowledge that the 'mercy of heaven' may reside even in
a 'hideous noise' is the consolation the drama brings. Thus deeds meriting
fame are deeds exemplifying knowledge, deeds 'to knowledge answerable.'
Samson lives to learn and dies to educate" (264-65)
Bennett: ." Samson achieves Christian liberty;" divine love, she says, is
present at the destruction of the Philistines as it is in the flames over
Sodom. Ms. Bennett moves fluently from Samson to a moving comparison with
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the anti-Nazi activist (150).
Christopher Hill: "The happier Paradise within was still to be regained on
earth. Samson perhaps regained it for himself at the moment of exultation
when the roof of Dagon's temple came crashing down" (318)
Isn't this grotesque? How many victims of 9/11 noticed the present love of
God or his heavenly mercy? Is it really thinkable that Milton could have
identified the Christian serenity of the 'paradise within' with the
homicidal vengefulness of that massive slaughter at the temple? It seems
impossible to me that the 'love of God' feasted on the horrifying massacre
of 3000 screaming and dying human beings. Perhaps this is what Rudrum means
by my'not knowing how to read the Bible'? Certainly Milton's text does not
seem to present such ideas, whatever a higher theology suggests. In this
period (post Krouse), few interpreters quoted the darker, uglier parts of
Milton's text. I lectured on my reading at Keele University in 1978 and only
later came upon Carey and Samuel and Wittreich, and was comforted that I
was not alone in some solipsistic, hermeneutic bubble.
SA is not an oblique autobiography of blind Milton: Samson did not learn
Milton's patience in blindness; he could never have written 'When I consider
how my light is spent...' The play does not signify Milton's hope of some
future destruction of the Philistine court of Charles II. But it may be a
monument to the tragic failure of the Good Old Cause. Much blood was shed
and nothing was achieved by the dying saints. All that tragic suffering and
waste led only to the return of the King. Many critics have seen Samson's
murderous behaviour as justified by the angel who prophesied he would begin
the deliverance of Israel. But there is no celebration of his great victory
in the next chapters of Judges. The Philistines continued to oppress the
Israelites until David's victory and still they continued till the time of
Nebuchadnezzar. Samson's death achieved nothing. Apparently,Samson's
genocidal slaughter was pointless. So it was with the G.O.C. In 1660.
Charles was back and his cohorts were stronger than ever. Frequently, late
in Judges, there is the repeated lament: 'In those days, there was no king
in Israel; each person did as he wished.' Samson's death was soon followed
by the coming of the monarchy to Israel. And the king came back to England
to make Milton's cup run over.As for Samson's angel, its promise of
deliverance for the Jews was not realised. They were to suffer an even worse
captivity in years to come. But Milton, too,had thought he had 'apparent
signes' of God's support for the G.O.C. (CPW. 3. 193), for the justice of
the Puritan revolution and for all the blood that had been shed. Like the
angel, the signes seemed to be from God. Everybody was mistaken.
S.A. is about the tragedy of God's inscrutability. God is silent about His
will even when he seems to speak clearly. The play is about the terrible
difficulty of knowing and hearing God. All that blood was shed in vain. 'The
Lord had blasted them and spit in their faces', wept Major General
Fleetwood.
Some notes on Rudrum's comments.
1. In a crude and simplistic distinction, Rudrum classifies
'traditional' readings as treating Samson like a 'true' hero while
revisionists saw him as a 'false' hero. Not true. I argue S. is a 'hero of
faith' although Wittreich does describe him as 'satanic'. What on earth is a
false hero?
2 .'Traditionalists' see Samson as enabled by the angelic promise
that he would achieve deliverance and so was justified in his violence [but
as we saw, nothing was achieved except a mass murder.]
2. Rudrum's early quibbles with my textual readings are so delicately
phrased that it is hard to know what he means e.g. my quoted
sentence about the 'unnaturally strong man'. What is it precisely that we do
not know? Revenge? I've shown that. That he wants to do it? When he went
with the messenger, sensing he might be able to do some 'great act,'
something'remarkable? his 'inexpiable hate'? He told Dalila he would feel
such hate if she 'took the way' and she did take the way!
'Tear her limb from limb'? He warned her if he would do this if she
approached him
so she did not....! What's wrong with my reading? Come on Dr. Rudrum, get
serious! It is a 'warning for her protection' says Dr Rudrum. Against what?
against his own uncontrollable hatred and violence! Precisely my point.
4. Silly sarcasm about their 'living happily
together' ignores Milton's injunction that
in mixed religious marriages, the true believer should
instruct the other partner and
win him or her gently into true belief. (DDD). Does Samson try? In half a
line he dumps 'her of Timna' and looks around at once for another woman to
use as an instrument for his own political aims. To her he whines later
that she betrayed his love. This is a slimy, puke-provoking lie. He is a
liar like she is. They are both scheming treason against the other but she
wins. Ergo, she is the more intelligent one .Stasis? I was looking at the
tropic effect of movement in shaping the structure.The soothing effect of
escaping from a stinking prison house into the fresh open air outside is
likely to be physically refreshing; it is hardly a spiritual advance. In
fact, his misery brings 'restless thoughts' like a 'deadly swarm of
hornets'.As he recounts his misery we see not renewal but spiritual
stagnation.
I am still not sure why Dr Rudrum freaked out when I omitted that half
verse from Hebrews. It said the good people of the OT would be perfected by
Christ's sacrifice, and taken to heaven to enjoy God's rest. Perhaps he did
not read the part of my book where I argue that Samson is a hero of faith,
not a satanic villain or the Antichrist. Hebrews tells us the OT saints are
all perfected wirh us. That's pretty obvious in the Letter. J.H. Davies in
The Cambridge Bible Commentary which I leaned on heavily) writes: "Christ's
work being done, 'the men of old' can receive their reward' in company with
us." The note to 12: 23 shows a little uncertainty. What's the problem?
What have I missed?
Well, Dr. Rudrum's review article was carefully crafted given the time he
had; my reply is hurried and incomplete,necessarily. Further discussion can
be found in my book which is more carefully prepared.
Best wishes to all persons of good will!
Derek
Derek N. C. Wood,
Senior Research Professor and Shastri Fellow,,
St. Francis Xavier University,
ANTIGONISH, NS,
Canada, B2G 2W5
e-mail: dwood at stfx.ca <mailto:dwood at stfx.ca>
phone: 902-867-2328 (w)
902-863-5433 (h)
fax: 902-867-5400
web: http://www.stfx.ca/people/dwood/Welcome.html
<http://www.stfx.ca/people/dwood/Welcome.html>
Derek N. C. Wood,
Senior Research Professor and Shastri Fellow,,
St. Francis Xavier University,
ANTIGONISH, NS,
Canada, B2G 2W5
e-mail: dwood at stfx.ca <mailto:dwood at stfx.ca>
phone: 902-867-2328 (w)
902-863-5433 (h)
fax: 902-867-5400
web: http://www.stfx.ca/people/dwood/Welcome.html
<http://www.stfx.ca/people/dwood/Welcome.html>
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