In Regina M Schwartz’s article “Yet once more”: Re-creation, Repetition, and Return, Schwartz points out 2 ideas that I feel are important. The first is that time goes on, and neither humans nor Satan can stop it or go back. The only one with that power is God, and Satan struggles with this idea, leading him to repeat his wrong doings. The other idea that Schwartz points out is the effect of narcissism on oneself and how similar Satan is to Eve.
I would first like to focus on the idea of time. Satan has fallen, but he refuses to accept this, and therefore “repeats” his act of falling by going to earth and corrupting man. Satan refuses to accept that another being has put him where he is (hell), and is instead determined that he is there by choice. Satan cannot go back in time, so his only option is to continue forward in a series of repetitive movements of his past errors. Satan is forced to a world “of wrath and displeasure, and he wreaks revenge on whatever does not feel wrath and displeasure as he does…revenge is the will’s ill will against time”
Because Satan is unable t be in a paradise, he decides that Adam and Eve can no longer be in their own paradise. Satan’s plan is “not just of expelling mankind, but with the more comprehensive aim of wasting the whole creation.” In this act, Satan falls again as he repeats his motives for up heaving God.
The second point Schwartz makes is the narcissistic qualities shared between Satan an Eve. Satan expresses a “towering self-love” when he claims to be self-created and when that claim leads him to resistance to God. Satan’s incredible self-love makes it hard for him to watch Adam and Eve embrace because he cannot stand that “two are participating in that embrace”. This is because for him, the only love is self -love. There is no room for love of another.
Satan’s self love extends to his love of Sin who is from Satan, therefore a part of him. It is through Sin that Schwartz compares Satan and Eve. Eve herself showed self love as she looked at her reflection. Eve’s characteristics are strikingly similar to Sin’s. They were both formed “from the left side of their parent/mate.” I believe this came up in class, but I am not sure who said it. I would like to agree that it is a bit ironic that Eve is supposed to be pure but she comes from the same side of Adam that Sin comes from Satan. Furthermore, the “issue of her loins, like Sin’s, will be ‘Food for so foul a Monster.’” Both Eve and Sin suffer the same fate.
What is important to notice here is that the connections between Eve and Sin are s similar that it seems to link Eve to Satan, potentially a reflection that Eve was the one that needed to be deceived into falling first. Satan refuses to acknowledge his narcissism, and he even claims to have n recollection of Sin. At last Eve knew that she was staring at herself. Even though she was turned away she realized the power of self-love, where Satan rejects any such accusations.
Rebecca R.
Source: “Yet once more”: Re-Creation, Repetition, and Return by Regina M. Schwartz
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