Re: Rép. : Re: [Milton-L] Samson as suicidebomber

Wed May 13 17:19:19 EDT 2009

But what's the point of returning to the mother's house private? To make it the springboard to the public: the initiation of the ministry. "He said and stood": speech-action. JD Fleming

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Bryson" <michael.bryson at csun.edu>
To: "John Milton Discussion List" <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 1:16:02 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: RE: Rép. : Re: [Milton-L]  Samson as suicidebomber

This is why I think it is fascinating that Milton pairs PR and SA, with SA in the final position. The Son and Samson each appeal to an inner motivation (an inward oracle, or an intimate impulse/rousing motions--which latter two may or may not be the same thing for Samson), but Samson--like Satan--seeks the divine without, in visible or audible signs, while the Son seeks within. Even their endings are diametrically opposite--the Son returning privately to his mother's house (ducking out stage left while the angels are trying to turn his triumph into a public spectacle through song), and Samson--at least in Manoa's imagination--becoming the object of triumphant parades, monuments, and epic/lyric song (as if the subject of the Samsoniad). 

The contrast in terms of passion (as illustrated in the Chorus' last speech) is also interesting. The Son is an object case in the Renaissance ideal of passion controlled by reason, while calm in SA comes only as a result of some variation on catharsis--a temporary effect, to be sure, and in need of repeated applications to maintain. The contrast between inner and outer, control and lack thereof, reason and passion, liberty and license could not be greater, at least in my view. In each case, the Son is the former term, while Samson (and/or Manoa and the Chorus) is the latter. 

"SA is a sad, tragic study of the loneliness of humanity, listening in the darkness for a God who will not respond or appear, One who almost seems to taunt us with ambiguous scraps that make us a little better than hopeless, even then to deceive our fragile hopes." 

Perhaps because Samson--like so many of us--listens in the wrong place, in the wrong way, and to the wrong thing? Samson, as Milton presents him, seems to me a classic idolator, making a God of his *image* of God. It is no wonder that his image does not respond to him. Whose does? 

Michael Bryson 

---- Original message ---- 

Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 16:21:26 -0300 
From: "Derek Wood" <dwood at stfx.ca> 
Subject: RE: Rép. : Re: [Milton-L]  Samson as suicidebomber 
To: "John Milton Discussion List" <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu> 
>(See Michael Bryson's question below) 
> 
>Because Samson's God is 'unsearchable. . .' The God of Adam and Moses and Abraham no longer appears or speaks. No bushes burn. Samson is like us, or like17th C. Christians, lonely, sinful and bewildered. There had been signs once for Samson and yet he has come now to be shackled, enslaved and shamed. His apparently divine impulses led him to the Timnan woman and what a mess that turned out to be! His marriage to Dalila was not motioned by God and now he thinks God wants him to go to the idolatrous forbidden feast of Dagon. Milton himself was doubtful about the provenance of Samson's motions: 'whether prompted by God or by his own valour . . . '(CP 4.1, 102). He records his anxiety about such promptings elsewhere: "divine illumination . . . no man can know at all times to be in himself, much less to be at any time for certain in any other . . ." (CP 7, 242). 
> 
>The final words of the Chorus are sometimes taken to be a beautiful concluding comment by Milton himself but they are a tissue of mistakes and ironies e.g. they presume to 'search' what they say is unsearchable; their calm of mind comes from a massive bloodwork of slaughter; 'spent passion' is not admired by Milton elsewhere (e.g. he finds litanies are dead and worthless because they lack the spark of passion); all really is best in the end but the Philistines are not overcome in this false end: perhaps the real end is the eschaton but they do not know this etc. 
> 
>Milton had believed, after the defeat of Charles, that God by 'apparent signes' had signalled his approval of his Saints but now he found himself blind, defeated and shamed. Major General Fleetwood had cried out in the same situation, 'God hath spet in our faces!' 
> 
>SA is a sad, tragic study of the loneliness of humanity, listening in the darkness for a God who will not respond or appear, One who almost seems to taunt us with ambiguous scraps that make us a little better than hopeless, even then to deceive our fragile hopes. Samson's best guess at liberation is like mad Lear's: 'Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.' Those e-mails about Godot were unintentionally quite relevant. 
> 
>Derek Wood. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>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 
>phone: 902-867-2328 (w) 
> 902-863-5433 (h) 
>fax: 902-867-5400 
>web: http://www.stfx.ca/people/dwood <http://www.stfx.ca/people/dwood/Welcome.html> /Welcome.html 
> 
>________________________________ 
> 
> 
> . . .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? . . . 
> 
>Michael Bryson 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
James Dougal Fleming
Associate Professor
Department of English
Simon Fraser University

"das Fragwuerdige zu sehen"