[Milton-L] Kirmss Sculpture

[Horace Jeffery Hodges]

Posted by 'Yuko Nii':

Yes! The WAH Center DID hire an ARMED Epic security officer to guard Kirmss sculpture alleged to have defamed world's greatest poet, following an email campaign protesting his work. The issue was resolved when Kirmss' wife Ellen explained the work to Professor Carol Barton who initiated the campaign.

In response, Carol wrote:

Thank you so much for that nonsense post, Yuko Nii. I alleged no such thing, either in relation to the sculpture, or to Arthur Kirmss. My "protest" was against the article's author, Mr. McGrath. You really ought to get your facts straight -- but apparetly, that's not something the WAH center considers important.

Just to clarify things a bit, the message that you are responding to was from Terrance Lindall. He and Yuko Nii use the same email address, but he neglected to sign his post. There's no way that you could have known this, of course.

I realize that the object of your anger was Mr. McGrath's article in The Times, but I was under the impression that you really didn't care for the sculpture. Perhaps my impression stemmed from this remark:

As I've already told Mrs. Kirmss privately, it would never have occurred to me that anyone would sculpt *either* "the Lady of Christ's" or the highly fastidious Martyr king with tongue extended in that fashion -- and to me it looked like Charles' Van Dyck beard.

I read this as meaning that you thought the sculpture inappropriate as a depiction of Milton. That doesn't mean that you thought that it defamed Milton, of course. At any rate, I may have misunderstood you.

>From the start of this controversy over McGrath's article, I've thought that we Milton scholars ought to be drawing attention to why we love Milton. Of course, we should correct popular errors when we notice them, but why get so angry about them?

As for Mr. Lindall's post, I can understand that you wouldn't find it very funny, but take it with good humor, Carol. After all, you were pretty hard on him:

And I'm so glad McGrath found such authority and reliability in his esteemed source, Mr. Lindall, who can "channel" Milton's thoughts, has published his works in such respected venues as Heavy Metal, and is (by his own acclimation, of course) among the 'top five best-known illustrators of Milton in the world,' and part of the great tradition that includes William Blake, Henry Fuseli, Gustave Doré and even (though his Milton work was inferior) Salvador Dalí."

Lindall is a well-known illustrator of Milton. William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon have chosen one of his illustrations for the cover of their recent book, The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton. You can see it here:

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Poetry-Essential-Milton-Library/dp/0679642536/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222674410&sr=1-1

Mr. Lindall is a genuine fan of Milton, and his WAH Center' celebration has been in the planning for several years. It's a serious effort to honor Milton . . . along with a bit of surrealistic humor.

Jeffery Hodges
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