Against Temptation

As we are still making our way as a class through Book IX, I wish to highlight here something that I found profoundly interesting in Adam’s articulation of reasons why Eve should refrain from separating from his side. While reading for a presentation concerned with understanding virtue in Paradise Lost through and alongside of Areopagitica, I became aware of virtue’s problematic status in the epic poem. In other words, virtue has a complicated definition involving bits of seemingly incongruous elements as absolute freedom and rational restraint.

Virtue, for Milton, is produced by trial, but more intriguingly, it is something which can arise from consuming “evil” things. The notion of evil objects or knowledge is severely problematized however, for Milton ultimately conveys that the consumer, rather than the consumed, is responsible for the effects of exposure and ingestion. As such, whether something is good or evil, whether something is with or without virtue, can be known only after it has been “tasted.” It is only through trial, through confronting and consuming potentially corrupt material that the rational will is exercised and the taste refined. The process of virtue, of discerning and pursuing its flavors, is simply that: a process, made up of repeated falls.

As such, can one ever taint or lose their virtue? It’s unclear, particularly in a postlapsarian world. Before the fall in Paradise Lost, however, this question of corrupted virtue was apparently just as complicated. In defending his desire to keep her within sight, Adam proclaims that it is not Eve’s weakness that he mistrusts, but their foe and the process of being tried: “Not diffident of thee do I dissuade / They absence from my sight, but to avoid / Th’ attempt itself, intended by our foe” (293-295). I found this statement utterly reasonable up to its conclusion, wherein Adam tells us that trial should be avoided not because it leads to corruption, but because it is itself corrupt: “For he who tempts, though in vain, at least asperses / The tempted with dishonor foul, supposed / Not incorruptible of faith, not proof / Against temptation” (296-299). In other words, it appears that, for Adam, if one is tried, one’s virtue is already tarnished, and it is this corruption that attracts tempters.

More later today (I know, you can barely contain yourselves).

Active within Beyond the Sense of Brute

As our class discussion will include the latter part of Book VIII, I thought I would return to the Book in this entry. For at its end, Book VIII explores some interesting and rather confusing--at least, for me--scenes concerning the relationship between Adam and Eve. As touched on in Tuesday's meeting, Adam proclaims to Raphael that Eve, despite being his known inferior, appears to him as the wisest, more fairest creature on earth: "For well I understand," Adam proclaims,"in the prime end / Of Nature her th' inferior, in the mind / And inward faculties, which most excel, / In outward also her resembling less / His image who made both, and less expressing / The character of that dominion giv'n / O'er other creatures" (540-546), he thinks she is pretty great. What I find most intriguing about his estimation of his partner is that he not only deems her less like the image of God than himself, but he also connects this outward appearance with lordly dominion. As God, we are repeatedly told throughout the poem, has no physical frame--he is not restricted within fleshly boundaries or shapes--how, I wonder, does Adam so authoritatively speak of the unknown image of God?

It is a question that seems to beget yet more questions. For if Adam is God's image (which is, I think, impossible), why isn't Eve, as well? If one chooses to argue that Eve is the image of Adam, and we are defining image as something akin to replica or fairly accurate reflection, why is she so apparently different in frame and character than her believed source, Adam, when Adam is cast in the same mold as his creator? Another justification for this specious hierarchy is that, while created superior and inferior in shape, their spirits are both God-like. This, however, is also disputed within Milton's text, as Adam tells us that Eve is also internally inferior. But again, how is this possible, as she is either the image of God or of Adam, who is also the image of God? And why, I continue wonder, is quasi-divine power, that of dominion and rule, located within corporeality?

Though the logic of their relationship is severely problematic, Raphael guards against its examination by advising Adam to give his love, though "[n]ot thy subjection" (570), to Eve. It is here that we can see, even in seventeenth-century work, the constructed nature of gender--a means of control through the rather arbitrary creation and maintenance of ridiculous binaries. For when Raphael tells Adam that his superiority is clearly evident, and that all he need do in order to see it is to "weigh with her thyself; / Then value: ofttimes nothing profits more / Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right /Well managed" (570-573), readers are made aware of how gender and power are taught by outside influences rather than springing naturally from within. For what is the standard by which Adam will weigh Eve against himself? If it is God, he has no physical body, and there is no one else. Moreover, the self-esteem Raphael encourages by this weighing is not only preposterous (as it is impossible for the aforementioned reason), but also rather disturbing in its malicious competitiveness. So what Raphael has taught Adam is that masculinity is more valued because, well, Raphael says so, and that love is founded on and tempered by competitive division.

And this is Paradise.

Bound on a Voyage Uncouth and Obscure

Beginning Book VIII is an echo of Eve's satanic dream, although this experience features Adam, Raphael, and daylight. Given our knowledge of Milton's propensity for opposites, I wasn't at all surprised to see this echo, though I was enthralled by the intricacies of its potential meanings. (I am not at all sure what these meanings are as of yet, but these amorphous thoughts will no doubt be teased out in subsequent entries.) I was particularly intrigued by Adam's declaration that, through Raphael's speech, he was able to explore and, perhaps, even experience things "else by me unsearchable" (10). Through narrative, the gap between personal experience and witnessing of event and the hearing of it seems somehow narrowed, and the discovery of God's greatness and wonder, Adam suggests, can indeed be conducted through listening to stories told of them. This statement directly--and intriguingly--contradicts Uriel's praise of Satan's quest for experiential, scientific encounters rather than being content with mere report, in Book III.

Continuing through Book VIII, the occurrences in Eve's dream are simultaneously reproduced and reimagined as Adam, his face declaring the "[e]nt'ring on studious thoughts abstruse" (39), mentally and spiritually journeys with Raphael up and through celestial boundaries into the high thoughts of God. He wishes to know of the governing order and shape of the universe, while Eve, her heart and body linked always with the earth (even--or especially--in her satanic dream of forbidden fruit), "went forth among her fruits and flow'rs" (44). The narrator tells us that, though she is perfectly capable of understanding, and perfectly able to hear, she waits for Adam to relate the story to her, and to "intermix / Grateful digressions, and solve high dispute / With conjugal caressess" (54-56). Are we to deduce, from placing this passage in conversation with others throughout Paradise Lost, that knowledge must always be sensual and patriarchical for Eve, inextricably linked with sexuality, masculine mediation, and the body?

As mentioned in a previous entry, however, the desire (clearly, another sensual word) for and reception of knowledge is also experienced in a very bodily, though somewhat different, way for Adam. Though Raphael tells his audience that "[t]o ask or search I blame thee not, for heav'n / Is as the book of God before thee set, / Wherein to read his wondrous works, and learn / His seasons, hours, or days, or months, or years" (66-69), and reading, many believe, is a purely cranial (in-?)activity, we learn that Adam feels "satisfied" (180) upon receiving answers to his questions. Throughout the poem, terms like satisfaction, hunger, and thirst are invoked repeatedly when referring to knowledge and understanding, giving the impression that the fuzzy mixing of body and mind aches for, consumes, and digests knowledge as one would food. And then, of course, we have the forbidden fruit, as well as its macabre double in Book X. However, the object of Adam's lust seems to be Raphael's stories of past, present, and future creation, designs not solely relegated to the earth but existing far above him, in the mind of God, whereas for Eve, "her fruits and flow'rs" (44) exude a constant appeal.

In another fascinating passage, Raphael, attempting to draw Adam's wandering mind back to his rightfully terrestrial existence, instructs him to"[d]ream not of other worlds, what creatures there / Live, in what state, condition, or degree" (175-176). However, as we have briefly discussed in class, it is, in fact, Raphael under God's direction who exposes Adam things outside of himself, beyond his memory and even his ability to comprehend. It seems that, here, the injunctions against discovery and improper knowledge ring a bit falsely, and perhaps, even create and fuel the desire to disobey, despite Adam's proclamations of being "freed from intricacies, taught to live / The easiest way, nor with perplexing thoughts / To interrupt the sweet of life" (182-84). Though "God hath bid dwell far off all anxious cares, / And not molest us, unless we ourselves / Seek them with wand'ring thoughts, and notions vain" (185-187), Raphael has given Adam a kind of map to wander as he will, pointing in the directions he should not go, though exciting wanderlust in those admonitions. Finally, we must ask, how did Milton feel about his historical and cultural context of travel, exploration, map-making, and colonialism? What does it mean that Satan is deemed an adventurer, a wanderer beyond his assigned boundaries, while Eve's danger lies in her staying, in a sense, too close to home?

Fall'n on Evil Days

Book VII opens with a rather strange invocation to Urania, a call for a return to the speaker's "native element" (15). For after being a guest in heaven, the speaker tells us, and soaring to the immortal heights of sublimity and seeing and telling of things which no mortal should have been able, it is "more safe" to continue his epic song with "mortal voice" (24). The speaker's seemingly humble recognition of himself as mortal and, therefore, limited in his abilities simultaneously contrasts and prefigures Adam's quest for knowledge from Raphael. We must wonder, however, if indeed the speaker's call to Urania can prefigure the actions of Adam, for the story of the fall has already occurred prior to the speaker's telling of it, and so perhaps his decision to be "narrower bound" (21) is an echo of Adam's original act. For I would argue against Paradise Lost that in this exchange with Raphael, both Adam and the angel are certainly tiptoeing on the edge of oblivion, if not overtly committing the first sin, defined here as consuming, of tasting of knowledge unfit for their natures and frames.

Directly after the speech to Urania, the speaker invokes her to tell of the exchange between Adam and Raphael. Here we see a fascinating paradox, one that permeates the entirety of the poem: the speaker, in "giving up" his authoritative, divine voice to Urania, is actually solidifying his limitless and rather god-like position. In other words, it is at the precise moment of humility, of weakness, that the speaker asserts himself as neither weak nor mortal. In restricting himself to temporal boundaries, the speaker highlights his previous abilities,as evidenced throughout the previous books, to transcend both time and space, as well as his greatness of spirit in being both wise enough to place restrictions upon himself and humble enough to seem to accept them. It is a paradox shared by Adam.

The speaker/Urania tells us that Adam, after having his questions answered in Book VI, was "Led on, yet sinless, with desire to know / What nearer might concern him, how this world / Of heav'n and earth conspicuous first began" (61-63). A few lines later, we get a clearer image of knowledge as something one eats or drinks, something one takes into his body and assimilates into his nature: "What within Eden or without was done / Before his memory, as one whose drouth / Yet scarce allayed still eyes the current stream" (65-67). The bit about his memory also harkens back to Book VI, and Satan's declaration that, as he could remember nothing before his own creation, he and the others must be self-generated. Though Adam acknowledges and seeks to understand that which came before him, and Satan denies the importance of pre-memory reality, neither are/were satisfied with their present existences as worshippers of God, content to know what he deems fit for their hearing.

Indeed, Adam admits that Raphael speaks "[g]reat things, and full of wonder in our ears, / Far differing from this world, thou hast revealed / Divine interpreter" (70-72). So wondrous are the angel's words that he is almost like translating another, unlearned language. And it is in this translation of dangerous knowledge, I think, upon Adam's request that he and Raphael fall together. For in language both reminiscent and shadowing of the fall yet to come, Adam requests that Raphael "[d]eign to descend now lower" in his willingness to impart "[t]hings above earthly thought" (80-84). Adam is, in a sense, asking Raphael to fall to Adam's own level.

And the angel, prefacing his revelations with the seeming disclaimer that no "words or tongue of Seraph can suffice, / Or heart of man suffice to comprehend" the recounting of "almighty works" (112-114) proceeds to do that which he has just stated as impossible, as far above his being and therefore unspeakable on his tongue and unhearable to Adam's ear. Humility, the seeming acknowledgement of inability to either tell or hear, actually functions as a means of transcending one's place in the divine hierarchy, and it is exactly this transcendent transgression that chained Satan to the Stygian pool.

Summoned Over Eden to Receive Their Names of Thee

Though I was initially fearful that Book VI would spend an exorbitant amount of time revealing the tedious intricacies of war--whether on earth or in heaven, war is really boring, possibly because people always devote way too much space to "enthralling" audiences with such fascinating bits as battle strategy and images of numberless, characterless grunts rushing into a field to hack eachother apart...and then we oftentimes don't even get good descriptions of wounds as a reward for trudging faithfully through the boring parts--Milton's sixth book both introduces and highlights previously existing tensions and questions of intrigue.

In Book I, we see the building of hell. Its womb is opened--rather, torn through--and from it, the demons produce materials for the construction of Pandaemonium. In Book VI we have a similar scene, as Raphael makes note that Satan's army, after taking counsel, with "innumerable hands / Were ready, in a moment up they turned / Wide the celestial soil, / and saw beneath / Th' originals of nature in their crude / Conception" (508-511). Though I am aware that Heaven also has built structures (one of the fallen angels was an architect) and paved roads, and Eden has the bower--which, one could argue, is also a product of industry--it seems that in both of these pleasant places, "natural" beauty on the surface of the lands is emphasized over the somewhat harsher materials lying below. Industry, connoting both initiative/work and laboring over and with the harsh, raw materials of gold, silver, or iron seem, in some senses, to be connected with evil--indeed, what does it mean that the architect, as the text mentions only one existing, was cast to hell to do his building?

Now, in constantly turning over and burrowing into stages of existence below one's present one, in always casting one's eyes and the labors of one's hands downward, Satan and his followers can be viewed as creating their own falls, as casting themselves down into the belly of worlds by degrees. However, their actions could also be seen as sinful self-reliance, of industrial self-fashioning in defiance of God in the destruction and reshaping of his dark materials. Making the cannon, Raphael tells us, was a concocting, a mingling of substances apparently sinful in their joining--this sense of blasphemous and corrupting construction of materials by evil hands is a theme that runs throughout the text.

The other, rather disturbing point I would like to think about here is Raphael's proclamation that, as punishment for their rebellion, Satan and his crew are "[c]ancelled from heav'n and sacred memory, / Nameless in dark oblivion let them dwell" (VI.379-380). But we see that our narrator, already occupying a dubious position in relation to the fallen (he seems to have been chained with them on the Stygian pool) has recounted them, recalled them for his audience, as has Satan in his epic catalogue. Though God and Raphael invoke "eternal silence" to "be their doom" (385), the narrator, Satan, and even Raphael disobey and remember these names and histories to both Adam and ourselves as distant listeners. In what ways then, I wonder, are narrators, storytellers, and audience members implicated in calling up and calling forth Satan's name, memory, and finally, person, from the deep?