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has become popular in academic circles to read for subtexts, and even
for
antitexts and untexts, in works that seek to bring a spark of divinity
to humankind. Because we assume that there is no spark and no divinity,
no "outside" beyond our own circle of discourse, our cynicism demands
that
we rethink literature and read for significances, especially currently
popular political ones, which we add to it, rather than for whatever
didactic
project it may seek to embody. We are talking more now and listening
less.
I have no proof that this trend is a bad thing-- certainly it has been
good for a number of careers--but I fear that we may be developing a
"hearing
disability." It may be useful to at least occasionally try to read
un-cynically,
with a willingness to be taught, to be led, even carried away, if only
for a time. One way to read Milton, for example, is to set aside our
own
prejudices just long enough to glimpse the paradigms that made his
world
comprehensible to his contemporaries, as even the Marxist critic
Christopher
Hill has observed:
We do not now
look to the
book of Revelation for our analysis of political processes; but the
concept
of the slaughter of the Two Witnesses helped Francis Woodcock to
explain
what was happening, and to forecast what was likely to happen.
Similarly
we may find it difficult to take seriously the idea that fear of popery
was a significant reason for supporting Parliament in 1642; but it was
for Richard Baxter, no fool. When Lady Eleanor Davies in 1633 foretold
a violent death for Charles I, Archbishop Laud dismissed her as 'never
so mad a lady'. But after 1649 it was less easy to laugh her off. Laud
had already met his violent death by then (The Experience of Defeat
27).
The prophetic paradigm is a
major constituent
of poetry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Spenser, Donne,
Herbert,
and Milton are striking examples, and Spenser's use of the prophetic
moment
has been thoroughly explored by Angus Fletcher. We have almost
forgotten,
says Fletcher, that a prophet, particularly in the Hebraic/Christian
tradition,
is not primarily someone who predicts the future or sees what is
happening
elsewhere, like a crystal-gazing "seer" or riddling oracle, but one
whose
word is of divine rather than human origin and therefore to be obeyed
(3-4).
The commentator in the Jerusalem Bible who introduces the prophets,
beginning
with Isaiah, puts it concisely: "the prophet in Israel is a mouthpiece;
he has no doubt that 'the word of God' has come to him and that he must
pass it on to others" (969). Isaiah exemplifies the mouthpiece prophet:
"Listen, you heavens; earth, attend, for Yahweh is speaking....Hear the
word of Yahweh, you rulers of Sodom...."What are your empty sacrifices
to me?" says Yahweh" (Is. 1:2a,10a, 11a JB). The discourse of the deity
interrupts the discourse of the known world as a word from beyond the
hermeneutical
circle. A prophet's word, then, priveleged as divine word, comes from
beyond
the temporal and is not subject to temporality. The prophet, in the
moment
of speaking the divine word, performs or is performed by the
transcendent--
becomes a threshold of immutable holiness in our world of profane
mutability.
Deterioration of the divine vision when retold within the destructive
confines
of temporally bound discourse is a cost accepted by the prophet, whose
mission is never to present the divine in its entirety and perfection
(an
acknowledged impossibility), but to represent it as well as can be
done,
by telling a story/myth/allegory/ parable. Metaphorical language,
dance,
image--that which stands for something else-- is employed to the best
of
the prophet's ability to reach, not everyone, certainly not the
cynical,
but all who desire to be reached and to find some direction for their
lives.
The project is didactical and unashamedly so. "He that hath ears to
hear,
let him hear."
Milton's last three great
works comprise
a coherent three-point didactic program, grounded in three parables.
Each
parable describes one or more divine interventions, and singles out an
important component of the prophetic moment as its subject. That
subject
I shall call the obedient moment. He begins with Paradise
Lost as the history of an alienation of worldly discourse from God
that will require intervention, by means of the prophetic moment, if it
is to be made a "fortunate fall." Next, he examines a crucial phase of
that intervention, the moment of obedience, of Jesus' refusal of
self-will,
in Paradise
Regained. Finally, in Samson
Agonistes, he brings forward the idea that Jesus' moment of
obedience
cannot be regarded as a uniquely intercessory incident, but one which
can
be imitated in even desperately adverse circumstances. The key to
Milton's
project is his expectation that the reader, taught by his divinely
inspired
parables, will be able to repudiate the outward Paradise for which the
Puritans so long and mistakenly sought, and begin to build the inward
New
Jerusalem to which the Spirit of God calls them. He means to make
prophets
of us all. This is not the project of a defeated man. Indeed,
Milton
is not even on the defensive.
The first of
Milton's three
parables opens with the thesis that will concern all three:
Of Man's first
disobedience, and
the fruit
Of that forbidden tree,
whose mortal
taste
Brought death into the
world, and
all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till
one greater
Man
Restore us, and regain the
blessed
seat, (PL I:1-5)
That is, the present story
will tell
of Adam's disobedience. As Adam is the first man, he is all mankind at
the time, hence the capitalization. He stands for a series of falls;
first
his own as an individual, second, that of all who come after (with the
notable exception of the second Man), third, of the Puritan failure in
the Revolution. Yet all this tale of disobedience aims to remind us
that
from disbedience and its consequences, even when things are at their
bleakest,
there is a way of return to Paradise: the "one greater Man" who
restores
us. Milton aims to "justify God's ways to men" not by providing
ironclad
rational arguments but by parabolically asserting Eternal Providence.
This
is an excellent theodical strategy, for Milton already knows that
rational
arguments cannot acheive his aim.
A theodical argument must
attempt
to reconcile three propositions: that God is all-powerful; that God is
all-good; and that terrible things happen. Any two of these can be
reconciled,
but not all three (Frederick Buechner 24). Anti-Miltonists assume this
as their starting point and hunt for the places where the poet fails to
knit the three propositions together. Of course, because he does fail,
they find them. And they aren't refuted by Milton's defenders. Both
camps
tend to make the mistake of treating Milton's poetic narratives as if
they
were intended as literal history or theological treatise. But Milton
anticipates
and derails his rationalist detractors (and defenders) by sticking to
poetic
narrative. This does not admit any weakness in his subject matter; only
in his ability to capture it in its entirety. As Dennis Danielson
points
out, it would be rash to assume that Milton hopes to use poetry to hide
theological inconsistencies (19). Instead, Milton is careful to have
Raphael
explain to Adam that what he is about to tell him is tailored to his
limited
capacity and hence not literally true (22).
...how shall I relate
To human sense the
invisible exploits
Of warring spirits...how
last unfold
The secrets of another
world, perhaps
Not lawful to reveal? Yet
for thy
good
This is dispensed, and
what surmounts
the reach
Of human sense I shall
delineate
so,
By likening spiritual to
corporal
forms,
As may express them
best...(V.564-574).
Milton is quite aware of the
hermeneutical
circle. In the De doctrina Christiana, he states unequivocally
the
metaphorical character of theological discourse:
When we talk
about knowing
God, it must be understood in terms of man's limited powers of
comprehension.
God, as he really is, is far beyond man's imagination, let alone his
understanding....in
the sacred writings...God is always described or outlined not as he is
but in such a way as will make him conceivable to us (133).
Since our understanding is
limited,
we are dependent upon the scriptures, not for an accurate idea of God,
but for the best idea we can get. But even this, Milton warns, is
beyond
us, unless we read the scriptures with the aid of divine inspiration:
"No
one, however, can form correct ideas about God guided by nature or
reason
alone, without the word or message of God..." (132). "Left onely in
those
written Records pure,/Though not but by the Spirit understood" (PL
VII.513-14).
Since Milton was aware that "reason alone" would not suffice, it
follows
that he as a prophet-poet, might seek to make God available through
divinely
inspired discourse, as did the Hebrew prophet-poets of old. He saw his
vocation in just this light from an early point in his career, having
turned
away from the ordained priesthood in favor of poetry as the better
ministry:
The hungry sheep look up,
and are
not fed,
But swoln with wind and
the rank
mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul
contagion
spread;
Besides what the grim wolf
with
privy paw
Daily devours apace, and
nothing
said;
But that two-handed engine
at the
door
Stands ready to smite
once, and
smite no more. ("Lycidas" 125-131)
One of the probable
interpretations
of "two-handed engine" is that Sword of which Blake speaks, the word of
Yahweh in the mouth of the prophet.
As Adam prepares to
depart from Paradise,
the archangel Michael gives him a crash course in history--future
history--and explicit instructions on how to get there from here. The
story
from Genesis to the birth of Christ--almost unremitting failure--seems
bleak, but at last there is a ray of hope with the advent of the second
Man. Adam expects that this Son of God will conquer Satan in a
physical,
outward battle:
Needs must the Serpent now
his capital
bruise
Expect with mortal pain:
say where
and when
Their fight, what stroke
shall bruise
the Victor's heel"
(XII.383-5).
Michael warns him that no
such battle
will take place. Instead, Satan's defeat will consist in the simple
undoing
of his work:
...nor so is overcome
Satan, whose fall from
Heaven, a
deadlier bruise,
Disabled not to give thee
thy death's
wound;
which he who comes thy
Savior shall
recure,
Not by destroying Satan,
but his
works
In thee and in thy seed
(390-5).
"The law of God exact," he
explains,
"he shall fulfill/Both by obedience and by love" (XII.402.3).
Adam is impressed. But he
wonders
how this one Man's obedience is an act of saving. After the Deliverer's
ascent to heaven, are not his followers left unprotected?
...what will betide the few
His faithful, left among
the faithful
herd,
The enemies of truth; who
then shall
guide
His people, who defend?
will they
not deal
Worse with his followers
than with
him they dealt? (480-4)
"Be sure they will," is
Michael's ominous
reply. But in place of the ascended savior "He to his own a Comforter
will
send,/The promise of the Father, who shall dwell, /His Spirit, within
them..."
(485-8). This is Milton's explanation of how the works of Satan are to
be destroyed in the seed of Adam. Jesus is to be in a sense a new kind
of being on Earth, because he is the son of God and of a woman, or a
kind
of man-God. Satan will find him baffling, because although the new Man
can be tempted, he cannot be made to fall. This savior would seem,
then,
to have an unfair advantage over the rest of us. But the promise to the
followers of this new Man is that by receiving the Spirit, they too
will
be able to resist temptation--not by any work of their own, as they are
human, but by work of the Spirit in them, by which means they become
children
of the Father. All this derives from St. Paul:
But when the
fullness of
the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under
the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive
the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God has sent forth the
Spirit
of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art
no
more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through
Christ
(Gal. 4:4-7 KJV).
Although there is no space
here for
a full argument, a case could be made that Milton's entire project in
his
Latin study, On Christian Doctrine, as well as in the three
parables,
turns upon this passage from Galatians. In the Christian Doctrine
there is one chapter on God, one on divine decree, one on
predestination,
and having disposed of the Father in relatively few words, Milton moves
on to forty-five chapters on the Son, whose work involves the
implantation
of his Spirit in man, and on how man may demonstrate that this
implantation
has taken place, becoming an heir of the Father through the Son.
As Michael ends his
lesson, Adam
shows that he has grasped its essence by aspiring to live in the manner
of the Spirit-led:
Henceforth I learn that to
obey
is best,
And love with fear the
only God,
to walk
As in his presence, ever
to observe
His providence, and on him
sole
depend,
Merciful over all his
works, with
good
Still overcoming evil, and
by small
Accomplishing great
things...(561-7).
To obey is not merely best,
but in
imitatio Christi, is all. The archangelic tutor approves his
pupil's
newfound resolve, and recapitulates the lesson with what for Milton is
the climactic point of the entire parable:
This having learnt, thou
hast attained
the sum
of wisdom; hope no higher,
though
all the stars
Thou knew'st by name and
all the
ethereal powers,
All secrets of the deep,
all Nature's
works,
Or works of God in heaven,
air,
earth, or sea,
And all the riches of this
world
enjoy'dst,
And all the rule, one
empire; only
add
Deeds to thy knowledge
answerable,
add faith,
Add virtue, patience,
temperance,
add love,
By name to come called
charity,
the soul
Of all the rest: then wilt
thou
not be loth
To leave this Paradise,
but shalt
possess
A Paradise within thee,
happier
far (575-87).
Milton anticipates his
second great
parable here, by having Michael remind Adam of all the temptations that
will come to his descendants--including the second Adam--and explaining
that the new road to Paradise will be through "deeds answerable" done
in
love: "the soul of all the rest." This Paradise will not be, during the
Christian's lifetime, outward, as the old Eden, but inward, "within
you,"
because within is the abode of the Spirit that makes this possible. The
spirit-indwelt Christian is to be a kind of divine beachhead in Satanic
territory, the first hint of the New Jerusalem. Michael says that this
new Paradise, "happier far," is now within Adam's grasp. Why happier?
Because
although great was the state of Innocence Adam had enjoyed, the state
of
Grace is greater. As God can turn evil to greater good, any fall can be
made fortunate. Up to this point Paradise Lost is indeed
concerned
with a fall, but now the beginnings of a recovery can be shown.
Adam's success as a pupil
is not
demonstrated by his apt recitation of the main points of Michael's
lesson
but later, in the last five lines of the epic. In the midst of their
ejection
from Eden (XII.641-9) the human couple are tempted to despair,
as
all their descendents will be tempted. They do weep "some natural
tears,"
but--and this is the effect Milton has spent twelve books preparing us
for--"but wiped them soon;" this resisting of the temptation to despair
is the obedient moment. If we have followed Milton's "great argument"
closely
we will understand that wiping away of the tears, and discover that in
our understanding of this is Milton's justification of God.
I who erstwhile the happy
garden
sung,
By one man's disobedience
lost,
now sing
Recovered Paradise to all
mankind,
By one man's firm
obedience fully
tried
Through all temptation,
and the
Tempter foiled
In all his wiles, defeated
and repulsed,
And Eden raised in the
waste wilderness
(PR I:1-7).
The second parable moves on
to the life
and work of the second Adam, focusing not, as one might expect, on the
"act of propitiation" by which Christ is sacrificed on the cross to pay
for the sins of the world, but rather on the moment at which Jesus'
career
begins, the Temptation in the wilderness. Milton's reason for doing
this
should be clear from the way in which he has ended the first parable.
Everything
that has happened up to this point prepares us for the appearance, not
of a victim, but a victor (Krause 115), and one whose victory can be
imitated.
The example of obedience on the Cross might have been expected, but it
is cluttered up with orthodox insistence on its sacrificial rather than
its examplary character. Milton finds the Temptation more suitable, for
it follows upon the first appearance of the Spirit which will in time
be
sent to all believers: "...on him baptized/ Heaven opened, and
in
likeness of a dove/The Spirit descended... (I.29-31). A voice from
Heaven
proclaims "the son of Joseph deemed," as instead (or now) the son of
God.
This incident draws the attention of Satan, who recognizes immediately
the opening of a new campaign, though its nature is not clear to him:
"Who
this is we must learn, for man he seems/In all his lineaments..."
(I.91-2).
Led by the Spirit into
the wild waste
(once, perhaps, Eden?), the anointed Man encounters there his Enemy,
who
argues that he is not an enemy to mankind but a friend, having helped
them
over the years with oracles. The reply, "God hath now sent his living
Oracle/Into
the world, to teach his final will,/And sends his Spirit of Truth
henceforth
to dwell/In pious hearts, an inward oracle..." (I.460-3) shows that the
appearance of the Dove is the crucial event which is to be put to the
test.
In the second book, we
see a tie-in
with the misguided hopes of "God's Englishmen." The disappearance of
the
long-expected Messiah into the wilderness to reclaim a spiritual Eden
runs
counter to the expectations of the disciples, whose land, overrun with
barbarians, they had hoped he would immediately liberate:
...God of Israel,
Send thy Messiah forth,
the time
is come;
Behold the kings of the
Earth, how
they oppress
The Chosen, to what highth
their
power unjust
They have exalted, and
behind them
cast
All fear of thee; arise
and vindicate
Thy glory, free thy people
from
their yoke! (II.42-6)
Not only many of the
Puritans, but most
of the influential religious radicals active at the time of the
Revolution
anticipated that the overthrow of the unrighteous kings of the nations
(and the Pope) would result in the reign of the Messiah. Christopher
Hill
fills several books with citations just to demonstrate this one point,
quoting from Levellers, Ranters, Muggletonians, Fifth Monarchists,
assorted
Regicides, William Erbery, William Sedgwick, Isaac Penington, James
Nayler,
Edward Burrough, George Fox, John Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Oliver
Cromwell,
James Harrington, Henry Stubbe, and Andrew Marvell:
Hence oft I think, if in
some happy
Hour
High Grace should meet in
one with
highest Pow'r,
And then a seasonable
People still
Should bend to his, as he
to Heavens
will,
What we might hope, what
wonderful
Effect
From such a wish'd
Conjuncture might
reflect.
Sure, the mysterious Work,
where
none withstand,
Would forthwith finish
under such
a Hand:
Fore-shortned Time its
useless Course
would stay
And soon precipitate the
latest
Day.
("The First Anniversary"
131-140)
Marvell here suggests that
Cromwell's
virtue joined with that of the people can precipitate the end of
history
by fulfilling the preconditions for the return of the Messiah. Milton
at
the time was caught up in the excitement; he "described the
acheivements
of the English Revolution as 'the most heroic and exemplary since the
beginning
of the world'--not excluding, apparently, the life and death of Christ"
(Hill, Essays 115). The Restoration silenced many of the heroic
exemplars; others fell into bitterness, satire, and cynicism.
Milton avoids cynicism by
turning
inward and finding there a revolution that cannot be defeated. He
contrasts
this with the failed ideology of the COmmonwealth by having Satan make
all the arguments for political liberation that he had himself so
brilliantly
made. Indeed, "Satan is not the rhetorical deceiver of Paradise Lost,
but one half of the poet talking to the other half. His arguments are
nearly
always rational, and he defends many views which Milton had at one time
held" (Hill, Milton and the English Revolution 416). Satan
mistakes
his Man, as had the earlier Milton. Satan offers, quite reasonably, to
help attain this political liberation--only to be rebuffed in an
unexpected
way. Jesus not only seeks no outward office, but analyzes kingship in
terms
of self-rule:
For therein stands the
office of
a king,
His honor, virtue, merit,
and chief
praise,
That for the public all
this weight
he bears.
Yet he who reigns within
himself,
and rules
Passions, desires, and
fears, is
more a king;
Which every wise and
virtuous man
attains:
And who attains not, ill
aspires
to rule
Cities of men, or
headstrong multitudes,
Subject himself to anarchy
within,
Or lawless passions in him
which
he serves (II.463-72).
This is common political
advice, though
Machiavelli might point out that it isn't very practical in worldly
terms;
but now the emphasis shifts:
But to guide nations in
the way
of truth
By saving doctrine, and
from error
lead
To know, and knowing
worship God
aright,
Is yet more
kingly...(II.473-6).
Jesus here offers a theory
of kingship
that is based on spiritual rather than worldly leadership. Satan cannot
see the utility of such a theory: "...think'st thou to regain/Thy right
by sitting still or thus retiring?" (III.163-4) Carrying the Man to a
high
mountaintop, he raises the ante--if you don't want to be king, how
about
emperor? But the prospect of vast armies at his command moves the Man
not,
for he is no Cromwell; he needs not "...that cumbersome/Luggage of war
there shown me, argument/Of human weakness rather than of strength"
(III.400-2).
Satan's perplexity
increases. But
he resiliently takes another tack: "Be famous then/By wisdom; as thy
empire
must extend,/So let extend thy mind o'er all the world,/In knowledge,
all
things in it comprehend" (IV.221-4). Showing the Man all the learning
of
classical Greece, the foundation of Western intellectual enterprise,
Satan
paints a picture of "the olive grove of Academe" and offers a full
scholarship:
These here revolve, or, as
thou
lik'st, at home,
Till time mature thee to a
kingdom's
weight;
These rules will render
thee a king
complete
Within thyself..."
(IV.281-4)
This was the offer Milton
himself had
not refused, nor most of his critics since (myself included).
Academicians
find the Messiah's refusal here hard to take, but the logic of it,
given
the premise of Christian reliance upon the Spirit for guidance, is
inexorable:
He who receives
Light from above, from the
Fountain
of Light,
No other doctrine needs,
though
granted true; (IV.288-90)
Christopher Hill reminds us
that "Paradise
Regained's attitude to learning is really very conventional" (Milton
and the English Revolution 424). Milton's Jesus here echoes, among
others, Bacon, who insisted that learning must be subject to a
Christian
walk and not go after "curiosities." George Fox, Milton's contemporary,
had an "opening from the Lord" "that being bred at Oxford or Cambridge
was not enough to fit and qualify men to be ministers of Christ" (Journal
7), and Dell and other radicals inquired if the learned could be the
elect,
and all answered no. Many of the orthodox were agreed with them on
this.
Satan reaches the end of
his rope,
and in a rather plaintive speech, comes without realizing it his
closest
to understanding the mission of the Man before him:
...I thought thee worth my
nearer
view
And narrower scrutiny,
that I might
learn
in what degree or meaning
thou art
called
The Son of God, which
bears no single
sense;
The Son of God I also am,
or was,
And if I was, I am;
relation stands;
All men are sons of God;
yet thee
I thought
In some respect far higher
so declared
(IV.514-21).
All men are sons of God.
Milton
wisely puts the punch line in the Enemy's mouth, even as he hides from
him its ironical and radical import. The Devil is thus made to be of
Milton's
party without knowing it. "There is a certain sense in which we, like
the
angels, may be called sons of God by virtue of our very nature, in that
we were created by him: Luke 3:38: 'sons of Adam, who was the son of
God'"
(On Christian Doctrine, Complete Prose Works VI.495).
That
Jesus is apparently not "far higher" than other sons of God is the
puzzle
Satan cannot solve, but which Milton means the reader to solve. In the Christian
Doctrine Milton examines a doctrine of
universal enlightenment:
"...God...excludes no man from the way of penitence and eternal
salvation..."
(194); "...that spiritual illumination which is common to all men"
(204);
"Moreover this promise was made to all mankind..." (418). He cites Rom.
5:18: "... a benefit upon all men," II Cor. 5:15: "...If one died for
all...,"
Col. 1: "...that he might reconcile all things" (449).
Here Milton, ostensibly a
Puritan,
diverges widely from Calvinism and Reformed theology in insisting that
all, and not merely the elect, have access to this Sonship. Milton's
radicalism
here places him with some whom the Puritans had counted enemies:
Anabaptists,
Diggers, and Quakers. Anti- trinitarian, mortalist, and champion of
free
will, he cites the famous "Quakers' text," John 1:9: "That was the true
light which gives light to every man who comes into the world" (455),
and
discusses the role of Christ and Spirit in saving all. Not that he
means
all will be saved, for as free will includes the possibility of
choosing
incorrectly, some will fail to accept the offer. But the offer is made
available to all and consists in Jesus's status not as God, someone
whose
righteousness is unapproachable, but as Man, second Adam, the seed of
the
Woman (Eve), bruiser of the Serpent's head. The work of redemption,
begun
in the trial in the wilderness, ends in the acceptance of the
indwelling
Spirit already placed in the hearts of mankind. All men are sons of
God,
says Milton, if they will but accept that they already are. It is a
question
of giving up the will in a prophetic moment, the moment of
obedience.
Satan narrowly misses
this doctrine,
for he does not understand his own remark that all men are sons of God.
So he devises one final test for the Man: having found him "Proof
against
all temptation as a rock.../To the utmost of mere man both wise
and good" (PR IV:533,5, emphasis added), he places him on the pinnacle
of the temple in Jerusalem. This forces the issue. If the Man falls
unrescued
from this place, his Sonship is a mere title. If he stands unaided, or
if angels come to catch him, he is revealed as something more than
merely
man. "To whom thus Jesus: 'Also it is written,/"Tempt not the Lord thy
God."' He said, and stood" (IV:560- 1). The obedient moment is here
revealed
in its full implications. The revelation is that Jesus will not
exercise
inhuman power, but instead exercise the will to obey the Spirit that is
in him. It had not occurred to Satan until this point that the mere
presence
of the Spirit, which he had seen only in the form of "a perfect dove...
whate'er it meant" (I.83), constituted the presence of God, with whom
he
might not contend. Satan falls, completely routed.
The angels, while
ministering to
the victorious Second Adam, sing a victory hymn: "...now thou hast
avenged/Supplanted
Adam, and by vanquishing/ Temptation, hast regained lost Paradise"
(IV:606-8).
Stanley Fish has called our attention to this hymn's choice of
capitalized
Temptation rather than Satan as the vanquished: "'Temptation' is not
only
the word we get; it correctly names our desire for the word we didn't
get.
That is, it is a temptation to expect something other than (the word) temptation,
to expect an external object of 'vanquishing,'..." (Composite
Orders 183). Thus ends the second phase of Milton's new revolution.
One Man lost Paradise outwardly, and the next Man regained it inwardly.
But these are capitalized Men. Just as Eden was raised in the waste
wilderness,
it must now be raised in all mankind. But how? For the answer, we must
look to Samson Agonistes.
Published together
with Paradise Regained, and following it in the same volume,
Milton's
"Dramatic Poem" so differs from it in genre and style as to seem to
make
it impossible that both pieces can be part of one intention. Yet the
contrasts
serve an overall purpose. John Shawcross remarks: "If we cannot read Paradise
Regain'd adequately, we have the more human Samson Agonistes
to help us" (Paradise Regain'd 112). Jesus is unfallen Man,
while
Samson is fallen man merely. Of all his heroes, Milton's Samson is
closest
to us in accesibility and sympathy. Though we are meant to imitate
Jesus'
vanquishing of Temptation, it is perhaps a tall order for the
individual
human to take on anything so abstract.
From the opening line,
Milton warns
us that this new work is to focus on the tragically personal: "A little
onward lend thy guiding hand/To these dark steps..." (SA 1-2). Samson,
like Milton, is blind. Milton, like Samson, has known imprisonment (8)
and sought retirement (16), remembers that he had a high calling from
God
(23) and that the promise of success implicit in this calling goes
unfulfilled:
Why was my breeding
ordered and
prescribed
As of a person separate to
God,
Designed for great
exploits, if
I must die
Betrayed, captived, and
both my
eyes put out,
made of my enemies the
scorn and
gaze...(30-4)
Milton/Samson's tragedy, as
we walk
in upon it, seems like that of Lear, whose mistake is made almost
before
we have been properly introduced to him. But Shakespeare shows a
development
of the action from the error; Milton shows an almost unrelieved
landscape
of error and almost no development. Shawcross comments: "We are
not...shown
the road to ruin; the road already has been walked" (Calm of Mind
293). We who presume ourselves whole are uncomfortable in the presence
of the severely disabled; at first we distance ourselves from the
ruined
Samson's intense isolation. But then we recognize that his pain is
ours,
for the outward blindness of the mighty Hebrew is emblematic of our own
spiritual blindness. And as his blindness is ours, his foolishness is
ours.
Our own betrayals, like those of Samson, predate the story at hand; we
have experienced, before we come to this poem, enough to make it
intelligible.
Milton uses our identification both against us and for us. Against us,
in the sense which has been demonstrated by Stanley Fish: our habits of
thought betray us as we read. Samsom faces a series of trials, as does
Jesus in the wilderness. But the temptations offered by Satan to the
second
Adam are appropriate to the scale of the combatants: all Israel, all
knowledge,
the world, a minor godship. Samson, in contrast, is faced with no
"kingly"
enticements. A "private man," his temptations are scaled to the
personal.
The first of these is an encounter with his old father, Manoa. Manoa
wishes
to ransom his son from the Philistines: "Well they may by this/Have
satisfied
their utmost of revenge/By pains and slaveries, worse than death,
inflicted/On
thee, who now no more canst do them harm" (483-6). The son replies:
"Spare
that proposal, father, spare the trouble/Of that solicitation; let me
here,/As
I deserve, pay on my punishment" (487-9). Manoa rightly assumes God
will
vindicate himself against the god of the Philistines, but wrongly
assumes
that this will not happen through Samson, whose wreck seems final.
Samson
assumes that his business at present is to endure punishment for his
failings.
The idea is that failure somehow disqualifies one for further
obedience.
Manoa would not go so far: he envisions God giving Samson new sight and
new battles: but this is not prophecy; he is indulging in fantasies.
Each
pre-empts God's right to exercise his divine will through the
appearance
of a new prophetic moment. Each falls to the temptation of
self-will.
Manoa's arguments, especially because they border on the prophetic,
seem
reasonable to the reader; as he falls, we fall with him.
The second encounter,
with Dalila
his wife, Samson finds even less edifying than the first. She has
convinced
herself she seeks forgiveness; he is convinced she seeks
self-justification.
Each is, perhaps, partly in the right; certainly each is in the wrong.
Samson's interpretation of the visit is that God "sent her to debase
me,/And
aggravte my folly who committed/To such a viper his most sacred
trust/Of
secrecy, my safety, and my life" (999-1002). His focus on punishment
shows
he is still unprepared for the prophetic moment; he is an "unfit
reader"
of Dalila's treachery and his fall, which makes possible the last great
victory now approaching.
The third encounter is
with one like
himself in size and strength but lacking his courage and resolve.
Harapha
charges Samson with having used not his own strength but black magic in
his famous victories. Stung, Samson recovers, in spite of himself, a
measure
of his old reliance upon his God:
I know no spells, use no
forbidden
arts;
My trust is in the Living
God who
gave me
At my nativity this
strength, diffused
No less through all my
sinews, joints
and bones,
Than thine, while I
preserved these
locks unshorn,
The pledge of my
unviolated vow.
For proof hereof, If Dagon
be thy
god,
Go to his temple, invocate
his aid
With solemnest devotion,
spread
before him
How highly it concerns his
glory
now
To frustrate and dissolve
these
magic spell,
Which I to be the power of
Israel's
God
Avow, and challenge Dagon
to the
test
Offering to combat thee,
his champion
bold,
With the upmost of his
godhead seconded:
Then thou shalt see, or
rather to
thy sorrow
Soon feel, whose God is
strongest,
thine or mine.
(1139-55).
This blind slave still
trusts in his
Living God, and is still willing, so to speak, to put his money on him.
But the offer of combat is in fact a subtle failure to resist
temptation;
in his haste to bring Harapha to battle, he places his own zeal for
God's
glory ahead of God's possible plans for him. The prophetic moment
eludes
all moments of self-will.
Harapha, however,
unwittingly sets
Samson on the right track by taunting him with his condition: "Presume
not on thy God, whate'er he be;/Thee he regards not, owns not, hath cut
off/Quite from his people" (1156-9). Samson knows all this and
acknowledges
it, as he has to the Chorus, Manoa, and Dalila. But he adds that he
will
not despair of "his final pardon/Whose ear is ever open, and his
eye/Gracious
to readmit the suppliant" (1171-3). This thought is buried in the heat
of his challenge to Harapha, but it will reappear in another form,
after
the summons to the temple of Dagon.
The problem presented by
this summons
is a subtle one; if Samson obeys, he obeys the law of the land as a
slave
owned by Philistines, to whom God has consigned him as a just
punishment
for his sins. Yet as he is a Hebrew, it is unlawful to him under the
law
of Moses, to which he still feels himself bound, to be present at pagan
rites. Either horn of the dilemma may involve him in an act of
self-will.
If I obey them,
I do it freely, venturing
to displease
God for the fear of man,
and man
prefer,
Set God behind; which in
his jealousy
Shall never, unrepented,
find forgiveness
(1372-6).
On the other hand, if one
need not despair
of "his final pardon/Whose ear is ever open," perhaps there is still
work
to be done on God's behalf and by God's choice as to place, time, and
procedure:
Yet that he may dispense
with me
or thee,
Present in temples at
idolatrous
rites
For some important cause,
thou need'st
not doubt (1377-9).
This is the solution; a
Hebrew cannot
go to Dagon's rites, but a Hebrew prophet can, for the moment
will
be not Dagon's but God's. Samson is at last ready to act on God's
behalf
not on his own initiative but God's: "I begin to feel/Some rousing
motions
in me which dispose/To something extraordinary my thoughts" (1381-3).
And
the walls come a- tumbling down.
Critics have argued that Samson
Agonistes is particularly autobiographical, and this is easy to do;
there are, after all, the blindness, the imprisonment, the sense of
failure
in a great enterprise, of being spurned by an unworthy people still in
bondage through their own doing, of having sought to serve God and of
seeking
to serve God still. The poem speaks of the Philistines as "lords," and
one thinks of the lords returning to power with Charles II; it speaks
of
Dalila's collusion with the Nazarite's enemies, and one is reminded of
that moment of poignant bitterness in the Second Defence of the
English
People, when Milton describes himself "at home with his children,
while
the wife and mother was inside the enemy lines, threatening death and
destruction
to her husband." But on what parallel there might be, between Milton's
last years and Samson's fateful shove against the pillars, there is a
resounding
silence. What rousing motions did Milton feel, and what temple did he
bring
down?
At the end of the Preface
to his Milton, William Blake appends an apocalyptic hymn that
ends with
an awesome vow:
I will not cease from
Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep
in my hand
Till we have built
Jerusalem
In England's green and
pleasant
land.
"Mental Fight," the key
phrase here,
separates Blake's commission from outward battle with outward weapons,
indicating that he is engaged in an inward or spiritual
struggle
which, if it bears fruit, will do so not so much in a secular realm as
in a secular realm transformed into a sacred realm by the action of
minds
and hearts engaged in obedience to a divine imperative. "Sword," here,
as it is capitalized, is not the sword of a temporal conqueror such as
Cromwell or Fairfax but that mightier Sword, the poet's pen, and also
the
still mightier Sword of a prophet's word. "We" refers to the English
people,
performing together a work of building: an image taken from the
rebuilding
of Jerusalem after the return of the Jews from exile in Babylon; also
it
is an image of Commonwealth. "Jerusalem" is the New Jerusalem of
Revelation;
unlike the Jerusalem of Ezra and Nehemiah the New Jerusalem is an
eschatological
event, placed usually but not necessarily in the future. In Revelation,
the New Jerusalem descends out of the heavens from God; in Blake, the
Saints
roll up their sleeves and build it themselves. This is in the tradition
of England as a typological Eden in disguise, which if all Englishmen
might
become "God's Englishmen," would be revealed immediately as the new
seat
of Paradise. But it is now to be conducted as a "Mental Fight," which
Blake
rightly sees as Milton's paradigm shift from the carnal revolution
unsuccessfully
carried out by his compatriots. Blake senses that in Milton's later
years
we have a prophet's design for a different revolution--not indeed by
the
sword of military might, for that had always belonged to a mixed
multitude,
but by the Sword of prophecy, which can be wielded only in the obedient
moment.
Andrew Marvell similarly
recognizes
Milton's claim to the prophetic role--
Where couldst thou Words
of such
a compass find?
Whence furnish such a vast
expense
of Mind?
Just Heav'n Thee, like
Tiresias,
to requite,
Rewards with Prophesie thy
loss
of Sight.
("On Mr. Milton's Paridise
Lost"
40-3)
--but Blake is the "fitter"
reader here,
for he recognizes that Milton's aim is not so much to be a prophet as
to
make England, indeed all mankind, a "nation of prophets." The temple of
Dagon becomes the secularity of the Restoration, of the Enlightenment,
of the Industrial Revolution with its "dark Satanic mills, greedy war
with
its "waste of wealth and loss of blood" (Sonnet XII), and apostate
religion
with its priests: "hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw" (Sonnet
XVI). The arm of Samson is the poetic/prophetic voice inspired by that
"Spirit, that dost prefer/Before all temples the upright heart and
pure"
(PL I.17-8).
Milton may seem to have
failed in
pulling down the pillars of our temple. We jibe at him as did the
Philistines,
calling his work "a monument to dead ideas," but we do so at a safe
distance,
like Harapha. And occasionally we wonder if somewhere we may have
mistaken
our road:
Now that
England's historical
destiny has whimpered to its end we may perhaps see that the defeated
had
points to make which would go forgotten in the two-and-a-half centuries
of imperial success. We would no doubt define an equal commonwealth
differently;
but it might seem a more attractive ideal than being the top of
nations.
In 1644 Milton saw England as 'a nation of prophets'. Where are they
now?
(Hill, The Experience of Defeat 328)
They are not perhaps so far
away as
we imagine. The obedient moment, says Milton, may be no more than
standing
still or wiping away a self- indulgent tear. "They also serve who only
stand and wait" (Sonnet XIX). Wherever anyone performs an act that
cannot
fully be explained by self- service, something of Milton's Eden is
raised
in the waste wilderness, and the possibility raised of an Earth
(PL XII.464-5) that "Shall all be Paradise, far happier place/Than this
of Eden, and far happier days."
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Thinking:
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Empson, W. Milton's God.
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York: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Fish, Stanley Eugene. Surprised
by Sin. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967.
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"Things and
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S., and Joseph Wittrich. Milton Studies 17. 163-85.
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Patrides, C.A., ed. Approaches
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-----------------. Paradise
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