Trapped in a Vicious Circle of the Tragic Triad…Miltonian Satan and Conradian Kurtz’s Process of Unearthing Authentic Identity

Abstract

There are spheres of human culture that are capable of appealing with a powerful force to a person’s heart at times allaying – like catharsis – surrounding anxieties and at times bringing excitement of unexpectedness to the existence brimful with the quotidian.1 One of these spheres is indubitably literature, the ever-growing circle of intertextuality and social communication that, as it is held by Stephen Greenblatt, is an inconceivable “circulation of social energy.”2 What is of significance, however, is the fact that literature is not only marked with its openness to intertextuality within strict literary borders, it is likewise characterised by its readiness to mingle with other spheres of human thought. One of the most noticeable co- partners in such a symbiosis seems to be psychology with its various derivatives. That psychology discloses a lot in common with literature on the ground of the same origin – the human psyche – is indisputable. According to Markowski, “psychoanalysis applicable to literary theory [...] focuses mainly on a neurotic subject expressing one’s subjectivity through the text. Literary text, then, is treated as a symbolic representation of neurosis.”3 In truth, the literary figures that the author of the article attempts to analyse disclose, despite their powerfulness revealed in a variety of shapes, one serious weakness.