Home Is Behind Them, Forever Unattainable, and in Some Sense They Know It. the Backward Pull Begins to Blend with Other Concepts
50 Milton and His Epic Tradition The Tradition 51 Home is behind them, forever unattainable, and in some the race, the lost homes of the heroes, and the transcen sense they know it. dent goals that all seek. The garden may be longed for as The backward pull begins to blend with other concepts ideal, yet knowledge that he is still in mid-journey of escape, of which the most frequently imagined in epic makes the hero look upon any apparent oasis with mixed poetry are gardens or garden-worlds, suicide, and mad feelings, as a shelter from reality. Occasional pastoral ness. Distinct enough in definition, and in some of their idylls do exist, fragile, doomed, and, for the hero, es manifestations, nevertheless, because they all represent capist, like Phaeacia and the country of Meliboe. As for inaction, passivity, and at times oblivion, they do some the future and transcendent world, the unattainable city times overlap one another in the poetry."'The most fre of Jerusalem is viewed by St. George from afar. Only quent and obvious device by which the hero is tempted to Dante is allowed to enter its gardens, and he must leave forget his mortality is some variation on the enchanted them behind, half forgetting the reality, in order to use garden.~ Whether pre-Christian or Christian, this garden language to describe it. It is good that there is at least is almost always a reminder that you cannot go home once in epic story a record of that process, the near again, whether "home" is taken to be as historical as speechlessness of the attainment set across from the in Vergil's Troy, or as psychological as the retreat to a pre articulate formlessness of the original cave.
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