But surely Blake had a supreme disdain for Milton -- so, if we pretend
that Milton's soul migrated into Blake, then surely there must have been
another competing soul that was also inside Blake. And that competing
soul won!
In Blake's "Milton" Book the First:
"Say first! what move'd Milton, who walkd about in Eternity
One hundred years, pondring the intricate mazes of Providence
Unhappy tho in heav'n, he obey'd, he murmur'd not, he was silent."
The question is so sarcastic. And did Milton consider Providence to
consist of mazes? Or are mazes found in, and created by, sin? And,
Milton "murmur'd not, he was silent"?
This is not the Milton I read. I hear a thundering voice when I read
Milton. So, what was Blake reading, in hearing no murmurs in Milton? He
thinks Milton's thundering was silence because it was passive obedience
to Heaven's dictates. As though Milton created nothing new!
Then there is the criticism of Milton's (and Shakespeare's) "Monotonous
Cadence" in the "To the Public" statement at the start of "Jerusalem."
If Blake had Milton's soul inside him, he surely rejected it...
In a way, isn't the posited Chaucer to Spenser to Milton to Blake
succession of souls simply a list of the succession of the greatest
poets in the English language? Shakespeare is excluded because he was a
dramatist and hence his abode is within a different soul material stream.
James C. Nohrnberg wrote:
> Chaucer --> Spenser: FQ IV.ii.34: "...through infusion sweet..."
> (with Sh. Cal. envoi, "match thy pype with Tityrus his style");
> Spenser/Chaucer --> Milton: Il Penseroso 103-19: "...call up him that
> left half told / The story of Cambuscan bold...";
> + Dryden on Spenser being Milton's original, and Milton on Spenser
> being a better teacher than Aquinas, but contra PL IX, 30-31: "long
> and tedious havoc fabl'd Knights / In battels feign'd" and XII, 386f,
> "Dream not of thir fight, / As of a duel";
> [Gray, The Bard / Progress of Poesie];
> Milton --> Blake: _Milton_ Bk. II: "Then first I saw him in the
> Zenith as a falling star / Descending perpendicular, swift as the
> swallow or swift: / And on my left foot falling on the tarsus [=Saul
> of Tarsus becoming a Christian], enter'd there: ...". -- 'Not Milton,
> but Milton in me,' Blake could say (after Galatians 2:20).
>
--
Kevin Farnham
Lyra Technical Systems, Inc.
http://www.LyraTechnicalSystems.com
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