Delirious Milton: The Fate of the Poet in ModernityComposed after the collapse of his political hopes, Milton's great poems Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes are an effort to understand what it means to be a poet on the threshold of a post-theological world. The argument of Delirious Milton, inspired in part by the architectural theorist Rem Koolhaas's Delirious New York, is that Milton's creative power is drawn from a rift at the center of his consciousness over the question of creation itself. This rift forces the poet to oscillate deliriously between two incompatible perspectives, at once affirming and denying the presence of spirit in what he creates. From one perspective the act of creation is centered in God and the purpose of art is to imitate and praise the Creator. From the other perspective the act of creation is centered in the human, in the built environment of the modern world. The oscillation itself, continually affirming and negating the presence of spirit, of a force beyond the human, is what Gordon Teskey means by delirium. He concludes that the modern artist, far from being characterized by what Benjamin (after Baudelaire) called "loss of the aura," is invested, as never before, with a shamanistic spiritual power that is mediated through art. |
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Page 27
... writing , espe- cially poetical writing , in which there is a " turn , " a versus , at the end of each line . Early Greek writing , which went from left to right across the writing surface and then from right to left , was called ...
... writing , espe- cially poetical writing , in which there is a " turn , " a versus , at the end of each line . Early Greek writing , which went from left to right across the writing surface and then from right to left , was called ...
Page 45
... writer as the thing about which one must contrive not to write if one is to succeed in writing at all . Every act of writing is carved from this deeper refusal . When by means of this refusal the writer is permitted to write , the ...
... writer as the thing about which one must contrive not to write if one is to succeed in writing at all . Every act of writing is carved from this deeper refusal . When by means of this refusal the writer is permitted to write , the ...
Page 46
... writing , oscillating between them , that distinguishes the ex- perience of writing from that of speaking , which does not seem to acti- vate so powerfully the feeling of having to suppress something in order to " speak . ” We think of ...
... writing , oscillating between them , that distinguishes the ex- perience of writing from that of speaking , which does not seem to acti- vate so powerfully the feeling of having to suppress something in order to " speak . ” We think of ...
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abyss Adam alienated Anaximander Aristotle artifact artist become body called chaos choice choose Christian concept created createdness creative Creator critical critical theory dead decision delirium divine Creation earth epic everything experience Faerie Queene fall Father foreskins forget God's Greek hallucination heap heaven Hebrews hell Homer human imagine interpretation Jesus John Milton Jorie Graham kings literary Lycidas material matter meaning metaphor metaphysical metonymical Milton modern modernist monist narrative nature necessity and chance original Paradise Lost Paradise Regained passage perhaps Philistines phrase physical pinnacle poet poet's poetic poetry political present problem question reading rebel angels refer Renaissance Samson Agonistes Satan says scene seems sense space speak Spenser spirit stand Stanley Fish structure substance Tasso temptation tempting thee theology theory things thou thought tion Torquato Tasso tradition truth University Press verse vision voice wilderness word writing