CHAPTER 33
EVERYONE ARRIVED IN THE MEETING ROOM and the panel was there, with everything they had gathered on the case. A projector has been added.
— I hope you all had a good rest — said Ben Morant, — I think it's important, and I even took Greg's advice, that having a clear head and a full belly were excellent allies to solve crimes — he looked at Greg who agreed — we have to draw up a plan.— plan to catch the members of this Cicada 3301, Miss Barah has already given us some information about William Blake, will tell us a little about John Milton and Vala.
She nodded and stood up. He walked over to the projector and turned it on.
— Of all the poets, John Milton is the most difficult to praise with true delicacy and sincerity. In proportion to other poets, Milton is the easiest to extol with simple phraseology and conventional reverence. There is one thing about John Milton that should generally be noted — that he is a mature taste, a taste that grows slowly. William Shakespeare is indeed for all ages, for all — seven ages of man.
Yuliya always felt comfortable in front of people and the more she talked, the more relaxed and peaceful she felt.
— I liked Shakespeare when I was dragged reluctantly to school and I like him now, I don't mean that as a child I simply liked romantic stories, I loved his poetry, especially when it was unintelligible. The clear, vibrant rhythm seemed to speak frankly even when he didn't understand it. The huge red and gold heraldic figures were obvious, though he couldn't understand them. Members of my family who collect coincidences assured me that I was very small when I ran down the street, bumped into the ground and, at the same moment, said the following lines:
She pressed the button and the slides appeared.
"Do not go on thus, with downcast eyes, / Looking for your noble father in the dust" (Hamlet, Act I, Scene II).
— And lines like:
"To the moonlight thou shalt visit again" (Hamlet, Act I, Scene IV)
— Or how:
"A Hercules, / Climbing the Trees of the Hesperides" (Lost Love's Labors, Act IV, Scene III).
— Not only were they good poetry, they were good childish images like the 'cow that jumped over the moon' or the many kippers growing in the woods. But Milton, at his best, means absolutely nothing to childhood. That's not to say kids might not like Milton, kids might like the mail address book. It is part of the kingdom of heaven to enjoy things without understanding them, I say that children cannot appreciate Milton's miltonism, which no one but Milton himself does. A boy doesn't appreciate the wonderful, restrained style, which, like a well — tamed war horse, even prances and turns, more out of restraint than impetuosity. A boy does not feel the rapture of these great lines, like the great eagle leaving its nest:
"Resolved to climb with full flight / Far above the mountain Aonia" (Paradise Lost, Book I, verses 14-15).
— I think a large part of the problem common minds have in appreciating Milton, or rather Milton's problem with pleasing common minds, for please remember that the popular mind is far more important than Milton, but it is in Milton's mistake, to always be described as a simple and classic writer. In fact, he was a highly complex and, in some ways, too modern writer.
— What is classic can be understood by anyone — added Igor — no diarist would say that the story of Ulysses returning in rags to the woman who had been faithful to him is not moving. No dog breeder would be indifferent to Argos' death. No man of the people would consciously say that the Venus de Milo was not a beautiful woman.
— It's second — rate, distorted art that really suddenly loses people's approval. The diarist could not see the peculiar compassion of Robert Elsmere, who wanted to be both a priest and an agnostic.
Yuliya nodded.
— The dog breeder would rightly be indifferent to the rhetoric of the many modern animal lovers who can't take care of a dog for a day. And the common man will not admit that Aubrey Beardsley's women are beautiful women, because they are not ugly. The taste of the man of the people is classic, some people accepting this fact or not.
Yuliya stood beside Ben Morant and continued:
— And if Milton were as direct as Homer or the Elgin Marbles, he would, in practice, be wildly popular. The real reason why it could not have had a glory as vast as its depth and excellence, was that it had in it something of the modern individualist, something of the social schismatic. He had that strange, evil ambition of the modern artist, he wanted to — think for himself— , but Dante Alighieri and Charles Dickens wanted to think for others too.
— Exactly! Milton stands between the all— too— social society in which Dante lived and the all— too— social that Dickens always wanted and occasionally experienced in that touchy isolation that belongs to the art of our time and that belonged to the religion of his time. Milton is the 17th century individualist. Milton is the perfect Calvinist:
man entirely alone with his God. Milton is also the perfect artist: the man entirely alone with his art...
— Perhaps no man has ever had such power over art itself since the creation of the fine arts, except.
She looked as if she was waiting for an answer, and Greg once again collaborated with her theater.
— William Blake?
She made the face of joy that every teacher does when they have a brilliant student in their classroom.
— It is now that we enter our history, we understand that a writer is always the fruit of another writer, and William Blake is undeniably the fruit of John Milton, however, incredibly more talented, or as you wish, a dopplebegabung, a multiple artist and in all these areas he was extremely talented, we see this characteristic in Leonardo Da Vinci, for example, he was an engraver, painter, draftsman and poet. He demonstrated an aptitude for the visual and verbal arts and intended to inextricably combine both in his work Songs of Innocence and of Experience, which we call verb-pictorial, given the way in which it was constructed, similarly in Vala. The man of images predominated over the man of letters, if the opposite occurred, or even if both artistic skills were developed simultaneously.
— Blake united poetry and printmaking in the same physical medium. Michelangelo, Dante, Gabriel Rossetti and Henry Fuseli, for example, wrote and painted, but at different times, in different works and media. According to Walter Crane, when an artist has the gift of dual talent, the interaction between two specific semiotic media produces harmony. Crane believed that Blake was an exceptional artist who could achieve:
The slide appeared in full Crane's sentence and they all wondered how many times that woman had given that class to have such timing.
"Harmony between text and illustration. They become a harmonious whole, in complete relationship" (1905, p. 139) 1.
— Blake developed an original printing technique called Illuminated Printing, illuminated printing, through which he engraved poems and drawings in the same copper matrix. He used this method to print his main works, whose unmistakable characteristic was the union of verb and image. However, according to Vaughn, in Blake's illuminated work, the images corresponding to each poem were not simply a reproduction of the verbal text, however, both languages complemented each other to form a broader whole, and of greater complexity, in fact, perceived. it is known that the poem expanded the interpretation of the image and vice versa, however, in some of his later works, what was read did not correspond to what was seen, since image and verb had no apparently coherent correlation.
— It cannot be said, therefore — said Igor — that Blake illustrated his verbal texts, since this concept refers to the act of translating the verbal through the non— verbal. Illustrating, in the current conceptions of the activity, means translating or re-signifying the source text, in this case, the translation is considered independent and, although it maintains a prior relationship with the source text, it is understood as another text, as it is the result of another interpretation.
— In Blake's case, what it does is combine one language with another. It creates image and verb so that they work together, like two instruments within the same orchestra, if they are separated they will make some sense, however, if appreciated together, they will expand and enrich the interpretation of the work as a whole. That is, by separating the two languages, the semantic power of the work is compromised.
She moved on to the next slide and continued the explanation.
— Based on this premise, we consider that, in Blake's enlightened work, none of the languages prevails over the other. There is no superiority relationship between the verb or the image, both are equally important for a broader understanding, however, as we have already stated, not all of his works have an intimate referential relationship between the verbal and the pictorial, the illuminated works of Blake, there are times when this power of referentiality between the two languages seems greater and moments when it seems less. There are three types of classification:
The engravings show a great degree of reference with the texts;
In others, this relationship takes place in a metaphorical way, making the reader interpret the engravings based on analogies;
And in still others, this referentiality is small, as the images have no correlation with the text and the reader is forced to raise hypotheses...
— Since, for example, there are characters that are not even mentioned in the verbal texts. Songs of Innocence in 1789 and Songs of Experience, in 1794. These works that in the future became one, due to their characteristics, belong to the first classification, however, it presents a high degree of referentiality between verbal and imagery texts, that is, verb and image go together and correlate in a imbricated way. In it, Blake shows us both sides of the human condition:
Innocence and experience...
— Written in the midst of the great French Revolution and the great English Revolution, the work portrays, in its first phase, a more optimistic vision of Blake regarding the world and men. At that time, the Bastille in France fell and monarchical absolutism was replaced by a constituent assembly, which propagated a dream of freedom, equality and fraternity.
— Same motto as Freemasonry.
She nodded.
— Blake was enthusiastic about this new perspective on social change. However, with the progress of the industrial revolution in England, increasingly aggressive and with the French revolutionaries assuming tyrannical positions, Blake began to succumb to the disbelief that the world was not necessarily heading towards a more just and promising future, therefore, the second phase of this work in question, gives signs that pessimism would have taken over his views on existence, and we can see a darker author, more skeptical about goodness, honesty. Innocence is then replaced by experience, that is, by a world corrupted by greed, disrespect for others and reason.
— The twenty — two poems of Songs of Innocence contrast with the twenty— two poems of Songs of Experience. We give as an example the case of Holy Thursday 3, belonging to the first work, and Holy Thursday 4, belonging to the second. The first describes an event of great significance for the Catholic Church, which would be the ascension of Jesus, 39 days after Easter. On that day, it was common for poor children, most of them orphans, to march from their respective institutions to St. Paul's Cathedral for the religious ceremony. The poem contained in Songs of Innocence, shows exactly a more innocent look at the issue of poor boys who head towards the cathedral for the celebrations of Maundy Thursday.
The lyrical self talks about the beauty of the scene, the crowd together, radiant, in colorful clothes, singing harmoniously, in this way, it is noticed that at first, through an innocent look, what was considered beautiful, starts to show itself. if much deeper and punished in the light of experience. Thus, Holy Thursday from Songs of Experience deals with what goes on behind that religious moment, showing how the lives of those children are arid and colorless, different from the celebration in which they find themselves.
Suddenly, Morant's phone rings, mumbles a few things, hangs up and says interrupting Yuliya Barah:
— That's what we feared, the case of the explosion at the embassy is related to the death of Abbot Nielsen.
— And what is the relationship between the two events?
Morant opened the photo on his cell phone and saw a wall of the embassy ballroom written:
Night: Monday...
Everyone agreed that more explicit than that was impossible.