Animal, Poet, Monster, God: The Bestiary and Biblical Sources in the Poetry of Nick Cave Cover Image

Životinja, pjesnik, Čudovište, Bog: Bestijarij i biblijski izvori poezije Nicka Cavea
Animal, Poet, Monster, God: The Bestiary and Biblical Sources in the Poetry of Nick Cave

Author(s): Boris Beck
Subject(s): Anthropology
Published by: Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku
Keywords: Nick Cave; the Bible; God; poetry; imagination; bestial; monstrous

Summary/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 doesnot 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.

  • Issue Year: 48/2011
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 9-29
  • Page Count: 21
  • Language: Croatian