exert: "... A “Manichean divide”, as the novelist Will Self has said, runs like an embattled frontier throughout Cave’s mental universe. In ‘Song of Joy’, he quotes Milton’s Satan, who in Paradise Lost refers to the “red right hand” of a jealous, vengeful God. In Milton’s poem the hand is red because it blazes with fiery potency; in Cave’s song it belongs to a murderer who has scrawled the citation in his victim’s blood..."
Great article on Cave here:
themonthly.com.au/monthly-essays-peter-conrad-good-son-nick-cave-1851
exert: "... A “Manichean divide”, as the novelist Will Self has said, runs like an embattled frontier throughout Cave’s mental universe. In ‘Song of Joy’, he quotes Milton’s Satan, who in Paradise Lost refers to the “red right hand” of a jealous, vengeful God. In Milton’s poem the hand is red because it blazes with fiery potency; in Cave’s song it belongs to a murderer who has scrawled the citation in his victim’s blood..."