NPPF Canto 1: 1-4 some random notes

[Michael Joseph]

Tim, Yes, indeed, Satan manipulates our sympathies. I noticed a comparable
ploy in 18th (post Great Awakening) and early 19th century execution
sermons, where readers were first reviled by the lurid acts perpetrated by
the malefactor and then seduced into sympathy for him through his abject
confession and plaintive anecdotes. The reader would realize his own
initial disgust and perforce harsh judgment had likewise been rash and
all-too-human, while the ember of sympathy he came to feel for the poor
condemned wretch glowed with a "glint-hint" of divine love.  He understood
that his own repugnant sins (however uninteresting they might have seemed
before) placed him in the same precarious position as the poor wretch
about to be "launched into Eternity." The Biblical quotation from the
parable of the two thieves demonstrated the value of humility, so that his
initial proud condemnation served finally as a painful reminder of his own
gross imperfections - though it also demonstrated that as long as life
remained there was hope.

But, given the purpose Fish articulates, doesn't Milton go too far in
making Satan so psychologically compelling, and his fall tragic? Fish's
argument strikes me as a justification of entrapment - just as comparable
arguments that explain away the beauty of Francesca's cantos on the
grounds that the poet wanted his readers to feel a nearly overpowering
sympathy for her in order that they might experience the full-bore pull of
temptation. And I think it a form of poetic vulgarity, and a kind of
spiritual defeat that would be unforgivable for a poet. It seems more
consonant with a sense of a commitment to poetry to imagine that Venus
always trumps Hephaesteus, beauty wins the battle with rhetoric, even at
the expense of the poem's greatness. I mean, otherwise the poem might be
great - but it won't be very good.



Michael




> Of course, it is essential that Milton "made Satan so attractive to readers"
> because, from the beginning of the epic, the reader must be find something
> sympathetic in his characterization.  The reader must be duped into
> believing what he says, so that the reader can experience a "Fall" similar
> to that of prelapsarian Mankind.  And Stanley Fish goes to great lengths to
> explain precisely how this occurs over the course of the epic poem.  Part of
> the irony in all this, as can be imagined, is the fact that the average
> reader *knows* the story and how the characters function within the biblical
> narrative, yet the Miltonic bard sets the reader up perfectly for having
> such a lapse in Reason.
>
> I question whether the Shade poem -- without the Foreward and
> commentary --establishes a dynamic between poem and reader to a similar
> degree.  As readers, we can read the poem "Pale Fire" separately, or in
> conjunction with the Kinbote contributions, but imo I don't see the Shade
> poem having much of an impact on the reader in and of itself; the poem
> achieves its greatness from the ways it is misinterpreted and mishandled by
> the commentator.  Likewise, there is more of a reader dynamic by way of the
> Kinbote sections, which invite the reader to assess and judge poetic intent
> (among other things).
>
> Shade's poem is good.  Ironically, it's Kinbote's mishandling of the poem
> that makes it great.
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Tim
>
>
>