Do you wonder if "Paradise Lost" was at all divinely inspired?

[astrum]

I find it remarkable--almost unbelievable--that a blind man wrote one of the English language's greatest works of literature.

Hence, I often wonder if a touch of divinity was present.

[The Atheist]

Probably much easier for a blind person to write than a deaf one to compose music.

Why would a blind person struggle to write? Helen Keller wrote a bit.

"The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands—the ownership and control of their livelihoods—are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease."

Helen Keller, 1911

I'd consider that far more inspired than any fiction ever written.

[MorpheusSandman]

People invoke divine inspiration when they are ignorant of the decades' worth of work that it took great poets like Milton to learn and hone their craft. Milton wrote PL at an extremely slow rate, carefully and thoughtfully shaping each sentence, each line, each metaphor, each metaphor, each structure, each motif. If one were going to invoke divine inspiration for literature it would probably better fit the hallucinogenic visions of Blake more so than the much more intellectual Milton.

[Lokasenna]

Religious material has inspired some of history's greatest works of art - does it have to be divine inspiration in this case, or indeed in any?

Personally, I think Milton had been reading the Old English Genesis B, which seems like a much more sensible source of inspiration...

[astrum]

People invoke divine inspiration when they are ignorant of the decades' worth of work that it took great poets like Milton to learn and hone their craft. Milton wrote PL at an extremely slow rate, carefully and thoughtfully shaping each sentence, each line, each metaphor, each metaphor, each structure, each motif. If one were going to invoke divine inspiration for literature it would probably better fit the hallucinogenic visions of Blake more so than the much more intellectual Milton.

Milton himself believed that "Paradise Lost" was divinely inspired

[JBI]

You forget that the archetypal Western poet, Homer, himself was blind. Now, coincidentally, the author of the Zuo Annals in China (the perhaps best prose history of the ancient period, famous for its numerous battle scenes) is held by tradition to be blind, as are the original chanters of the Japanese Epic-like novel The Tale of the Heike.

In terms of musicians, historically, there have been numerous examples of music masters who were blind (especially in China, when most of the famous ancient ones were blind), yet also in the western tradition, with Homer as the key example.

Perhaps the lack of the sense of vision keeps in line the sense of aural memory, or enhances the ability to recall the sound of a story (that is, its mental spoken record) over its visual form (the written record). Generally people who cannot read tend to remember things better orally transferred to them than those of us who read too much.

As for divine inspiration, that's a poetic trope that Homer the blind bard evokes, and therefore Milton the blind bard follows. Call it a sort of alignment of the tradition in Milton with the sort of culmination of the development of Western culture from Greek to the final tombstone of the Renaissance which Milton pretty much represents. Everything after that is text more or less, and notions of oral literature begin to quickly disappear.

That being said, Milton perhaps believed so, or perhaps believed that there was a higher vision beyond the peripheral view of the world found through the senses. In that kind of understanding, his resolve to find the world of Light is very much a personal spiritual journey prompted by the lack of the sense of sight. I don't exactly call that divine inspiration, but rather based on a notion of the possibility of divine inspiration.

[MorpheusSandman]

Milton himself believed that "Paradise Lost" was divinely inspired

I don't give a fig what Milton believed. Artists believe a lot of nonsense about their creative process. To me, Eliot and Auden got closest to the point in suggesting that it was in the poet's massive assimilation of tradition and contemporary culture that produced the best poets, and one can read all of Milton's cultural influences in Paradise Lost, from Spenser to Shakespeare to his politics and ideology. These things weren't inspired by God, they were inspired by Milton's own experiences.

[astrum]

Who are we to say that Milton wasn't divinely touched?

How do we know that?

[The Atheist]

Who are we to say that Milton wasn't divinely touched?

Why not? It's the kind of claim that deserves a response. If he was divinely touched, who else was? What is the criterion for seeing someone as "divinely touched"?

Was Beethoven? Homer? Helen Keller? Shakespeare? Enid Blyton? Winston Churchill?

How do we know that?

We don't. I just think a divine being - especially one who is omnipotent and omnipresent - might have had something more interesting to say. I would have thought that after 1500-odd years he might have wanted to emphasise his boy's words rather than recount Genesis.

If it was divinely inspired, why does it appear to be an allegory of the English Civil War?

[MorpheusSandman]

Who are we to say that Milton wasn't divinely touched?

How do we know that?

Who are we to say that all of reality isn't a dream of a great raccoon and all of our memories were just constructed 1 minute ago via a computer program? We are not anyone to say any such things, but those claiming its so might wonder why anyone would/should believe it. In general, people tend to deify their brains, especially their unconsciousness, because it seems so totally "other" to them, so alien to their conscious knowledge and control of their being. But since people don't like thinking they are influenced/control by parts of themselves they don't understand/identify with, they cook up stories about it being "divine," or part of some external deity.

[Poetaster]

Milton's poetry is surely divine, but divinely inspired? Nah!

[astrum]

Milton's poetry is surely divine, but divinely inspired? Nah!

So, do you not think that literature, art, or even scientific discoveries can be divinely touched at all?

[MorpheusSandman]

So, do you not think that literature, art, or even scientific discoveries can be divinely touched at all?

There would have to be a "divine" for them to be "divinely touched," and there's not a stitch of evidence that there is.

[Poetaster]

So, do you not think that literature, art, or even scientific discoveries can be divinely touched at all?

No, I don't believe in God.

[desiresjab]

I don't give a fig what Milton believed. Artists believe a lot of nonsense about their creative process.

I wonder if you would mind talking about Merrill's creative process for Sandover, since you are bound to know a bit about it. Will you post twenty or thirty of your favorite lines from it? The book is almost as rare as money is to my pocket.

I know you are an atheist, but have not seen you say it. Well, I assume rather strongly that you are. Now that matters not a fig to me, but does make me curious about your enjoyment of Merrill.

So if one does not believe at all in God, spirits, angels, the afterlife or ouija boards, Dante can still be read with pleasure. We have a way of placing him in a quaint context to allow this enjoyment, soaking all that Medieval naivete like good gravy up into our biscuit. There is a sense in which we do not have to take him seriously, however seriously he might have taken himself.

I'll keep my question direct: What's in your biscuit with Merrill?