Milton's Radical Epic

Milton’s Radical Epic by Michael Wilding (From Writing and Radicalism, ed. John Lucas, London, 1996, expanded from a plenary paper at the 5th International Milton Symposium, University of Wales, Bangor, 1995). John Milton’s commitment to social justice, to a primal egalitarianism, is basic throughout his literary production. A consistent radical vision is present from his earliest work. The indictment of the unequal distribution of wealth in A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634 (Comus) is one of the great dramatic utterances of the English literary heritage. The Lady declares: If every just man that now pines with want Had but a moderate and beseeming share Of that which lewdly-pampered Luxury Now heaps upon some few with vast excess, Nature’s full blessing would be well-dispensed In unsuperfluous even proportion, And she no whit encumbered with her store; And then the giver would be better thanked His praise due paid... (768-76)1 The radicalism is unambiguous and incontrovertible.2 Three years later, in ‘Lycidas’, Milton denounces the corrupt clergy of the reactionary church of England, indicting their careerism, greed and idleness.3 ‘The pilot of the Galilean Lake’ (St Peter) ‘stern bespake’: 1 All quotations from John Milton, Complete English Poems, Of Education, Areopagitica, ed. Gordon Campbell, London, 1993. 2 See Saad El-Gabalawy, ‘Christian Communism in Utopia, King Lear and Comus’, University of Toronto Quarterly, 47 (1978) 228-38. ‘How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, Enow of such as for their bellies’ sake, Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold! Of other care they little reckoning make Than how to scramble at the shearers’ feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest; Blind mouths! That scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least That to the faithful herdsman’s art belongs! What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But, swoll’n with wind and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread...’ (113-27) As well as clergy the indictment of bad shepherds includes academics and poets, all of those whose teaching lacks substance and leaves their listeners ‘swoll’n with wind’.4 With the outbreak of the revolution, Milton became a prolific and increasingly radical pamphleteer and polemicist.5 3 ‘An expression of the same spirit which had long been making itself heard in the Puritan pulpit and which was at the moment clamoring in the reckless pamphlets of Prynne and Lilburne’ – William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (1938), Philadelphia, 1972, 288. On the radicalism of Milton’s early poetry see David Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, London, 1984, and Michael Wilding, Dragons Teeth: Literature in the English Revolution, Oxford, 1987. 4 David Daiches, Milton, London, 1957, 76-92; Catherine Belsey, John Milton: Language, Gender, Power, Oxford, 1988, 28. 5 The best account of Milton’s political career is in Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution, London, 1977. See also David Loewenstein and James Grantham Turner, ed., Politics, Poetics and Hermeneutics in Milton’s Prose, Cambridge, 1990, and Thomas N. Corns, Uncloistered Virtue: English Political Literature, 1640-1660, Oxford, 1992. It is often said that Milton took a radical step in writing Paradise Lost in English rather than in Latin. But the vernacular epic was well established with Dante, Camoens and Spenser by the seventeenth century and to have published a Latin epic at this late stage, 1667, would have been absurd. One of the major projects of the English revolution had been to complete the access to major texts begun with the introduction of the English language Bible into churches in 1532. The publishing explosion consequent upon the breakdown of censorship in the 1640s resulted in the large-scale availability in English translation of works previously restricted to the privileged elite educated in Latin. The radical aspect of Paradise Lost resides in the choice of theme and in the redefinition of epic values. The epic characteristically celebrated the tribal group or nation. A narrow, local patriotism informs Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid. Milton rejects that tradition, and chooses the theme of the Fall of Adam and Eve. It is a foundation myth but what is founded is the human race, not a particular nation. And the focus is on the loss of Paradise rather than on the establishment of a dynasty. Milton had once considered writing an epic on King Arthur; but the collapse of the English republic and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the failure of the English revolution, made him disinclined to celebrate his native land. But as always with Milton, it is dangerous to make too dogmatic or simplistic an assertion. It is tempting to say that his choice of the theme of Paradise represents a refusal to write about Britain. At the same time, however, to write of Paradise was indeed to write of Britain. The slogan of the English Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 took Paradise as its touchstone: When Adam delved and Eve span Who was then the gentleman ? The restoration of primal social equality and just distribution of wealth was the aim of these pioneering English revolutionaries. The image of honest labour - Adam with spade, Eve with distaff - survives in woodcarvings in numerous English churches. The slogan underpins Paradise Lost. The concept of England as Paradise is recurrent in the century before Milton's epic. The image is used by Dr Dee in a letter to Queen Elizabeth in 1588, responding to her 'calling me, Mr Kelly, and our families home, into your British Earthly Paradise and Monarchy incomparable.'6 The image is especially current in radical contexts. In 1579 John Stubbs attacked the proposed marriage of Queen Elizabeth to the Duke of Anjou in The Discovery of a Gaping Gulf whereinto England is Like to be swallowed by another French Marriage: he called the Duke 'the old serpent in shape of a man whose sting is in his mouth and who doth endeavour to seduce our Eve that she and we may lose this English Paradise.' Stubbs, and the bookseller Page who distributed the pamphlet, paid the penalty - 'their right hands were struck off with a cleaver driven through the wrist with a beetle.'7 The savage maiming of these protestant radicals lies behind the imagery of Areopagitica. Probably the most famous usage is in William Shakespeare's Richard II, when John of Gaunt refers to Britain as 'This other Eden, demi-paradise.' (II. i. 42) The context is revolutionary. Richard II dramatizes the overthrow of a monarch. Queen Elizabeth took the point, remarking 'Know that I am Richard.' The play was contracted to be performed the day before Essex's unsuccessful rebellion. Andrew Marvell uses the concept in the 1650s in 'Upon Appleton House,' the poem he wrote commemorating the estate of Lord Fairfax, the retired commander-in-chief of the Parliamentary army: Oh Thou, that dear and happy Isle The Garden of the World ere while, Thou Paradise of four Seas, Which Heaven planted us to please, But, to exclude the World, did guard With watry if not flaming Sword; What luckless Apple did we tast, 6 Facsimile in Charlotte Fell Smith, John Dee, Constable, London, 1909. 7 Roger Howell, Sir Philip Sidney: The Shepherd Knight, Hutchinson, London, 1968, 72-73. To make us Mortal, and Thee Wast ? (321-8)8 England as a lost Paradise is a potent image for the English radical. There is no doubt it is a calculated sub-text in Paradise Lost. When Satan proposes a mission from Hell to search out Paradise, Eden is paraphrased as 'The happy isle' (II. 410). Britain is clearly denoted. Milton, then, rejected a nationalist commemoration of Britain in favour of a cosmic epic, preceding and transcending nationalism. Yet simultaneously he inscribed a potent British radical image that suggests England could have been, indeed once was, a Paradise, and he indicates in the course of the poem the forces that have spoiled it - the abandonment of common ownership, the development of the value systems that he identifies with Satan and Hell. So the English radical theme is reasserted in the cosmic epic. The radical departure from traditional epic practice here is significant. Compare Milton’s practice with Bakhtin’s definition of the epic: The epic as a genre in its own right may, for our purposes, be characterized by three constituent features: (1) a national epic past –in Goethe’s and Schiller’s terminology the ‘absolute past’ – serves as the subject for the epic; (2) national tradition (not personal experience and the free thought that grows out of it) serves as the source for the epic; (3) an absolute epic distance separates the epic world from contemporary reality, that is, from time in which the singer (the author and his audience) lives.9 The nationalist past and tradition of Bakhtin’s points (1) and (2) are significantly absent. And rather than preserving an absolute epic distance, Milton pointedly introduces contemporary references: in the way the world of Hell parallels his contemporary world, in the references to parliamentary practice, to gunpowder and to imperial trading adventures which we shall discuss later, and in the explicit reference to contemporary and near-contemporary figures like Galileo, 8 The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans, Boston, 1974; The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, ed. H. H. Margoliouth, revised by Pierre Legouis and E. E. Duncan-Jones, Oxford, 1971. 9 ‘Epic and Novel’ in M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, Austin, 1981, 13. whom Milton had visited (‘the Tuscan artist,’ I. 288) and Columbus (‘such of late / Columbus found,’ IX. 1115-16). Milton’s systematic redefinition of epic is characteristic of his strategy. He removes the nationalistic component, redefining his epic as cosmic, and then reinserts a contemporary nationalist reference to England as the Paradisal ‘happy isle’. In a similar way he opens the poem with a vision of splendid epic rebellion, only to redefine the nature of rebellion, deepening our thinking about rebellion and epic. At first glance Satan is the archetypal rebel, resisting the arbitrary authoritarianism of God. This was the reading of Paradise Lost that appealed to the Romantic poets – Blake and Shelley especially – and that continued through to William Empson.10 The poem records Satan’s rebellion in Heaven; it opens with Satan and his followers in defeat in Hell, and follows their revenge on God in Satan’s destruction of Adam and Eve. It is the destruction of Adam and Eve and the ensuing human race that is markedly less admirable than the heroic speeches of resistance, and it is this that requires our rethinking of the nature of Satan’s epic heroism. Satan as the master of lies is characteristically and inevitably ambiguous, and Milton exploits this ambiguity to make the reader rethink. And by an extraordinary, outrageous and absolutely persuasive reversal of received thinking, Milton redefines revolution. He confronts the established, ruling-class ideology head on: you are the rebels, he declares, you are the perpetuators of revolution against divine authority, against the good. The radical activists on earth are not rebels, they are the emissaries of divine truth attempting to restore the primal state.11 So the poem opens 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 Restores us, and regain the blissful seat, 10 John T. Shawcross, ed., Milton, 1732-1801: The Critical Heritage, London, 1972; William Empson, Milton’s God, London, 1965. 11 Fredric Jameson, ‘Religion and Ideology’ in Francis Barker et. al. ed., 1642: Literature and Power in the Seventeenth Century, Colchester, 1981, 129. Sing, heavenly Muse... (II. 1-6) The emphatic positioning of ‘Restore us’ at the poem’s beginning is an extraordinary assertion. The word ‘restore’ had been appropriated by the monarchical reaction that had destroyed the English revolution and brought the ‘Restoration’ of 1660. Milton seizes it back. The true restoration is to the primal Paradisal state. Monarchy is the rebellion against God. In the course of the poem Milton spells this out. Satan is unambiguously identified as ‘The monarch’ (II. 467) who uses ‘The tyrant’s plea’ (IV. 394). He sits ‘on a throne of royal state’ (II. 1) in parody of ‘the almighty Father ... High throned above all height’ (III. 56-8) Satan is traditionally the first, the archetypal rebel. Milton simultaneously presents him as the archetypal monarch. Monarchy is the fruit of Satan’s rebellion, an institution invented in a futile attempt to imitate the divine. It was not something established by God. Humanity was established as equal in Paradise; there were no social ranks. This is spelled out in the culminating book of the epic when Adam is shown a vision of the career of Nimrod (XII. 24-37). The ideal social model is ‘fair equality, fraternal state’. But Nimrod ‘will arrogate dominion undeserved / Over his brethren’ (XII. 27-8) just as Satan aspired ‘To set himself in glory above his peers’ (I. 39). It is a rebellion against the divinely instituted egalitarianism. Nimrod’s name derives from the Hebrew verb ‘to rebel’; but this arch rebel, like every ruling elite, accuses others of rebellion. Adam’s response to this vision is to reassert the original divine establishment of human equality: O execrable son, so to aspire Above his brethren, to himself assuming Authority usurped, from God not given; He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl, Dominion absolute; that right we hold By his donation: but man over men He made not lord - such title to himself Reserving, human left from human free. (XII. 64-71) The assertion has a further radical resonance. Milton is here offering the same socio-political interpretation of Genesis as the Diggers made in 1649. The Diggers had attempted to found a communist society. Their manifesto, The True Levellers' Standard Advanced: or the State of Community Opened and Presented to the Sons of Men turns to the Genesis account of Creation to define it. In the beginning of time, the great creator Reason made the earth to be a common treasury, to preserve the beasts, birds, fishes and man, the lord that was to govern this creation, for man had domination given to him, over the beasts, birds and fishes: but not one word was spoken in the beginning, that one branch of mankind should rule over another. And the reason is this. Every single man, male and female, is a perfect creature of himself.12 In the same year Milton wrote in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates his defence of the judicial execution of Charles I: No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free, being the image and resemblance of God himself, and were by privilege above all the creatures, born to command and not to obey; and that they liv’d so. Till from the root of Adam’s transgression, falling among themselves to doe wrong and violence, and foreseeing that such courses must needs tend to the destruction of them all, they agreed by common league to bind each other from mutual injury, and joyntly to defend themselves against any that gave disturbance or opposition to such agreement. Hence came Cities, Townes and Commonwealths/ And because no faith in all was found sufficiently binding, they saw it needful to ordaine som authoritie, that might restraine by force and punishment what was violated against peace and common right...13 12 Christopher Hill, ed, Winstanley: The Law of Freedom and Other Writings, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1973, 150. 13 The Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don M. Wolfe et al, 8 volumes, New Haven and London, 1953— 82, III. 198-9. Mankind was not born to exercise dominion over mankind. Structures of rule and control were established after the Fall, as a direct consequence of the Fall, of Satan’s destruction of the original Paradisal state. Milton’s strategy here is important. He is asserting that a radical vision is primary, not reactive. It has always been the argument of the ruling class that they are the natural rulers and than any radical challenge is reactive, disruptive, subversive, rebellious. Milton resolutely confronts this position. As he wrote in Areopagitica (1644): There be who perpetually complain of schisms and sects, and make it such a calamity that any man dissents from their maxims. 'Tis their own pride and ignorance which causes the disturbing, who neither will hear with meekness, nor can convince; yet all must be suppressed which is not found in their syntagma. They are the troublers, they are the dividers of unity, who neglect and permit not others to unite those dissevered pieces which are yet wanting to the body of Truth. (608) The revolutionary programme, the radical agenda, is the restoration of primal unity, primal truth, primal equality.14 Like the Diggers’ settlement, not only was the original created Paradise one of 'fair equality, fraternal state' (XII. 26), it was also one of common ownership. There was no private property, earth was 'a common treasury.' Celebrating the institution of marriage, Milton writes: Hail, wedded love, mysterious law, true source Of human offspring, sole propriety In Paradise of all things common else. (IV. 750-752) 14 See Michael Wilding, 'Milton's Areopagitica: Liberty for the Sects', Prose Studies, 9 (1986) 7- 38, reprinted in Thomas N. Corns, ed., The Literature of Controversy: Polemical Strategy from Milton to Junius, Frank Cass, London, 1987, 7-38. The Ranters of the English Revolution had extended their communism to sexuality. Milton, like the Diggers, opposed this. But he emphatically asserts that in every other sphere there was no private possession, 'all things common else.' It is a brief assertion, half a line in an epic. But it is unambiguously stated and at no point retracted. Unobtrusive enough to slip past the censors, who carefully scrutinized this work of a high-profile revolutionary, it spells out unassailably the social model of Paradise.15 Moreover it is not a property obsessed, materialist life in Paradise. The emphasis is on simplicity, sustainability. When the archangel Raphael visits, Adam walks forth, without more train Accompanied that with his own complete Perfections; in himself was all his state, More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits On princes, when their rich retinue long Of horses led and grooms besmeared with gold Dazzles the crowd and sets them all agape. (V. 351-357) Paradisal existence is defined as one of private domesticity in contrast with earthly ruling class corruptions, with the 'tedious pomp' designed to mystify the ruled. Milton's contempt for this public, political show is caught in the way the grooms are 'besmear'd' with gold. In contrast, when Adam and Eve entertain Raphael the emphasis is on nature rather than artifice: Raised of grassy turf Their table was, and mossy seats had round, And on her ample square, from side to side All autumn piled, though spring and autumn here Danced hand-in-hand. A while discourse they hold 15 On the Diggers and other radical groups of the English revolution, see Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, Harmondsworth, 1975; Eduard Bernstein, Cromwell and Communism: Socialism and Democracy in the Great English Revolution (1930), Nottingham, 1980; and David Petergorsky, Left-Wing Democracy in the English Revolution, London, 1940. No fear lest dinner cool... (V. 391-6) The stress is on the advantages of Paradisal primitivism. The food is freshly, freely on hand and does not need to be cooked. As for utensils, Adam and Eve simply pick fruits and use the shells. The savoury pulp they chew, and in the rind, Still as they thirsted, scoop the brimming stream. (IV. 335-6) There is no unnecessary commodity production. There are no markets, no bartering, no cash transactions, no Vanity Fair. Importantly, Adam and Eve are vegetarian. They do not eat flesh or fish. There is no death, no killing in Paradise till after the Fall. They live in friendship and harmony with the animals. About them frisking played All the beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase In wood or wilderness, forest or den; Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards, Gambolled before them; the unwieldy elephant, To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed His lithe proboscis... (IV. 340-347) It is a vision of primal harmony, the peaceable kingdom. Humanity's relationship with nature is an indicator of its relationships with itself. Political radicalism has at various times foregrounded this holistic vision. The vegetarianism of numerous radical figures - of Shelley, of Dr Shrapnel in Meredith's Beauchamp's Career, of George Bernard Shaw, of Jack Lindsay - has tended all too often to be marginalized. The emergence of an environmental politics has brought these issues back into focus. They are all part of a whole vision: freedom, equality, environmental concern, vegetarianism, anti-militarism, common ownership. Flesh-eating is introduced after the Fall. Sin instructs Death 'Thou therefore of these herbs, and fruits, and flowers / Feed first, on each beast next, and fish, and fowl...'(X 603-4) Death declares such a scent I draw Of carnage, prey innumerable, and taste The savour of death from all things there that live. (X. 267-9) The introduction of death is in terms associated with eating and appetite: 'prey', 'taste', 'savour.' So saying, with delight he snuffed the smell Of mortal change on earth, though many a league remote Against the day of battle, to a field Where armies lie encamped come flying, lured With scent of living carcasses designed For death the following day in bloody fight; So scented the grim feature, and upturned His nostril wide into the murky air, Sagacious of his quarry from so far. (X. 272-81) The way Death 'snuff'd the smell' again identifies mortality, the Fall, and flesh-eating. Carnivorousness is the defining quality of Death, and Death is introduced to earth by the Fall. Flesh eating is one of contemporary human habits alien to Paradise before the fall. Nimrod, the hunter, is the first earthly tyrant. The other associated activity likewise alien is warfare, and Milton's rejection of militarism is one of the most radical features of his epic. It is here closely linked with Death's carnivorousness. The possibilities for presenting Paradise are various; they all clearly depend upon a vision of social good. The Old Man of the Mountains, familiar from the accounts by Marco Polo and Sir Thomas Mandeville, offered a paradise of flowing drinks and enticing young women to the hashish-entranced assassins he trained. Milton's Paradise is markedly not a place of rest and recreation leave for killers. It is not a paradise of idleness and indulgence. There was sexuality: that is stressed in radical opposition to those who would deny it. And centrally there is work. It is not exploitative, alienated labour; it is work without undue pressures, work that is part of the totality of Adam and Eve's existence, work that stimulates the appetite and that makes rest a delight rather than a tedium. They sat them down, and after no more toil Of their sweet gardening labour than sufficed To recommend cool Zephyr, and made ease More easy, wholesome thirst and appetite More grateful, to their supper-fruits they fell... (IV. 327-31) It is work, but it is not burdensome: this point is re-iterated: Yet not so strictly hath our Lord imposed Labour as to debar us when we need Refreshment, whether food or talk... (IX. 235-7) In Milton’s radical vision work is central to human life. Paradise is a place of work. He does not offer an aristocratic ideal of indulgence and diversion. It is not a leisure class vision of idleness. There are no servants in Paradise, no handmaidens, no slaves, no robots, no laboursaving devices. Labour is a central part of Paradise. Milton is in accord with Karl Marx here. As Marx wrote in Capital As creator of use-values, as useful labour, labour is a necessary condition of human existence, and one that is independent of the forms of human society; it is, through all the ages, a necessity imposed by nature itself, for without it there can be no interchange of materials between man and nature – in a word, no life.'16 This is the era of the country house poem, and Paradise is 'a happy rural seat of various view.' (IV. 218) But it is markedly distinguished from the ruling class vision of Ben Jonson's 16 Karl Marx, Capital, translated by Eden and Cedar Paul, Everyman, Library, J. M. Dent, London, 1930, I. 12. 'Penshurst', where the tenants do all the work, or even of Marvell's 'Appleton House,' where Fairfax may take the salute from the flowers, but we do not see him bedding them out, or giving a hand at mowing the hay like Leo Tolstoy's Levin in War and Peace. In contrast to Paradise, Milton presents Hell as materialist, technological, sophisticated, hierarchical and militaristic. The stress is on Pandemonium's architectural splendour, on the intimidating building of an absolutist regime. Built like a temple, where pilasters round Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid With golden architrave; nor did their want Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven: The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon Nor great Alcairo such magnificence Equalled in all their glories... (I. 713-19) The stress is on architectural splendour, on the intimidating buildings of an absolutist regime. The inspiration for such achievement is Mammon (whose name is the Aramaic word for riches): Mammon led them on – Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell From heaven; for even in heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven’s pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed In vision beatific; by him first Men also, and by his suggestion taught Ransacked the bowels of their mother earth For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew Opened into the hill a spacious wound, And digged out ribs of gold. Let none admire That riches grow in hell; that soil may best Deserve the precious bane. (I. 678-92) Milton’s critique is unambiguous. It is greed for material riches, represented by Mammon, that inspires the mining enterprises. Milton presents earth as a sensate being - 'their mother earth' - an ancient concept that is once again part of an environmental politics. Rifling the bowels is what the executioners did when hanging, drawing and quartering. Digging out ribs of gold represents a Hellish parody of the creation of Eve. Once seen as benightedly anti-technological, Milton's concerns here at the destruction and desecration of 'mother earth' can now be properly resituated as prescient radical environmentalism. The first mining enterprises are Hellish. It might be objected that these represented episodes of mining occur in Heaven, when the first cannon are made, and in Hell, when Pandemonium is constructed, rather than on earth. But Milton stresses a continuity throughout his cosmos. And whereas the Paradise he shows us is an unspoiled primal state, Hell represents a pre-vision of what the earth was to become with its mines, buildings, parliament, military, and false philosophers. Hell is consistently presented in comparison with earthly civilizations: the epic similes serve to introduce Fiesole, Valdarno, Norwegian hills, Pelorus, Etna, the Red Sea, the Rhine, the Danube, Egypt, Gibraltar, Libya and so on. The analogies and comparisons serve to indicate that Hell is the site of Milton’s critique of the modern world. Hellish technology is closely associated with repressive and destructive aims, the military-industrial complex, as one U.S. president put it. Pandemonium is the venue for the puppet parliament of Satan's archetypal tyranny, in which the imperialist conquest and exploitation of Paradise is proposed and approved. Before their fall, Satan's crew develop cannons and gunpowder in heaven. They are the first armaments manufacturers. Raphael spells out the parallel between Satanic and human military technology to Adam: In future days, if malice should abound, Some one, intent on mischief, or inspired With devilish machination, might devise Like instrument to plague the sons of men For sin, on war and mutual slaughter bent. (VI. 502-6) The cannon are first used in the war in Heaven. Backed by this weapons technology, Satan launches his archetypal imperialist adventure from Hell, the conquest of 'this new world' (II. 403). Beelzebub proposes the scheme as a revenge on God for their defeat: either with hell-fire To waste his whole creation, or possess All as our own, and drive, as we were driven, The puny habitants; or if not drive. Seduce them to our party... (II. 364-8) As it happens, seduction rather than force is the successful methodology. Satan is situated firmly in that interface of disinformation, armaments, and drug trading so familiar in the late twentieth century. Is it mere happy coincidence or a chilling prophecy of Irangate and the contras, that Satan's troops assemble in 'The quarters of the north' (V. 689) ? Setting off on his mission of destruction, Satan's voyage is compared to that of a trading fleet Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring Their spicy drugs... (II. 638-40) The association with the colonial ventures of European powers is spelled out.17 Of course the annotators will remind us that drugs means dried products. But Milton knew about drugs in the sense of narcotics and addictive substances. He notes the use of betel nuts by the Javanese in his Commonplace Book. His contemporary Thomas Shadwell was one of the first English poets with an addiction to opium - so Dryden writes in MacFlecknoe 'His temples, last, with poppies were o'erspread / That nodding seemed to consecrate his head.'(1267) Van Linschoten's account of his voyage to the East Indies, translated into English in 1598, 17 See J. Martin Evans, ‘Milton’s Imperial Epic’, in P. G. Stanwood, ed., Of Poetry and Politics: New Essays on Milton and His World, MRTS, Binghamton, New York, 1995. offers one of the earliest western accounts of bangue, cannabis, and its use by the military and exploited labourers: The common women use it when they meane to have a mans companie, to be merrie, and to set all care aside. It was invented by Captaines and souldiers, when they had layne long in the field, continually waking and with great travell, they desiring again to comfort themselves, thereby to settle their braines doe use Bangue, in such manner as is aforesaid ... It causeth such as eat it, to reele and looke as if they were drunke, and half foolish, doing nothing but laugh and bee merrie, as long as it worketh in their bodies. It is verie much used by the Indians, and likewise by some Portingales, but most by the slaves thereby to forget their labour: to conclude it is a small comfort to melancholy.18 Britain's trading, exploring and settling activities were well under way in India and North America by the time Milton was writing Paradise Lost. It is often argued that any indictment of colonialism is a specifically anti-Spanish product of the Protestant anti-Catholic propaganda embodied in such tracts as The Tears of the Poor Indians, which Milton's nephew translated. But there is no need to restrict matters so narrowly. Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, and Jonathan Swift's denunciation of a modern colony in Gulliver's Travels were soon to appear. For Milton not to have put in an imperial context into the comprehensive vision of an epic would have been remiss. Developing colonialism was a fact of the seventeenth-century world as economic globalization is of today's world. This was what distinguished it from the earlier period. The epic that deals with the events of the very beginnings of human history firmly locates its reference after the Fall in the present time. Both East and West Indies are specified. After the Fall, conscious of their nakedness, Adam and Eve choose The fig-tree – not that kind for fruit renowned, But such as at this day to Indians known, In Malabar or Decan spreads her arms 18 The Voyage of John Huyghen Van Linschoten to the East Indies, ed. A. Tiele, volume II, Hakluyt Society, London, 1885,115-6. Branching so broad and long... Those leaves They gathered, broad as Amazonian targe, And with what skill they had together sewed, To gird their waist – vain covering, if to hide Their guilt and dreadful shame; O how unlike To that first naked glory! Such of late Columbus found the American, so girt With feathered cincture, naked else and wild, Among the trees on isles and woody shores. (IX. 1100-18) They choose the fig tree for covering, 'such as at this day to Indians known,/ In Malabar or Decan.' 'Such of late / Columbus found the American.' (IX. 1100-1116). 'At this day', 'such of late': the fallen Adam and Eve are identified with the newly colonized peoples of India and America of Milton's contemporary world. And if they are to be compared to Indian and American peoples, then the invading colonizer Satan is implicitly but inescapably to be identified with the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and English merchant adventurers, and the values of those adventurers are to be registered as Satanic. Satan reaches earth from Hell by flight, but the recurrent images describing his progress are of a sea voyage. This, in an era before air travel and space travel, locates him pointedly in contemporary analogies: the European voyages of trading and colonization. The decision to make the attack on earth was ratified by the parliament of Hell. At one level the motivation is revenge on God for the defeat in the war in Heaven. But at the same time Milton presents it as a thoroughly political decision, approved by the decision of a modern parliament. The political context offers yet another radical indictment of contemporary practice. The parliament of Hell is a sham, the democratic institution a mystifying illusion. The first indication of this is given at the end of Book I when the fallen angels swarm to the ‘solemn council’ (I. 755). In order for them all to enter they have to reduce their size. Thus incorporeal spirits to smallest forms Reduced their shapes immense, and were at large, Though without number still amidst the hall Of that infernal court. But far within, And in their own dimensions like themselves, The great seraphic lords and cherubim In close recess and secret conclave sat, A thousand demi-gods on golden seats, Frequent and full. (II. 789-97) The members of the council retain their full size and consult in secret; the crowd remains outside, reduced; a physical reduction that expresses the reduction of their significance to the political decision making. As for the council of a thousand, far too many for any meaningful consultation, only four get to speak: Moloch, Belial, Mammon and Beelzebub. It is a blatant travesty of decision-making, and a powerful indictment of parliamentary practice.19 Moreover, of those four speakers, Beelzebub was merely proposing what Satan himself had already decided – the attack on Paradise: Thus Beelzebub Pleaded his devilish counsel – first devised By Satan, and in part proposed. (II. 178-80) Critical attention has tended to focus on the rhetorical splendour of the individual speeches. This has its appropriateness, for they are splendid; but their objective function is to divert attention from the realities of the decision-making process. The decision has already been made secretly, in a private deal. The parliamentary debate is a theatrical masquerade. Such is Milton’s radical analysis of contemporary political practice. The epic poem traditionally has a hero, a powerful protagonist on whose adventures the action revolves. Satan is the obvious candidate for the role in Paradise Lost, but how can the 19 Merritt Y. Hughes, ‘Satan and the “Myth” of the Tyrant’, in Hughes, Ten perspectives on Milton, New Haven, 1965, 187. embodiment of evil be the hero? Milton’s strategy, of course, is to re-evaluate the nature of heroism.20 Satan, with his great physical strength, his undoubted military courage, his commitment to revenge and his refusal to surrender, embodies a large part of the traditional heroic qualities. Verbal and metaphorical parallels and allusions to the Iliad and the Aeneid are recurrent.21 But how admirable are these traditional heroic qualities? Is military might something we want to admire and enshrine? Satan responds to Abdiel in the war in Heaven, defending ‘The strife which thou call’st evil, but we style / The strife of glory...’ (VI. 289-90). It is Milton’s strategy to present this traditional ‘strife of glory’ in a questioning way, to show it clearly as the strife of evil. By giving the role of epic hero to Satan, Milton redefines the traditional celebration of military might as the commemoration of military atrocities. It is a radical rewriting of the epic, a confrontation of the whole cultural tradition, and a refusal of contemporary social practice. It is a rejection of conventional, official values towards militarism as challenging today as it was when written. The rejection is explicit in the invocation to Book IX, where Milton describes himself as Not sedulous by nature to indite Wars, hitherto the only argument Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissect With long an tedious havoc fabled knights In battle feigned. (IX. 27-31) He is not only not ‘skilled’ in the militarism and ruling-class pageantry of the traditional heroic poem, he is not ‘studious’ in it either (IX. 42); it is not something on which he has spent time or in which he intends to develop his skills. There is indeed ‘long and tedious havoc’ in Paradise Lost, but it is grotesque.22 The war in Heaven begins with full epic clichés: 20 John M. Steadman, Milton and the Renaissance Hero, Oxford, 1967; Michael Wilding, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Sydney, 1969. 21 Davis P. Harding, The Club of Hercules: Studies in the Classical Background of Paradise Lost, Urbana, 1962. 22 Arnold Stein, Answerable Style, Minneapolis, 1953. Now waved their fiery swords, and in the air made horrid circles; two broad suns their shields Blazed opposite, while Expectation stood In horror... (VI. 304-7) But it soon becomes mock epic or anti-epic. Satan introduces the cannon ‘scoffing in ambiguous words’ (VI. 568): ‘Vanguard, to right and left the front unfold That all may see who hate us how we seek Peace and composure, and with open breast Stand ready to receive them, if they like Our overture, and turn not back perverse; But that I doubt; however, witness heaven; Heaven, witness thou anon, while we discharge Freely our part; ye who appointed stand Do as you have in charge, and briefly touch What we propound, and loud that all may hear.’ (VI. 558-67) After the onslaught Belial remarks: ‘Leader, the terms we sent were terms of weight, Of hard contents, and full of force urged home.’ (VI. 61-2) The punning on the technical terms of cannonry, on the firing procedures and on the weighty cannon balls help bring the episode close to burlesque. The response of the good angels increases that tendency. They throw back hills. They plucked the seated hills with all their load Rocks, waters, woods, and, by the shaggy tops Uplifting, bore them in their hands... (VI. 644-6) The episode has moved beyond epic splendor to excess – an excess of technology, an excess of punning, an excess of sheer brute force: So hills amid the air encountered hills, Hurled to and from with jaculation dire, That underground they fought in dismal shade... (VI. 664-6) There is a deliberately grotesque aspect to this, an absurdist critique of epic warfare. The focus of the epic has moved from the traditional single combat encounter, with all its alleged nobility, to absurdity: an absurdity of labored puns, an absurdity of child-like mudthrowing, an absurdity of overkill. This is not an episode that ennobles military conflict. And Milton’s final point is that nothing is achieved, nothing is proved. Even though the good angels have right on their side, warfare resolves nothing. The Almighty Father says to the Son: sore hath been their fight, As likeliest was when two such foes met armed: For to themselves I left them; and thou know’st Equal in their creation they were formed, Save what sin hath impaired – which yet hath wrought Insensibly, for I suspend their doom: When in perpetual fight they needs must last Endless, and no solution will be found: War wearied hath performed what war can do... (VI. 687-95) This is no war to end all wars, for there never was or could be such. This is the archetypal war in which nothing is resolved, nothing is achieved. There is nothing admirable, nothing noble, nothing glorious. It is just ‘long and tedious havoc’, the stuff of traditional epic poetry. Just as Satan’s archetypal monarchical tyranny is shown in its first earthly manifestation in Nimrod, so his archetypal militarism is shown in its first earthly manifestation with the giants. This thematic reiteration firmly locates Milton’s critique as applicable to earthly issues. The cosmic evil of Satan is something re-enacted continually on earth; its manifestations are there in ruling-class practice – in monarchical tyranny, parliamentary fraud, military slaughter. We are shown the giants in battle, and Michael interprets the episode to Adam: Such were these giants, men of high renown: For in those days might only shall be admired, And valour and heroic virtue called; To overcome in battle, and subdue Nations, and bring home spoils with infinite Manslaughter, shall be held the highest pitch Of human glory, and for glory done, Of triumph, to be styled great conquerors, Patrons of mankind, gods, and sons of gods, Destroyers rightlier called, and plagues of men. Thus fame shall be achieved, renown on earth, And what most merits fame in silence hid. (XI. 688-99) The rejection of militarism and military solutions is explicit and unambiguous. Milton’s position was consistent on this. In Paradise Regained the Son tells Satan: They err who count it glorious to subdue By conquest far and wide, to overrun Large countries, and in fields great battles win, Great cities by assault; what do these worthies But rob and spoil, burn, slaughter, and enslave Peaceable nations. (III. 71-6) In the rejection of traditional epic military values, Milton’s concerns are both social and literary. There is no separation between the two. In challenging and rewriting literary tradition in its privileging of militarism, he is at the same time challenging prevailing social attitudes and ruling-class assumptions. He is a revolutionary in the literary sphere and in the political sphere, for each involves the other. This can be seen in his prefatory note to Paradise Lost on ‘The Verse’. It concludes; The neglect them of rhyme so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming. (p. 148) The terms are the terms of his political radicalism – the recovery of ‘ancient liberty’ from ‘modern bondage’. Liberty is what humanity began with, and lost, and must no struggle to restore: Paradise Lost was written as ‘an example’ of what had been lost, and what can be done. Paradise is a model for how things were: a pre-corrupted England, a pre-colonized world. But it is destroyed. The future offered to Adam is 'a Paradise within thee, happier far.' (XII. 587) These lines have often been interpreted as a mark of Milton's post-Restoration quietism, indeed I have interpreted them that way myself. 'Tyranny must be, / Though to the tyrant thereby no excuse.' (XII. 95-96) Is this to imply that political change on earth is not to be sought for, cannot be achieved ? In the short term, perhaps that was the correct reading. Attempts to revive the radical impulse in the 1660s and 1670s were defeated. But if quietism is a total message, for all readers, then why did Milton include his indisputably radical message in the poem? If there is no hope of re-establishing the egalitarian, communal, peaceful society, why go to such pains to present it to us? Just to let us know what is irrevocably lost? Or to keep the spirit of radical opposition alive? Despite all the mystificatory and obscurantist interpretations, Milton's work has continued to be a text of radical inspiration for over three hundred years. It has continued to carry the word of possibility and resistance through the 'evil days ... in darkness and with dangers compassed round.' (VI. 26-28), it has provided a continuum between the generations ensuring that the model of the desirable is not lost. 'Members of Milton's fit audience sit and wait in the darkness, but they read by the candlelight in the meantime,' Sharon Achinstein writes in Milton and the Revolutionary Reader. She offers us a persuasive account of Milton's strategy: ‘In the nighttime of the earthly kingdom launched in the Restoration, these faithful few, keeping watch, await the true light of day, the true Kingdom of God. For Milton the task ahead was to keep up the faith, either ‘Sole, or responsive each to other's note.’’23 The period of darkness provides a time for a regrouping of forces and energies, until out of the darkness light will emerge once again. 23 Sharon Achinstein, Milton and the Revolutionary Reader, Princeton University Press, 1994, 223, 215.