Page 13 - GALIET EMBERS & SAPPHIRE: Milton IV

time, Aletheia-truth,16 day, air and fire. In Milton’s gender reversal, Comus represents matriarchy while Lady Chastity patriarchy.
Comus’ Dionysian woods, un-silent, are made for “Joy and Feast,/Midnight shout and revelry,/Tipsy dance and Jollity” (102-5); hers are made for revealing song. In his, fairies and elves, wood nymphs, mirrors of half-humans, half-beasts, satyrs and bacchants revel “beating the ground,/In a light fantastic round” (143-4); in hers, winged angel and guardian spirit dwell. In his, a purer fire: starry-threads leading to mimesis and to the awakening of venerable Hecate and Venus to eroticism (135). In hers, moon-threads leading to a clearing of being and to the awakening of Faith, Hope, Conscience, divine virtues that belong to a sublimated Eros: agape. Comus extols the bounty of nature, affirming what Plato negates; that is, the good does not hoard, but shares bliss; beauty does not arise from reason or convention, but is ‘nature’s coin’ and ‘nature’s brag’ (739-42).
There are no flowing rivers in their terse hours. No communion. Beneath her pure gaze, she is wise and Comus a fool. Whereas she is true, incapable of self-deceit and deceiving others, Comus, impostor and charlatan 3⁄4 daemon of ungodly
16 True as Heidegger unhiddenness or that which is revealed. Heidegger. The Essence of Truth. Inwood, Michael. A Heidegger Dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
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