Informing Them by Types and Shadows

Book XII is always a bit of a disappointment to read. Perhaps my inclinations to cynicism and delight in literary trauma are showing through this reading, but it seems that Milton’s ending is too clean, too anticlimactic, too … disappointing. I write this while recognizing that, conceptually, being shown the entirety of the world’s future and then being kicked out of paradise to fend for oneself is almost inherently exciting, but the way it plays out makes me want to speedily return to Book I, and live it all over again.

Despite this, there are some interesting things occurring in Book XII, particularly near its end. As noted many times in class, Paradise Lost is an immensely integrated text—in other words, themes not only develop throughout Milton’s epic, but they interlock and continuously echo one another. I was pleasantly surprised, and a bit baffled, to find just such an echo of Satan’s characteristic trait in Michael’s speech to Adam. Telling Adam of his life after Eden, Michael comforts our fallen parent by advising him to add charity and patience, as well as other virtues, to the knowledge he has obtained. If Adam does so, he will then “not be loath / To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess / A Paradise within thee, happier farr" (XII. 585-587). The most provocative and curious thing about the archangel’s statement is, of course, its memory of Satan’s internal hell, that sense of space which transcends boundaries to be carried around inside of the character, rather than externally containing him.

This echo transforms the infernal memory of Satan’s condition, however, as Adam will internalize a very different space than Satan’s hell. Despite this, what does it mean that Satan first experiences such a relation to space? What does it mean that we as readers come to know and understanding internalized space through Satan?

The other strange aspect of Michael’s statement is the notion that Adam’s internalized Eden could be “happier farr” than its physical counterpart. How is it possible that the internalized experiences, the inside realities of a corrupted creature could be happier, could be more perfect, than the perfect garden from which the first pair was cast? This sounds a bit too much like Adam making a heaven of hell—yet another echo of Satan—for my comfort.

This concept of internalized space becomes prominent in Eve’s character, as well. Before I touch on this, however, I wish to highlight what is probably (or should be) an obvious fact to all readers of Paradise Lost—Eve is never present to discourse with messengers of God. Indeed, her communication with heaven is either mediated by Adam or her dreams. To be fair, Satan also conversed with her through the rather indirect medium of dream, but that’s Satan—he is supposed to be crafty and enigmatic. Though Eve says, and correctly, that “God is also in sleep” (611), it would appear that he is only in sleep with her. This is not to accuse Milton of even implicit misogyny, but to engage and probe an interesting difference of relation consistent throughout the poem.

But back to space: upon his return to wake Eve, she tells him to lead on away from Eden, for “with thee to go / Is to stay here; without thee here to stay, / Is to go hence unwilling; thou to mee / Art all things under Heav'n, all places thou, / Who for my wilful crime art banisht hence. (615-619). Adam has become all places to her, a sentiment I find teetering on the edge of idolatry. This is not the only troubling part of this proclamation, however, for as Adam has internalized Eden, Eve has externalized and concentrated perfect paradise in Adam. Though she has internalized space, she has not done so within herself, in some senses returning Adam to the sole inhabitant of the garden.