Jul
3
Gratitude & “In Place of a Curse”
July 3, 2008 |
I was gathering my thoughts yesterday and getting ready to write them out when the umwblogs site went down for maintenance. I should have written something out but I’m too dumb to do that so I just went to bed instead. Anyway, here’s another try.
It seems to me that Satan’s inability to be grateful and the idea of necessary contiguity (brotherly dissimilitudes, if I can go so far) sort of join up. What curses Satan is his need to prove himself entirely self-sufficient; he refuses to feel grateful for a gift even though that gratitude would be the reciprocal exchange for a gift. By so doing, he makes it so that he cannot lie contiguous with anyone or anything. He must stand apart–not contiguous, and definitely not continuous. He is set aside, in a way.
How does this tie into Milton’s knowledge that he is a prophet? Would he, by acknowledging this and setting himself out of the general population in this way, also extract himself from contiguity? I don’t think so, because in Milton’s ideal world everyone is a prophet; everyone would be setting themselves up, not apart, just making themselves a virtuouso at whatever it is they do best. By fulfilling ourselves to the best extent we can, we make it more easy to be contiguous. We may be best at one thing, but this oen thing is furthered by exploring other things, and these other things make it easier to form connections with other people. The more you branch out, the more topics you converse about, the easier it is to find common ground.
Similarly, we must all put thought into our decisions, but this thought ought to lead to being able to choose the better of two good things and therefore again extending our contiguity. By being our best selves, we can both understand the gratitude we have for other people and begin to repay them by being, in our own way, something worth being grateful for. If we’re all working to the fullest extent of ourselves, we are all prophets and virtuousos, and that’s something to be grateful for, I think.
To that end here’s a poem that I think Milton would probably have agreed with in some ways. Or maybe not, but at the least I feel as though it links up some things we’ve been talking about.
In Place Of A Curse
At the next vacancy for God, if I am elected,
I shall forgive last the delicately wounded who,
having been slugged no harder than anyone else,
never got up again, neither to fight back,
nor to finger their jaws in painful admiration.
They who are wholly broken, and they in whom mercy is understanding,
I shall embrace at once and lead to pillows in heaven.
But they who are the meek by trade, baiting the best of their betters with extortions of a mock-helplessness,
I shall take last to love, and never wholly.
Let them all in Heaven - I abolish Hell -
but let it be read over them as they enter:
Beware the calculations of the meek, who gambled nothing
gave nothing, and could never receive enough.
John Ciardi
Note please: “delicately wounded,” “painful admiration,” “wholly broken.” Seems Miltonic to me.
Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.