Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.21.1805151940450.14237@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: From the Index of Similes
Date: Tue, 15 May 2018 19:42:44 -0400 (EDT)
From the Index of Similes http://www.alansondheim.org/neck.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/tank.jpg Adam and Eve, after their fall, compared to the Americans, as first seen by Columbus & Their repentance to Deucalion and Pyrrha's address to restore human race after their flood, & Then Adam caressing Eve to Jupiter with Juno (May-Flowers) & His address to her sleeping to Zephyrus breathing on Flora & His bower to Pomona's arbour & Desires to know the story of the creation, prior to his own, to thirst unalloy'd increasing & Awak'd after carnal fruition, the first effect of his fall, to Sampson shorn by Dalilah & his sorrow on the vision of Noah's flood, to a father's mourning his children all destroy'd in his view at once && Angels coelestial, the spears (of the guardians of Paradise) to ears of corn ripe for reaping & Their march against Satan's army, to that of the birds in Paradise to receive their names from Adam & Their hallelujahs to the sound of seas && Chaos, Atoms, their motion, to the Libyan quicksands & Confusion there, to forming a town, to heaven and earth (suppos'd) falling && Death, and Sin, their making a bridge over Chaos to the world, to polar winds, driving the ice together in the (suppos'd) north-east passage & The work to Neptune's fixing the Isle of Delos & to Xerxes making a bridge over the Hellespont && Death's instinct of Adam's fall to the flight of birds of prey to a field of battle & His and Satan's frowns on each other to two thunder-clouds meeting && Eve, her hair to the wine's tendrils & Her looks to the first blush of morning & Her self to Pandora, To a wood-nymph or Venus & To a Dryad, or Delia, (Diana), & To Pales or Pomona, & To Ceres, & Her Temptation by Satan (alluded to by the story of Ophion and Eurynome) && Raphael, his view of the world in his descent from heaven to paradise, to that of the moon through an optick glass && Satan, First view of the world, to a scout's casual prospect (after a dangerous journey) of a new country or city, & Appearance in the sun's orb, to a spot in it differing from all astronomical observations, & Meditation on his intended attempt on the world, to a gun recoiling & His army against the coelestials in number -- to the stars, To the dew-drops, & Himself recoiling on a blow receiv'd from Michael, to a mountain sinking by an earthquake & His combat with Michael to two planets (the frame of nature, suppos'd, dissolv'd) rushing in opposition to each other & View (in the serpent) of Paradise and Eve there, to a citizen's taking the air in the country from his home-confinement && Sin, her middle parts, to the (suppos'd) Dogs of Scylla, Of the night-hag && Waters, their flux into seas & on the creation to drops on dust && -- from the Index of Similes to Paradise Lost, A Poem in Twelve Books, John Milton, The Author, London, Printed for a Company of Stationers, 1739 (includes Addison's commentary in the Spectator). Comment - So that the description moves from the equivalence of simile to a flat lid and doesn't survive. Satan dries, flakes, dissolves, without the attendant mathematics, but with the thought. Smile for the a minute; the smile's off. To tear or torn there's no daily there; saying wait a minute the simile's off, almost a smile. So that rather the link is loosened. Let us argue for the simile, similitude, smile or worse, and who knows the difference? The state of things - as if the real were within the simile's uncanny smile into absence. +++