Adventrous voyagers

Brecht's Life of Galileo at the Asolo is rich in the ingredients that made the rift in the Renaissance between Aristotelian knowledge and the new insights of natural philosophy so deep and fraught with implication. We are definitely seeing a Galileo shaped by the Brechtian imagination -- more emphasis is placed on his attention to the practical arts than upon the influence of Plato -- many of Galileo's key works take the form of dialog, for example.

It's a fine play, resonant with Galilean wit and acerbity, and receives a thoughtful, elegant staging at the Asolo.

You might wish to review the play. Thanks to Shaw and AGE, we know where to find it.

For the relation to Milton, who alludes to the "Tuscan artist" three times in his epic, there's much to say. In the Italian, Milton may have recognized a brother in anti-authoritarian arms.

Brecht felt the words of Galileo to his young student were of the essence of his scientific spirit:

"...the old age is past, and this is a new age. During the last hundred years it has been as though men were expecting something. The cities are narrow and so are men’s minds. Superstition and plague. But now we say: because it is so, it will riot remain so. For everything moves, my boy.

I like to think that it began with ships. Ever since men could remember they crept only along the coasts; then suddenly they left the coasts and sped straight out across the seas.

On our old continent a rumour started: there are new continents! And since our ships have been sailing to them the word has gone round all the laughing continents that the vast, dreaded ocean is just a little pond. And great desire has arisen to fathom the causes of all things: why a stone falls when you drop it, and how it rises when you throw it in the air. Every day something new is discovered. Even centenarians let the youngsters shout the latest novelty into their ears."

And in that light, consider Milton's embarkation, in the first invocation of Paradise Lost:

I thence

Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,

That with no middle flight intends to soar

Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues [ 15 ]

Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.

Milton at 400

Via NPR (thanks Shaw):

Dec. 9 marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Milton, and fans around the world are celebrating with literary events, exhibits and readings of his epic poem Paradise Lost.

Milton, who visited Galileo in 1638, was also the first writer to ever use the word "space," in the sense of "outer space," to consider the infinite scope of the universe. As he wrote in Book 8 of Paradise Lost:

... this earth a spot, a grain, 
An atom, with the firmament compared 
And all her numbered stars that seem to roll 
Space incomprehensible (for such 
Their distance argues and their swift return 
Diurnal)...

A rare first American edition of Paradise Lost is included in the Morgan Library exhibit. It was published in 1777, one year into the American Revolution. Kiely says that Milton opposed the monarchy in England — and that the founding fathers read him.

"His theories of republicanism, of the people's right to overthrow a magistrate, or a king, or any ruler if they were not carrying out the will of the people, was directly influential on the Constitution of this country," says Kiely.

Addendum: a bit more on the idea that Milton's God rejects kings:

The Tyranny of Heaven
Milton's Rejection of God as King

Michael Bryson
(U. Delaware Press, 2004)

The Tyranny of Heaven argues for a new way of reading the figure of Milton's God, contending that Milton rejects kings on earth and in heaven. Though Milton portrays God as a king in Paradise Lost, he does this neither to endorse kingship nor to recommend a monarchical model of deity. Instead, he recommends the Son, who in Paradise Regained rejects external rule as the model of politics and theology for Milton's "fit audience though few." The portrait of God in Paradise Lost serves as a scathing critique of the English people and its slow but steady backsliding into the political habits of a nation long used to living under the yoke of kingship, a nation that maintained throughout its brief period of liberty the image of God as a heavenly king, and finally welcomed with open arms the return of a human king.