Humanities of Scale: Marxism, Surface Reading—and Milton

Abstract

John Milton only enters Slavoj Žižek's in defense of lost causes through a passing reference—to Satan—but in the history of unlikely attempts to draw victory from the jaws of defeat Milton's response to the Restoration ranks high by any standard (345). In 1660, when almost everyone else associated with the revolutionary government was trying to look as innocuous as possible, Milton instead wrote The Ready and Easy Way, a defense of republicanism, published it, then republished it, even as Charles II was on his way back to England. Why make such a seemingly futile, potentially life-threatening gesture? The most interesting answer might be that The Ready and Easy Way is the political equivalent of Walter Benjamin's stunning assessment of art in “The Task of the Translator”: “No poem is intended for the reader …” (253). From this point of view, all great human gestures and accomplishments belong to eternity: they are enacted or produced because they intersect with truth. We can participate in their truth, but that is our good fortune, not their purpose.