BYRON & BLAKE — DIVINE TERNARY TRIAD

LORD BYRON — CAIN, A MYSTERY — ÉDITION ARTEMIS — 2004

WILLIAM BLAKE — THE GHOST OF ABEL — BLACKMAST ONLINE — 2001

DIVINE TERNARY TRIAD

Byron’s play is a strange fantasy about, not the ghost of Abel, nor even the Biblical episode about Cain‘s assassination of his younger brother Abel. It is a fantasy rewriting of the dilemma of Cain in front of God’s curse of Eve, Adam, and their descendants forever and eternity, as opposed to Abel’s acceptance of it and the supposed hostility from God to fruits and other vegetal products sacrificed to him as opposed to first-born kids or lambs, conveying the lack of value of agriculture and the extra-value of herding.

Cain‘s main argument is that he is punished because of his mother’s sin with the famous snake when he, Cain, could not even be a possibility since Eve had not yet discovered the pleasure and creativity of sex, not to mention Adam. He is right that punishing the descendants of someone for the crime of that someone is definitely unjust and even dubiously ethical. For God it is unacceptable. That does not bring anything really new to the tale.

Lord Byron adds something essential, during two full acts before getting to the dramatic turn of events between Cain and Abel. Cain is characterized from the very start as refusing the punishment God cast onto the whole human line, the first one, mind you, hence all the possible and future lines descending from Eve and Adam because of the sin of Eve who got seduced by the snake that made her pick the forbidden fruit from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge. He refuses to accept God’s decisions, and the total subservience God imposes onto everyone down the line, “for ever and ever,” till the end of humanity, if it has an end, by making humans mortal, which they were not at first.

His anger and dissatisfaction lead Cain to a spirit that comes from nowhere, or rather from deep in some abyss. This spirit is said to be Lucifer who explains that he is no longer an angel because he disagreed with God on the…