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?
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?
posted by alh at 7:41 AM
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