Visions and Revisions: A Book of Literary DevotionsPowys, John Cowper
History
Visions and Revisions: A Book of Literary Devotions
Powys, John Cowper
Literature, Modern -- History and criticism
One feels, as one reads Milton, that his ultimate view of the universe
is a great chaotic battlefield, amid the confused elements of which
rise up the portentous figures of "Thrones, Dominations,
Principalities, and Powers," and in the struggle between these, the
most arbitrary, the most tyrannical, the most despotic, conquers the
rest, and, planting his creative Gonfalon further in the Abyss than
any, becomes "God"; the God whose personal and unrestrained
Caprice creates the Sun, the Moon and the Stars, out of Chaos; and
Man out of the dust of the Earth. Thus it is brought about that what
this God _wills_ is "Good," and what his strongest and most
formidable antagonist wills is "Evil." Between Good and Evil there
is no eternal difference, except in the eternal difference between the
conquering Personality of Jehovah and the conquered Personality of
Lucifer. So, far from it being true that Milton is the dull transcriber
of mere traditional Protestantism, a very little investigation reveals
the astounding fact that the current popular Evangelical view of the
origin of things and the drama of things is based, not upon the Bible
at all, but upon Milton's poem. In this respect he is a true Classic
Poet--a Maker of Mythology--a Delphic Demiurge.
One of the most difficult questions in the world to answer would be
the question how far Milton "believed" simply and directly, in the
God he thus half-created. Probably he did "believe" more than his
daring, arbitrary "creations" would lead us to suppose. His nature
demanded positive and concrete facts. Scepticism and mysticism
were both abhorrent to him; and it is more likely than not that, in the
depths of his strange cold, unapproachable heart, a terrible and
passionate prayer went up, day and night, to the God of Isaac and
Jacob that the Lord should not forget his Servant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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