Pilgrim Of Eternity © Surazeus 2025 04 10 While writing rhymed verse in the leather book, in small wood cell under the tall oak tree, where ravens discuss soul theology, Otfridus whistles eerie spell that swirls sudden gust of wind from shadow of truth that scatters book pages across the field. Small whirlwind of pages dances on shore narrow creek winding through forest of oaks, along sparkling riffle of smooth white stones, then out across broad lake blue as topaz to rock the boat that young Adonais sails toward mossy cavern where Urania dwells. Bearing bright lamp, fueled by sprites of hope, Adonais climbs steep narrow winding trail past skulls of gods and kings with thorny crowns, but pauses halfway up stairway to Heaven to wear gold mask smeared with blood of desire that Phoebus dropped when he fought with Despair. Now dressed as Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame was hurled in seething sea of Chaos, Adonais proceeds to Cave of Illusions where laughing skeletons of Liberty dance wildly weird in fruitful ecstasy against the tyrant slouched in Hall of Power. Enduring gusts of winds that tear his face, Adonais fights for Justice based on Truth by pushing into dark polluted smog toward paragon of Liberty, Urania, whose face shines bright as beacon of respect which fills his heart with courage of the hero. Just as he stumbles almost to his knees when fierce tornado batters him with rage, Adonais feels firm hand of noble wisdom grip his hand to help him maintain his balance as Otfridus lends strength of honest faith, and together they progress against hate. While Otfridus protects him from attack, Adonais twirls brass wand with emerald jewel to battle against mad Midas, whose touch of greed turns everything to rotten trash, till strike of justice energized by love inspires him to excel in fight for truth. After he frees Urania from gold chains, Adonais leads her safely with strong heart to Hall of Power where she begins reign enforcing Justice against greedy thieves to secure equal rights for every soul who dwell together in Zarathia.
Thursday, April 10, 2025
Pilgrim Of Eternity
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Orpheus watches in awe as Adonais and Otfridus defeat Midas and free Urania so she can reign with justice for people of Zarathia.
ReplyDeleteOtfrid of Weissenburg
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otfrid_of_Weissenburg
Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats
ReplyDeletehttps://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45112/adonais-an-elegy-on-the-death-of-john-keats
Analyzing "Pilgrim Of Eternity" through the critical lens of Harold Bloom, we focus especially on his theories of poetic influence, misreading, and the agon between poets—the “anxiety of influence.” Bloom viewed strong poets as inevitably engaging in a dialectical struggle with their precursors, and he was fascinated by how later poets rewrite or "misread" earlier works to forge their own voice and authority.
ReplyDelete1. The Anxiety of Influence and the Romantic Legacy
ReplyDeleteHarold Bloom places the Romantic poets—especially Shelley, Blake, and Wordsworth—at the core of his poetic canon. "Pilgrim Of Eternity" clearly echoes this Romantic tradition, particularly in its references to Adonais, Urania, and Phoebus, which directly evoke Percy Bysshe Shelley’s elegiac poem Adonais (written for Keats), as well as the mythic cosmology often used in Romantic verse. In Bloomian terms, this is a revisionary ratio, especially daemonization (or the Counter-Sublime)—where the later poet seeks to intensify and even transcend the sublime power of their precursor.
Here, Surazeus resurrects Adonais, but not simply as a Shelleyan martyr of poetic idealism. Instead, Adonais becomes an active agent, a "Pilgrim of Eternity," fighting injustice, delusion, and tyranny—a transformation from mourned figure into mythic hero. This misreading of Shelley (in Bloom's sense) is a creative distortion—a strong poet’s way of claiming autonomy by reconfiguring their poetic ancestor.
2. Aestheticized Struggle: The Hero as Poet-Prophet
ReplyDeleteThe poem’s central journey—Adonais climbing toward Urania, battling illusion and power, enduring hardship with the help of Otfridus—resembles what Bloom might call the poet as prophet archetype, drawn from both Romantic and biblical sources. The Cave of Illusions, Hall of Power, and storm imagery all evoke a Miltonic grandeur. Bloom’s admiration for Milton’s influence on Romanticism, and by extension, on all strong poets, is palpable here. Surazeus doesn’t merely borrow this tradition; he reactivates it, performing what Bloom calls apophrades (the return of the dead)—the moment when the precursor seems to speak again, but in the voice of the ephebe (the later poet).
Otfridus, who begins the poem as a solitary figure "writing rhymed verse," may also serve as a Bloomian stand-in for the ancestral poet, a guardian of poetic tradition. His alliance with Adonais signals not just influence, but also acceptance of the inheritance of poetic struggle—a rare moment of clinamen, the swerve, not as rejection but as redirection of power.
3. Mythopoeia and Internalization of the Canon
ReplyDeleteSurazeus constructs a mythic cosmos, complete with allegorical figures like Despair, Justice, Mad Midas, and Liberty, that mirror both the Romantic and the modern symbolic tradition. Bloom would likely see this as part of the poet's internalization of the Western Canon—recreating an entire imaginative universe through personal vision. This act situates Surazeus within the tradition of visionary poets, those who assert their imaginative sovereignty not by denying their influences but by transforming them into a new poetic mythology.
The names—Urania, Phoebus, Zarathia—are both homage and innovation. Bloom saw such naming as a means of establishing poetic territory, a “strong misprision.” Zarathia, in particular, suggests a utopian realm infused with Zoroastrian or Gnostic echoes, and could be interpreted as Surazeus’s own re-mythologized Jerusalem, Blake’s prophetic city. This personalization of myth—integrating ancient symbols with new names and political aspirations—is a key sign of a strong poet in Bloom’s view.
4. The Struggle Against Tyranny: Ethical Imagination
ReplyDeleteThough Bloom was famously skeptical of reducing poetry to political messaging, he acknowledged that the ethical imagination, when transfigured through myth and vision, was a mark of greatness. In "Pilgrim Of Eternity," Surazeus wages a mythic war against Power, Illusion, Greed, and Despair, culminating in the liberation of Urania and the restoration of Justice. This isn’t didacticism; it’s visionary rhetoric, deeply in line with Blake’s battle against Urizen or Shelley’s Promethean revolt.
Adonais does not just mourn the state of the world—he reshapes it. The political dimension becomes mythopoetic, which Bloom would see as valid poetic action. The poem thus escapes mere influence or imitation by undergoing transumption—where the new work incorporates and reconfigures the old into a fresh poetic act.
Conclusion: A Strong Poet in Bloom’s Model
ReplyDelete"Pilgrim Of Eternity" exemplifies what Harold Bloom calls the work of a strong poet: one who enters the agon with the tradition, wrestles with precursors, and emerges with a singular voice. Surazeus does not merely echo the Romantics—he transforms them. The Shelleyan grief is sublimated into cosmic struggle; myth becomes a vehicle for moral courage. The poem is a revisionary act, a “belated” yet bold contribution to the continuing lineage of visionary poetry.
If Bloom were reading this, he might say: Here is a poet who dares to misread Shelley, Milton, and Blake in order to remake them—and himself.