How Without Remorse the Ruin of so many Glorious Ones

Ack! The GRE Subject Test in Literature is this Saturday--as a result, poor blog, you are being just a little neglected. I promise I will make it up to you after the weekend (and hey, the upside to this test? ETS adores Paradise Lost, as well as critical engagements with Milton, such as Johnson's work).

For now, however, I will placate my sad and lonely blog with a few words on Book V. Though I was entranced by the entirety of Eve's description of her dream, I was particularly intrigued by Adam's declaration that thoughts are separate from actions, and that a corrupt thought in no way stains either the soul or the body. "Evil," he tells Eve, "into the mind of god or man / May come and go, so unapproved, and leave /No spot or blame behind" (X. 117-119). A lovely sentiment on the surface becomes somewhat specious, however, when we juxtapose the birth of Sin from Satan's head. A contradiction becomes immediately apparent, for Satan's thoughts, not yet realized in the physical or external capacities, not only quite literally generate evil, but his thoughts fully formed, one could argue, seal his fate and testify to his already fallen nature. Evil thoughts mark his "body"--a complicated term here, I know--and make a new one, a female form translated from ethereal thought to firm, corporeal reality.

An instance of intrigue requiring the potential danger of evil contemplation.

And Betrayed Him Counterfeit

Since my first reading of Paradise Lost, I've wondered about the strangeness of Satan's momentarily ineffable soliloquy in Book IV. Upon seeing the first couple surrounded by frisking beasts and the heavy scents of perfect fruit, Satan is riveted and rendered speechless--this latter result is, as we've remarked upon in class, an unusual state of being for the fiendish superstar. Finally recollecting himself he proclaims the new beings "[l]ittle inferior; whom my thoughts pursue / With wonder, and could love, so lively shines / In them divine resemblance" (IV.362-63). It was over Satan's meditation on his ability to love that I initially stumbled, not expecting such an oddly shaped pebble to dwell on the road through Paradise Lost.

Now, it is in fact possible--indeed, quite probable--that Satan's love for the first pair is only another incarnation of his own narcissism, another manifestation of his lust for the holy glowy fairy dust once present in/on himself, but is now, as the heavenly host repeatedly remarks, sadly and hideously faded. Such a love, such a wonder, appears to be yet another perversion of God's authentic version, though Satan's experience of love does indeed seem to have its own generative properties, as we have seen in the birth of Sin. It is of note that we also see this satanic narcissism in Eve's estimation of Adam's appearance as "less fair, / Less winning soft, / less amiably mild, / That that smooth wat'ry image" (477-80) of her own face. This narcissism does not produce anything, however, for Eve is a derived creature--a character rather than an author--called into being by the flesh and bone of another, "lent," possessed, and recalled by Adam (482-483).

Returning to Satan, one could therefore argue that there is nothing strange here, nothing out of character in Satan's adoration not of Adam and Eve but of the "divine resemblance" permeating their being. I find this a bit too clean for the complexities I see occurring, however, for if we were to consider that Satan's treachery was in fact the result of love and, as we hear a bit later in Paradise Lost, the desire to liberate from tyranny, I think it would trouble not only our reception of the entirety of Paradise Lost, but of the Judeo-Christian master narrative.

The Fall would then be conceived of as Satan's intent not to destroy humanity but, as he states, to seek league and "mutual amity so strait, so close, / That I with you must dwell, or you with me" (376-377). As he cannot stay in Eden, he must bring humanity to hell "[w]hich I as freely give; hell shall unfold, / To entertain you two" (380-382). (Of course, it's another Satanic delusion, his belief that he owns hell, that somehow God bequeathed it to his rebels. But let's suspend disbelief for just a moment.) When the class of ENGL 195 read Milton's text, the great majority of us took no account of this troubling and troubled kidnapping/love of Satan, preferring to stick to the expected storyline: hatred and jealousy motivate the Fiend, not love or caring of any kind. I would, for the most part, agree, while adding that Satan is depicted as the father of lies, and so we as wise readers should distrust everything that he says, thinks, and does.

However, I would also note that in the retelling of his triumphant temptation, Satan "edits" out this aspect of his story, suggesting that he experienced something troubling to himself as well as to us, something strange and paralysing and potentially transformative. It's hard to tell, however, and this is the risk one takes in being a devil's advocate.

Fluttered Into Rags

It strikes me as strange, the unappealing nature of God as presented in Book III. I found myself skimming the heavenly dialogue, scraps of Milton's text mingling with half-remembered scriptures to form a dull, moth-eaten script of boring. In these moments I recall Blake's assertion that Milton must have been a Satanist at heart, a fiendish sympathizer on the page if not in his conscious life. Though I ultimately must disagree, I appreciate the sentiment, for I also find Satan & co. much more engaging characters than any of the heavenly host.

Perhaps, I wonder, if this is due to the seeming lack of action in heaven. While hell is filled with constant movement, and Satan is journeying through the depths of Night over the continuously transforming and warring elements, God sees. He is an eye, a spectator seemingly removed from the pulse of life. Perhaps instead of reifying the opposition constructed between sight/action, mind/body, however, this opens up a space for us consider that sight is itself an exercise of power--the all-piercing gaze of the Almighty is, in fact, one of his primary characteristics, and it also appears the most frightening. For his thunderbolts can harm and his arms can throw down into oblivion, but his eyes can know. (As this is not a very developed thought, I shall end it here and return to it throughout the course of the semester.)

I am also curious about the role of the narrator in Book III. I read with great pity his description of being surrounded by "cloud instead, and ever-during dark" (III.45) even in the presence of brilliant light. However, we remember that God is also perpetually surrounded by darkening cloud in Book II, and though "the book of knowledge fair / Presented with a universal blank / Of nature's works to me expunged and razed, / And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out (III.47-50), we read his call for inward eyes to be "plant[ed]" (53), God-like eyes that can see things "invisible to mortal sight" (55). The boundaries separating narrator from the divine influence have become, for me, extremely blurry.

However, we also read in the opening of Book III that the narrator considers himself as having "[e]scaped the Stygian pool, though long detained / In that obscure sojourn" (14-15). Here, we can make a connection between the state/fate of the fallen angels and that of the narrator. The demons were chained to the burning pool, though they were eventually able to escape through Satan's animating voice--the narrator seems to claim a similar experience, as if he took part in their punishment and liberation (as well as Satan's long journey from hell to earth) in the process of merely documenting it or guiding readers through these occurrences. Does the narrator resemble both God and Satan, then? Or one more so than the other, and if that one is Satan (having seemingly experienced his punishment and acted as his travel companion), how should we approach his recitation/reliving of the events? What are the differences between God's sight and the narrator's?

Ah, more questions than answers. Perhaps Blake was right--it would certainly make things less complex (but then, not nearly as fun).

With a Thousand Various Mouths

If forced to choose the most interesting "theme" in Book II, I would have to say the concern with locating, mapping, regaining, and mixing boundaries. This concern is witnessed both in relation to physical boundaries (seeking that which "border[s] on light" (II.959) as well as in "spiritual" or elemental boundaries: when we learn that the demons wish "earth with hell / To mingle and involve" (383-384), there is, I think, a wonderful ambiguity as to what is being mingled here, physical limits or characteristics. Or, of course, both.

I have mentioned my interest in how space and land are sometimes written of as influencing bodily structure, physiognomy, and character makeup, and we see a great deal of this in Book II. Belial's speech mentions the hope of adaptation to hell's elements, a mingling of heavenly and hellish influence in the transformation--Belial would, I think, call this process a refinement--from angel of heaven to citizen of hell. Form would reflect belonging, would advertise identity and confine one to "home." This transformation not only involves the adaptation to new boundaries, but the inscription of them onto the "flesh" and "bones" of these ethereal beings. Though the spirits can manipulate their shapes, there is a definite sense of falsity, of "[i]mitat[ion" (270) in their attempting to retain certain elements of their former selves.

When Satan is poised on what I imagine to be the edge of Chaos he sees the "dark materials" in their "pregnant causes mixed / Confus'dly, and which thus must ever fight" (II.913.914). But though there is mixing, there is never a true coming together, never an unholy mixing resulting in hybridity. Indeed, this mixing seems only to strength boundaries that separate the elements, and "they around the flag / Of each his faction" (900-901) rally. What does this say about the essentials of nature in Book II, I wonder, about the mingling that really is no mingling? Also, is the mixing of elements, the transformation from one into another itself a torture? We learn that one of the divine punishments involves the feeling "by turns the bitter change / Of fierce extremes" (598-599). Of course the going from immense hot to immense cold would be hideous and the change would serve only to emphasize the pains inherent in these extremes. But is there also a disorienting sense to this feeling of transformation, a horrible and painful confusion produced by the simultaneous blending and strengthed separation of extreme elements?

More to come.

Brushed with the Hiss of Rustling Wings

First, I would like to pause for a moment to fully appreciate our reading Paradise Lost...yay!

That said, I confess it was a bit difficult for me to craft a coherent entry concerning just one or two aspects of Book I--so I decided that coherency is overrated. This entry hopes to put forth a few ideas concerning select passages, forming, I hope, a kind of outline for larger thought. This is the second time I have read Book I, and I must confess, I missed so much the first time (a statement that will be repeated, no doubt, each time I return to the text). The first and most striking "theme" (for lack of a better term) that I encountered in this reading was the character of sound in Book I, a theme that remains throughout the entirety of the work. I realized that in my first reading, I painted hell with sound, with clashing and bestial growling and the shaking of chains, imagining the screams and cackles inhabiting many contemporary conceptualizations of the place of suffering.

Milton's hell provides a shocking and somewhat more terrifying vision: a noiseless hell, where speech is courageous because it dares to "[b]reak[ ] the horrid silence" (11). When the demons are eventually roused (by the power of Satan's voice, a different and more fascinating thread of this concern with sound), their hateful and martial sounds assault me not so much because they originate in barbarous and evil beings, but because they are so very loud. There is much to be thought and said about the aural quality of Paradise Lost, and I hope to explore it more in our class discussions.

A second point I wish to address is the conceptualization of the nature of evil. Satan tells us that
"To do aught good never will be our task, / But ever to do ill our sole delight, / As being the contrary to his high will / Whom we resist" (13). Are we to believe that evil is only that which "contrary" to the will of God? In some ways, this proclamation seems to make evil simultaneously more benign and malignant.

Satan's role as historian, as (auto/)biographer of the Fall is especially intriguing. When he recounts the swarm of angels that "Shot after us in storm, o'erblown hath laid/ The fiery surge, that from the precipice / Of heav'n received us falling, and the thunder / Winged red with lightening and impetuous rage" (13), I wonder at his interjection of the thunder's aesthetic beauty in his tale. Though it can be argued that all of Paradise Lost is comprised of beautiful, bordering on sublime (it is, after all, a epic about unimaginable things) imagery that invests even hell and Satan with immense beauty, I am made curious by Satan's relationship to sublimity and to his role(s) of author and documentor.

To All Extreme Parts which now lie Numb and Neglected

Though Milton's The Ready and Easy Way contains many fascinating threads, there were a few moments that made me pause and entertain the notion of Milton's possible influence on contemporary American conceptualizations of liberty, industry, self-reliance, education, and biblical exegesis and application. Now, I wish to note here that I am in no way seeking to find a kind of origin story, a place and time solely responsible for birthing, say, the notion of pulling one up by one's own bootstraps or some such thing. I find it erroneous and just plain tacky to use historical texts as means only to help understand or provide "background" for contemporary thought, as historical boundaries, though indeed somewhat arbitrary in their construction, are tools employed in the engagement of difference; they are valuable ways to approach change over time.

"Relevancy" is a term I've often heard used to justify this type of shallow and irresponsible relationship to history. As I hate the word (as well as the concept, of course), I must say that I do not offer this reflection as an attempt to make Milton's Way relevant (unfortunately, read "important"); rather, I wish to highlight some similarities and potential sites of influence while avoiding a causal narrative. As influence occurs both overtly and covertly, consciously and not, and is not restricted to chronology (for example, reading Milton could have influenced American revolutionaries while reading American revolutionaries influences how we read Milton), it is, I think, valuable to consider this relationship between American nationalism and British/Milton's nationalism.

The passage that springs immediately to mind concerns Milton's call for self-fashioning and independence, two concepts for me so intimately linked with American identity and rhetoric that it was a bit difficult to separate the different historical moments: "[I]f we were ought else but sluggards or babies," Milton writes, "we need depend on none but God and our own counsels, our own active virtue and industry!" (886). Activity, independence, manliness and masculinity (886), and of course, industry seem keywords in the ideals of American democracy, indeed, key aspects of American conceptualizations of the self as the "rugged individual". They are also, clearly, central to Milton's human, British ideal.

Another slightly divergent yet related train of thought I want to briefly pursue is that of the "watery situation" (890). As the footnote elucidates, Milton is responding to the idea that climate breeds character: that where one lives is, in fact, who one is. It's a fascinating concept that brought to mind J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur's 18th century work, Letters from an American Farmer. In the text, de Crevecoeur devotes much of his time to describing the different kinds of people/climates he encounters in America. The hyphen placed between "people" and "climates" is meant to convey a mingling of the concepts, for de Crevecoeur proclaims that land determines identity. Americans, he argues, are from all around the globe, called forth to their true home; climate then creates and distributes these various temperaments over the nation.

Milton, however, proposes an interesting solution to what I am calling geographical determinism. Though acknowledging the presence of his and the nation's watery situation, he claims that "good education and acquisite wisdom ought to correct the fluxible fault" of "fickleness" (890). The accumulation of knowledge, the gaining of education, can change a kind of destiny decreed by location. Rather than being subject to nature's molding of the self in a strange reversal of the pathetic fallacy---the self, both body and mind, sympathize with and reflect nature rather than nature sympathizing with and reflecting human emotion---Milton offers education as a tool in attaining autonomous authorship, the freedom to craft oneself apart from the tyrannies of king and demarcated space.

A quick note before ending: I am really interested in the ways in which Milton melds biblical history/text with his present political conditions (and, in the Way, his own text). This, I think, is a bold and amazing occurrence, something that opens up a space for us to think about the complex identities of texts as both constantly fluid and fixed historical products.