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?