[Milton-L] Samson as suicide bomber

[Kemmer Anderson]

http://www.counterpunch.org/poems01092009.html

I published a sonnet called "Gaza" with a Samson allusion and a 
borrowing from Samson  Agonistes in my line 14. The New York Times 
article is fascinating because the one director is Israeli and the 
other is Palestinian. In my desk at school I have a bone that I 
picked up off the surface of Gaza in 1983. That bone now in my palm 
drives or speaks the poem.  Once an art object is in the eye, the 
poet's intention and the reader or director's hermeneutics intersect 
in a political moment. Kemmer Anderson

At 11:13 AM 5/7/2009, you wrote:
>Miltonists might be interested in the article today on the front
>page of the Arts section of the NY TIMES, as it deals with
>the question of Samson as suicide bomber and reverses the
>cultural identifications, turning the biblical Jews into
>Palistinians and biblical Philistines into present-day Israelis.
>
>Flanders Opera's production of Saint-Saens opera deals with
>a question Miltonists have been repeatedly considering: is
>Samson into a suicide bomber? The production does so by
>reversing the roles in the bible and thus making opera-goers
>confront the present political situation in the middle East.
>A fuller account of the production is found on the NY TIMES
>website for today in the Arts section.
>
>As I noted in my article on musical treatments of Samson,
>Saint-Saens's opera has some interesting connections with
>Milton's poem, particularly on the political front.
>
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