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Feminine power: the divine to the demonic @ the British Museum

This is the first major exhibition ever held at the British Museum focusing solely on goddesses – on female spiritual beings from mythological traditions from around the world – and it is absolutely fabulous!

Queen of the night relief, c. 1750 BCE, Iraq, painted clay © The Trustees of the British Museum

Questions about women and femininity

The exhibition sets out to ask questions about images and ideas of the divine: How do different traditions view femininity? How has female authority been perceived in ancient cultures? Are sex and desire the foundations of civilisation or their disruptors? To what extent do female deities reinforce patriarchal social systems or subvert them? What relevance to goddess from ancient or remote cultures have for us, here, today?

To ‘answer and explore’ these questions the exhibition brings together female divine and demonic figures feared and revered for over 5,000 years from traditions all round the world. It includes painted scrolls from Tibet, Roman sculpture, intricate personal amulets from Egypt, Japanese prints, Indian relief carvings, statuettes and figurines, alongside contemporary sculptures.

Ancient and modern

It’s important to realise that the exhibition combines ancient and modern. It brings together historical artifacts – ancient sculptures and sacred objects relating to female goddesses from all around the world – but also includes modern and recent works of art by contemporary female artists such as the renowned American feminist artist Judy Chicago, and the creations of less well-known woman artists from various cultures, such as this fearsome headpiece from India.

Dance mask of Taraka, workshop of Sri Kajal Datta (1994) India, papier mâché © The Trustees of the British Museum

The aim is to explore the multitude of ways in which femininity has been perceived, conceived, created and depicted across the globe, from the ancient world to today. The exhibition explores the embodiment of feminine power in deities, goddesses, demons, saints and other spiritual beings, associated with the widest possible range of human experiences and attributes, from sex and fertility, through wisdom, passion and nature, to war, mercy and justice.

18th century Chinese porcelain of Guanyin, the Chinese translation of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, with child and attendants © The Trustees of the British Museum

Treasures

What makes the exhibition so enjoyable is not necessarily its feminist aims (although many visitors will, of course, identify with these) but a much simpler factor. Recent British Museum exhibitions about Nero or Stonehenge featured fabulous objects but also a lot of run-of-the-mill coins or skeletons or shards of pottery. These were important because they tell us about the subject’s archaeology and history, but sometimes they can get a bit, well, boring.

Here, by contrast, having selected 50 or so of the most interesting, relevant or thought-provoking goddesses from traditions around the world, the curators were free to pick only the very best objects to represent them. Almost all of the objects are from the museum’s own collection and they showcase its extraordinary breadth and range. But more importantly, lots and lots of them are really beautiful or, if not beautiful, then striking and fascinating.

Statue of Venus, 1st to 2nd century Rome © The Trustees of the British Museum

I studied the labels and read the extensive feminist commentary but then I have read the same kind of thing thousands of times, and read it every day in the papers and hear it every day on the radio and TV. Discussions of gender and sexuality and gender stereotyping and #metoo and the gender pay gap and female empowerment and strong independent women and women pioneers in culture and science and sport are now part of the permanent background hum of modern life.

What is not an everyday experience is to be able to take a walk through the mythologies of the world, to savour the beauty and force of a carefully curated selection of exquisite and surprising and fascinating historical and cultural artifacts.

Not all the objects on display are masterpieces, but many of them are really, really beautiful, and all of them have fascinating stories to tell and many of them shed lights on countries and cultures I knew little or nothing about. The exhibition amounts to a kind of David Attenborough odyssey through the weird and wonderful products of the human imagination.

Mami Wata headpiece, Nigeria, early 1900s, painted wood and metal © The Trustees of the British Museum

Five themes

One of the curators explained that they went out of their way to consult far and wide, with heads of departments across the museum, with stakeholders and members, in order to draw up a long list of themes and subjects relating to female power. Alongside this they drew up a long list of objects to illustrate the themes, at the same time drafting a list of feminist commentators who might be interested in commenting on them.

The outcome of this long process of consultation and consideration has been to divide the exhibition into five themes, each of which is introduced and explained by the curators – and then a leading contemporary feminist was invited to contribute thoughts on the theme and reflections on the objects.

The five themes are:

  • Passion and Desire, introduced and analysed by Classics Professor Mary Beard
  • Magic and Malice, commented on by writer and podcaster Elizabeth Day
  • Forces of Nature, commented on by psychotherapist and campaigner against violence against women, Dr Leyla Hussein
  • Justice and Defence commented on by human rights lawyer Rabia Siddique
  • Compassion and Salvation commented on by writer, comedian and podcaster Deborah Frances-White

Thus each section each of the individual exhibits has two panels, one a factual description by the curators and one a subjective and thoughtful comment by the contributors. There are also some standalone video ‘thought-pieces’ of the five commentators giving their thoughts about women and power.

Creation and nature

To give an idea of the sheer number and range of goddesses and deities involved, this is a list of some of the exhibits in just the first section, devoted to ‘Creation and nature’.

  • Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes with flaming red hair and a fiery temper
  • Sedna, the Inuit mistress of the sea
  • Lashmi, the Hindu goddess of abundance
  • Oshun, the Yoruba orisha of water, coolness and healing
  • Mami Wata, the mother water of African spiritual traditions
  • Izarami-no-mikoto, a creator deity of both creation and death in Japanese Shinto mythology
  • sheela-na-gigs, the primitive stone figures found in the Middle Ages across Britain, France and Spain
  • Papatūānuku, the mother earth figure of In Māori tradition, who gives birth to all things, including people

You get the idea. Not so much about the goddesses as such, but the impressive range and diversity of cultures represented.

Kali

The exhibition includes a newly acquired icon of the Hindu goddess Kali by contemporary Bengali artist, Kaushik Ghosh, the first contemporary 3D representation of Kali in the collection.

As one of the most prominent and widely venerated goddesses in India, this devotional image of Kali reflects the living tradition of her worship, important for millions of Hindus around the world today.

The statuette was commissioned especially for the exhibition, together with the London Durgotsav Committee, who run the annual Kali Puja festival in Camden, in Kali’s honour.

According to the curators: ‘Loved and feared for her formidable power and aggression, Kali is the goddess of destruction and salvation, who transcends time and death, destroys ignorance and guides her followers to enlightenment. Although superficially terrifying, the bloodied heads that she wears and carries represent her power to destroy the ego, setting her followers free from worldly concerns, and the belt of severed arms signifies that she liberates them from the cycle of death and rebirth, by the many weapons she wields.’

Kali Murti, Kaushik Ghosh, India, 2022. Image © The Trustees of the British Museum

Ancient and modern

There’s a kind of doubled or paired approach to everything. I’ve mentioned the way many of the exhibits feature a panel giving the historical and cultural facts, as written by the curators, and next to it a panel giving the more subjective view and reflections of the guest commentator. Doubling. Two perspectives.

But I mean it in another way as well, which is the curators’ deliberate juxtaposition of the very old and the very contemporary. This is announced right at the beginning of the exhibition (although it was only when the curator pointed it out that I understood it).

Right at the beginning of the ‘Creation and nature’ section they have two exhibits, not quite next to each other, a bit more subtly placed than that. One is a trio of Cycladic figurines of women, those primitive, flat faced half-abstract figures which date from as long ago as 3,000 BC.

A figurine of a woman, from the Cyclades, over 4,000 years old.

These are so beautiful as objects and shapes that I could look at them all day. Anyway, just round the corner from them the curators have hung a print titled ‘The Creation’ by the American feminist artist, Judy Chicago (born in 1939 and still going strong).

I needee a bit of help deciphering this but it is an image of a woman giving birth, taken from between her parted thighs, with her two breasts as hills on the horizon, one a volcano exploding. Obviously it’s heavily stylised, and features strata of creation on the right including sea life and, above them, lizards and apes and humans.

The Creation, Judy Chicago, USA, 1985, coloured screen print in 45 colours on black paper. Image © The Trustees of the British Museum

In other words, it’s a stylised image of the creation of life on earth. An interview with Chicago is quoted in which she jokes that Michelangelo’s famous image of the ‘Creation’ depicts a man (Adam) lying lazily on his back while a complacent God reaches out and touches his finger. Chicago wanted to counterpoint this patriarchal fantasy with a depiction of the more effortful, bloody and seismic moment of creation in a woman giving birth, but at the same time give it modern mythic overtones, reflecting our knowledge of geology and evolution.

So far so interesting and both works are examples of what I meant by saying that all of the exhibition’s artefacts are powerful and beautiful. It also exemplifies the juxtaposition of ancient and modern I was talking about.

History and art

But it is a dichotomy or duality on another level, as well, which is that the Cycladic figures are conventionally thought of as being of predominantly archaeological and historical interest whereas the Chicago piece is clearly a modern ‘work of art’.

So the curators are enacting another form of doubling: they have deliberately mixed together works which come from the staid academic world of history and anthropology with living works of art.

So there are, arguably, three sets of pairing or doubling going on throughout the exhibition: ancient and modern, curator and commentator, history and art.

These juxtapositions set up forcefields of energy between ancient objects of worship and veneration whose purpose was clearly ‘religious’ and modern works of art whose purpose is, well, what?

In her speech the curator said she was explaining the difference between the consciously ‘sacred’ objects (depicting goddesses and ritual) and the modern ‘profane’ art works to an exhibition sponsor, and the sponsor asked: ‘Is there a difference?’

Good question, and the exhibition provides a fascinating field of study for similar questions and reflections, either prompted by our own impressions as we stroll among these weird and wonderful objects, or by the factual summaries of the curators, or by the reflections of the feminist commentators, or by the vibrant juxtaposition of objects from such different times, places and cultures.

The visitor strolls not only between beautiful objects but amidst a complex matrix of factual information, aesthetic experiences, and intellectual discourses, jangling and buzzing, prompting all manner of thoughts and feelings.

Lilith

Take the figure of Lilith. Since the late first millennium AD, Lilith has been known in Jewish demonology as the first wife of Adam and the consort of Satan. Her origins are thought to lie in Mesopotamian demons. The exhibition includes several representations of this talismanic figure, including a ceramic incantation bowl from Iraq (500 to 800 AD), featuring a rare early image of Lilith in female form. Buried upside down under the thresholds of houses these bowls were inscribed with charms to protect the owners (who are named in the text) from demonic forces. They regularly name Lilith as a demon to be warded off, sometimes as grammatically singular and feminine, but also masculine or plural, one among many indications of the gender fluidity found in many mythologies.

Ceramic incantation bowl from Iraq (500 to 800 AD) © The Trustees of the British Museum

So far, so historical or archaeological. But the exhibition also includes a very striking sculpture of Lilith by American artist Kiki Smith, made in 1994. Smith’s sculpture is cast from the body of a real woman and the striking thing is that this life-size black metal sculpture is attached half way up the gallery wall. This would be a striking installation in a gallery of contemporary art but in the staid world of the British Museum with its glass cases carefully spotlighting tiny coins and bits of pottery, it makes a huge statement, visually and physically. The artist herself writes of her work:

Lilith becomes this disembodied spirit that goes off and wreaks havoc and doesn’t want to be subjugated. Here she is transcending gravity and the constraints of her body.

Yes, the legends about Lilith and the havoc she wrought we may or may not be familiar with. But it’s the fact that she is a life-size sculpture hanging upside down on the gallery wall which makes the statement.

Lilith by Kiki Smith (1994) image © Pace Gallery

The exhibition poster

Of all the objects in the exhibition, the Lilith sculpture is the one the curators chose to go on the poster and promotional material. Personally, I think that was a mistake. I think it would have been better, more accurate, to use a montage of 3 or 4 of the most striking objects to give a true sense of the exhibition’s breadth and diversity. It’s also a bit boring that out of all the cultures of the big wide world, the curators have chosen an artist from America. Disappointing. As if we don’t hear enough about American artists already. Would have been more genuinely diverse to promote a work by a Hindu or Nigerian or Inuit artist.

But then again, it is a strange and disturbing object. Maybe it recaptures, in our blasé culture, some of the shock and mystery and weirdness that many of the more obviously ‘religious’ objects on display conveyed to their contemporaries, long ago and far away.

Lots of goddesses

If nothing else, the exhibition shows that there have been lots of goddesses and female spirits, in all societies, at all times. In the second half of the show I noted a fourth kind of doubling, which is where the curators have a panel describing an important goddess in a general sense, and then introduce a specific instance of the goddess, drawn from their vast collection.

So there’s a curator panel describing the figure of Eve, explaining her provenance and significance in Christian theology; the curators then give an example of the iconography of Eve in the form of a striking woodcut by Renaissance artist Cranach the Elder. Then one of the feminist commentators gives a more subjective assessment of the importance of Eve in shaping and projecting ideas of femininity in the Christian tradition.

A similar two-panel treatment (general explanation, then specific artifact) was meted out to (to name just the ones that really struck me):

  • Radha (Hindu)
  • Ishtar (Babylonia and Assyria)
  • Aphrodite (Greece)
  • Lilith (Jewish-Christian)
  • Tlazo Iteotl (Aztec)
  • Hekate (Greek)
  • Circe (Greek)
  • Cihuateteo (Aztec)
  • Rangda (Bali)
  • Taraka (Hindu)
  • Sekhmet (Egypt)
  • Athena (Greece)
  • Luba (Congo)
  • Mahadevi (Hindu)
  • Kali (Hindu) Isis (Egypt)
  • Maryam (Islam)
  • Mary (Christian)
  • Guanyin (China)
  • Tara (Tibet)
  • Medusa (Greece)
  • witches (Christendom)

Women and gender identity

The curators assert that the representation of feminine power in world belief and mythology has played – and continues to play – an important role in shaping global cultural attitudes towards women and gender identity.

I suppose this is true of many places, still, but…. there’s something not quite right with that statement. On reflection I think it’s that the curators are pushing it a bit far when they say the exhibition explores or investigates the role religion, and female deities, goddesses and spirits have played in representing, defining, limiting and empowering women through the ages. To really properly do that would require a library full of books and studies of religious sociology and anthropology. To be blunt the exhibition, big and broad though it is, only scratches the surface of a vast, global, pan-historical subject.

As an example, the exhibition includes a section devoted to the Virgin Mary who is (obviously) the most prominent female figure in Christianity, itself the most widespread religion on earth. This section contains five artefacts connected with her veneration, which is more than most of the other goddesses get, but, still… It would obviously need quite considerably more than that to amount to a proper ‘investigation’ or ‘exploration’ of the role of Mary in defining and limiting women’s roles in Western society over the past 2,000 years. Vastly more. Thousands of books and objects. A huge exhibition could be devoted to Mary alone. And that’s just one among the 50 or 60 female deities on display here.

And that thought brings out the exhibition’s weakness, which is that a lot of the very broad (and very familiar) generalisations which the feminist commentators make about gender and identity are not really supported by the exhibits.

The curators tell you the facts about Rangda (Bali) or Taraka (Hindu) or Sekhmet (ancient Egypt) and then the commentators shoehorn onto them one of the handful of familiar feminist concerns about gender stereotyping or gender fluidity or the power of desire or women as strong independent figures and so on. Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s spot on. But sometimes it feels…contrived. You feel the unknowable weirdness of some of these objects, the strange worlds they inhabit and the fearsome spirits they represent are being hijacked to pad out a Guardian editorial.

A friend of mine, a designer, goes to lots of exhibitions and makes a point of never reading the labels. She likes to engage directly with the objects on display, unmediated by the curators’ editorialising. The commentators opinions are over familiar and tend to drag you into the squabbling world of the modern media and culture wars and twitter and so on.

Whereas the exhibition’s great strength is the way the objects themselves open doors in your head to weird and wonderful otherplaces and otherminds, leading you through the looking glass, through the back of the wardrobe, into a huge range of times and places and cultures.

And the way these beautiful or fascinating objects have been carefully juxtaposed with notable works of contemporary art to set up all kinds of resonances and vibrations. This – the often strange, haunting beauty of the objects themselves, and resonances set off by their artful positioning – is what I responded to, what I found very stimulating and rewarding.

(To be fair, the exhibition is accompanied by a big heavy catalogue packed with essays by feminist academics, and this does go into considerably more detail about the issues around women and gender and sexuality which the exhibition references. Read the catalogue blurb to get the publishers’ summary of it. ‘The publication concludes with a discussion of contemporary feminism…’)

The curators speak

Here are the voices of two women closely involved with the exhibition. Belinda Crerar, curator, British Museum, writes:

This exhibition is a tour through history and around the world to see the different ways that female power and authority have been perceived in spiritual belief. The diversity of these goddesses, spirits, enlightened beings and saints, and their profound influence in people’s lives today and in the past, gives us pause to reflect on how femininity – and indeed masculinity – are defined and valued now and in the future.

Muriel Gray, Deputy Chair of Trustees of the British Museum, writes:

The Citi exhibition Feminine power: the divine to the demonic is brimming with magic, wisdom, fury and passion. I am very proud that through the breadth and depth of the British Museum’s collection, alongside special loans, we can tell such powerful and universal stories of faith and femininity from the most ancient cultures to living traditions around the world. I would like to thank Citi, whose ongoing support has allowed the Museum to realise this ground-breaking exhibition.

A word from our sponsor

The exhibition is sponsored by Citi. Citi is the swish new name of what used to be Citigroup Inc, an American multinational investment bank and financial services corporation headquartered in New York (where Kiki Smith lives and works). A spokesman for the bank writes:

As a global bank, our mission is to serve as a trusted partner to our clients by responsibly providing financial services that enable growth and economic progress. Success in our mission is only possible if we can continue to foster a culture of equality and inclusion that enables and encourages diversity of thinking. To drive that message of equality and the power and influence of women over time, we are delighted to see the Museum use its collection, along with some spectacular loans, to create a thought-provoking look at the diversity of representations and complex meanings of the divine female over time.

So the exhibition, which the curators and contributors like to see as ‘subverting’ the patriarchy and ‘questioning’ masculinity and ‘interrogating’ gender stereotypes etc – is wholeheartedly aligned with the values of American multinational investment banks and financial services corporations.

Whether you like it or not, ‘equality’ and ‘inclusion’ and ‘diversity’ are now fully integrated into the lexicon of international capitalism, and it is money from American capitalism which makes possible exhibitions like this, makes possible the curators’ good intentions and the feminist commentators’ ‘subversive’ comments. What do you think of that, O goddesses of fire and flood and fury?

Tiare Wahine, Tom Pico, Hawai’i, 2001, Ohi’a wood © The Trustees of the British Museum

I’m not especially singling out this exhibition. It’s the same kind of irony which meant that the huge sculpture lamenting the transatlantic slave trade made by the American artist Kara Walker (also based in New York) was hosted at Tate Modern, a gallery founded by sugar plantation owner Henry Tate who, although he never owned slaves, made a fortune out of black labourers descended from slave in the Caribbean, whose name the Tate organisation insists on retaining despite protests.

Or that until recently Tate, whose exhibitions routinely campaign for a better world, was funded by BP, the oil corporation, which is actively engaged in destroying the world.

Ditto the National Portrait Gallery, which is only ending its funding by BP this year, having only just noticed global warming and oil companies’ role in creating it.

Or that the Serpentine Gallery in London has only just (2021) dropped ‘Sackler’ from its name because of the Sackler family’s involvement in selling the opioid painkillers which have made large numbers of Americans into addicts, wrecking hundreds of thousands of lives. (A link I was making two and a half years ago, Patrick Staff: On Venus @ Serpentine Sackler Gallery.)

In fact I attended a press launch of an exhibition at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery which was addressed by its Chief Executive, Yana Peel, and I squirmed a bit as she imperiously lectured us about sexism and racism (it was the exhibition by African-American female artist Faith Ringgold). So I was all the more surprised and amused when Peel was then forced to step down from her post after the Guardian revealed her involvement in ‘the NSO Group, an Israeli cyber intelligence company whose software has allegedly been used by authoritarian regimes to spy on dissidents’.

And then, of course, there are the many, many art galleries and cultural institutions which have spent the last 30 years deeply entwining themselves with the money or support of Russian oligarchs. Russia. Oligarchs. Putin. Nice company to keep.

So I’m just adding this exhibition to the many which promote high-minded values about gender and race, and advocate for sweeping social change, while being funded by money from harmful or immoral or deeply reactionary sources. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to find this kind of irony hilarious. There’s no point getting upset, it’s the way of the modern world. But you are allowed to smile at the ironies.

For young readers

There is, of course, a sumptuous catalogue accompanying the exhibition, but a book has also been written for younger readers, what the press release describes as a ‘fascinating and empowering introduction to 50 female figures from around the globe’, entitled Goddess: 50 Goddesses, Spirits, Saints and Other Female Figures Who Have Shaped Belief, written by Janina Ramirez and illustrated by Sarah Walsh.

Related links

Other British Museum exhibitions

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by Simon on May 25, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Ancient history, Art, Exhibition, Mythology
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Posted by Simon on May 25, 2022

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2022/05/25/feminine-power-the-divine-to-the-demonic-british-museum/

Content warnings at Tate

Warning: This blog post contains strong and sometimes challenging imagery, including depictions of slavery, violence and suffering.

Baroque Britain

When I visited the Baroque Britain exhibition at Tate Britain I was surprised that there was a Content Warning at the entrance to the second room. This warned us that some of the images were disturbing and might upset visitors. Specifically, a massive painting by Benedetto Gennari the Younger which shows black people in collars and chains. Slaves, in other words.

Portrait of Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin by Benedetto Gennari the Younger (1674)

A handful of other paintings show rich people – men and women – being served or accompanied by black servants, but this is the only one where the black people (all boys, I think) are wearing very obvious metal slave collars round their throats.

William Blake

This is the second warning notice I’m aware of Tate putting up. The William Blake exhibition last year also warned visitors, in these words:

The art of William Blake contains strong and sometimes challenging imagery, including some depictions of violence and suffering.

That’s putting it mildly, seeing as Blake illustrated Dante’s Divine Comedy with its extensive descriptions of thousands of sinners being subjected to all sorts of tortures and torments in Hell, and Milton’s Paradise Lost which opens with Satan and the fallen angels languishing in agony in a lake of fire. Presumably it was these images of fire and brimstone which the warning was talking about.

Satan, Sin and Death: Satan Comes to the Gates of Hell by William Blake (1807)

Although when you actually look at Blake’s images, they are pretty inoffensive, aren’t they? Is an image like the above really thought to be so scary that visitors to an art gallery need a warning about it?

I wonder if the curators have ever seen a Hollywood film? Or even an average episode of Eastenders? Chock full of threat and violence. I can think of plenty of other Tate exhibitions which were full of much more genuinely upsetting images.

Notes and queries

Maybe visitors do need to be warned that art galleries and exhibitions contain images of slavery or violence or threat, but this new trend obviously raises a few questions:

Slavery 1 – black slavery

There must be thousands of images of black slavery scattered around the art world. Will every single one of them eventually require a Warning? For example, the huge memorial sculpture to slavery by Kara Walker currently on display in the atrium of Tate Modern. I don’t recall there being a warning for visitors about to encounter this. Should there be one?

Much more appalling and upsetting than any painting is actual period photographs of black slaves, which survive by the tens of thousands. I suppose if there’s an exhibition about slavery, or about these kinds of photographs it will be self-evident but, presumably if they’re included in exhibitions focused on other subjects – like the American Civil War or American history – presumably any photos of slavery will require a warning, as well.

Slavery 2 – white slavery

Most pre-modern societies had some form of slavery: ancient Rome and ancient Greece were based on slavery, and the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings traded in slaves (it’s estimated that at the time of the Norman Conquest of 1066, 1 in 10 of the British population were slaves).

The Mayans and Aztecs kept slaves in the Americas, as did the Sumerians and Babylonians in the Near East. The Egyptians employed huge numbers of slaves, including Israelites, Europeans and Ethiopians. Slave armies were kept by the Ottomans and Egyptians.

In Imperial Russia, in the first half of the 19th century, one third of the population were serfs who, like the slaves in the Americas, had the status of chattels and could be bought and sold.

In fact the English word ‘slave’ is derived from Slav, the white ethnic underclass of Eastern Europe that provided the bulk of medieval-and-later slaves, not only to Europe but to the Turks, Arabs and Tatars.

SLAVE – late 13the century, ‘person who is the chattel or property of another’, from the Old French esclave (13c.), from Medieval Latin Sclavus ‘slave’ (source also of Italian schiavo, French esclave, Spanish esclavo), originally ‘Slav’; used in this secondary sense because of the many Slavs sold into slavery by conquering peoples. (Etymological dictionary)

Will any gallery displaying any images of slaves from any of these historical cultures, from any period of history, from anywhere around the world, require there to be warning messages for visitors?

‘Trade negotiations in the country of Eastern Slavs by Sergei Vasilyevich Ivanov (1909)

If not, why not?

Violence 1 – secular

Human history is more or less the ceaseless history of wars and empires, human history is saturated with conflict and violence. Will notices warning of ‘strong and sometimes challenging imagery, including some depictions of violence and suffering’ have to be placed outside every gallery which includes any images of conflict and war?

The first VC of the Great War won by Capt Francis Grenfell of the 9th Lancers at Audregnies, Belgium on 24th August, 1914 by Richard Caton Woodville

Violence 2 – religious

Christianity is saturated with violence. Its central image is of a man being tortured to death, and is closely accompanied by the stories and images of countless thousands of other Christian martyrs, most of whom died blood-curdling deaths.

Will all of these images require a warning notice? They would have to be put up in every gallery which includes images of the Passion of Christ or of the saints and, if we follow this logic through, outside every Roman Catholic church in the world.

Crucifix at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama, USA

Why now?

Why now? The painting by Benedetto Gennari the Younger has existed for 340 years and been sporadically on public display throughout that period, the Blake images for over 200 years during which they have featured in numerous books and exhibitions.

Why are these warning notices making their appearance now?

It’s not as if we are suddenly more opposed to slavery – the Campaign to Abolish the Slave Trade got going during the 1780s, 240 years ago, and used as many images of atrocities against slaves as it could find. Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest international human rights organisation, was founded in London in 1839 and is still very active. I.e. graphic images of slavery have been in the public domain for over 200 years.

As to images of threat or violence, my God what have most movies for the past 100 years been about, plenty of plays and countless hundreds of thousands of art works not to mention millions of photographs taken of every war since the Crimea or the Indian Mutiny.

What is it in contemporary society which suggests that art lovers, old and young, native and foreign, have, for the last 300 years or so, been able to confront and process images like this without any kind of warning… but now they can’t.

Re. the slavery images, is it because the black population of the UK has reached a kind of tipping point where images like this are no longer acceptable, even in an obviously academic and historical context?

Have changes in social attitudes across the British population suddenly made images of black people in chains unacceptable?

But what about the warning about Blake’s pretty harmless cartoons? That doesn’t make any sense at all.

Or is it not British society, is it the attitudes of art curators which have changed?

Is it not the British public that the curators are concerned about? Is it the art curating profession which has been swept by progressive views, and whose modern woke training has told them that images like this are objectionable.

When they envision visitors being offended, is it really themselves and their progressive cohorts who they are envisioning?

Conclusion

So I’m not belittling the impact that images of black slavery might well have on black, or any other, visitors to an exhibition like this, or the emotional impact of images of threat or violence might have on gallery goers more broadly.

But up until a year or so ago, curators of pretty much every gallery and museum in the world were happy to assume that gallery visitors were grown-up enough, adult enough, to take images like this in their stride. To be shocked, maybe, maybe even to have an emotional response, but to be able to cope with it.

I’m genuinely curious to know 1. what has changed and 2. where this new trend will go.

And 3. am I going to have to put warnings at the top of every one of my blog posts which is about war or slavery or violence or conflict or threat? Because that’s most of them…

Reviews of other Tate exhibitions

2 Comments
by Simon on March 3, 2020  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on March 3, 2020

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/content-warnings-at-tate/

Europe’s Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom by Norman Cohn (1975)

Norman Cohn (1915 to 2007) was an English academic historian. In the 1960s he became the head of the Columbus Centre, which was set up and initially financed by Observer editor David Astor to look into the causes of extremism and persecution. As head, Cohn commissioned research and studies from other academics on numerous aspects of persecution, and himself wrote several books on the subject, namely:

  • The Pursuit of the Millennium (1957) which traced the long history of millenial, end-of-the-world cults which, more often than not, seek scapegoats when the Great Awakening or Rapture or whatever they call it fails to happen
  • Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith (1993) which traced millennial religious themes to their sources in ancient civilizations
  • Warrant for Genocide (1966) about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-semitic forgery which surfaced in Russia in 1903 and claimed to describe a Jewish conspiracy for world domination

Europe’s Inner Demons is roughly in two halves: what it builds up to is a description of the witch craze and witch trials of early modern Europe and America (i.e. the 1600s and 1700s). But it’s the first half which interests me more. In this Cohn describes the origin and meanings of many of the absurd accusations which were later to be brought against the ‘witches’, following them from their origin in pagan times, through the early medieval period, and climaxing with their deployment in the arrests, torture and execution of the Knights Templar in the early 1300s.

It happens that I’ve just finished reading a book about the Knights Templars, which mentions Cohn’s book, and so I was inspired to read the first half, up to and including the Templars trial.

Cohn shows that:

  • In pre-Christian, pagan Rome writers and authorities attributed inhuman and uncanny activities to minority, outsider groups who they associated with secret societies dedicated to overthrowing the state. Chief among these was the (originally traditional) event of the Bacchanalia, which, originally, was an orgiastic festival celebrating the god Bacchus but, over time, became associated with dark nights, wine and promiscuous sex. Cohn shows how traditional Roman writers came to associate it with darker, anti-social motivations. A fateful link was made between tiny, minority sects who held secretive activities – the worry that these sects were in some way anti-social, dedicated to social revolution – and the attribution to them of increasingly absurd accusations, such as child murder, ritual sacrifice, the drinking of human blood, and deliberately indiscriminate sex – all designed to undermine traditional values and hierarchies and relationships.
  • In the early centuries of Christianity, pagan and Roman writers redirected the tropes they’d developed to blacken the followers of the Bacchanal at the new Eastern religious sect, accusing the Christians of unholy rituals at which they drank the blood of ritually murdered individuals, or engaged in promiscuous sex. Cohn points out that these are easily understandable distortions of a) the Eucharist, where Christians really are enjoined to drink the blood of Christ and b) the Loving Cup or various other references to group love, team love, Christian love, which had a purely Platonic, non-sexual meaning. But not for the accusers and propagandists who scraped the barrel of the human psyche to dredge up all the worst crimes they could think of.
  • Once Christianity had become established (by, say, around 400) the powers-that-be began to persecute Christian heretics and Cohn shows how these heretics now found themselves subject to the same slanders and propaganda as the early Christians had been – dark rumours of midnight masses, perverted rituals, the slaying of a victim whose blood was then drunk and body eaten. And he shows how the ritual victim was all-too-often said to be a baby.

Medieval pessimism

A big-over-arching idea which I found particularly powerful was Cohn’s contention that as the Middle Ages progressed, Christianity – and western culture, such as it was in the early Middle Ages – became more pessimistic.

Going back and reading the early Church Fathers – Tertullian and Justin Martyr and St Jerome and so on – he says you are struck by their conviction that the end of the world is just around the corner and the Day of the Lord is at hand. The early Christians are strong in their faith and happy, burning with conviction that the End is Nigh, that any day now the Lord will return in splendour and all their sufferings will be justified.

However, as the years, then decades, then centuries go by, hopes fade, the Roman Empire is overthrown, societies sink into less advanced forms, the economy collapses, waves of barbarians fight their way across the old imperial lands. And Jesus does not return. By around 1000 AD, medieval culture can be described as depressed. And in its disappointment, it looked with ever-greater desperation for scapegoats.

The atmosphere was changing. Fantasies which in the early Middle Ages had been unknown in western Europe were turning into commonplaces. (p.41)

This is reflected in the rise of the figure and role of Satan and his demons. Cohn has a fascinating chapter (pp.16-34) describing the development of Satan, the Devil. In the Old Testament he is barely mentioned. When bad things happen it is generally because the Old Testament God is wilful and capricious and swayed by his bad moods. Satan does appear in the Book of Job but he is more of a collaborator with God than his enemy; it is Satan who comes up with new ways to persecute Job. It is in the so-called inter-testamentary period – between the last of the accepted books of the Old Testament, written about 300 BC and the first books of the New Testament, written about 50 AD, that Satan undergoes a sweeping change of character. Historians usually attribute this to the influx of Eastern, Zoroastrian and Manichean ideas coming from the Persian Empire in the greater multicultural atmosphere created by the triumph of the Roman Republic and then Empire.

Anyway, in the New Testament, Satan has become a completely new thing, a tormentor and tempter sent to oppose Jesus at every step. Satan’s demons possess innocent people and only Jesus can exorcise them. In the climax of a series of tests, Jesus is made to go out into the wilderness to be confronted and tempted by the Devil in person.

Cohn shows how in the early centuries of the church, saints and holy men were still supposed to be able to drive out demons and Satan’s helpers, merely by revealing the consecrated host or a cross or saying Jesus’ name. But in line with the growth of medieval pessimism, the years from around 1000 AD saw greater and greater anxiety that the Devil was taking over the world which translated into ever-more paranoid fears that secret societies and heresies were flourishing everywhere, dedicated to the overthrow of existing society and to establish the triumph of the Antichrist.

Slowly and steadily, the myth of Devil worship, and the details of how this worship was carried out – by murdering a baby, drinking its blood or its ashes mixed with blood, and then weird rituals to do with black cats (lifting its tail to kiss its anus) – were carefully elaborated by successive generations of highly educated and paranoid Catholic intellectuals.

The stereotype of the Devil-worshipping sect was fully developed, in every detail, by 1100. (p.76)

Heretic hunting and the inquisition

Cohn devoted a chapter to the rise of inquisitions, carefully delineating the difference between secular courts and their power, and the power vested in one-off inquisitors by the pope. He describes the hair-raising campaigns of heretic-hunting inquisitors in Germany and the South of France in the 1200s, notably the egregious Conrad of Marburg appointed inquisitor in central Germany in 1231, or John of Capestrano, appointed heresy inquisitor by the pope in 1418. Already, in 1215 the Lateran Council, by insisting that bishops do everything in their power to suppress heresy on pain of dismissal, had incentivised people across society to come forward with denunciations. Basically a lot of people were tortured into confessing and then burned to death. A lot.

Along the way we learn about the beliefs, the demographics and then the terrible persecutions endured by groups such as:

The Paulicians

A Christian sect which was formed in the 7th century and rejected a good deal of the Old and much of the New Testament, originally associated with Armenia and horribly persecuted by the Byzantine Empire.

The Bogomils

Asect founded in the First Bulgarian Empire by the priest Bogomil during the reign of Tsar Peter I in the 10th century, a form of opposition to the Bulgarian state and the church, they called for a return to what they considered to be early spiritual teaching, rejecting the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Dualists or Gnostics, they believed in a world within the body and a world outside the body, did not use the Christian cross, nor build churches, as they revered their gifted form and considered their body to be the temple, giving rise to many forms of practice to cleanse oneself through purging, fasting, celebrating and dancing.

The Waldensians

Originated in the late twelfth century as the Poor Men of Lyon, a band organized by Peter Waldo, a wealthy merchant who gave away his property around 1173, preaching apostolic poverty as the way to perfection. Waldensian teachings quickly came into conflict with the Catholic Church and by 1215, the Waldensians were declared heretical and subject to intense persecution.

The Fraticelli ‘de opinione’

Members of the Franciscan order of monks who rebelled against its growing worldliness and corruption (St Francis had died in 1226) and tried to return to a really primitive material life, owning literally nothing, and having no food from one day to the next. Declared heretics in the 1400s, Cohn goes into great detail about the trial of leading Fraticelli in 1466.

The Cathars

From the Greek katharoi meaning ‘the pure’, the Cathars were a dualist or gnostic movement which became widespread in Southern Europe between the 12th and 14th centuries. They believed there were two gods, one good, one evil – diametrically opposed to the Catholic church which believes in only one God. The Cathars believed the God of the Old Testament, creator of the physical world, was evil. Cathars thought human spirits were the genderless spirits of angels trapped in the material realm of the evil god, and destined to be reincarnated until they achieved salvation through the consolamentum, when they could return to the benign God of the New Testament.

The self-fulfilling nature of torture

Cohn introduces the reader to each groups’ likely beliefs and social origins, then describes how the secular and religious authorities (i.e. the King of France or Holy Roman Emperor or pope) launched an inquisition, sometimes even called a ‘crusade’, against each of them. (The crusade to exterminate the Cathars in the south of France became known as the Albigensian Crusade, 1209 to 1229).

And then he makes his over-arching point which is that, time and time and time again, the use of torture made ‘heresies’ appear to explode, appear to be held by huge numbers of people, at all levels of society, as innocent victims were roped in and tortured and, quite quickly, would say anything and implicate anyone in order to stop the torture (or, more cruelly, to prevent their family and children being tortured, too).

Yet as soon as they were free to speak in front of secular courts, again and again these supposed ‘heretics’ recanted and said they only confessed to the bizarre rituals, murder, cannibalism and orgies, because they were tortured into saying so.

Cohn shows that there were real heretics i.e. groups who rejected the worldly corruption of the Catholic Church and tried to return to the simple, pure, ascetic life of the early apostles and that, on its own terms, the Church was correct to be concerned about them and to try and bring them back within the fold.

But that the way it did this – by trying to blacken their name by getting members to confess under torture to midnight masses where the Devil appeared in the shape of a black cat, and then a baby was ritually burned to death and its ashes mixed in with wine which all the followers had to drink to assert their membership — all this was fantasy cooked up in the feverish brains of Catholic propagandists and the inquisitors themselves.

What interests Cohn is the way these fantasies became formalised, and turned into part of received opinion, official ‘knowledge’ – not least when a list of these perverse practices was included in a formal papal bull, Vox in Rama, issued in 1233, which included the accusation that the Devil in person attended the midnight covens of the Waldensians and other heretics. In other words, by the early 13th century these absurd fantasies had received official sanction and recognition from the highest religious authorities on earth.

Although each of the heretic-hunting frenzies Cohn describes eventually burned out and stopped – sometimes due to the death or discrediting or, in the case of Conrad of Marburg, the assassination of the lead inquisitor – nonetheless, the period as a whole had established the absurd practices of all heretics and enemies of the Church as accepted, indisputable fact, sanctioned by the pope and the entire church hierarchy.

The crushing of the Knights Templar (pages 79 to 101)

Cohn then goes on to show how precisely the same old tropes, the same accusations of unnatural and blasphemous crimes, were dusted off and dragged out to accuse the Knights Templars, in their trials which lasted from roughly 1307 to 1309. His account is largely the same as Michael Haag’s in The Tragedy of the Templars: The Rise and Fall of the Crusader States namely that the whole farrago of trumped-up accusations was made by King Philip the Fair of France in order to get his hands on the Templars’ vast amounts of gold and land. Its more proximate cause was that Philip wanted to merge the two great crusading orders, the Templars and Knights Hospitallers, into one super-order and then place himself at the head of it in order to lead a mighty new crusade – but that was never very likely to, and indeed never did, happen.

Instead Philip’s loyal bureaucrats pounced, arresting all the Templars on the same day and submitting them to torture to force them to admit to the same litany of crimes: that at the initiation ceremony they were forced to spit on the cross, to kiss their initiator on the lower back, buttocks or mouth, agree to sodomy if requested by a senior brother, and other blasphemous acts such as worshiping a malevolent satanic head.

All the Templars who were tortured signed confessions agreeing this is what they had done – understandable, seeing that the tortures included:

  • having your hands tied behind you, being hauled up via a hook secured to the ceiling, then suddenly released, coming to a stop with a jerk, so that the tendons, muscles and sometimes bones on your shoulders and bones were abruptly torn or shattered
  • having your feet covered in grease and pit in a naked fire, where they roasted until the toe and feet bones fell out of the cooked flesh

As one Templar said, rather than submit to the tortures he would have confessed that he personally murdered Jesus Christ. The sorry saga dragged on for three years because Pope Clement feebly tried to rescue the order which was, theoretically, answerable only to him. But being himself French and a nominee of the French crown, and based in Avignon on French soil, he eventually, feebly acquiesced in the crushing of the order, the confiscation of its wealth and the burning at the stake of its four most senior officers (plus at least a hundred others).

The fate of the Templars is a sorry, sordid tale of greed, corruption and unbelievable cruelty, but for me is one more proof that the nominally Christian Middle Ages were a complicated mixture of genuine religious belief, almost incomprehensible religious fanaticism, alongside staggering cruelty, all underpinned by very recognisable motives of greed and ambition.

More generally, Cohn’s review of how society has tended to demonised outsider groups – from as far back as we have records – sheds sobering light on this permanent tendency of human nature, and shows how even the most ridiculous prejudices and bigotries can be entrenched as established ‘fact’, and then revived as and when needed to persecute the different, the strange, the non-conformist, the helpless. Couldn’t happen now? Well, the career of the fanatical heretic-inquisitor Conrad of Marburg could be usefully compared to that of Senator Joe McCarthy. And in our own time, right now, 2019, we are seeing the revival of all kinds of tropes and stereotypes designed to justify prejudice and persecution. At least we don’t strappado people or burn them to death – but the underlying impulses of human nature haven’t changed one whit.

Some Knights Templar being burned at the stake, illustration in the Chroniques de France ou de St. Denis.

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by Simon on May 27, 2019  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on May 27, 2019

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2019/05/27/europes-inner-demons-norman-cohn/

Johnson’s Life of Milton (1777)

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason.

Since the end of poetry is pleasure, that cannot be unpoetical with which all are pleased.

The characteristic quality of his poem is sublimity… Its end is to raise the thoughts above sublunary cares or pleasures… his natural port is gigantic loftiness… he can please when pleasure is required, but it is his peculiar power to astonish… his great excellence is amplitude.

Johnson’s Lives of the Poets

Johnson’s Lives of the Poets are not pleasurable to read because they are not underpinned by a strong central thesis. Instead he relates separate facts about each poet and comments on them in discrete paragraphs. They feel bitty.

Given Johnson’s complete lack of sympathy with Milton’s politics – and his critique of Milton’s appalling selfishness and beastly behaviour to his two daughters – it is notable how generous he is to Milton the poet.

It is striking how profoundly Johnson misunderstands Milton the man, for example:

  • He deplores Milton’s lack of regular church attendance; Johnson thinks the discipline of church attendance is vital; this is what makes him a Tory; he can’t conceive of people whose spirituality is more free, independent, no less sincere.
  • Similarly, he attributes Milton’s republicanism to jealousy of power, and surly resentment, ‘an envious hatred of greatness… a petulance impatient of control’ – utterly failing to grasp Milton’s ideas about freedom – that everyone should be free to express themselves & rule themselves; that hirelings shouldn’t be appointed in the church just as men shouldn’t be subjected to arbitrary power in civil life.

Paradise Lost

With respect to design, it is the first i.e. greatest product of the human mind.

Le Bossu says an epic requires first a moral – Johnson concurs that to justify the ways of God to men is the highest conceivable moral.

Second the moral has to be enacted in a fable, i.e. a plot: ‘a narration artfully constructed so as to excite curiosity and surprise expectation.’ In this Milton equals every other poet in his design i.e. the creation of the world, its end, and everything in between, are carefully placed.

Johnson then considers the various characters, the angels, Satan, Adam & Eve.

Of episodes

I.e. extraneous to the main action, Johnson correctly points out Raphael’s long account of the war in heaven, the creation, the universe – and Michael’s second book vision into the future as far as the crucifixion and resurrection and second coming. I.e. between them they prepare the background, and then explain the sequel, to the main Event.

The hero

Dryden says Adam can’t be the hero; but why not? His posterity will triumph and the feeling of the end of the poem is upbeat.

Style

Milton chose a subject appropriate to the vast luxuriance of his imagination and powers. ‘Sublimity is the general and prevailing quality of the poem.’

Moral sentiments

‘In Milton every line breathes sanctity of thought and purity of manners.’

Criticism

Johnson’s criticism is that the super-elevated subject of the poem matter allows for very little human interest. Milton’s achievement is vast in bringing to bear a lifetime’s reading and knowledge to adorn and vary a well-known story – but in the end it feels heavy. ‘None ever wished it longer than it is.’

The poem is undermined by the confusion of spirit and matter: the angels are sometimes pure spirit, other times hit and wounded in battle. Incongruity.

Johnson dislikes the incorporation of Sin and Death – abstract ideas – as real actors in the narration: ‘one of the greatest faults of the poem’. It is mixing allegory with story. I like it because it makes the story a) vivid b) highly visual c) Spenser made a career out of bringing allegorical figures to life e.g. Rumour. But I agree that it feels different in kind and style from, say, Michael.

Faults in the narrative

  • Why did Gabriel let Satan simply go away after he was arrested by the angels?
  • If Man is created to fill the void left by the fall of the rebel angels, how come Satan had heard a rumour about man before his fall? Presumably because God foresees all.

Fault of tone

Johnson particularly deprecates the Limbo of Fools in Book II, as inappropriate satire, as lowering the tone.

Diction

Both in prose and verse he had formed his style by a perverse and pedantic principle. He was desirous to use English words with a foreign idiom.

Nonetheless, Johnson judges that this large fault is overwhelmed by the sheer imaginative power of the poem.

Rhyme

Johnson thinks rhyme is superior to blank verse because it distinguishes poetry more easily (rather as he thinks a Christian ought to physically attend church rather than just pray in his house because it distinguishes holy thoughts from mundane).

Nonetheless, Johnson can’t wish Paradise Lost rhymed; it’s a shame he makes no comment on Dryden’s rhyming version of the same subject, State of Innocence. And nobody in their right mind would wish Paradise Lost any longer.

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by Simon on July 19, 2006  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on July 19, 2006

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Paradise Lost, Book 11 by John Milton (1667)

Paradise Lost, Book 11 (901 lines)

The ostensible subject of this book is Michael showing Adam visions of the future.

More generally Michael is inducting Adam into the implications of the Fall – fighting, murder, disease, old age, God’s anger, 1 sole holy man standing out against the giddy crowd, Enoch, Noah (Milton self-portraits).

And Michael imparts simple wisdom: the Middle Way. Moderation.

Summary

1-21 Adam and Eve stand penitent. Their prayers go up to heaven.
22-44 The Son intercedes on their behalf, reminding everyone he will eventually die for them.
45-71 The Father agrees forgiveness but they cannot stay in Eden.
72-83 a trumpet blown to assemble all the angelic host.
84-125 The Father explains that, lest the man also eat of the fruit of the tree of eternal life, he will expel him. The father calls & instructs Michael to expel man from paradise, but to do it gently and give him a vision of the future; and set up cherubim to guard the entrance to the garden.
126-140 Michael prepares to descend. Cut to Adam and Eve.
141-161 Adam says he thinks God is listening to their prayers; their lives shall be meliorated; he ends by blessing Eve for being mother of mankind. [We’ve come a long way from their suicide pact].
162-180 Resigned, Eve says let’s get to work.
181-192 But they both notice a change: the sky lours; a bird of prey chases another; a bear chases fawns. The world is Fallen.
193-207 Adam points this all out to Eve, plus he’s seen lights falling from heaven.
208-225 Michael and his cherubim touch down.
226-250 Michael approaches, manly not dazzling.
251-262 Michael announces he’s exiling them.
263-285 Eve laments having to leave the flowers and bower she has dressed.
286-292 Michael says there’s no choice: they will be together.
293-333 Adam manfully acquiesces: if Eve will miss the flowers, Adam will miss meeting with God face to face.
334-369 Michael assures Adam God will be everywhere and his grace follow him, with signs. Come up this hill & I’ll show you the future.
370-422 Adam ascends the hill whence he can see the whole world, and Michael closes his eyes with magic drops.
423-460 Vision 1 They foresee Cain murdering Abel.
461-499 Adam asks, Is this Death? Vision 2 Michael shows him a cave full of desperate sick people dominated by Death…
500-514 Adam asks, Why are we born when life is so horrible? Can the image of the Maker be so degraded?
515-525 They don’t degrade God’s image; they degrade their own, says Michael.
526-546 Michael says it is best to live in moderation; however old age and its infirmities cannot be avoided…
547-552 Why prolong life, asks Adam.

Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv’st
Live well, how long or short permit to heav’n.

556-637 Vision 3 the Giants marry the daughters of Cain. Seems happy, but Michael explains the daughters of Cain are atheists and wantons.
638-673 Vision 4 a populous plain and city, but war breaks out between the two populations, waste and destruction: a prophet, Enoch, rises up and appeals for peace but everyone turns on him and he is whirled up to Heaven.
674-711 Michael makes it plain he disapproves of the warrior code & ethos, the worshipping of might. Enoch’s righteousness is praised and an example of all the righteous whom God will save.
712-762 Vision 5 amid a world of decadence Noah builds his ark, and Adam watches while his entire posterity is wiped out in the great Flood.
763-786 Adam is appalled: he hoped things would improve not decline. What next?
787–839 Michael makes Milton’s ethics crystal clear: all military might and heroism is an empty sham; it leads to luxury and wantonness- and then to extermination. Only one man in a dark age shall sound the note of warning (cf Abdiel brave in the concourse of the fallen angels) a self-portrait of Milton. But also a crystal clear rejection of the entire ‘heroic’ ethos of Satan.
840-901 Vision 6 Adam sees the ark alight on a mountaintop and the waters recede and a rainbow in the sky and Michael interprets it as God’s promise never again to flood the earth.

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by Simon on July 18, 2006  •  Permalink
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Aspects of Paradise Lost

Theology

Does Paradise Lost succeed in justifying the ways of God to man?

No. The whole argument hangs on four or five very debatable points:

  • Whether you accept the assertion, repeated over and over by God, the Son, the angels and the narrator – that worship from created beings is only meaningful if it is freely given i.e. created beings have to be free – and that freedom involves the freedom to do wrong and well as right. To which one replies: a) couldn’t God have created a world in which there was no evil? Hence, no temptation? Lost of freedom and choices: just nothing Evil. b) couldn’t God have intervened at various points to prevent the tragedy? The obvious answer is, Yes.
  • Whether you accept the assertion that all mankind deserves to be punished for something done before they were born. Obviously not.
  • Whether God could have forgiven them there and then and said, I’ll give you a second chance. Why not?
  • (All this is accepting the hard-to-understand but much-repeated point that merely because God foresees something, does not make it pre-ordained. Let’s accept that.)
  • (And accepting the strange idea that God makes a universe knowing it will be wrecked – why?)

The solution to the entire problem with Milton’s theology is to realise that Christianity is not designed to tell a logical story of the creation: Christianity has devised a myth which explains the current state of mankind, society and people. For those who buy into the myth it has tremendous psychological power – but it is a myth, created retroactively to make sense of the status quo – if you examine the same myth as if it were a logical story explaining the origin of the universe then it becomes highly questionable, because you are essentially saying that God created an imperfect world – and there’s no way out of the paradoxes that throws up – because the Christian response – that, no, God created a perfect world and we, humanity, screwed it up, works if you relate that myth to your own personal life story which will inevitably involve screw-ups and failings (that’s what the whole myth is designed to do). But fails as a stand-alone account of the creation of the whole world, viewed in the abstract. Thus Milton tries heroically, epically, but fails to justify the ways of God to man. God’s ways seem harsh, cruel and arbitrary.

If it succeeded, why isn’t part of the syllabus at any Catholic or Protestant seminary school? Because, by taking the story so literally, Milton lets the cat out of the bag.

Architecture

Does the poem lay out its pretty well-known story in a suitable way?

I think Milton succeeds admirably in taking the well-known story and adapting it for the traditional methodology of epics i.e. starting in media res and telling key events in flashback – just as Odysseus tells all his exotic adventures in flashback, or Aeneas tells the people of Carthage his story ditto, thus Raphael tells the origins of the rebellion and the War in heaven and the Creation of the universe in flashback; and just as Aeneas is vouchsafed a vision of the futurity of Rome, so Adam is given a vision of the future of humanity. Top marks.

However, it is a major flaw that the poem tails off as it drags on – that Raphael’s account of the Creation or Michael’s prophecy are boring. Why? Because we’ve read them before, described much more snappily, in the Bible.

Style

Does Milton’s style help or hinder one’s reading? Is it answerable to the subject matter?

Although the essence of Milton’s style remains the same throughout (the Latinate grammar, the odd use of syntax, Latinate vocabulary) no-once can doubt that the poem goes off. The best books are the first four. Why? Several reasons:

  • In Hell Milton is free-est to invent episodes; thereafter he is more constrained by the Biblical account. Thus in Book X it is a breath of fresh air when Satan encounters Sin and Death again, making their way up to the Universe.
  • Milton seems to have put more effort into fully imagining these early books: one simple indicator is that they are packed with epic similes – whereas the long books of Raphael’s are almost barren of similes – making you realise how refreshing they had been, to add variety to the style and rhythm.
  • If books VI, VII, X, XI and XII are boring because they have to retell large chunks of Genesis without using similes, other sections of books V and so on are just as boring because they have to convey long gobbets of Christian theology. Long stretches are not much more than versified pamphlets.

Epic poem

Does PL succeed as an epic poem in the tradition of Homer, Virgil, Camoes, Tasso?

Yes.

Aesthetics

Taken all in all, is Paradise Lost a success?

A limited one, or Yes, with reservations. These reservations stem from:

  • The failure of the theology to allay big doubts about God, its fundamental aim.
  • The failure of the later books to maintain the imaginative force and novel subject matter of the earlier ones.
  • The consequent flattening or failure of the style, which becomes pedestrian and boring for long stretches.

It seems to me axiomatic that Milton was a devout Christian who wrote the poem with the explicit aim of justifying the ways of God to men. The facts are the following: the first four or so books are the best. ‘Best’ means they are most enjoyable to read because containing the highest proportion of vivid and memorable language.

From Book 5 onwards the poem becomes more stodgy – the Raphael books: his account of the origins of the devil rebellion i.e. Satan’s revolt against the Son up till Abdiel standing up against the rebels (5), the actual War in Heaven (6), the creation of the universe and of Man – all this feels already-read (7), and then Raphael’s deliberately vague description of the Universe; then Adam’s memories of waking & meeting God (8).

The whole of Book 9 is an account, told in real time, of Eve leaving Adam, then being seduced by the serpent to eat the fruit, then persuading Adam to eat it. This ought to be the dramatic centrepiece of the poem but is the dullest – we know what’s going to happen so there’s no drama – instead there is lengthy and hard-to-follow argumentation between the snake and Eve – she eats – and then more argumentation between Eve and Adam – he eats – they make love – then feel guilt and shame.

Given a choice, which would you rather read – books 1, 2 and 3 or books 9, 10 and 11?

Book 10 where the Son quickly judges the pair is only enlivened by the great scenes of Sin and Death building a path up to the earth.

Book 1 where Michael lays out the future of the human race is dull.

Milton’s style

Debate ranges over Milton’s style: at one end people say it’s recognisably English phrasing and syntax – at the other Dr Johnson and co say it’s written in a style heavily influenced by Latin and unlike any English ever spoken. I’m at the Dr Johnson end, but then most poetry is unlike the language actually spoken by ordinary people. The question is not the disputed source or origin of Milton’s style, it’s whether it works or what he intends.

Christopher Ricks’ book shows in minute detail that Milton’s style is highly considered, carefully wrought, and meaningful i.e. for long stretches it does work.

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by Simon on July 17, 2006  •  Permalink
Posted in Books, Christianity, History, Literary criticism
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Posted by Simon on July 17, 2006

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2006/07/17/aspects-of-paradise-lost/

Milton’s Satan and the Classical World

The whole debate about whether Satan is the ‘hero’ of Paradise Lost is wrong-headed. It is based on three premises:

  1. The poetry is most vivid when describing Satan – hence Blake’s claim that “The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it.”
  2. Satan is the protagonist of the plot, moving the action along while the other characters – God, Son, Adam – are in various ways passive recipients of actions.
  3. Satan fits neatly into Milton’s classical frames of reference and discourse i.e. Satan is dynamic like a character in a Greek play, he is described using multitudes of epic similes, themselves generally taken from pagan examples etc.

1. The devil scenes are more vivid because Milton has more freedom to invent and write freely than in the Bible-based scenes where he has to stick very closely to what he thought of as a literal version of history. But it is a delusive attractiveness. Satan quite clearly shrinks and mangles in size and scope as the poem continues and as his superficial attractiveness is reduced to bestiality.

2. Satan is without doubt the main engine of the plot – but this implies no superiority. Everything Milton stands, his whole theology denies and rejects the claim.

3. The identity of Satan with everything classical and pagan is one of the ways Milton condemns him. Milton takes every opportunity to make it absolutely clear that he considers his epic superior to the classic ones because he deals with Christian virtues of justice and forgiveness.

Ways Milton denigrates the Classical world

1. He explicitly says so:

… Sad task, yet argument
Not less but more heroic than the wrath
Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued
Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage
Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused…
…the better fortitude
Of patience and heroic martyrdom
Usung…” (IX 14-17, 31-3)

2. As a learnèd humanist Milton’s mind adverts continually to analogies from the pagan ancient world but he continually undercuts them to emphasise that they are feigned – NOT TRUE – unlike his Christian analogies taken from the Bible.

At every turn Milton critiques and criticises the very techniques and references he is so learnedly, so deftly, copying from the ancient world.

There is a steady stream of examples of the way Milton downplays, undermines, undercuts his own classical analogies – with its basis in militarism and paganism – in order to foreground his preferred Christian values of fortitude and martyrdom. Remember: ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’

Examples

  • Pandemonium is described in classical terms – using all the terminology of the Pantheon or Parthenon. It is a palace of devils. Compare and contrast with the unfeigned simplicity of Adam and Eve’s rural bower and of their simple morning worship.
  • When Satan puffs himself up to persuade Eve to eat the apple he is explicitly compared to an orator from the ancient world, pulling every trick in the rhetorician’s book – and clearly judged bad and immoral for doing so.
  • When Satan addresses the devils in his palace, reporting on his adventure – he couches his story in all the self-aggrandisement of a Great Hero; and yet what is the result of all this ‘heroism’ – he and all his audience are turned by God into hissing reptiles.

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by Simon on July 17, 2006  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on July 17, 2006

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2006/07/17/miltons-satan-and-the-classical-world/

Paradise Lost, Book 9 by John Milton (1667)

Synopsis of Paradise Lost, Book 9 (1,189 lines)

1-47 semi-invocation: Milton describes his subject matter as fitter than Greek or medieval legend; introduces the concept of ‘answerable style’; and describes the way the poetry comes to him at night ‘Easy my unpremeditated verse.’

No more of talk where God or Angel Guest
With Man, as with his Friend, familiar us’d
To sit indulgent, and with him partake
Rural repast, permitting him the while
Venial discourse unblam’d: I now must change [ 5 ]
Those Notes to Tragic; foul distrust, and breach
Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt,
And disobedience: On the part of Heav’n
Now alienated, distance and distaste,
Anger and just rebuke, and judgement giv’n, [ 10 ]
That brought into this World a world of woe,
Sinne and her shadow Death, and Miserie
Deaths Harbinger: Sad task, yet argument
Not less but more Heroic then the wrauth
Of stern Achilles on his Foe pursu’d [ 15 ]
Thrice Fugitive about Troy Wall; or rage
Of Turnus for Lavinia disespous’d,
Or Neptun’s ire or Juno’s, that so long
Perplex’d the Greek and Cytherea’s Son;
If answerable style I can obtaine [ 20 ]
Of my Celestial Patroness, who deignes
Her nightly visitation unimplor’d,
And dictates to me slumb’ring, or inspires
Easie my unpremeditated Verse:

48-98 Satan returns to Paradise after circling the globe for a week avoiding sight of the sun from where Uriel spotted him in Book IV. Descends through the River Tigris which appears as a fountain at the foot of the Tree of Life.
99-178 Satan’s 1st soliloquy: bemoaning how low he has fallen, seeking disguise in a suitable beast.
179-191 Satan slips into the mouth of the serpent.
192-204 Morning wakes Adam and Eve who pray to God.
205-225 Eve suggests they labour apart in the garden since a) everything keeps growing faster than they can train it b) if in sight of each other they keep interrupting each other.
226-269 Adam replies: a) God hasn’t strictly assigned them to do everything and not exchange smiles and words b) God made us for delight, after all c) soon little hands will help us d) it’s true separation leads to happy reunion but e) Adam warns of the devil lurking somewhere: Eve should stay with him.
270-289 Eve is hurt that Adam thinks that she can be so easily beguiled.
290-317 Adam replies if the Devil was strong enough to tempt angels he can tempt them both: best to stay together.
318-341 Eve argues that a) if they’re so insecure Eden is no longer Eden b) what is faith, love, virtue, ‘unassayed?’ i.e. these virtues only mean something if tested (cf the Areopagitica) c) are you really saying God left us in such an imperfect state?
342-375 Adam replies that the fault is not in Eden which is perfect; it is in themselves whose Reason is free, thus continually liable to err. Thus it follows they will be less likely to err if there’s 2 of them together. But if she thinks ‘trial unsought may find us both securer’, Go.
376-384 Eve insists on the last word. Sexism. She can’t believe the foe will attack the weaker – vain confidence!
385-411 Eve goes forward beautiful and confident as a dryad from Greek myth. Vain confidence.
412-72 Satan is waiting amid the green delights of Eden; and when he sees Eve is momentarily transported by her beauty; but hate and envy return.
473-493 Satan’s second soliloquy of hate, envy, revenge.
494-531 Satan sidles up as a magnificent tho sycophantic snake. Notable that he has 2 epic similes in these 30 lines. Where Satan is are heroic similies giving variety and power to the verse (may be a tactic of Milton’s to associate paganism, and the fallen simile form itself, with Satan – but makes for greater dynamism, variety).
532-548 Satan flatters Eve.
549-566 Eve wonders that the snake can speak. How come?
567-612 Satan says he ate of the fruit of the tree and a) understood the universe and b) could talk and c) realised Eve was the divinest thing in the garden. Flattery.
615-624 Eve asks which tree?
625-630 Satan says he’ll take her there.
631-646 Satan leads Eve to the tree and is compared to ignis fatuus in another epic simile.
647-654 Eve tells the snake she is forbidden to touch the tree.
655-58 Satan pretends surprise. Not allowed to eat fruit?
659-663 Only of this tree.
664-678 Satan then rises up like an ancient orator (another epic simile)
679-732 Satan gives reasons to eat the fruit: a) it has allowed a beast to speak b) he is not dead, as threatened c) God won’t punish the appetite for knowledge of good and evil, that would itself by unjust d) it was only forbidden to keep you in awe e) whereas if you taste you could become gods f) if she will die it will be the human dies to become a god. Meanwhile, g) who says the gods made earth? Whereas everything good seems to come from the earth h) how can your knowledge hurt him? I) how can eating it do any harm against His will if He is omnipotent? [An impressive list of reasons]
733-744 plus lunchtime draws on and Eve is hungry i.e. physiology contributes to flawed reason – body and soul together.
745-779 Eve soliloquises: a) it’s made the serpent speak b) it’s obviously valuable or else why be banned? c) a prohibition against knowledge binds not d) the serpent has not died e) she trusts the serpent as bringing good news to man. [Eve’s soliloquy doesn’t echo Satan’s only 5 of Satan’s 9 reasons are repeated…]
780-794 Eve eats the fruit. ‘Greedily she engorged without restraint.’
795-833 Eve soliloquises a list of errors: a) she will dress and praise the Tree each morning (instead of God); b) under the impression that she will soon be equal with the gods c) she praises Experience over Wisdom d) thinks God can’t see her e) shall she share her knowledge with Adam or keep it selfishly? f) this will make her more equal with Adam, maybe superior (and thus more loved – completely failing to understand the Scale of Being) g) she will entice Adam because she can’t bear the thought of her dying & he having a second Eve – selfishness..
834-855 Eve bows low to the Tree (blasphemy) and then goes to meet Adam who meets her coming, carrying a garland of flowers.
856-885 Eve tells Adam she’s eaten of the Tree: and lies that she did it chiefly for him.
886-895 Adam is astonished, drops the garland whose petals fade.
896-916 Adam soliloquises: he immediately casts his lot with her, and can’t imagine life without her.
921-960 Adam addresses Eve: a) perhaps they won’t die b) surely God won’t punish them, his own creation c) he will go with her: so forcible is ‘the bond of nature’.
961-989 Eve rejoices that this trial has proved Adam’s love; but she assures him they won’t die; and she’s never tasted anything so sweet.
990-1016 Adam eats ‘not deceived, but overcome with female charm’. Earth groans. They are intoxicated then inflamed with lust. They acquiesce in sex, sleep, then awaken to their shame, like Samson epic simile.
1067-1098 Adam laments the effects of the fall: a) good lost and evil got; b) knowledge of their nakedness, innocence lost, c) how shall he face the angels? d) he wants to pull the woods and tress over him e) meanwhile, best to weave coverings for their parts.
1099-1133 They make coverings from trees. Now reason is overthrown by appetite and passion and so they fall into arguing.
1134-1142 Adam blames Eve for wanting to go out alone.
1143-1161 Eve says don’t blame her: a) the serpent could as well have tempted Adam as her b) why didn’t he absolutely forbid her from going off? It’s all his fault.
1162 Adam is for the first time in his life angry: a) he’s just chosen death over life for her, ungrateful bitch b) he warned her as much as anyone could, short of physically stopping her, which defeats the idea of free will c) her overconfidence d) his delusion in her beauty and perfections. Ends with the sexist thought that men should never let women rule because they will choose the evil route then blame the man.

Thus they in mutual accusation spent
The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning,
And of their vain contest appeared no end.
1187-1189

Thoughts

Milton is the most intellectual poet. The entire plot, structure, shape, pattern of the poetry is dictated by a logical argument: even individual words are carefully chosen and placed for their multiple meanings.

You have to work quite hard to understand the many arguments in Satan’s temptations, or the gradual way Eve leaves Adam.

Thus, the few ‘poetic’ touches: Satan like the will o’ the wisp; the garland dropping from Adam’s hand – come as a great relief because there is no logical argument embedded in them.

60% of the lines are dialogue, itself consisting of versified argumentation. But it feels like more because you have to make proportionately more effort to follow the logic.

Prose 98, 179-204 (26), 1, 3, 1, 4, 1, 2, 385-472 (88), 493-531 (39), 4, 1, 2, 1, 631-646 (16), 2, 664-678 (15), 12, 780-794 (15), 834-855 (22), 886-895 (10), 4, 1, 990-1016 (27), 1034-1066 (33), 1099-1133 (35), 1, 1, 3. 468 40%

Speech: 99-178, 205-225, 227-269, 273-289, 290-317, 322-341, 343-375, 376-384, 473-493, 532-548, 553-566, 568-612, 615-624, 626-630=5, 647-654, 3, 5, 679-732, 745-779, 795-833, 856-885, 896-916, 921-959, 961-989, 1017-1033, 1067-1098, 1134-1142, 1144-1161, 1163-1186. 721 60%

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by Simon on July 17, 2006  •  Permalink
Posted in Books, Christianity, English literature, History, Literary criticism, Poetry
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Posted by Simon on July 17, 2006

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2006/07/17/paradise-lost-book-ix/

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