As this Christmas season approaches, there is no fitter time for a literary analysis of two of the greatest Christian epics of all time, John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Milton’s works became the only Protestant attempts to render Biblical history into Classical tragic and heroic structure (arguably the Ten Commandments was the first Biblical film epic). However, far from succumbing to Classical culture, Milton’s poems are actually criticisms of the pagan elements of Classical literature, and a restructuring of Classical dramatic form to match the redemptive themes of Christianity.
Milton’s introductory theme is hierarchy. God’s law reigns omnipotent, and paradise exists within those bounds. In the beginning, liberty, or the ability to realize one’s highest created purpose, only extends as far as obedience. This is what Protestants call the covenant of works, whereby the creation was originally created with free will. After the fall, paradise is lost, the liberty of free will is revoked, and sin and death corrupt the world. However, because God’s providence presides over the creation, God allows the fall to happen so that He might sacrifice Himself on man’s behalf. Hence the first glimpse of love in Paradise Lost is between God the Father and God the Son and eventually extended to man. God the Son willingly takes on the task of enduring the punishment of the law for His elect, those of mankind who will be saved:
Happy for Man, so coming; he her aid
Can never seek, once dead in sins, and lost;
Atonement for himself, or offering meet,
Indebted and undone, hath none to bring;
Behold me then: me for him, life for life
I offer: on me let thine anger fall;
Account me Man; I for his sake will leave
Thy bosom, and this glory next to thee
Freely put off, and for him lastly die
Well pleased; on me let Death wreak all his rage.
Under his gloomy power I shall not long
Lie vanquished. Thou hast given me to possess
Life in myself for ever; by thee I live;
Though now to Death I yield, and am his due,
All that of me can die, yet, that debt paid,
Thou wilt not leave me in the loathsome grave
His prey, nor suffer my unspotted soul
For ever with corruption there to dwell;
But I shall rise victorious, and subdue
My vanquisher, spoiled of his vaunted spoil.
Death his death’s wound shall then receive, and stoop
Inglorious, of his mortal sting disarmed;
I through the ample air in triumph high
Shall lead Hell captive maugre Hell, and show
The powers of darkness bound. Thou, at the sight
Pleased, out of Heaven shalt look down and smile,
While, by thee raised, I ruin all my foes;
Death last, and with his carcase glut the grave;
Then, with the multitude of my redeemed,
Shall enter Heaven, long absent, and return,
Father, to see thy face, wherein no cloud
Of anger shall remain, but peace assured
And reconcilement: wrath shall be no more
Thenceforth, but in thy presence joy entire. 75-76
And so, to the epic theme of tragedy is given a new theme, redemption; but redemption within the context of grace. If in their state of blissful freedom, men and angels transgress, God is not obligated by covenant to save anyone in the story. He does so out of His own infinite free will. This is why the tragedy/comedy divide does not hold the story, and Milton inter-splices the Christian theme of redemption from God’s infinite love. Liberty without grace is transient and ultimately insupportable, leading to the tragic end of those ancient heroes of the old Classical myths, fall and misery. At this point however, some have reinterpreted Milton. Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost has been dolefully misunderstood ever since William Blake.
Satan is portrayed by Milton in all the gaudy pomp of the Classical style. Milton is almost boundless in his flamboyant descriptions. Pandemonium is build in the Doric style, demons assume the names of all the Greek, Roman, and Babylonian gods on earth, and Satan breaks forth from Hell with the fierceness of a Greek hero:
He ceased; and Satan stayed not to reply,
But, glad that now his sea should find a shore,
With fresh alacrity and force renewed
Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire,
Into the wild expanse, and through the shock
Of fighting elements, on all sides round
Environed, wins his way; harder beset
And more endangered than when Argo passed
Through Bosporus betwixt the justling rocks,
Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned
Charybdis, and by th’ other whirlpool steered. 64-65
Here William Blake, ignoring the Protestant context of Milton, says, “The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it.” Nothing could be further from Milton than to side with the Devil! In fact, Milton masterfully chooses his rhetoric to be most appropriate to both good and evil. Instead of deifying Satan, Milton is condemning the Classic gods. Obviously, Blake held a preconceived appreciation for the Classical heroes, just as Milton (and most Protestants during the 17th century) saw the paganism of the Classics as demonic. Milton takes pains to connect every legion in Hell with a supposed deity on earth to emphasize the deception and superstition of such beliefs. Milton spends his first two books in Paradise Lost making this important point. Sin and Death spring from Satan’s head, etc. Doric Pandemonium is far from an ethereal castle; it is the Parthenon positioned exactly where Milton believed it to belong, in Hell. Milton is relentless rather than “at liberty” with the Devil. When speaking of God and Christ, Milton tactfully switches rhetoric to the clarity, simplicity, and beauty of the New Testament:
Now had the Almighty Father from above,
From the pure empyrean where he sits
High thron’d above all highth, bent down his eye
His own works and their works at once to view:
About him all the Sanctities of Heaven
Stood thick as stars, and from his sight receiv’d
Beatitude past utterance; on his right
The radiant image of his glory sat
His only son; on earth he first beheld
Our two first parents, yet the only two
Of mankind in the happy garden plac’d… 69
Compare this with the description of Christ from Hebrews 1:3 as Milton would have known it in the King James English “Who being the brightness of his [God the Father’s] glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” This is certainly not very “fettered” language. God, being higher than any literary style of man, deserves His own rhetoric, the Bible, for description. Milton is humbly acquiescing to the hierarchy of God’s reign even in the manner in which he chooses his language and is pledging allegiance to God alone. There is a clear separation here between God and His creatures.
If the imagery of the ancient myths is a demonic perversion of the language of angels, then how do angels appear in Milton’s poetry? Below are three selections:
So spake the Eternal Father, and fulfilled
All justice: Nor delayed the winged Saint
After his charge received; but from among
Thousand celestial Ardours, where he stood
Veiled with his gorgeous wings, up springing light,
Flew through the midst of Heaven; the angelick quires,
On each hand parting, to his speed gave way
Through all the empyreal road; till, at the gate
Of Heaven arrived, the gate self-opened wide
On golden hinges turning, as by work
Divine the sovran Architect had framed.
From hence no cloud, or, to obstruct his sight,
Star interposed, however small he sees,
Not unconformed to other shining globes,
Earth, and the garden of God, with cedars crowned
Above all hills. As when by night the glass
Of Galileo, less assured, observes
Imagined lands and regions in the moon:
Or pilot, from amidst the Cyclades
Delos or Samos first appearing, kens
A cloudy spot. Down thither prone in flight
He speeds, and through the vast ethereal sky
Sails between worlds and worlds, with steady wing
Now on the polar winds, then with quick fan
Winnows the buxom air; till, within soar
Of towering eagles, to all the fowls he seems
A phoenix, gazed by all as that sole bird… 137-138
Memorial, where the might of Gabriel fought,
And with fierce ensigns pierced the deep array
Of Moloch, furious king; who him defied,
And at his chariot-wheels to drag him bound
Threatened, nor from the Holy One of Heaven
Refrained his tongue blasphemous; but anon
Down cloven to the waist, with shattered arms
And uncouth pain fled bellowing. On each wing
Uriel, and Raphael, his vaunting foe,
Though huge, and in a rock of diamond armed,
Vanquished Adramelech, and Asmadai,
Two potent Thrones, that to be less than Gods
Disdained, but meaner thoughts learned in their flight,
Mangled with ghastly wounds through plate and mail.
Nor stood unmindful Abdiel to annoy
The atheist crew, but with redoubled blow
Ariel, and Arioch, and the violence
Of Ramiel scorched and blasted, overthrew. 173
He ceased; and the arch-angelick Power prepared
For swift descent; with him the cohort bright
Of watchful Cherubim: four faces each
Had, like a double Janus; all their shape
Spangled with eyes more numerous than those
Of Argus, and more wakeful than to drouse,
Charmed with Arcadian pipe, the pastoral reed
Of Hermes, or his opiate rod… 323-324
The Biblical and Classical imagery are mixed when discussing angels. Milton informs his readers that the clashes of Titans only hint at the true spiritual depth of angelic and demonic warfare. However, once again New Testament symbolism gains the victory. In the titanic battle between Michael and Satan in Paradise Lost, both sides cannot prevail, and the battle becomes a supernatural artillery stalemate. Christ rides in with His chariot and gains the victory in language similar to the opening of Ezekiel:
And the third sacred morn began to shine,
Dawning through Heaven. Forth rushed with whirlwind sound
The chariot of Paternal Deity,
Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel undrawn,
Itself instinct with Spirit, but convoyed
By four Cherubick shapes; four faces each
Had wonderous; as with stars, their bodies all
And wings were set with eyes; with eyes the wheels
Of beryl, and careering fires between;
Over their heads a crystal firmament,
Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure
Amber, and colours of the showery arch.
He, in celestial panoply all armed
Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought,
Ascended; at his right hand Victory 186-187
Christ is clearly above all created glory, and His reign and Word are respected as preeminent by Milton. In Paradise Regained, Milton depicts Satan tempting Christ with all the military, political, and intellectual pomp of the ancient classical empires. Christ’s response to the philosophies of Athens is firm:
But these are false, or little else but dreams,
Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm.
The first and wisest of them all professed
To know this only, that he nothing knew;
The next to fabling fell and smooth conceits;
A third sort doubted all things, though plain sense;
Others in virtue placed felicity…
Alas! what can they teach, and not mislead,
Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,
…With music or with poem, where so soon
As in our native language can I find
That solace? All our Law and Story strewed
With hymns, our Psalms with artful terms inscribed,
Our Hebrew songs and harps, in Babylon
That pleased so well our victor's ear, declare
That rather Greece from us these arts derived--
Ill imitated while they loudest sing
The vices of their deities, and their own,
In fable, hymn, or song, so personating
Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame.
Remove their swelling epithetes, thick-laid
As varnish on a harlot's cheek, the rest,
Thin-sown with aught of profit or delight,
Will far be found unworthy to compare
With Sion's songs, to all true tastes excelling,
Where God is praised aright and godlike men,
The Holiest of Holies and his Saint Book 4, page 42-44
The height of Satan’s temptation in Paradise Regained is the giving of the Classics and the vain kingdoms of the world to Christ, and Christ refuses. Thus in all His doings, Christ lives out God’s law in its purity to the fullest, and is able to regain paradise for man. His victory is far more certain than the faulty free will of Adam, and in Christ along is true paradise and liberty. Milton is the beginning of the Reformation in the arts, and a capstone in Western epic literature. This season is the perfect time to enjoy Milton’s Christ-centric literature.
Thy Father is the Eternal King who rules
All Heaven and Earth, Angels and sons of men.
A messenger from God foretold thy birth
Conceived in me a virgin; he foretold
Thou shouldst be great, and sit on David's throne,
And of thy kingdom there should be no end.
At thy nativity a glorious quire
Of Angels, in the fields of Bethlehem, sung
To shepherds, watching at their folds by night,
And told them the Messiah now was born,
Where they might see him; and to thee they came,
Directed to the manger where thou lay'st;
For in the inn was left no better room.
A Star, not seen before, in heaven appearing,
Guided the Wise Men thither from the East,
To honour thee with incense, myrrh, and gold;
By whose bright course led on they found the place,
Affirming it thy star, new-graven in heaven,
By which they knew thee King of Israel born. Book 1 page 8
Sources:
Image of Guido Reni 031 from Wikipedia
http://www.planetpdf.com/planetpdf/pdfs/free_ebooks/Paradise_Lost_NT.pdf
http://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/jspui/bitstream/1794/769/1/regained.pdf
http://www.archive.org/stream/marriageofheaven00blak/marriageofheaven00blak_djvu.txt
http://www.archive.org/details/paradise_lost_08083_librivox
http://www.archive.org/details/paradise_regained_0810_librivox
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