"Satanic Tongues" in Paradise Lost?

Original Sin: Blinded by Idolatrous Love?

What did these two see in each other?

Illuminated Manuscript, Spain, circa 950-955 A.D.

El Escorial, Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo, Ms & II. 5 f° 18

(Image from Wikipedia)

Yesterday's post considered Adam's idolatrous love for Eve in Milton's Paradise Lost, a devotion so vehement that Milton describes it as "uxorious" in his Christian Doctrine (John Carey, translator, Complete Prose Works of John Milton, Volume 6, Maurice Kelley, editor (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973), page 383). Milton presents this love as having led Adam very far astray, as we already know.

Today's post picks up on my still-developing article immediately after the section posted yesterday:

If Adam is idolizing Eve, then he is guilty of idolatry, and from our investigation above, his actions would seem to constitute precisely that sort of religious error. Further to this point, as we have already seen, he characterizes Eve as "holy" and even calls her "divine":

O fairest of Creation, last and best
Of all Gods works, Creature in whom excell'd
Whatever can to sight or thought be formd,
Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet! (PL 9.896-9)

Note how this putatively still unfallen, vocative address by Adam to Eve recalls Eve's own fallen, vocative, idolatrous address to the Tree of Knowledge:

O Sovran, vertuous, precious of all Trees
In Paradise, of operation blest
To Sapience . . . (PL 9.795-7)

She concludes her idolatrous address by literally worshipping the tree, or perhaps the power within:

So saying, from the Tree her step she turnd,
But first low Reverence don, as to the power
That dwelt within, whose presence had infus'd
Into the plant sciential sap, deriv'd
From Nectar, drink of Gods. (PL 9.834-838)

Her idolatry is thus paralleled by Adam's idolatry, his worship of Eve, and note that immediately following this passage in which Eve worships the tree comes the passage in which Adam weaves the garland for Eve as if he were a mere reaper honoring the revered "Harvest Queen."

Moreover, Adam's overpraise of Eve in his thoughts recalls the satanically possessed serpent's similar overpraise (cf. PL 9.615):

Fairest resemblance of thy Maker faire,
Thee all things living gaze on, all things thine
By gift, and thy Celestial Beautie adore
With ravishment beheld, there best beheld
Where universally admir'd; but here
In this enclosure wild, these Beasts among,
Beholders rude, and shallow to discerne
Half what in thee is fair, one man except,
Who sees thee? (and what is one?) who shouldst be seen
A Goddess among Gods, ador'd and serv'd
By Angels numberless, thy daily Train. (PL 9.538-548)

In unsuspectingly echoing the diabolical serpent's words, Adam effectively speaks with the serpent's tongue and thereby reveals his own already falling mind, for only seven lines down from calling Eve "holy" and "divine," Adam concludes that some enemy has ruined not only her but "mee with thee hath ruind, for with thee / Certain my resolution is to Die" (PL 9.906-7). Adam's mind falls still further as he soon begins to question whether breaking God's command was really wrong since the serpent had already touched the tree and eaten its fruit and further to question if death really will follow as the consequence.

Despite all of this mental conturbation -- if I may coin a Carrollean portmanteau word -- Adam is "not deceav'd" but is rationalizing "Against his better knowledge" (PL 9.998), allowing his reason to be led astray by his vehement, idolatrous love for Eve that expresses itself in a Satanic tongue . . . as Milton sees things, of course.

Adam's Idolatrous Love

Postlapsarian Gardening

"Make Haste, for Eve is Gathering..."

(Idolatrous Image from Wikipedia)

I've finished a rough draft of my Milton article, and today's section explores Adam's 'idolatry':

When a postlapsarian Eve returns to Adam, she announces that she has taken from the Tree of Knowledge and that its fruit is good:

This Tree is not as we are told, a Tree
Of danger tasted, nor to evil unknown
Op'ning the way, but of Divine effect
To open Eyes, and make them Gods who taste; (PL 9.863-6)

Implicitly, she sets herself as a divinity, above Adam in knowledge and status, and in lines that soon follow, she makes this explicit:

Thou therefore also taste, that equal Lot
May joyne us, equal Joy, as equal Love;
Least thou not tasting, different degree
Disjoyne us, and I then too late renounce
Deitie for thee, when Fate will not permit. (PL 9.881-5)

In such manner does Eve now esteem herself divine, inviting Adam to do the same or bear the consequences of separation from her godhead.

At that moment -- given what Raphael has told him -- Adam ought to remonstrate with Eve and rationally oppose her statements, remind her that she has broken the divine command, and perhaps seek to intercede with God for her. Instead he temporizes, hesitating while he silently reflects:

O fairest of Creation, last and best
Of all Gods works, Creature in whom excell'd
Whatever can to sight or thought be formd,
Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet! (PL 9.896-9)

Instead of responding as Raphael would have advised, Adam silently addresses the fallen Eve not only as if she were yet unfallen but even as if she were a being superior, the best of God's works, excellent in both form and mind, even holy and divine! Little wonder, then, that Adam uses the vocative and addresses Eve with the awed reverence due to a divine being.

Milton quickly goes on to show us, as earlier adumbrated, that Adam "resolves through vehemence of love" to share Eve's fate (Book 9, "Argument"). In Milton's time, the word "vehemence" could mean "great or excessive ardour, . . . fervour of personal feeling[, or] . . . passionate force" (Oxford English Dictionary 3599), and this would seem to fit Adam's case, as Raphael has warned him about succumbing to passion for lower things as though they were higher rather than loving with a refined, rational love the truly higher things that raise one to heaven (cf. PL 8.579-594). These passionate feelings have been anticipated by his actions in preparing for Eve's return, for he had already implicitly set her above himself by forming a garland with which to crown her at her appearance:

. . . Adam the while
Waiting desirous her return, had wove
Of choicest Flours a Garland to adorne
Her Tresses, and her rural labours crown,
As Reapers oft are wont thir Harvest Queen. (PL 9.838-42)

Here, Milton lifts a motif from pastoral poetry, but it shares in common with the tradition of courtly love the elevation of the woman above the man, being merely transferred from the court to a rural setting.

Moreover, Milton insinuates pagan associations with the reference to Eve as "Harvest Queen," a ritual figure in the sort of "rural festivals denounced by many Puritans as profanations of the sabbath, pagan in origin, and occasions of sin" (Dale Hudson and Maeve Adams, "Civil War of Ideas: Overview," Norton Anthology of English Literature, Norton Topics Online, paragraph 2). The eighteenth-century antiquarian William Hutchinson reports on such a harvest festival in Northumberland, England:

In some places, an Image apparelled in great finery, crowned with flowers, a sheaf of corn placed under her arm, a scycle in her hand, carried out of the village in the morning of the conclusive reaping day, with musick and much clamour of the reapers, into the field, where it stands fixed on a pole all day, and when the reaping is done, is brought home in like manner. This they call the Harvest Queen and it represents the Roman Ceres. (Hutchinson, A View of Northumberland, with an Excursion to the Abbey of Mailross in Scotland, 2 Volumes (Newcastle, 1778), Volume 2, ad finem, 17)

One might doubt the classically trained Hutchinson's identification of a Northumberland "Harvest Queen" with the Roman goddess of harvest Ceres, but an obviously pre-Christian crop festival in which reapers joyfully crown their harvest queen with flowers sounds rather like what Milton is alluding to. One might object that Hutchinson is describing an "Image" rather than a human being, but is Milton himself clearly alluding to a woman being crowned by reapers? Even if he were, the parallels to a pagan harvest festival remain and suggest that Adam risks the danger of idolizing Eve through his vehemence of love.

Well, thus stands this 'idolatry' section from my article's completed rough draft in all its "mutable perfection" and awaiting critique.

Actually, I could use some assistance on a particular point. The quote from Hutchinson is useful for commenting upon Milton's "Harvest Queen" allusion, and I don't think that scholars have previously noted it, but I'm a bit leery of using it because I haven't been able to confirm the quote to my satisfaction. If anybody reading this happens to have access to a copy of Hutchinson's book, A View of Northumberland, and could check the quote for accuracy in its details and its citation, I'd be eternally grateful.

Not that I'll continually thank you over on that other shore, which could get tedious for us both, but that I -- like Adam but minus the idolatry -- will silently esteem you for your gracious act of kindness.