LONGING FOR A NEW BEGINNING: DERRIDA, MILTON AND THE PROMISE OF APOCALYPSE

Abstract

With a view to an analysis of the capacity for a (symbolic literary) new beginning inherent in the apocalyptic promise, the paper contrasts Milton’s ’apocalyptica‛ with Derrida’s thinking of the apocalypse. Close reading of the relevant texts by both authors, in the case of Milton supplemented by the appropriate framework of literary history, shows a partial terminological disagreement between the two authors (inasmuch as they view apocalypse primarily as an act of unveiling and as a (catastrophic) end of the world, respectively), which is further shown to be a consequence (or a manifestation) of their conflicting views on the virtue and the very possibility of the apocalyptic occurrence. Conceding the possibility of a “fabulously textual” apocalyptic event, Derrida sees it in the context of philosophical pseudo-messianic ’endism‛, intellectual and political escapism, or an implicit engagement in the destructive deviation of reality (a ’fabulization‛, i.e. constructing of the reality on the basis of an apocalyptic fable). Milton, however, sees the apocalyptic event (an imminent part of reality as much as a textual phenomenon) primarily in the framework of its ’positive connotations‛ represented by the possibility of a transformation of the way one experiences the world and the possibility of a quenching of the longing for a new beginning. It is concluded that Milton’s poetic gesture toward a transcending of the end and toward the (post)apocalyptic (millenarian) promise affirms the capacity of literature to form and offer the (literary) experience ich leads beyond Derrida’s philosophical aporia of the end and establishes with it an intellectual and spiritual balance.