COMUS IN THE CONGO
SIR,—When Dr. Conor Cruise O'Brien in his 'time of crisis' turned to Milton, would it not have been better, instead of drawing analogies with Comus, to have seen himself as the eponymous hero of Samson Agonistes? After all, there arc a number of very striking similarities between the two men at d their situations.
In the dramatic tragedy (Milton's one), it will be remembered, the dialogue opens" with Samson, who has been betrayed to his enemies, bemoaning his fate. He is blind. He has failed to achieve the mission that God (rather inappropriately, the United Nations is deified) had given him :
Promise was that Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver; Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find hi n Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves.
The Chorus—so unmistakably the Afro-Asian block—enters and speaks of the deified UN in terms of wonderment and awe: ' Just arc the ways of God, And justifiable to men . . .
Who made out laws to bind us, not himself, And hath full right to exempt Whom so it pleases him by choice From National obstriction, without taint Of sin, or legal debt. Samson is obviously pleased to receive the Char' which is sympathetic to his case and he makes a s y
dig at some countries not in the Afro-Asian block: Your coining, Friends, revives me, for I learn Now of my own experience, not by talk, How counterfeit a coin they are who friends • Bear in their Superscription (of the most 1 would be understood); in prosperous days They swarm, but in adverse withdraw their head Not to be found, though sought.
He does not meet with a great deal of sympathy, however, from his father Manoa—whom one can see dressed in green with shamrocks growing out of his cars—while his enemy Harapha (one imagines him peering over the top of the Express or the Telegraph} says: Fair honour thou dost thou thy God, in trusting He will accept thee to defend his cause, A Murderer, a Revolter, and a Robber.
Eventually, after Samson's tempters have all come and gone, the hero is led away to perform before a large assembly of Philistines. He avenges himself and his God by pulling down the temple upon the audience, getting killed in the process. In the case of Dr. O'Brien this could only be anticipatory, though one must admit that it is hard to imagine him being recalled to the Congo.
Only one character from Samson seems not to fit Dr. O'Brien's situation—Dalila. But of course only Harapha, emerging again from behind his Express, could suggest that she was the slightest bit relevant to the story.
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