On Misunderstanding the Will of God
Amlan Das Gupta The critique of violence is the philosophy of its history Walter Benjamin I wish in this essay to consider a question which presents itself with some force in Samson Agonistes . As a consequence it has received considerable critical attention, but there may be, even after that, some point in re-examining it. Does Samson in his final act carry out the will of God, or does he significantly fail to realize it? The answer that we give to the question undoubtedly shapes our response to the play as a whole. Since I intend this paper to be as short as possible, let me set aside the considerable (and deeply interesting) body of criticism that has in the last ten or fifteen years concentrated on the problematic nature of Samson’s last action, and briefly summarize the information which needs to be taken into account as given in the play itself. Samson, till more than two-thirds of the play is over has little idea how his story will end, though he is fairly clear that it will end badly. At 1381 he makes his famous comment about experiencing “rousing motions” and reiterates his vows generally as an Isarelite and more specifically as a nazirite, one separate to God, and forbidden to eat certain kinds of food, cut his hair and visit graveyards. He also hints that he intends to perform some great deed or perish: exactly how is unclear at this point. I would draw attention to the fact that Milton is unusually cagey about letting Samson refer to divine will at this point: the “rousing motions” may be from God, but there is no clear indication. The Argument that prefaces the play is equally unclear. Having refused absolutely to go with the Philistine officer, Samson “at length” is “persuaded inwardly that this was from God”. The scene of the play’s catastrophe distances us from the loquacious and argumentative hero. The messenger does not hear him speak, apart from the loud cry that he gives addressing the Philistine nobility (1640). Otherwise Samson’s own words are heard through intermediaries (as in his desire to rest on the pillars, 1629), but his thoughts are the subject of speculation. He stands with bent head, in the posture of either one who prays, or one who meditates some great action. Milton would have known the difficulty in the Biblical text in this regard. The Biblical Samson speaks relatively little (unlike Milton’s character) but his last words are reported in the Bible. Versions differ: KJV has “Let me die with the Philistines”, Samson expressing his desire for suicide. The Geneva has “Let me lose my life with the Philistines. The Vulgate is even more uncompromising: Let my soul die with the Philistines, “Moriatur anima mea cum Philisthim”. Manoa is the first to recover from the shock of this news: after the tragic ode of the chorus, he seeks to put the best possible interpretation on the event. The first few lines seek to reestablish Samson’s heroic identity: “ Samson hath quit himself/Like Samson, and heroically hath finished/ A life heroic”: but he is quick to add that the best part of the whole business is that it proves that God has not abandoned Samson “as was fear’d”. The Chorus picks up this idea in a more assertive manner, concluding: All is best, though we oft doubt, What th’ unsearchable dispose Of highest wisdom brings about, And ever best found in the close. Oft he seems to hide his face, But unexpectedly returns And to his faithful Champion hath in place Bore witness gloriously; [ 1745-52] This then, baldly, is the substance of what the play offers. If we return to the question posed at the beginning, we find that there is any clear textual evidence as to whether Samson acts according to divine prompting in the twinned acts of slaying himself and destroying the Philistine nobility. I would make what I hope is an unexceptional point: there is nothing in the play itself that can help us resolve the question, and we need to fall back on either radical interpretation or scholarly supplement to resolve the question to our satisfaction. But one question may have received less attention that it deserves. It might be interesting to consider briefly how the notion of divine will is present in the play in a general way, and how it may be understood or misunderstood. The problem here arises out of the fact that the notion of the divine in Samson is itself difficult to understand: the play’s presentation of Samson, judge of Israel, has to accommodate both the neoclassical formalism of the play and its invocation of Greek models on the one hand, and the ethics of the Christian poet on the other . How divine will is known (or can be known) is clearly different in the three cultural models that the play seamlessly integrates: consequently. Samson’s opportunities for responding to divine dictate must be thought to be itself a problematic issue. Leaving aside the fact that within the three systems, the Greek, the Hebraic and the Christian, there are profound debates and differences in the articulation of the relationship of the human and the divine, we could try to examine the broad outlines of three paradigms which seem to be relevant to what the play offers. If each of these systems is seen to be offering a range of options, the ones that we will be choosing are probably on the extreme side: this, I should explain is not in order to present them in parodic form, but because it is here that we may more clearly understand the problems that present themselves to us. One point of convergence might be that in all these systems whatever happens is broadly in conformity with divine will; that is to say, irrespective of human agents, God’s will is manifested in events. It may be true that this is a relatively long term view:
The Chowkidaar
Kritika Chettri Above Deorali, outside the Tashi Ding hotel, the chowkidaar budo stood letting smoke from his beedi trail down to the mist that had begun erasing the valley. Inside, men and women were celebrating. Singing the old anthem from the time of their king. Glass after glass of imported liquor flowed. The hotel had reached its golden jubilee, almost a decade later than its chowkidaar outside. Old kings and new politicos had passed through these rooms. Now their photographs hung grim and solemn over these rejoicers. Since the doors and windows were tightly shut, the Kanchenjunga cold never strayed here too long. Neither did the fragrance of men and women who preferred not to smell as themselves, escape outside. Paljor called for a refill. He was the grand host with grand plans. Plans to turn Sikkim into the top most tourist destination in the country. That would require replacing this ageing relic with a five star hotel. But he had his own share of woes- “A few weeks ago my material was coming from Siliguri, when those Gorkhaland people called a bandh. Highway bandh. So I told my driver to rush right away. Have you seen the size of that highway? Anyway, he banged into another cargo truck, falling straight into the Teesta river. It took a while before they could fully rescue the truck.” Piling everything he could on his plate Rabi added- “Good loyal drivers are impossible to find. Here no one wants to do that kind of thing anymore. The Darjeeling ones are just too reckless.” He himself had jumped straight from the poor oblivion of Kalimpong haat bazaar right into the top leagues of Gangtok society. Paljor thought nothing of this pot bellied, pork marked man. But he had scattered a string of consumer labels along the city. Plus with this new found money, he had even started on some philanthropy. A business mind is quick to recognize another so nodding in approval he continued -“Too reckless indeed. This fellow has a wife and kids already in the kamaan. Here he was keeping another woman before falling into the Teesta. She must be hardly twenty and he had been saying he was just twenty five for the last two decades.” Reuden owned a string of ethnic but world class cottages offering unique village experience all over the state, and a son who refused to get married – “Maybe I should send my son to do some driver’s handy-boy thing. Gain first hand experience in these matters. As they say- driver ko life/ golai pichi wife.” Laughter resounded as Paljor continued- “Men will marry when they will. My chowkidaar, the one outside, is already sixty plus. All this while he had remained a pure bal brahmachari. As soon as my driver fell into the river, he went and married his girl, young enough to be his granddaughter.” “God give the old man good health, and us, young wives like those” These days Reuden had been meditating. They were teaching him to think only positive at the camp. “But it was no happy ending. She turned out to be more clever than pretty. She first came here as the handy-boy’s girl, then he ran away and she became the driver’s girl , until he drowned and she jumped into the arms of my chowkidaar budo, before making off with the poor unsuspecting fool’s entire savings in less than a month. What would you call that?” “Enterprising, that’s what you call it” Rabi insisted. “Is she anything to look at?” “At that age even a goat looks good.” Paljor assured. Laughter rippled into those glittering glasses. They would soon retire, some right up towards Baluakhani, others right down towards Ranipool. Since the whole of Sikkim was a hill station, there were only highs and lows. When it snowed up in the north towards Nathula, icy fangs would descend down to where the chowkidaar stood. He would light another beedi. It often snowed in Nathula. People came from all over just to see that snow. She had wanted to go too. Said she had never seen snow. He hadn’t either. A draft struck drying out the beedi in hand. He had to light it again. Beedi had kept him warm, beedi would keep him warm. But just three more remained and the bitch had run away with every single penny. When Birey’s wife ran away, they found her within a month. Living with another man down in Siliguri. Siliguri was taking in anyone and everyone. Indiscriminately. But Birey had friends and relatives who took it upon themselves to hunt her down. As if their own wives had escaped. Untainted, uninterrupted, all these years passed. A few more and he would have remained, just a chowkidaar like any other. That cursed morning he had to return from this chowkidaari, nothing but an old fool. Saab must have heard too. Today he had asked if everything was all right. Dogs began their parliament from afar. Hunter dogs could smell out anyone from anywhere. She, smelt of rotten kinema and burnt sidra ko achaar that he loved. He hoped she would return. The party inside was over. The lights turned off. The blue hills turned bluer before vanishing altogether. The scavengers began their rampage. Now quibbling over an old decaying bone. Now barking in unison at some common enemy, a jogi perhaps. But not a soul stirred. Flinging the dying beedi into the darkness, picking up the stick from the ground, he rooted himself, ready to face those intruders clawing in. The barbed wire was already giving way. _________________ Kritika Chettri writes from Kalimpong. Till recently she had been teaching at the Sikkim University. She is now concentrating on writing. HUG thanks Pavel Chakraborty for the two chowkidaar photographs.] adminhumanitiesunderground.org
My Meat is Yours
Biplab Chowdhury [Biplab Chowdhury is one of the most self immersed and outré poets of Bengal at this point of time. A journalist by profession, the fond and universal chacha to his close ones, Biplab has traversed a long, forlorn path as a poet. He is intimately connected with the world of the Bangla little magazines and travels far and wide with and for poetry. This is a short selection from one of his recent collections—My Meat is Yours–আমার মাংস তোমার (Chnoya Publications, 2015). Translation: HUG] “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” –John 6/56 O White Swan Did I know that god himself has banned meat for my benefit! Would I have flown then at the speed of wind– At the edge of the serrated greed of the blazing scimitar? O white swan, from my acute wish to wring your neck He wants to turn and deliver me to the rose-forest And I, ignorant, go and sit in the peoplesparkling park No one remains, my partner, a pair of tongs And the eternally-aged mind, my mind Nibbles away at itself mistaking it for meat. Clay Idol Last time at the fair, you had disappeared O clay doll of mine. No longer there, was that the reason you could not tell your name to anyone? With the thud of the first wind you cracked into a million pieces. And then you sank into water. And mud. O clay doll of mine—still no one dare make you cry. Wheel Unable to look downward, is that the crime? Fastening the sack, the cat you lug far across the train lines. Those eyes, smouldered in terrific lightning, I must draw! But that can’t be done alone, for they stand in rows neat, all aligned; from their sockets like torchlight luminosity is drawn out. Over our spines, the speeding wheels of the train roll over. Four Everyone is writing his Best Poems. In the desert a drunkard slurps camel’s blood. The moon pours silver light-beams on his head. Sand particles glitter. Our greedy faces turn ruddy. Like morning teeth—truly unstained and the most ferocious. These my writing hands do not stop always at writing. From yet-untraveled deserts the stench of camelblood strikes my nostrils. I slide away from you. You who had, one day, clutched tightly the railings of some ferry-ghat… Wish Dearest, I want to just sit in the flower-garden. Unperturbed by thorns. The bloodbath beneath the feathers I shall hide carefully. You shall only see flowers in the flower garden. Red and blue and yellow and more yellow light all over the place. I am talking about morning. Is that coming to you as evening’s language? I am spent, old, you are correct, but look the flowers are all new. Blooming all over beneath a blue sky—all blue. Not my ribs anymore, ignore those. Sitting in my favourite flower garden I want to forget even me. Shadow Look at your own shadow and walk on. Especially when in the evening’s light, he walks in front of you. When he is alongside and you glance at him sideways, there may be dense bloodshed if you walk into a lamppost. When he is behind you, why will you accept such an antithesis? Walk on, straight. When he is all over you, around you, warmth and shanti you will take from him. Sleep Yes, one day after love what will remain is sheer sex. On a viscous marsh we shall sleep all rain-soaked. Night and rain will get fiercer. When morning comes our sex-exhausted sleep-trench will be cloaked by soil. And then we shall sleep, and sleep… My Hands From the trees they have not plucked flowers, leaves. They have not gotten hold of anyone’s neck in a grizzly strangle-hold. Over the waves of your breasts they rested, assuming that the softened world lies there. All sounds of the world they thought had come to a halt. Hoping, one day they will be placed under another pair of hands. Right now the world wants to see blood in flood, so overwrought, twitchy it is. My Friends Make the bed for me. Cajole me to eat warm rice, fish made for me. Before that they offer me, with hands trembling, quivering, glassful of booze. Recite new poems, incandescent writings. I see the new strokes of their brush over paper and canvas. I dream and am imprisoned within a web of dreams. One day, all of us shall fly. Bewinged. My Body-less Head I have chopped off my own head and placed it at my feet. Blood rushes, in the way its atoms will. Drenches the earth. All the gifts of this world arrive and stand wordlessly by my side. Friends of the beheaded all. “If there are so many murders, there will be more suicides”—at the end of the writing they ruminate. But one can hear them aloud, plainly. With a loud thud my decapitated body falls over. ————————– adminhumanitiesunderground.org
Calcutta, Crow
Brinda Bose I what conversations do you hold with the room you grew up in? are they the colour texture stink of seaweed, soaked in the spirit of briny seas olive black with the dark weariness of faraway lands alive with the hope of survival in return exquisitely hardy in refuge,remnants most intimate, most distant more difficult than fleeting friends and lovers lost and found that old room swam you through every fall nick ephemeral passing elation swept out blood crusted bandages when wounds healed and smirked at your flickering jubilations having no memory and all memory, no eyes and ears and nose and mouth and fingers but all eyes ears mouth nose fingers your room baillemaps you each time you return tracking bruises that broke and made you fingering, lightly, all the laughter that birthed the crows feet at the corners of your eyes II finally, only one street defines this city the coffin of skeletal tramlines where collegiac ghosts rest on violent flashbacks on laughter coiled in cobwebs on raging literature crouched in crumbled pages: precarious, predatory on shelves holding crusted pavements and gross management tomes to ransom there was a time when all of poetry was an epiphany, wild and endless before recollections rolled anger roiled and ardour spent retreading bookstreet now where time is liquid, burning drowning infusions sugarblack melting argument smoking affection, o what affection was that… whoever knew that such an ageless street as this the ageing might reclaim hunting still for themselves, for others, for manuscripts torn, caffeine, grass, frenzy, ennui, rapture restless verses that spiral up and down those grimy stairs vomiting fear and tenderness insomniac III crawling this city’s face, grey termite tearing through a dusty shelf two millimeters in a year, or less.remembrances of what we said and did not say, what we did, slept, loved, lied, cried.but so much that we said we would do but have not, burning and yearning through alleys of conversations real and imagined. calcutta, crow. about all you know and think you know, about us together and apart walking along unbidden local traintracks and riverine, those glances which have met and held. of a time before we came to be, that a city existed in which we were born and played and hungered and wept, and knew, and did not know calcutta’s crow resolute resilient fretfully watching that odd tender touch that drops from your careless hand on my shoulder it has been so long and not so long at all that the city has held us, screaming and silent. all our lives when our lives have just begun. is it the old man bergson who meanders along with us unbearably light, henri henri hold on tight we said. oh is he the third who walks always beside us shadowdances through our piledhighyesterdays and wipes the snot of obnoxious recollection on our sleeves as they brush against each other and smirk. calcutta, crow agnosco veteris vestigial flammae, i feel once more the scars of the old flame but what is that flame how high does it sear to leer up the skirt of ageing thighs where did it come from when did the match strike and blaze and touch a fingertip of jasmine attar to the languorous dip behind my ear which your hand reached out and licked calcutta’s crow somnolent satyr-ical hanging from the edge of the parapet looking into our eyes as we wander together and apart there and here, rapt lost hidden in the stench of stories we have shared in separate lives just like those old framed black and white replicas of our future selves having neither history nor logic that hang askew in that studio on the second floor where clocks stand frozen that no one visits except us. calcutta, crow ____________________ adminhumanitiesunderground.org