Changing Perspectives in Literature and the Visual Arts, 1650-1820

by Murray Roston

Overview

Continuing with the theme of his work Renaissance Perspectives in Literature and the Visual Arts, Murray Roston applies to a later period the same critical principle: that for each generation there exists a central complex of inherited ideas and urgent contemporary concerns to which each creative artist and writer responds in his or her own way. Roston demonstrates that what emerges is not a fixed or monolithic pattern for each generation but a dynamic series of responses to shared challenges. The book relates leading English writers and literary modes to contemporary developments in architecture, painting, and sculpture. "A sumptuous book. . . . Clearly and gracefully written and cogently argued, Roston's admirable achievement is of paramount significance to literary studies, to cultural and art history, and to aesthetics. . . . Outstanding."--Choice

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691632483
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/19/2016
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #1066
Pages:	472
Product dimensions:	8.70(w) x 11.10(h) x 1.20(d)

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Changing Perspectives in Literature and the Visual Arts, 1650â"1820

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By Murray Roston

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1990 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-06795-7

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CHAPTER 1

MILTON'S HERCULEAN SAMSON

THE BAROQUE CHURCH, THE PRE-EMINENT EXPRESSION OF THAT artistic mode, testified to a revolution in man's conception of the universe and of his place within it. The religious buildings of the Renaissance had evinced a quieter aim, conveying there the dignity and centrality of man, either in smaller churches fitted to serve his devotional needs, such as Brunelleschi's charming Pazzi Chapel, or, within the larger structures, by a proportioned coordination of design manifesting the rational achievements of the human architect who had planned or constructed them. In Brunelleschi's more spacious church, Santo Spirito, the slender columns, placed equidistantly both from the wall and from each other in order to create harmony of form, raise the eye to graceful semicircular arches above, extending along both sides of the aisle within the well-lit interior. The purpose of the baroque church was markedly different, to evoke not a sense of tranquillity but of rapturous exaltation, in effect to awe the worshipper into adoration. The appearance of the interior contrasts dramatically with the earlier style, as all windows at ground level are blocked off, transferred to the upper course above the cornice. The resultant lighting suggests an antithesis between the darker, weightier area below, oppressive with masonry and representing, as it were, the rich physicality of this earth, while relief is offered above by the vision of heavenly scenes bathed in light from the dome interior and from the concealed or recessed windows along the upper nave.

Behind such change lay an essentially new apprehension of the divine and of the process of creation. Throughout the Renaissance, the formation of the universe had come to be regarded, in terms of Christian Neoplatonism, as a single inaugurative act in the past, a moment in universal history which had placed the planetary spheres in their constant and perfect orbits. There they were henceforth to emit a music, if no longer audible to human ears after the Fall, at least serving as a perpetual model for the undisturbed concord desired by both society and the individual. Divine creation in the baroque era, however, was apprehended as more immediately relevant, an act of dazzling power, of incalculable dynamism and energy continuing throughout eternity but requiring to be renewed and revitalized at every moment. At a time when Galileo had revealed through the newly refined telescope that the moon was not a smooth, unblemished celestial sphere but a physical mass with a rugged and pitted surface like the earth's, when Tycho Brahe had disproved the eternity of the stars by showing them subject to accident, and when Giordano Bruno had posited an innumerable series of solar systems in an intimidatingly vast, perhaps infinite universe, the religious artist of the baroque period had come to conceive of the cosmos anew as a complex system of immense, interacting physical forces, awesomely held in control by the power of a Supreme Being.

The new style of church manifested that vision architecturally, both in its impressive facade and in the enhanced grandeur of its interior, designed to overwhelm the spectator by its massiveness and ornate splendour. Externally, it preserved the symmetry and order of Renaissance tradition; but that symmetry had grown heavier in appearance and, as Wölfflin was the first to note, a restlessness and sense of constriction had entered to disturb the perfect proportions. Where the facade of Alberti's S. Maria Novella (fig. l) had been smooth in surface, serenely integrated, and geometrically rationalized, the facade which Pietro da Cortona designed between 1635 and 1650 for the church of SS. Martina e Luca in Rome (fig. 2) was intended to convey not only a new plastic and tactile quality but, even more, a feeling of suppressed movement, of stresses with difficulty sustained or overcome. Weighty cornices project over the upper and lower sections, creating a top-heavy, overhanging effect, a sense that they would come crashing down were they not sturdily supported from below by the numerous columns and pilasters. Where the two storeys of Alberti's design are elegantly unified by twin "scrolls," here the impression is created of one cumbersome building deposited upon another, of resisted gravitational pressures, of a mass sustained only by the solidity of the stone. The ornamental details further this effect, the medallions appearing spatially constrained, with no margin to ease them optically away from the encroaching columns, thereby again suggesting constriction and resistance. Similarly, the pediments over window and door penetrate into the areas occupied by the adjoining pillars, overlapping as though both were struggling for room; and the articulation of mingled curves and straight lines in the overall design of the facade increases the impression of plasticity, of an interplay of forces achieving stasis by a series of implied thrusts and counterthrusts.

Inside the churches, the impetus to echo the new conception of the cosmos and of man's terrestrial abode is no less marked. In Borromini's S. Agnese in Piazza Navona (fig.3), completed in 1666, the surface of the lower church is thickly encrusted with ornamentation, every inch filled with fluted columns, lavishly executed entablatures, architraves, friezes, frescoes, and bas-reliefs, with the deep-set arch over the altar adorned with variegated courses of stonework and stucco in exuberant testimony to earthly bounty. Here, too, the altar is compressed into an area seemingly too small to contain it, the columns beside it crowding upon its frame as though even in so large an edifice the proliferation of wealth spills, as from a cornucopia (a favoured motif of the baroque) beyond its confines, to produce an atectonic effect. In many of these churches, splendid ceiling frescoes in illusory quadratura perspective, such as those by Gaulli in Il Gesù and by Andrea Pozzo in the church of S. Ignazio (cf. fig. 29), offer a vision of innumerable angels floating upward into a heaven blinding in its splendour.

The nature of the baroque, its relationship to the new cosmology (which by its non-sectarian quality made the mode available to the Protestant despite its origin in a Counter-Reformation setting), and its more specific relevance to Milton's Paradise Lost I have examined in some detail elsewhere, and the above discussion is intended therefore as only the briefest of summaries. In this present chapter, I should like to apply some of the principles of that theory to Milton's Samson Agonistes, and to explore how a knowledge of the baroque artist's motivation, deduced from the sculpture, paintings, and architecture of the time, may assist in illuminating certain enigmatic aspects of that drama.

To enquire why Milton chose Samson as the hero of his drama may seem gratuitous, so intertwined in the literary imagination have author and hero become. Indeed, the apparent superfluity of the question is a tribute to the compelling authority of Milton's writing, his ability, as in Paradise Lost, so to impose upon us his own fictional reconstruction of biblical narrative that he dislodges from our memory the lineaments of the original text. We return to Genesis surprised to find no hint in the scriptural Adam of the noble Grand Parent for contemplation and valour formed, capable of intelligently discussing with archangels the purposes of creation. So here, the discrepancy is wide. The sensitive, penitent character of Samson as Milton presents him, tortured by guilt, bears little relation to the somewhat brutish, vainglorious figure emerging from the Book of Judges, lusting after harlots and forever boasting of his muscular exploits — "With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men" (Judges 15:16). Ironically, in his Old Testament form he would appear more appropriate as a model for Milton's braggart Harapha, the object of ridicule in the drama, than for the remorseful, soul-searching hero of the play. As Northrop Frye has remarked, were it not that we have the play before us, the "wild berserker" engaged in the savage and primitive exploits recorded in the scriptural account might have been thought the most unlikely of biblical characters for Milton to choose, entailing on the poet's part a casuistic suppression of Samson's less amiable features in order for him to be transmuted and tamed to suit the dramatist's needs.

To elevate this scriptural figure to the dignity of a tragic protagonist demanded in effect a reconstruction of his character. Milton was obliged to enlarge Samson's intellect, to purify him from lewdness by omitting the reason for his visit to Gaza, to present Dalila as his lawful wife instead of his mistress, and, above all, to endow him with a profound moral consciousness. In that latter regard, the biblical Samson, from his recorded comments in the various episodes related there, would seem to have been motivated in his responses to the Philistines by jealousy for his personal reputation rather more than championship of a national cause, with the me and my repeatedly accorded prominence in the justification of his acts — "As they did unto me, so have I done unto them." In Milton's play, he is oppressed primarily by his sense of having failed in a divine mission and, without the slightest warrant within the scriptural account, yearns for spiritual renewal, for the purging of his guilt by an act of penitence, and thereby for eventual regeneration in the eyes of God. The discrepancy between the two accounts is highlighted in their contrasting conclusions. As the Old Testament Samson reaches for the pillars, he prays only for personal vengeance, an opportunity to retaliate for the blinding he has suffered, to achieve satisfaction by settling his score with his enemies: "Strengthen me, I pray thee, only this time, O God, that I may at once be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes." Milton's Samson, as he sets out for the Temple of Dagon, has a higher aim, a determination to prove spiritually worthy of his new-found purity and his rededication to the religious and national tasks for which he had originally been selected:

of me expect to hear
Nothing dishonourable, impure, unworthy
Our God, our Law, my Nation, or myself.

(1423–25)

If, therefore, the character of Samson required so radical a metamorphosis in order to be made suitable to the theme of this play, why did Milton need that story at all? For his basic theme he required it minimally, for it has long been recognized that in its deeper dramatic concerns the play draws more substantially upon the book of Job than upon the book of Judges, as its structural design confirms. Where the Bible presents the entire span of the champion's life, from the announcement of his birth through the period of his full vigour and on to his death, Milton's play focusses solely upon the final phase of his suffering, when disaster has already struck, the period when, like Job, he must face the full implications of his tragic condition. Both have been unpredictably flung from high public regard, cruelly afflicted in body and mind, and each reaches out painfully to question the justice of God's act in casting him away, their search for meaning and spiritual renewal providing the main thrust for the two works. The echoes of Job in Milton's play cannot be missed, as he is visited by a series of supposed comforters — Manoa, the Chorus, and Dalila paralleling Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar — whose misunderstanding of his grief only sharpens his own anguished quest for meaning. The two situations are not identical. While Job is convinced beyond doubt that he has never sinned in a manner commensurate with the punishment he has received at God's hand, Samson is fully conscious of the magnitude of his crime. Yet the inner turmoil of the two as they grope towards the truth remains essentially similar. Each is intellectually convinced of the justice of God's acts towards him; but welling up from within is a passionate, instinctive denial of that justice, the belief that his suffering is in excess of his deserts. It is the wrestling between these two contradictory impulses that creates in both characters the tragic intensity of their agony.

The quiet opening lines of Samson Agonistes, with their echo of Oedipus at Colonus, have suggested to some critics a contrary effect, a prevailing mood of calm resignation on his part:

A little onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on;
For yonder bank hath choice of Sun or shade ...

They misled Tillyard, for example, into declaring that Samson at the very beginning of the play has already established himself in his Protestant-Stoic citadel, that he has "achieved his personal integrity. He has purged his pretensions by an utter humility, and is content with his sad lot, however servile." The text, however, informs us otherwise. That quiet opening mood is shattered a moment later as we learn of his true condition, and of the torments racking him within. The pleasant bank to which he asks to be led may provide external balm, but it cannot touch the inner lacerations of conscience. It will offer

Ease to the body some, none to the mind
From restless thoughts that like a deadly swarm
Of Hornets arm'd, no sooner found alone,
But rush upon me thronging.

Consciously he admits responsibility for his lot, but only too humanly his self-condemnation is deflected into a fusillade of barbed questions directed at God. Job had cried bitterly: "Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? ... Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul?" Samson asks no less sorely and uncomprehendingly: "O wherefore was my birth from Heaven foretold? ... Why am I thus bereav'd thy prime decree?" The deadly swarm of restless thoughts which afflict him are in large part this bitter questioning of the divine justice and order in which he had, until the calamity, so firmly believed:

Why was my breeding order'd and prescrib'd
As of a person separate to God,
Design'd for great exploits; if I must die
Betray'd, Captiv'd, and both my Eyes put out,
Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze?

His more sober judgment, an abiding faith in God's ultimate righteousness, rises repeatedly to stem the flood of questions, to turn them against himself as he realizes their blasphemous implications:

Yet stay, let me not rashly call in doubt
Divine Prediction

or

But peace, I must not quarrel with the will
Of highest dispensation, which herein
Haply had ends above my reach to know.

Yet the protests continue surging up, crashing against his rational beliefs to create the seething eddies of his religious crisis. All, he declares, has occurred through his own fault; of whom has he to complain but himself who weakly betrayed his trust to a woman? But at the very moment that he condemns his own impotence of mind in body strong, he cannot resist protesting against a God who failed to bestow upon him a double share of wisdom to match and shore up his double share of strength. That, he implies, was God's fault, not his. And why was sight to such a tender ball as the eye confined, why his strength hung so lightly in his hair? For these, he cannot be held responsible. The agony of Samson is this struggle to come to terms with his abject state despite the turmoil of bitter complaints churning within him, complaints which, "finding no redress, ferment and rage,/Nor less than wounds immedicable/ Rankle and fester, and gangrene,/To black mortification" (619–22). Only when that storm has been stilled, when the anger has been vented, can patience be achieved — that calm of mind all passion spent which he will find only towards the conclusion of the play.

It would seem, therefore, that the story of Job, with his tormented protest against a punishment outweighing his sins and a spiritual striving after reconciliation with God, would have been ideally suited to Milton's purpose, carrying with it overtones of Oedipus and Lear, also engaged in their spiritual odysseys. Yet instead he turned to the story of the rough swaggerer Samson, which required extensive remoulding of character and manipulation of sources before it could be made suitable to his needs. The question remains, then, what elements there were in the Samson story which succeeded in drawing Milton away from the more natural choice of Job.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Changing Perspectives in Literature and the Visual Arts, 1650â"1820 by Murray Roston. Copyright © 1990 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• CONTENTS, pg. v
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, pg. vii
• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, pg. ix
• INTRODUCTION, pg. 3
• 1. MILTON'S HERCULEAN SAMSON, pg. 13
• 2. DRYDEN'S HEROIC DRAMAS, pg. 41
• 3. POPE'S EQUIPOISE, pg. 89
• 4. THE EMERGENCE OF THE NOVEL, pg. 151
• 5. THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE SUBLIME, pg. 193
• 6. BLAKE'S INWARD PROPHECY, pg. 255
• 7. THE "INCONVENIENCE" OF JANE AUSTEN, pg. 311
• 8. LOWERING SKIES, pg. 339
• 9. THE CONTEMPLATIVE MODE, pg. 373
• Notes, pg. 399
• Index, pg. 441

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