[Milton-L] Kirmss Sculpture

[James Rovira]

Thanks very much to the artist for his detailed replies.  I'm happy to
say that his writing after the fact exceeds the execution (no pun
intended) of the work itself -- at the least, it makes for an
interesting conversation about one contemporary interpretation of
Milton.

I'm not convinced that anyone who is beheaded can be said to have
offered him/herself in an act of self-sacrifice -- not even John the
Baptist.  He was taken by force and then beheaded by force, and had
neither natural nor supernatural means of extricating himself from his
imprisonment.  We could compare this to Christ -- the Gospels claim he
said he had the power to lay down his life and take it up again after
his imprisonment, and that he could command legions of angels to
deliver him.  So Christ's continued imprisonment and crucifixion was
by choice in a way John's imprisonment and beheading or Milton's
imprisonment was not.

It could be said that in the case of John the Baptist, his refusal to
compromise his message/principles led to his beheading (as Herod
certainly didn't seem interested in beheading John) -- so in that
sense his refusal to compromise constituted an act of self-sacrifice.
It's not so clear to me that Milton never compromised his principles,
however.  He writes against censorship, on the one hand, then not long
after works as a State censor.  He was eventually released from prison
by Charles II -- why, if he was so uncompromising and a threat to the
peace?  He certainly suffered by not getting his way -- by not seeing
the end of the monarchy, for example.  And he suffered a number of
other ways: with his first wife, his blindness, etc.  We could also
say that some of his positions were adopted out of principled
self-interest (say, in his divorce tract).  I don't know that any of
these constitute self-sacrificial suffering, however, as in the case
of John the Baptist or Christ, and I'm not sure that Milton suffered
at all for his art.

At any rate, thank you again for your close reading of your own work.
I'm not sure that even careful examination of the artwork would lead a
viewer to this reading, but that's in part the nature of art.

Jim R