Re: Rép. : Re: [Milton-L] Samson as suicide bomber

[Michael Bryson]

There *is* a Dagon, then, in SA? Then why does Dagon--or Jehovah, for that matter--not speak in SA? Why, of the last three great works, does SA function as the one in which “God” is given no voice but that of human assertion?

*That* is the point I am driving at. In PL, the “God” speaks for itself, and at great length. In PR, the “God” speaks for itself, though much less than in PL. In SA, the “God” does not speak at all. Milton removes the non- or trans-human
element entirely (right down to removing Samson’s famous prayer from Judges to the realm of doubtfully-delivered second-hand report). And I am fascinated by why he might have done that. If “man” is created in the image of God in PL, I
think what we have in SA is the reverse. “God” is created in the image of whichever “man” happens to be speaking. Samson’s Jehovah is a god of violence, as is Harapha’s Dagon. Dalila’s
Dagon, however, appears to be more a god of law and the procedures of civil justice, which might help explain some of Samson’s contempt for Dagon’s “ungodly” deeds (again, for Samson, it seems that to be a “true God” means to be a
warrior—Yahweh Tsevaoth). I think explaining that contempt as a reaction to the “oppression of the worshippers of [Jehovah]" is not quite enough to account for his distaste, even disgust, in that moment.

Now, the book of Judges as sacred history or allegory is an interesting argument, but not the one I am trying to pursue here. What I am interested in is the way in which Milton uses Samson, and changes the already dubious character he finds in Judges. In Judges “certain of Samson's acts are under God's special control” (Judges 14:4, for example), but in SA this is made ambiguous at best, as the role of God in Samson’s taste for Philistine women is attested to only by Samson. Simply dismissing that difference is one way, I suppose, of addressing the question (as would be explaining it exclusively in terms of genre), but I am rather more interested in exploring other ways. What might the difference mean? Why is it introduced? I think Milton does this in order to raise questions, not stifle them.

Michael Bryson

---- Original message ----

  Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 09:19:58 -0400
  From: "Harold Skulsky" <hskulsky at smith.edu>
  Subject: Rép. : Re: [Milton-L]  Samson as suicide
  bomber
  To: <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
  >1) The ungodly deeds of Dagon are the deeds he
  has inspired in his votaries, consisting in the
  oppression of the worshippers of the one true God.
  >
  >2) See answer to (1).
  >
  >3) Judges is a sacred history, not a fable or
  allegory. It has a prima facie claim on the
  credence of a professing Christian. If it says
  that certain of Samson's acts are under God's
  special control, then this proposition enjoys a
  prima facie claim to credence. The impurity of
  Samson's motives is irrelevant to their status as
  instruments of God's purposes. Where Samson's
  first principles tally with common knowledge for
  Milton and his target audience, they are
  antecedently worthy of belief unless conclusively
  discredited.
  >
  >Remarks: there is abundant evidence in the
  Miltonic corpus that Milton takes the broad lines
  of the metaphysical theory of angels quite
  seriously, and also credits the widespread view
  that the Syro-phoenician pantheon consists of
  fallen angels under various disguises. PL among
  other places shows passim that JM has sifted
  through the available metaphysics and adapted it
  to his own idiosyncratic version of materialism.
  There is also abundant evidence that JM broadly
  accepts the view that history is directed by
  Providence, and that this fact is a scandal to
  faith that the faithful are bound by duty to
  overcome.
  >
  >Plays do not exist in a vacuum, nor, for that
  matter, does any other communication. For X to
  communicate something intelligible to Y, X and Y
  need to share a large fund of working assumptions,
  not all of them trivial. These assumptions are not
  what , e.g., SA is designed to SAY to us, but are
  the preconditions for SA's saying anything at all.
  >
  >
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