Re: Rép. : Re: [Milton-L] Samson as suicidebomber
JD Fleming
jfleming at sfu.ca
Wed May 13 20:48:21 EDT 2009
Nietzsche observes how precious a thing it is to have antipodes. Michael, your view of these matters, as expressed below, is that kind of gift to me! JDF
----- 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 2:49:08 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: Re: Rép. : Re: [Milton-L] Samson as suicidebomber
Perhaps. But I suspect not. In fact, I am beginning to suspect that something far more radical is going on at the end of PR. Paradise is regained, neither through through bloody sacrifice on a cross, nor through the lessons of a public ministry, but by one man's resistance to temptation--and the temptations of the public realm, at that. I think, for Milton, the Passion narrative (the ransom sacrifice) was not only beside the point, it was an active distraction from the point, after the fashion of Satan's temptations in PR. The model of "salvation" on offer therein is something that is done *to* or *for* people, a model the Son specifically rejects in PR (refusing to "save" either Jew or Gentile). Milton specifically chooses to illustrate the regaining of Paradise as a private act, done "in secret" and "above heroic" (especially in the epic sense of heroism as resulting in glory and fame).
This is where my questions are leading me right now--I think Milton's Son in PR is rather more "Gnostic" than "Orthodox," at least in terms of the emphasis that is placed on inner illumination, secret acts, intimate and experiential knowledge as opposed to the formal, book-learned knowledge Satan offers, and the manifest lack of interest on the part of character and poet in inhabiting/illustrating the more traditional aspects of the savior role. In that light, I would argue (and have so argued) that "Tempt not the Lord thy God" serves as an assertion, not of separateness from the divine, but of unity therewith.
I'm pulling something like this together to send off to the Murfreesboro conference this year, and am thinking "out loud" a bit here. But I think this is why Milton had such trouble with his poem on the Passion--the emphasis is external and showy in a way that PR's is not.
Michael Bryson
---- Original message ----
Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 14:19:19 -0700 (PDT)
From: JD Fleming <jfleming at sfu.ca>
Subject: Re: Rép. : Re: [Milton-L] Samson as suicidebomber
To: John Milton Discussion List <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
>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
>>
>>
>>
>>________________ >TNEF17430.rtf (16k bytes) >________________ >_______________________________________________ >Milton-L mailing list >Milton-L at lists.richmond.edu >Manage your list membership and access list archives at http://lists.richmond.edu/mailman/listinfo/milton-l > >Milton-L web site: http://johnmilton.org/
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>James Dougal Fleming
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>Department of English
>Simon Fraser University
>
>"das Fragwuerdige zu sehen"
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Simon Fraser University
"das Fragwuerdige zu sehen"
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