This is the best since Blake and Doré.
The painter has caught the essential allegory of Book I. For the majority of the world who do not share my enthusiasm for Milton's epics, Paradise Lost is a retelling of the first three chapters of Genesis, filling out the details and sweeping under it all of what Alexander Pope invited his readers to "expatiate fre" about.
Note the huge, naturalistic--almost photographic--eye that represents The Word. It is present in every panel of the scroll, but for all its realism its details are quite Egyptian in form and reminiscent of the All-Seeing Eye that dominates the Masonic-derived image on the one-dollar bill from the top of the pyramid. But there are plenty of counterfeits of The Word also, the eyes that occupy the whole heads of many of the creatures. It made me ask 'What is the opposite of the Word, the Truth? Obviously, the lie that is the truth of Satan the rebel, the destroyer who destroys for the sake of destroying.' As a story, Milton's verse is so compelling that you want to know the ending, even if you already know what it is. But is it a necessary outcome?
I was first struck by the similarity, even identity, of detail in the tees, the vines, the branches in the first details we see, and no surprise, it morphs into the scales of the serpent.
The council of Pandemonium contains angels who look much like contemporary demons, and it's no joke just what Satan and his rebel angels may have morphed into. That is the value and the delight of allegory: to hold up the mirror to nature by identifying qualities that are so complete in the personification in essences and personae not of our direct experience as to give us back an image of our own collective and individual mind.
As I sat here watching the YouTube video, I had to read the printed text aloud, with great fervor, and it shivered me like a great peal of organ music that vibrates through your seat. This has extraordinary power. Are you up for it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCLUAAfPzUw&feature=channel
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Merry Christmas!
Here is my Christmas card, with brave expectation of keeping this spirit thoughout the new year whose number would seem to proclaim half-sight. May all our "inward sight" be clear.
The Mystic's Christmas
by
John Greenleaf Whittier
"All hail!" the bells of Christmas rang,
"All hail!" the monks at Christmas sang,
The merry monks who kept with cheer
The gladdest day of all their year.
But still apart, unmoved thereat,
A pious elder brother sat
Silent, in his accustomed place,
With God's sweet peace upon his face.
"Why sitt'st thou thus?" his brethren cried,
"It is the blessed Christmas-tide;
The Christmas lights are all aglow,
The sacred lilies bud and blow.
"Above our heads the joy-bells ring,
Without the happy children sing,
And all God's creatures hail the morn
On which the holy Christ was born.
"Rejoice with us; no more rebuke
Our gladness with thy quiet look."
The gray monk answered, "Keep, I pray,
Even as ye list, the Lord's birthday.
"Let heathen Yule fires flicker red
Where thronged refectory feasts are spread;
With mystery-play and masque and mime
And wait-songs speed the holy time!
"The blindest faith may haply save;
The Lord accepts the things we have;
And reverence, howsoe'er it strays,
May find at last the shining ways.
"They needs must grope who cannot see,
The blade before the ear must be;
As ye are feeling I have felt,
And where ye dwell I too have dwelt.
"But now, beyond the things of sense,
Beyond occasions and events,
I know, through God's exceeding grace,
Release from form and time and space.
"I listen, from no mortal tongue,
To hear the song the angels sung;
And wait within myself to know
The Christmas lilies bud and blow.
"The outward symbols disappear
From him whose inward sight is clear;
And small must be the choice of days
To him who fills them all with praise!
"Keep while you need it, brothers mine,
With honest seal your Christmas sign,
But judge not him who every morn
Feels in his heart the Lord Christ born!"
I can't get it to load on here except in this plain-Jane layout. I had it in double columns and a picture, but alas.
The Mystic's Christmas
by
John Greenleaf Whittier
"All hail!" the bells of Christmas rang,
"All hail!" the monks at Christmas sang,
The merry monks who kept with cheer
The gladdest day of all their year.
But still apart, unmoved thereat,
A pious elder brother sat
Silent, in his accustomed place,
With God's sweet peace upon his face.
"Why sitt'st thou thus?" his brethren cried,
"It is the blessed Christmas-tide;
The Christmas lights are all aglow,
The sacred lilies bud and blow.
"Above our heads the joy-bells ring,
Without the happy children sing,
And all God's creatures hail the morn
On which the holy Christ was born.
"Rejoice with us; no more rebuke
Our gladness with thy quiet look."
The gray monk answered, "Keep, I pray,
Even as ye list, the Lord's birthday.
"Let heathen Yule fires flicker red
Where thronged refectory feasts are spread;
With mystery-play and masque and mime
And wait-songs speed the holy time!
"The blindest faith may haply save;
The Lord accepts the things we have;
And reverence, howsoe'er it strays,
May find at last the shining ways.
"They needs must grope who cannot see,
The blade before the ear must be;
As ye are feeling I have felt,
And where ye dwell I too have dwelt.
"But now, beyond the things of sense,
Beyond occasions and events,
I know, through God's exceeding grace,
Release from form and time and space.
"I listen, from no mortal tongue,
To hear the song the angels sung;
And wait within myself to know
The Christmas lilies bud and blow.
"The outward symbols disappear
From him whose inward sight is clear;
And small must be the choice of days
To him who fills them all with praise!
"Keep while you need it, brothers mine,
With honest seal your Christmas sign,
But judge not him who every morn
Feels in his heart the Lord Christ born!"
I can't get it to load on here except in this plain-Jane layout. I had it in double columns and a picture, but alas.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)