Original scientific paper
ANIMAL, POET, MONSTER, GOD: THE BESTIARY AND BIBLICAL SOURCES IN THE POETRY OF NICK CAVE
Boris Beck
; Zagreb
Abstract
In his poetic texts, Nick Cave widely employs direct, indirect and derisive biblical quotations and saints, since he regards his poetry as a distinctive dialogue between Man and God. He sees God as a flight of poetic imagination, while poetic expression is a reflection of God. God is bodiless and does not meddle in the human world and can be read off as being amoral and bestial. Thanks to those characteristics, Cave introduces animals into the complex mentioned in direct biblical quotations, and also by inserting recognisable biblical motifs as conceptual metaphors. Since God is not a person, the contrast between sin and redemption is replaced by the antithesis of unimaginativeness and the imagination. For its part, imagination is beyond the scope of morals and is manifested as monstrous – while monstrosity is the polar opposite of Cave’s notion of the divine as the invisible to which only the art of words gives form.
Keywords
Nick Cave; the Bible; God; poetry; imagination; bestial; monstrous
Hrčak ID:
75084
URI
Publication date:
20.12.2011.
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