THE MANIAC MESSIAHS
IN
STEPHEN
GILL’S THE FLAME
By Dr. G. Dominic Savio
& Mrs. S.J. Kala
“A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit…”
-Isaiah 11:1-10
“And he will be called Wonderful
Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of
Peace”
-Isaiah 9:1-7
"And Ma'amin, I
believe with a full heart in the coming of the Messiah, and even though he may
tarry, I will wait
for him on any day that he may come."
- Maimonides's Thirteen Principles of Faith:
‘Messiah’,
is a Hebrew word, meaning the ‘anointed one’. It is an oft used term in Judaism
and in Christianity. The followers of both the religions have a deep faith in
Messiah. But, they differ from one another in their beliefs. According to the
Jews, the Messiah’s reign lies in the future. They eagerly await it unlike the
Christians who believe Jesus Christ to be their Messiah.
The messiahs of Judaism and Christianity have always
featured in many literary works. They have either a close or a remote semblance
to either of them. But, presently a messiah with a vast difference and a rare
one, a maniac is depicted by Stephen Gill in his long poem, The Flame. The phrase “maniac messiahs’
used by this multiple - award winning poet certainly has a purpose to serve.
Probably it throws out the lava of disgust from the volcano of suppressed wrath
kindled at the unquestionable happenings in this abominable hell the, world.
Stephen Gill, a Punjabi Christian presently in
The suffering undergone then prods him to patronize
Peace and Universal Brotherhood in all his writings. World Federalism, a
concept that he promotes and craves for is propagated through his works. The Flame (2008), a collection of poems
showcasing Stephen Gill’s social concerns and yearning for peace, brings out
the harrowing experiences of the victims of the diabolic terrorism. The
subtitle, “A long poem about the destruction caused by maniac messiahs”, makes
the reader contemplate on who the messiahs are and why they are labeled so.
This paper brings to focus the maniac messiahs in The Flame. The paper aims at juxtaposing
the maniac messiahs in The Flame with
the Christian and Judaic messiahs and studies their contradictions. It also
delves deeper into the nomenclature, the prophecies in the Bible and the
characteristics of the Christian messiah.
In the article on “The Messiah” from Jewish virtual
library, it is understood that the belief in messiah and a messianic age is so
deeply rooted in Jewish tradition. (1) The Jews in
Gradually there was a change in their belief system.
The Jews were made to believe that their messiah may not be a military leader
but may be a charismatic teacher who would interpret the Mosaic Law correctly,
restore
After Jesus Christ, many Palestinian Jews
revolted against the Romans under the headship of their messiah, Simon Barkokhba. The effects of it were dreadful. Quite contrary
to the belief of the traditional Jews in a personal messiah, Reform Judaism, a
movement of the modern world denies the arrival of an individual messiah. It
insists on “a future world in which human efforts, not a divinely sent
messenger, will bring about a utopian age.” (The Messiah 2)
“The Hebrew word masiah means ‘anointed one’ and may
indicate Jewish priests , prophets and kings” (Lendering
1). In Greek messiah was translated as Christos hence the
Christian Messiah was called “Jesus the Christ”. Neither traits of Jewish
priests, prophets and kings nor that of Christ can be seen in “the maniac
messiahs” of Stephen Gill in his The
Flame .
The
Flame is a long poem. It is written in
eight parts and sixty two cantos. The poem is about the devastation caused by
the maniac messiahs. The first part of the poem is devotional. It is in the
second, third, fourth and the fifth that he highlights on the destruction
wrought by the terrorists. In the sixth part Gill sketches out the silhouettes
of those who are responsible of the calamity. The seventh and the eighth part
of the poem are earnest craving for the loss, both physical and psychological.
In the blurb, Gill declares that The Flame it is not an attack on any
particular community, religion or nationality. He opines that “people are
people everywhere and suffering is suffering”. The bombing of a Day Care Centre
in The Flame is a well schemed act of
the terrorists. The crazy, foolish and insane acts that are unjustifiable on
any grounds even in a fantasied world earn him the
title of “the maniac messiahs”, conferred by Gill. Why then should they be
called so? A look at the roots of the concept and the belief in it might be of
immense help to the study.
Furthermore, are Gill’s “the maniac
messiahs” an upshot of any other recent movement? How close or distant are they
to/ from the Christian and Judaic messiahs? A study of the messianic
expectations of the Christians an orthodox and non – orthodox Jews is
quintessential. Only then can “the maniac messiahs” in Stephen Gill’s The Flame be understood well.
According to Judaism, Maimonides
summarises what the Messiah is expected to do as
follows
… He will be
a descendent of David
He does not
have to perform signs or wonders…
He will
fight the wars of the Lord
Elijah will
come before Messiah….
In messiah’s
reign there will be no hunger or wars…
(“The Messiah of Judaism” 3)
In the
Old Testament there are umpteen messianic prophecies. Christians believe that
the advent of Christ is foretold in the Old Testament and it is realized in the
New Testament. According to the key reference in the Old Testament historical
books, the prophecies in Psalms which consists of praise songs, the book of Job
and that of the major and Minor Prophets the messiah, the characteristics of
the Messiah is as follows.
…He’ll
battle with Satan
He’ll have
both priestly and kingly roles
The messiah
will be a redeemer, and will live on earth
The messiah
is God’s son; the messiah is divine
The messiah
will suffer at the hands of his detractors…
The messiah
will usher in a new era of bring peace and tranquility…
He will bear
the sins of many
He will
perform miracles… (Jones, Robert 14)
Having analysed the
characteristics of Judaic Messiahs and the Christian Messiah, an intrinsic
investigation of the characteristics of the maniac messiahs in The Flame is to be carried out. Gill in
his preface to The Flame introduces
the term “the maniac messiahs”. He identifies them as those “misled individuals
who generate the blizzards of fear and panic.” (7) He does not come out with
evident explanations of why he calls them so. The readers wonder whether it is
because of the self attribution of the characteristics of the messiahs of the
Christian and orthodox and non – orthodox Jews by the terrorists. The manic
messiahs “call themselves liberators, separatists and jehadis”
(20).
Who are these maniac messiahs?
According to Gill they are the openers of Pandora’s Box. True to the scientific
world, they make immense use of Science and Technology to create the intended
chaos. They are “educated and illiterate, rich and poor, men and women,
politicians, engineers, medicos and religious leaders of all ages.”( 25)
Where do these maniac messiahs
come from? Like Jesus have they come out of
It is believed that the
Messiah will fight against Satan or will wage the wars of the lord. Nevertheless, the maniac messiahs fight a
battle that is altogether different from the battle of the Christian and the
Judaic messiahs. They battle directly with law abiding citizens, the civilians.
Thereby, they pressurise their “government to accept
their agenda” (21), an indirect battle.
Their relentless pursuit
to grab the crown of chaos
swim political pendulums …. (103)
The terrorists wage this war
with the lethal weapons of violence and the threat of violence.
… their deal
with the devil
the sightless assassins of the innocents … (90)
Wanton violence
startled signals to stamp out
the plague
that scourges the defenseless lives. (100)
The deal of the maniac
messiahs with the devil is divergent to the belief of the Christians and the Jews
in the messiah battling with the Satan. The deal with the devil also has
allusions to Faustus’ deal with Mephistopheles.
The Christian prophesies
foretell of the messiah having to perform both priestly ad kingly roles. What
roles do the maniac messiahs in The Flame
have to play? According to Gill the maniac messiahs have variegated roles to
perform. Firstly, they play the role of destroyers. They actively engage
themselves in destroying many. Accordingly they are the bringer of deaths and
casualties to the innocent civilians.
… the avatars of savagery
mow down defenseless innocents (48)
Time stopped when an explosion
blew up… (51)
Many lost their eyes,
ears and fingers
bones broken and twisted
rambled in shock
among the debris and dead bodies. (52)
After engaging themselves in destruction they hardly realise the ineffaceable physical and psychological impacts
it can cause.
several families did not speak
and several more
confused, outraged or shocked
sat frozen (84)
Shocked volunteers
witnessed a pyramid of ashes
over the cradles--–
a bone–chilling calculation (78)
Secondly, the maniac messiahs
play the role of a trainer or a brainwasher with the responsibility of
conducting “secret training camps, where they exercise for physical fitness,
learn to use firearms, explosives and receive constant doses for their
brainwash.
For which evidence
of what study
they rambled through the last hours … (94)
in the windowless cells
of anarchistic gospel
they prepare terror
with the weeds of ignorance
on the fire of savagery…(104)
The above lines reveal
conspicuously the scheming that has preceded the noxious act. It is apparent
that the plotting takes place “in the windowless cells”.
Thirdly they are the
industrialists running the industry of terrorism (21). The monthly or the
annual mammoth turnover of the industry is the fund utilized for all their
activities. They generate a treasure trove from the “sale of drugs, and the
misuse of the funds of some charitable organizations formed to deceive people
and governments” (21). Gill underscores it in his poem The Flame through the following lines:
In the plutonium trade
smuggles are more likely
by these dukes of fruitless longing. (104)
With knowledge,
easy money and weight
they become maniac messiahs
to snuff out the inner blaze. (102)
Lastly and most significantly
they are diabolic warriors who fight with innocent civilians using the
poisonous weapons of violence and the threat of it.
… to widen the ditches of agonies
and spread a carpet of paralyzing fear
to mangle mothers
and wives. (102)
The phrase “Spread a carpet of
paralyzing fear” underlines Gill’s views of the terrorists’ attempts in spreading
the threat of violence. Is this threat by the maniac messiahs a forewarning of
the forthcoming peril? It is indeed worth pondering. However, the rigorous
training that these terrorists receive to indulge in violence and to be in the
vanguard of the battle turns them into heartless souls. Nothing can make them
little warm:
I ask blood spillers
from the cabaret of appalling barbarity
if they hear
the silence of infants
in the cradles of terror;
share
the woes of mothers (89)
The maniac messiahs play with
perfection different roles. What is their driving force? Why do they aim at
“soft targets”, the civilians? “They do
this work for a greater good or for themselves to enter the kingdom of their
land of peace easily.” (25) It is undoubtedly outrageous that they too talk of
peace. Gill’s deliberations on the different theories of peace expose the
readers to an unashamed truth that “Terrorists also talk of peace. They believe
that they achieve or will achieve peace by terrorizing citizens.” (20) But, ironical
enough, they do not bring the assured peace to anyone. “Those who believe in
preparation for war for peace have invented the deadliest weapons such as
nuclear bombs. Instead of peace, the world is coming closer to the threshold of
complete annihilation.” (20) They usher in only chaos and commotion. They fail
to be redeemers:
… and in the lonely corridor of the evening
discomforting silence wander
wearing
a despairing mantle of confusion. (79)
Unlike the religious messiahs,
the manic messiahs lack priestly authority. They are mostly prodded by
religious fanaticism and they are neither truly religious nor spiritual.
Obviously they are hardly humane in their attempts to reach their goals. They
are solely guided by their limitless craze for power that they would wield in
making others subservient to them.
It is alleged that the messiah
is divine and is God’s son. But, maniac messiahs cannot be imagined to be God’s
son nor can divinity be ever associated with these earthly maniac messiahs of
Gill in The Flame. A divine spirit
can hardly imagine of such destruction.
Car bombs, mobility and might
Have become the toys of the robots
Who know how and when
To free their unfed tigers
From the cages of depravity. (102)
Only an uncivilized and a cold-blooded
human being can be the cause of such an explosion mentioned in The Flame.
When they are the cause of
many sufferings, how then can they be suffering messiahs? One of the messianic
expectations is that the messiah will be a sufferer at the hands of his
detractors. Here, in The Flame, the
maniac messiahs are not the sufferers instead they are the source of
meaningless sufferings and unbearable pain:
… babies
shrouded in blood
and plastered with insulation
or faces half covered with glass
calling brokenly
for their dads and moms (72)
What harm did the innocent
babies cause the maniac messiahs? Why is it that they are targeted? Are they
not affected in any way? All these inexplicable questions arise when one mulls
over the inexcusable disaster.
The place
where the dismembered limbs lie
mocks the blindness of the brutes (97)
The line “mocks the blindness
of the brutes” is self explanatory. It reveals about the self – centered and
barbaric temperament of the terrorists.
Another vital characteristic
of a Messiah is that he will be rejected by some of his own people. With this
parameter the maniac messiahs are gauged. Who are close to the maniac messiahs?
Only their followers are. The rest of the people dread them because of the
threat of violence and the violence caused by them. They detest them for their
mean nature of disregarding human life. In The
Flame the pains undergone by people of different age groups have been well
documented.
Indignant waves
of sadness and fury
of every group and race….. (96)
…children
… suffer from the painful longing
… parents have gone
to soothe their sagging spirit
The morning
… that buried your elders
in a massive grave of frozen mind… (97)
Will anyone be closer to
the maniac messiahs after such a catastrophe? Certainly they will like to be
far from them by rejecting them. It is to be observed that the maniac messiahs
are not rejected by some people only but all other than their cohorts.
A Christian Messiah is
expected to perform miracles. According to Oxford Dictionary, a miracle is an
“act or event (some thing good or welcome) which does not follow the known laws
of nature; remarkable and surprising event”. Instead in Gill’s The Flame the maniac messiahs blow away
the Day Care Centre. It is not a good or a welcome act. It is an act against
the laws of the society. The devastation catches people unaware.
Contrasting the maniac
messiahs with the religious messiahs it is understood that they are hate
incarnate. The guiding star of all their activities is hate and only hate. Their disgusting behavior exhibits their
anger towards and odium for their government and the civilians.
The
heavenly bodies
must have wept in disgrace
for their impotent rage to burst
the blisters of shocking atrocities
wrapped in a shroud of secrecy.(90)
…
to appease Beelzebub
with their offerings
at the altar of a seething cauldron
of wrath (91)
… who had tried to frame a coffin
for liberty
under the shades of their vilest
impulses. (97)
The phrases “seething cauldron of wrath”
and “vilest impulses” talks of the abominable nature of the terrorists. Their
hatred and anger is manifested in the explosion, “the blisters of shocking
atrocities” that was planned in “secrecy”.
A Messiah is said to bear the
sins of many. Ludicrously, there needs to be someone who will bear the sins of
the maniac messiahs. Who is it going to be? The countless number of crimes that
they commit saddles them with their own grave sins. In such a condition how
will they bear others’ sins? In an
attempt to bear the sins of many a Messiah will be persecuted. However, preposterously the maniac messiahs
persecute others.
… hands, legs
and blood all around. …
they collected them
in separate bags. …
An attendant tagged
the feet of twenty infants
on the first day. (76)
The “… hands, legs and blood” and “the feet of twenty infants”
vouch for the mayhem caused by the maniac messiahs. It is for sure that such
maniac messiahs will not bring salvation to any. Nor will they ever usher in a
new era of peace and tranquility.
Yet another distinguishing
trait of a Messiah is that he will be the final judge. The maniac messiahs in The Flame are to some extent judges.
They seem to judge the fate of others by taking away the God given life from
them. They decide on the end of others. Is it because of this that Stephen Gill
labels them maniac messiahs? Is it because of the only rationale that they
foresee the death of others that they are called so? Does the word “maniac” in the phrase “maniac
messiahs” have any underlying current?
A quick look
at the word the “maniac” will facilitate a better understanding of the phrase
and the character of the terrorists. The Oxford Dictionary explains it as an
“extreme enthusiast”. Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
identifies him to be “A person who exhibits the behaviour
known as mania”
and also says that he can be classified as a serial killer. Mania is a type of ruthless medical condition that is
characterized by exceptionally elevated mood, energy, unusual
thought patterns. The dictionary meaning can better be taken up for studying the
phrase “maniac messiahs” instead of the medical explanation as such a patient
will certainly need a clinical treatment.
The
“maniac messiahs” in Stephen Gill’s The
Flame are “extreme enthusiasts”. They are nothing more than a sort of
serial killers. They indulge in mass killing.
…
before unchaining the bulldozers
of their delusional disorder
to create a tormenting lake… (90)
…
preparing a lurid feast
to feed their famished fascination….
They
tied the knots of reason
before plunging bayonets
into the raw flesh… (91)
The phrases “famished fascination” and “delusional
disorder” showcase the maniac messiahs as “extreme
enthusiasts” and throw light on their insanity.
… soft opiates to their mind
they grabbed and gazed
baffling over the potentials
of savagery it wombed
(92)
A reading of the above
lines explains why Stephen Gill has used the word maniac. For these maniacs,
“extreme enthusiasts” destruction is the only motto. Logic is a rare tool that
they make use of. From the line “… soft opiates to their mind” the readers
understand how blind they are to reasoning.
Why did Gill ever use
the word messiah? Is it because the terrorists feel that they are working for a
mission with a vision? Is it because they too talk of peace and a promised land
of peace? Is it because they decide the fate of many innocent victims? Whatever
be the reason they can in no way be compared with any religious messiahs and
Gill is also very clear about it.
Gill seems to be
comforting himself by addressing them with the sugar –
coated phrase the “maniac messiah”. He has wisely used the adjective “maniac”
with the noun “messiah”. Gill an advocate of peace, deals with the terrorists
too in a mild fashion. Instead of going in for tooth for tooth and an eye for
eye he showcases his true Christian spirit in addressing the dealers of vice as
“maniac messiahs”.
Had Gill been very
unsympathetic in his dealing, he would have ceased to be a Christian. Even the
terrorists themselves will be moved for a while and may have second thought about
their evil doings when they come to know that they are addressed as “maniac
messiahs”. If this phrase can create such a wonder then Gill’s dreams of
promoting peace through literature and building a universe of peace cannot be
far away?.
Works
Cited
Gill, Stephen. The Flame. Canada: Vesta Publications,
2008.
“Messiah (Handel)” WikipediaThe Free Encyclopedia.