Munkácsy: "The Blind Milton Dictating"

Mihály Munkácsy, The Blind Milton Dictating Paradise Lost to His Daughters, 1877

During a few days in New York City I decided to check out the Public Library. The main reading room was closed, which was a disappointment. But I did visit the Edna Barnes Solomon Room, where many oil paintings hang, with this large (several feet wide) Munkácsy as the centerpiece. Readers of this blog will know that, counter to normal tastes, I prefer abstract painting to objective or narrative works. Many narrative paintings are so detailed that I lose interest. You know: Jesus with eight or nine disciples, a whole bunch of onlookers, each with different expressions, and maybe some angels or Romans to boot.

This piece, with just four figures, communicates in a way I can really get. Before I knew what the painting was about, I thought that the male figure was slumped in pain. What we actually see is a figure (Milton, 1608 - 1674) in the deepest concentration imaginable, perhaps even weighing new words against those that came to him in the night, as this excellent blog post explains. And I wonder, how much literature is composed in a sort of trance state, or through the means of what we might refer to as "channeling"?

The sister on the far right is in charge of the main transcription, and she leans forward so as to figure out exactly what her father is saying. The other sitting sister seems to be embroidering. Maybe she weighs in when a word or phrase is in doubt. The standing sister looks like she was leaving until something particularly arresting emerged from her father's mouth. Maybe he was expressing sympathy for the devil.

Other artists have tackled the same subject, including Delacroix, who includes an image of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden in this painting from 1827-28. The act of dictation here seems so much less burdensome than in the Munkácsy.

In Henry Fuseli's 1794 version, Milton himself looks like a specter, or emissary from another world, with inspiration settling on him in a cone of light.