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

Fri May 15 11:55:51 EDT 2009

In point of fact, it is clear throughout SA that the hero's strength has returned with his hair. Thus turning the millstone, offering to fight Harapha -- declined, H says, because S is blind, not because he is an unworthy opponent -- numerous comments by Manoa and Chorus, and, above all, S performing feats of strength in the theatre, "none daring approach." Other Renaissance and Baroque Samson plays (see Kirconnell) follow an intentionalist logic such that S's strength departs when he breaks his congenital vow, and does not return until God's favor is renewed, hair or no hair ("just" a symbol). So they have S, for example, performing for the Philistines in drag, beaten by small boys, etc.  What makes SA striking and odd is precisely that it does not work that way. On all these points (if I can be forgiven a plug) I have a fair bit to say in chapters two and three of my recent book. 
JD Fleming

----- Original Message -----
From: "Salwa Khoddam" <skhoddam at cox.net>
To: "John Milton Discussion List" <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2009 6:18:18 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: Re: Rép. : Re: [Milton-L]  Samson as suicidebomber

I see SA as packed full of images and motifs of  faith and hope.  Yes, Samson may have looked for outward signs of God at the beginning and didn't find them, but the play is about the regeneration of his faith, which causes him to realize his former strength.  At what point did his strength return?  His regeneration begins much earlier than 1354, or even the controversial 1381 ("rousing motions").  The chorus, which in Greek tragedy is often on the side of the tragic hero, is full of advice and support to Samson and reminds him that he was "elected" by God and therefore he must be patient and be open to the "Secret refreshings, that repair . . . strength, / And fainting spirits uphold" ( 663-66). Step by step, with resistance to each of his visitors who tempt him in ways to distract him from his mission (to act as "God's champion", whether one considers this avenging or taking revenge), Samson begins to reclaim his inner faith, recollect his Nazarite [sic] vow, symbolized by his hair, and is ready to act at the end in both a physical and spiritual agon for his God. He never lost his physical strength, otherwise how could he work as a beast in the mill, confront the well-armed Harapha? It is his faith that he lost "in the living God who gave me / At my nativity this strength, diffus'd / No less through all my sinews, joints and bones / Than thine [Harapha]" (1140-43). The hair (like the forbidden fruit in PL) does not contain any magic or strength.  It is the cutting of it (like the eating of the forbidden fruit) that has destructive consequences. Also, let's not forget the phoenix in lines 1699-1706 to which Samson is compared to.  Certainly an image of hope. 
 We may think of his final action as violent, but then the God of the OT was violent in order to bring justice.  As you know, there are some parallels between Job and Samson. 
Sorry for the somewhat lengthy post. 
Best Wishes, 
Salwa 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Michael Bryson 
To: John Milton Discussion List 
Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 3:16 PM 
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"