“자연은 자기 할 일을 다 했다”: 밀턴의 창조력 회복과 아담의 자아 정체성 형성

Abstract

This essay explores the ways in which Milton aims to restore his creative power through expressing prelapsarian Adam's proper practice of creation-centered spiritual power in his relationship with nature. In Paradise Lost Milton has suffered from a lack of inspiration and in the prologue to Book 7 emphasizes his fears of actual or potential failures in creating a sacred and adventurous epic. To continue the process of poetic creation, Milton needs the substantial aid of 'Light' as an absolute source of wisdom and creativity. Here my argument is that Milton experiences creation-centered spirituality as a form of Light from nature in the same way Adam is engaged in the flow of creative power by the "contemplation of created things" in the process of realizing his identity. Actually, Milton thinks that the creative power itself is immanent in creation and created things. Nature can be understood as the means and the end of creative spirituality because it serves as the source of providing the spirituality as well as it is the representative of the purpose of creation inherent in created things. In a sense the creative imagination dependent upon nature is safer and more reasonable than the inspiration from Muse in that the first is discursive but the latter is arbitrary. So in Book 8 Milton would have creative spirituality penetrate the very fiber of his being and give other beings their appropriate authority. Finally, all the beings of Book 8 including Milton himself join in "sacred song, and waken raptures high; / No voice exempt, no voice but well could join / Melodious part." In this point Milton restores the imagination of nature's self-revelatory spirit and depending upon it, continues to sing the remaining half of Paradise Lost.