Milton, Samson Agonistes: "knowing, as needs I must, by thee betrayed"

Samson Agonistes

John Milton

(Image from Wikipedia)

Several days ago, I cited a passage from Gordon Campbell's article "Milton and the Languages of the Renaissance" (Sederi 4, 1993, edited by Teresa Guerra Bosch, pages 11-21). Professor Campbell was explaining the well-known line "And knew not eating death" from Paradise Lost 9.792:

Milton is imitating a Greek construction in which the verb "to know" is followed by a nominative participle without repitition of the subject. At one level, then, the line means "not knowing that she was eating death". The purpose of the Hellenism is of course to introduce a Latinism, mors edax, death that devours. The same thing happens in Samson Agonistes (840): "knowing, as needs I must, by thee betrayed", which means both "knowing that I was betrayed by thee" and "knowing myself to be betrayed". (Campbell, "Milton and the Languages," page 19)

Readers will recall that I didn't quite catch Professor Campbell's point about the line "knowing . . . by thee betrayed" in Samson Agonistes 840. But after yesterday's post, I think that I understand. The two 'meanings' -- "knowing that I was betrayed by thee" and "knowing myself to be betrayed by thee" (adding "by thee") -- are simply two ways of rendering the line in grammatical English, much as "sensit . . . delapsus" (properly, "sensit se delapsum esse") can be rendered in grammatical English as "he sensed that he had fallen" and "he sensed himself fallen" (though that latter translation might not be quite as grammatical).

As for the "mors edax, death that devours," about which I noted that I had previously looked into much this very same morbid issue, I can now add two more online sources:

Diego de la Vega, Conciones Quadragesimales Vespertinae: Super Septem Poenitentiales Psalmos (Societatan Venetam, 1601)

Quam edax mors, quam insatiabilis eius famus, quae tot ferculis non est contenta, tot Regibus, tot Principibus, Ducibus &c. Nemini parcit, omnes devorat, qui ex Adae genere oriuntur, sed & ipsum Deum hoiem factum devorauit . . . (page 625)

Martin Opitz: Lateinische Werke 1614-1624, edited by Veronika Marschall, et al. (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009)

Quidquid tempus iners, et edax mors deteret, in te,. Surget, et auctorum series ducetur in omnes. A te vel solo: tu nil tibi maius habebis

I lack the page number for the latter, and I also haven't had time to work out suitable translations for these two Latin passages, but since Milton would likely be unfamiliar with either of them, these probably aren't worth investigating anyway.

Samson as 'Suicide Bomber'

Samson Destroys the Temple of Dagon

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872)

(Image from The Bible Illustrations)

The Milton List has been conducting a discussion about John Milton's Samson Agonistes, under the somewhat provocative thread heading "Samson as Suicide Bomber" -- the obvious allusion being made to current-day suicide bombings.

The scholar Carroll Cox offered some rather provocative comments of his own about the allusion:

There is an elephant in the room -- so far delicately ignored: "Suicide Bomber" refers, of course, to Arabs, who have replaced "dirty commies" in the mythology of u.s. politics. But that is not the elephant but merely the context. The elephant is that, through discussing Samson in theological terms, one implies that the suicide bombers of the daily newspaper are acting or claiming to act from theological motives -- that they are religious fanatics.

But they are acting from strictly secular motives, as a study of a year or so established: they represent frustrated nationalism! So if we want to discuss Samson as a suicide bomber, we need to discuss his politics, not his religion.

Not his religion? Well, Cox often presents a Marxist analysis, emphasizing political motives as more fundamental than religious ones. Be that as it may, in the case of "suicide bombers," he is wrong to state that "they are acting from strictly secular motives," as I noted in a response:

The expression "Suicide Bomber" refers to anyone who blows himself or herself up to kill others, usually in a terrorist act. The bomber can be any ethnicity and any religion -- or even have no religion. Currently, most such bombers are Muslims radicalized by Islamism. They may act out of a combination of motives, but religion is certainly one of these. Moreover, regardless of the motivation, Muslims would be unlikely to engage in "suicide" attacks if these had not already been declared not acts of suicide and if these had not already been theologically justified by Islamists. According to such Islamists, the reward for the Muslim 'suicide' bomber is paradise -- which is why . . . ["suicide bombings"] are called by Islamists "martyrdom operations." Religion certainly plays a major role in the phenomenon, and it cannot be ignored.

A number of other scholars disagreed with Cox -- including Noam Flinker, Salwa Khoddam, James Rovira, Stella Revard, and Feisal Mohamed. Feisal's response was the most interesting for my purposes:

I believe Carrol Cox has in mind the work of Robert Pape, now available in the important book Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Pape and others have shown that the Tamil Tigers, which is not a religious movement at all, is one of the groups most frequently engaging in suicide attack. But complicating the assertion that this is only the military tactic of a nationalist struggle is the culture that has developed in the Tamil cause, which elevates self-sacrifice to the kind of cosmic virtue that one would associate with religion.

Feisal's point about the Tamil Tigers is very interesting since this group is often put forward as evidence that suicide bombers can have entirely secular motives. Apparently, that's not quite the case. I suspect that any 'military' strategy requiring 'suicidal' missions would tend to offer religious motives even if the struggle were otherwise wholly secular. At any rate, Cox seems to have backed away from his assertion that suicide bombers "are acting from strictly secular motives," for he contacted the journalist Chip Berlet, an expert on right-wing religious movements, asking for his opinion of Pape's book. As Cox acknowledges, Berlet responded that Pape's analysis is a:

"Highly flawed analysis because the concepts of apocalyptic belief and religious nationalism were simply dismissed."

Cox therefore restated his position -- or, rather, repositioned himself, dropping his own dismissal of religion as a motive:

I do want to insist that when writers speak of "suicide bombers" they should recognize that the subject is a complex one. The phrase is firmly embedded in contemporary politics, and to use it raises contemporary political issues. (Just as it is impossible to discuss Milton's concept of freedom in PL without overlapping 21st-c theological disputes.)

This is a rather far cry from his original claim that suicide bombers "are acting from strictly secular motives" and appears to be an implicit acceptance of my own position (though Cox and I would cash this out rather differently).

Anyway, the comparison of Samson to a suicide bomber is not new, for Noam Flinker dealt with it as early as 1991, and the comparison became quite popular after 9/11. I haven't dealt with this particular issue much, for I'm not an expert on Milton's Samson Agonistes.

But perhaps I ought to look into it.

"Milton is a great poet, but living with him is hell."

Milton: Testosterone-Driven Poet?

"I'll be back."

(Image by Christian Northeast for Time Magazine)

If we take Gary Lynn Taylor's words in the entry heading above at face value, then we can probably agree that he does not boundlessly love Milton.

I've taken the quote from this Shakespearean scholar's recent Time Magazine 'review' of Nigel Smith's new book, Is Milton Better Than Shakespeare?

Taylor is the Shakespearean scholar who argues that the poem "Shall I die? Shall I fly" -- found in a collection of manuscripts donated to the Bodleian Library in 1755 by Bishop Richard Rawlinson -- truly comes from the hand of Shakespeare:

{1}
Shall I die? Shall I fly
Lovers' baits and deceits,
sorrow breeding?
Shall I tend? Shall I send?
Shall I sue, and not rue
my proceeding?
In all duty her beauty
Binds me her servant for ever.
If she scorn, I mourn,
I retire to despair, joining never.

{2}
Yet I must vent my lust
And explain inward pain
by my love conceiving.
If she smiles, she exiles
All my moan; if she frown,
all my hopes deceiving
Suspicious doubt, O keep out,
For thou art my tormentor.
Fie away, pack away;
I will love, for hope bids me venture.

{3}
'Twere abuse to accuse
My fair love, ere I prove
her affection.
Therefore try! Her reply
Gives thee joy or annoy,
or affliction.
Yet howe'er, I will bear
Her pleasure with patience, for beauty
Sure will not seem to blot
Her deserts, wronging him doth her duty.

{4}
In a dream it did seem
But alas, dreams do pass
as do shadows
I did walk, I did talk
With my love, with my dove,
through fair meadows.
Still we passed till at last
We sat to repose us for pleasure.
Being set, lips met,
Arms twined, and did bind my heart's treasure.

{5}
Gentle wind sport did find
Wantonly to make fly
her gold tresses.
As they shook I did look,
But her fair did impair
all my senses.
As amazed, I gazed
On more than a mortal complexion.
You that love can prove
Such force in beauty's inflection.

{6}
Next her hair, forehead fair,
Smooth and high; neat doth lie,
without wrinkle,
Her fair brows; under those,
Star-like eyes win love's prize
when they twinkle.
In her cheeks who seeks
Shall find there displayed beauty's banner;
O admiring desiring
Breeds, as I look still upon her.

{7}
Thin lips red, fancy's fed
With all sweets when he meets,
and is granted
There to trade, and is made
Happy, sure, to endure
still undaunted.
Pretty chin doth win
Of all their culled commendations;
Fairest neck, no speck;
All her parts merit high admirations.

{8}
Pretty bare, past compare,
Parts those plots which besots
still asunder.
It is meet naught but sweet
Should come near that so rare
'tis a wonder.
No mis-shape, no scape
Inferior to nature's perfection;
No blot, no spot:
She's beauty's queen in election.

{9}
Whilst I dreamt, I, exempt
From all care, seemed to share
pleasure's plenty;
But awake, care take
For I find to my mind
pleasures scanty.
Therefore I will try
To compass my heart's chief contenting.
To delay, some say,
In such a case causeth repenting.

Taylor's disputed discovery of this 'new' Shakespeare poem was also the subject of a Time Magazine article of June 21, 2005 (1985?), "Shall I Die? Shall I Fly . . . ," in which Otto Friedrich reports on the debate among Shakespearean scholars over Taylor's attribution of the poem to Shakespeare, the sharpest objection being: "Could Shakespeare really have written a poem that is so, well, mediocre?"

I wouldn't venture to say, except to note that a commonplace of creative writers is the proverb that "Every writer has a bad first novel."

Be that as it may -- and even though "Taylor himself does not claim to have discovered a masterpiece" in the 'Shakespeare' poem -- Taylor takes issue, in "Milton and Shakespeare: Battle of the Bards" (Time Magazine, May 15, 2008), with Nigel Smith's insistence that Milton is better than Shakespeare, apparently because Taylor believes that Shakespeare has better sound bites, Milton not being "a poet for the sound-bite century" because of such passages as one from Paradise Lost 4.268ff describing Adam and Eve in Eden:

The 20-line sentence contains 20 proper names: Enna, Prosperin, Dis, Ceres, Daphne, Orontes, Castalian, Nyseian, Triton, Cham, Ammon, Lybian Jove, Amalthea, Bacchus, Rhea, Abassin, Amara, Ethiop, Nilus, Assyrian.

Definitely no sound bite, but is Taylor being serious, or ironic? Or possibly both? Read his review, and decide for yourself. Meanwhile, he does make a good point about one difficulty that we face in reading Milton:

Milton makes even smart people feel stupid. Not by accident, either. He is probably the most unrelentingly aggressive poet in English. When Samson says, "My heels are fettered, but my fist is free," he displays the best and worst of Milton. The best is Milton's unsurpassed technical command of English: the double contrast of "heels . . . fettered" against "fist . . . free"; the long vowel in "heels" echoed by "free"; the alliteration of "fettered . . . fist . . . free"; the combination of all three effects in the verse-ending stressed monosyllable "free," so ironically spoken by a blind slave in chains, but also so irresistibly open-voweled, defiant and exhilarating. In some ways, "free" is the single word that sums up what's most appealing about Milton's politics -- his resistance to tyranny, his commitment to liberty. But of course the whole sentence is a threat to beat up someone who disagrees with him -- in particular, someone who refuses to acknowledge his God-guaranteed superiority over everyone else. And this religious fanatic will express his freedom by committing suicide in order to kill thousands of his enemies.

I wouldn't say that Milton makes us feel stupid, though we might feel a bit brow-beaten if we disagree with Milton, for he could be harshly, brilliantly polemical, but Taylor has chosen a pertinant issue here. How do we deal with a great poet who has written such a masterpiece as Samson Agonistes, which seems to justify a man who in our time would fit the profile of a suicide bomber?

Or did Milton really mean to justify blind Samson's ways to man?

An Academic Aside: Samson Agonistes

Etching of Samson

from

1882 German Bible

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm on one of my Miltonic jaunts today, this time an excursion through Samson Agonistes.

On the Milton Listserve, one of the scholars, Joe Mayer, asked why Milton describes Samson as if in prayer with "eyes fast fixt," for Samson's eyes had been physically gouged out according to the biblical text.

Carol Barton suggests that Milton was "nodding" in describing Samson as having his "eyes fast fixt" as if in prayer, for Milton knew -- but momentarily forgot -- that Samson's eyes had been physically removed.

Milton's 'fatigue' is possible, but a careful poet such as Milton must have gone over the line many times, checking and rechecking, so I wonder if "nodding" is the answer to Joe Mayer's query about Samson's "eyes fast fixt."

Just as a query of my own, mostly out of ignorance, but did Milton believe that Samson's eyes had physically been gouged out?

In Samson Agonistes, a quick scan gives these references:

line 33: "eyes put out"

line 41: "eyeless in gaza"

line 67: "O loss of sight"

line 152: "lost Sight"

lines 195-6: "that which was the worst now least afflicts me, / Blindness, for had I sight"

lines 644-5: "irreparable loss / Of sight"

line 914: "though sight be lost"

line 1103: "eyes put out"

line 1160: "put out both thine eyes"

line 1294: "sight bereav'd"

line 1489; "eye-sight lost"

line 1490: "it shall be my delight to tend his eyes"

line 1502: "his strength with eye-sight was not lost"

lines 1527-8: "What if his eye-sight (for to Israels God / Nothing is hard) by miracle restor'd"

line 1624: "without help of eye"

line 1637: "eyes fast fixt"

line 1687: "blind of sight"

line 1741: "loss of eyes"

I may have missed some, but of these lines, only line 41 ("eyeless in gaza") and line 1741 ("loss of eyes") would most strongly suggest that Samson's eyes are physically missing, but are these to be taken literally?

I am merely asking, uncertain.

Expressions such as "eyes put out" seem far more ambiguous to me, for "put out" might be read as "extinguished" -- as in the light of the eyes being extinguished.

Milton would, of course, know the Hebrew of Judges 16:21, which reads (apologies for the poor transliteration): "wayenaqqru et ainaiv."

This is often translated "and they gouged out his eyes."

My lexicon (Brown-Driver-Briggs, 669a), however, defines "naqar" as "bore, pick, dig." The Arabic cognate has the meanings of "perforate, bore out, hollow out." The Hebrew term "naqar" (and its Arabic cognate) thus seems to allow for some hermeneutic room to choose between the sense of gouging out and the sense of perforating.

Incidently, the King James Bible translates Judges 16:21 as "the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes," which -- as noted in Milton's use above -- seems to allow for some ambiguity.

But why would Milton want ambiguity on this point? What would be gained? Could it possibly have something to do with concepts of purity and holiness in Milton's reading of what he considered the old covenant? Purity and holiness are related to soundness of body and mind -- for instance, a priest must be sound of body according to divine law.

Yet blindness itself, even with the eyes physically present, would perhaps not constitute soundness of body, would it?

If any biblical scholars with expertise in Hebrew would care to comment, I'd be grateful.

Other individuals -- even Milton scholars -- are also invited to offer opinions.