My Mother’s House

´He to his mother’s house private returned.´

I can still hear the thrilling voice of Irene Samuel my Milton teacher at Hunter College reading that line which closes Paradise Regained: Jesus’s four temptations by Satan in the desert. (Milton adds the fourth.) Irene Samuel, and Milton, have helped guide my entire life.

They make me know that in a world of lascivious cruelty, an artist goes forward alone. That great works of art, like angels, are messages. That they prompt me to take better actions

Jesus is not coming back from hell. I know what hell is. Who does not? He is coming back from the devil, which is not the same thing. The devil in Milton is just some chap, much smaller than his publicity would lead one to believe. Mischief. Mischief.

It is we who do actual evil. With time, I have come to know that I have been the means of that whether I was conscious of it or not. The damage done remains. Is some of my subsequent suffering expiation for that? I hope so.

My mother’s house. I know how returning to it feels, and that the return must be private. There is something hilarious about having survived.