The musical analogy also points to the way mazes figure the double
perspective central to Milton's thought. If one is in a maze, and
doesn't know what that maze looks like, one experiences the twisting
corridors one after another--in time--but if one sees a maze--from above
or in three dimensions, its spatial pattern becomes graspable. What had
seemed disorder as it unfolded in time is revealed to have always been a
spatial order. From the temporal point of view of the maze-runners,
however--and this in my view is what makes Milton special--the spatial
view is obtainable by keeping careful account of where one has been and
using reason to transmute temporal experience into spatial knowledge.
Similarly, one hears music sound by sound, but later understands it as
having been a highly patterned set of relations, which the score
represents in a spatialized form. Fairyland (and /The Faerie Queene)/
also present a temporal activity of wandering from which a spatial form
(numerological as well as thematic) emerges over time. Spenser even
warns us--in the letter to Ralegh--that the story, were it terminable,
would end where it began.
John Leonard wrote:
> Kevin Farnham writes:
>
>
>> Thinking a bit more about the question of whether Milton thinks
>> heaven has mazes... consider a score of a Mozart symphony. It looks
>> "mazelike" to the ignorant, to those who do not know what the symbols
>> mean. But if one listens to the symphony, listens again and again,
>> learns it, internalizes it... is that symphony a maze? or is it in
>> reality a vision of oneness?
>>
>
>
> Perhaps the answer is that heavenly mazes are both mazy and
> harmonious. Kevin consistently equates mazes with disharmony and
> error. My own view is that Milton sometimes makes this association,
> but not always. I like Kevin's musical analogy. Milton actually
> makes the same analogy, but does so in a way that includes mazes (not
> rejects them):
>
> The melting voice through mazes running;
> Untwisting all the chains that tie
> The hidden soul of harmony.
> (L'Allegro 140-42)
>
> The difference between Kevin and me is that I think Milton
> occasionally put in a good word for mazes (as well he might, for
> mazes--especially multicursal ones--are fun).
>
> John Leonard
>
>
--
Marshall Grossman
Professor
Department of English
University of Maryland
3101 SQH
College Park, MD 20895
301-405-9651
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