The title of Aldous Huxley’s
Eyeless in Gaza(1936) derives from Milton’s
Samson Agonistes(1671), in which the blind Samson is described as: “Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves”. The novel has traditionally been seen as a watershed in Huxley’s career, demarcating the work of the “amused, Pyrrhonic aesthete” (as Huxley would later describe his younger self), who sardonically depicted the moral anomie of the post-war generation in novels such as
Antic Hay(1923) and
Point Counter Point(1928), from the work of the quasi-mystical pacifist, who sacrificed his artistic standards in order to promote what he would subsequently term the Perennial Philosophy (the common mystical core of the chief religions, with the exception of Islam). This distinction, while appealing in its…
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Citation: Poller, Jake. "Eyeless in Gaza". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 October 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5226, accessed 16 April 2024.]
