jmage at panix.com wrote:
>
> And that John Dunne tried to strangle the imp in the cradle?
>
> 'Tis all in pieces, all cohaerence gone;
> All just supply, and all Relation:
> Prince, Subject, Father, Sonne, are things forgot,
> For every man thinks he hath got
> To be a Phoenix, and that there can be
> None of that kinde, of which he is, but hee.
I hadn't reread the Anniverserie poems for over 40 years (since well before I ever dreamt of being a marxist). "For every man thinks he hath got / To be a Phoenix" is a stupendous image of that 19th/20th century academic perversion, the terrified lust to be original (with an "independent mind") at all costs -- a perversion absolutely dominant in the Butler thread on this list. Of my three favorite poets (Milton, Pope, Pound) only Pope is relatively free of this perversion.
Milton nursed "the imp" to giant size (Adam speaking to Raphael):
...As new waked from soundest sleep Soft on the flowery herb I found me laid In balmy sweat, which with his beams the sun Soon dried, and on the reeking moisture fed. Straight toward heaven my wondering eyes I turned, And gazed awhile the ample sky, till raised By quick instinctive motion up I sprung, As thitherward endeavouring, and upright Stood on my feet; about me round I saw Hill, dale, and shady woods, and sunny plains, And liquid lapse of murmuring streams; by these, Creatures that lived, and moved, and walked, or flew, Birdsd on the branches warbling; all things smiled, With fragrance and with joy my heart o'erflowed. My self I then perused, and limb by limb Surveyed, and sometimes went, and sometimes ran With supple joints, and lively vigour led: But who I was, or where, or from what cause, Knew not; to speak I tried, and forwith spake, My tongue obeyed and readily could name What'er I saw. Thou sun, said I . . .
P.L. 8, 253-273
No purer assertion of an identity prior to and independent of social relations -- of history -- exists or could exist.
Carrol