Samson Agonistes by John Milton
Samson Agonistes is a 60 page poem about the end of Samson’s life after his hair is cut by Dalila, his eyes are gouged out, and he is made into a slave of the Philistines. At the end of the poem Samson manages to push apart the central pillars of a building in which the Philistines are having a festival, causing it to collapse and kill hundreds of his enemies at once along with Samson himself.
Milton is an incredibly complex writer, a writer that you could spend your entire life studying. One of the things that I find most interesting about Milton, and one thing that makes his writing so intense, is that he earnestly believed his poetry was an instrument of God.
In Paradise Lost he says his words are written to ‘justify the ways of God to men,’ which is a pretty fucking ballsy/delusional thing to be convinced of. Milton saw himself as a literary genius and an artist for the ages, but even more than that he saw himself as anointed by God. That sense of cosmic destiny and grandeur goes to the core of Milton's writing.
This sense of divine calling is also present in Samson, God's holy warrior. Like Milton, Samson was blind. Like Milton, Samson was persecuted for his role in fomenting a revolution. (Milton was an anti-royalist who wanted to create a Republican form of government in England.) Like Milton, Samson sees himself as a flawed person who has made many mistakes, but is chosen by God to accomplish great things.
This sense of righteousness is very compelling and very dark at the same time. Milton portrayed the slipperiness of this type of righteous indignation brilliantly in the character of Satan from Paradise Lost. Ultimately, Samson isn't that different from a suicide bomber who is convinced that all Westerners are evil and should be slaughtered indiscriminately. For Milton Samson is a hero, but he is also a person who is full of faults. Samson is a tragic hero.
I feel that there are few writers who have a stronger command of language than Milton. This is Samson bemoaning his blindness:
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse
Without all hope of day!
O first created Beam, and thou great Word,
Let there be light, and light was over all;
Why am I thus bereav'd thy prime decree?
The Sun to me is dark
And silent as the Moon,
When she deserts the night
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Since light so necessary is to life,
And almost life itself, if it be true
That light is in the Soul,
She all in every part; why was the sight
To such a tender ball as th' eye confin'd?
I'll end this review by posting a Blind Willie Johnson song about Samson called 'If I Had My Way I'd Tear This Building Down' -- the (probably mythical) story about this song is that one day Blind Willie Johnson played it in front of the Beaumont Texas City Hall and caused a minor riot:
Samson Agonistes expresses a lot of the same anger and desire for revolution that you can hear in this song. If the sentiment of this song appeals to you, then you'll probably find a lot to appreciate about Samson Agonistes as well.
