Milton: Books are not absolutely dead things . . .

John Milton

I borrowed from at least two different writings by Milton and at least a couple more not by Milton in composing this sonnet below, which is in the series of poems I've called the Writing Block series. In order to make this more fun, let's see which readers can find the sources to the poem below:

Not Books Alone

Also is letter not completely dead,
But in the vial of the living word
Sustained is law that oft soundeth absurd,
Provoking object that, provoking, led

To choiceless choice, for reason is but choice,
And Satan quick did grasp the naked truth,
That Eve and Adam, much to their great ruth,
Grasped naked, that reasonless meant the Voice

To excite voiced obedience: "Now choose
Life" from the Tree of Life and live by faith
Sustained through grace, or so He sayeth,

Yet still I fear can this salvation lose,
Though grace hath promised that she ever stayeth,
For gaze on Lucifer, who ever strayeth.

There it is, a sonnet in process, which might or might not be finished. I generally keep tinkering on my poems forever . . .

"le-ruach ha-yom": "the cool of the day"?

Domenico Zampieri, Adam and Eve (1623-25)

The Lord God 'walking' in the garden

in the cool of the day?

(cf. Genesis 3.8 and 3.12)

(Image from Wikipedia)

One Milton List scholar (who prefers anonymity) has recently inquired about the precise time of day denoted in Paradise Lost 10.92-102 by several expressions (e.g., "cadence low," meaning "sinking low"):

Now was the Sun in Western cadence low
From Noon, and gentle Aires due at thir hour
To fan the Earth now wak'd, and usher in
The Eevning coole, when he from wrauth more coole [ 95 ]
Came the mild Judge and Intercessor both
To sentence Man: the voice of God they heard
Now walking in the Garden, by soft windes
Brought to thir Ears, while day declin'd, they heard,
And from his presence hid themselves among [ 100 ]
The thickest Trees, both Man and Wife, till God
Approaching, thus to Adam call'd aloud. (PL 10.92-102)

In this passage, Milton fills out the scene described in Genesis 3.8:

And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. (Genesis 3.8, King James Version)

Milton draws upon an ancient interpretation from the early church that the Son of God came to judge Adam and Eve -- apparently interpreting "voice of the LORD God" to mean God's "Word," a hermeneutic that probably derives its theological justification from the opening verse of the John's Gospel:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1.1, King James Version)

Another Milton List scholar, Matthew Stallard -- of Ohio University's Department of English Language and Literature -- cited biblical souces that Milton might have drawn on:

Interestingly, the 1560 Geneva, 1558 Bishop's Bible, the 1540 Great Bible, and the 1611 Authorized Version all refer to this as "the cool of the day" at Genesis 3:8. The 1610 Duoay-Rheims, while stopping short of naming the exact hour, renders it as "the afternoon air." Literally, the Hebrew here (ru'ach) could be translated as "spirit" or "wind" or "breath" of the day. Sounds refreshing enough.

Surprised that "cool" translates "ruach," I checked this out and posted my own note to the Milton List:

I'd never noticed that Genesis 3.8 says "le-ruach ha-yom," literally, "the spirit/wind of the day." I presume that the expression "the cool of the day" is an idiomatic translation, for I didn't find "cool" for "ruach" in my Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament.

Here's an unscholarly-looking website that compares Genesis 3.8 with Genesis 18.1:

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http://net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Afternoon

AFTERNOON - af-ter-noon' (neToth ha-yom, "the declining of the day"; Jdg 19:8 the King James Version): The expression kechom ha-yom, "in the heat of the day" (Gen 18:1) refers to the early afternoon when the sun is a little past its zenith, its rays still being very strong. The phrase le-ruach ha-yom, "in the cool of the day" (Gen 3:8) is in contrast to the last phrase and points to the late afternoon; in the Orient a cooling breeze arises at this period of the day, and it is then that much of the day's business is transacted.
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No lexical sources are given, so take the above with a grain of salt, but the reasoning sounds reasonable.

Now, I know that some of my Gypsy Scholar readers have greater knowledge of Hebrew than I do and could probably fill us in on why "le-ruach ha-yom" -- "the spirit/wind of the day" -- gets translated as "the cool of the day." Can "ruach" also mean "cool," or is this expression (le-ruach ha-yom) translated in a purely idiomatic way?

The Bonds of 'Freedom'...

The Heart of the Order

Thomas Boswell

The heart of the moral order?

(Image from Amazon.com)

Anyone who has read my article "Economy of Damnation: Satan's Fall in Paradise Lost" (Milton and Early Modern English Studies 15.2 (2005.11)) will know that Milton presents Satan's rebellion against the moral order and for unbounded freedom as merely delivering the falling archangel over to the bonds of his own fallen character, such that he is driven by his contending desires and unguided by the moral reasoning that had characterized his pre-fallen state.

Not even able to choose grace, he is beyond redemption.

Anyone intrepid enough to subject one's self to reaching the article can go to the MEMES website, ignore the annoying pop-up, click on "Publications," and run the cursor down to click on the fourth item in the list (학회지보기), which takes one's self to the online journal where one's self can click on Milton and Early Modern English Studies 15.2 and read a pdf of my article, "Economy of Damnation: Satan's Fall in Paradise Lost."

Or just click on the article title in my previous sentence and subject one's self to the article alone.

But if that doesn't tempt you, then read instead Thomas Boswell's Washington Post article for March 12, 2007, "Don't Make Bonds A Guilty Pleasure," for an erudite and penetrating analysis of Barry Bonds steroid-driven, diabolical quest for Hank Aaron's home run record. Let me whet your appetite with some choice quotes:

Barry Bonds wants to overshadow this entire baseball season and harm the sport he has grown to hate and wants to hurt....

A year ago, there was hope that Bonds would simply fade away, worn down by age, injury and, perhaps, baseball's history of undeserved good luck. "I don't even want to play next year," Bonds said last year during spring training. "Baseball is a fun sport. But I'm not having fun. I've never cared about records anyway, so what difference does it make."

Now the tune has changed utterly. Disgusted with appearing weak and, in his mind, appeasing his enemies, Bonds has embraced the dark side. "I'm playing until I'm 100," he now says. "You guys get used to me"....

If Bonds's current defiant stance seems to have more depth than his whiny demeanor last spring, then there's probably a simple reason. Bonds is echoing one of our oldest and most emotionally complex archetypes -- the fallen angel, the proud, ambitious transgressor who is hurled from heaven.

Who knew a left fielder could stumble into such classic material?

"Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven," Milton's Satan decided in "Paradise Lost." "To be weak is miserable. . . . My sentence is for open war, which, if not victory, is yet revenge."

Many have agreed with the poet William Blake that Milton drew such a sympathetic portrait of Satan that he was "of the Devil's party without knowing it." There may be a similarly perverse temptation in our antihero culture to shrug and give Bonds a free pass into baseball history.

There's an old cliché that baseball is like life. A terrific riff on the cliché is that baseball isn't really like life because baseball is much more important than that. Turns out, baseball is so epic in scope that it's even intimately involved in the metaphysical struggle between good and evil and thus reflects the pre-cosmic war in heaven between the fallen and the unfallen angels.

But you've already sensed this if you've seen The Natural or the even earlier Damn Yankees.

Still, it's good to be reminded, so if you want good sports writing leavened with erudite moral reasoning, read Boswell's article.

Paradise Lost: The Movie!

Gustave Doré, Expulsion from Heaven

(Image from History of Art: Gustav Dore)

Michael Joseph Gross reviews a movie not yet made in his New York Times article "It's God vs. Satan. But What About the Nudity?"

The title refers to the nudity of Adam and Eve, and handling that part of the film would be difficult, especially the first couple's first coupling after they've tasted the big apple. Milton implies that their coupling is rough sex, and though he doesn't get pornographic in his description, he doesn't shy away from presenting it:

As with new Wine intoxicated both
They swim in mirth, and fansie that they feel
Divinitie within them breeding wings [ 1010 ]
Wherewith to scorne the Earth: but that false Fruit
Farr other operation first displaid,
Carnal desire enflaming, hee on Eve
Began to cast lascivious Eyes, she him
As wantonly repaid; in Lust they burne: [ 1015 ]
Till Adam thus 'gan Eve to dalliance move,

Eve, now I see thou art exact of taste,
And elegant, of Sapience no small part,
Since to each meaning savour we apply,
And Palate call judicious; I the praise [ 1020 ]
Yeild thee, so well this day thou hast purvey'd.
Much pleasure we have lost, while we abstain'd
From this delightful Fruit, nor known till now
True relish, tasting; if such pleasure be
In things to us forbidden, it might be wish'd, [ 1025 ]
For this one Tree had bin forbidden ten.
But come, so well refresh't, now let us play,
As meet is, after such delicious Fare;
For never did thy Beautie since the day
I saw thee first and wedded thee, adorn'd [ 1030 ]
With all perfections, so enflame my sense
With ardor to enjoy thee, fairer now
Then ever, bountie of this vertuous Tree.

So said he, and forbore not glance or toy
Of amorous intent, well understood [ 1035 ]
Of Eve, whose Eye darted contagious Fire.
Her hand he seis'd, and to a shadie bank,
Thick overhead with verdant roof imbowr'd
He led her nothing loath; Flours were the Couch,
Pansies, and Violets, and Asphodel, [ 1040 ]
And Hyacinth, Earths freshest softest lap.
There they thir fill of Love and Loves disport
Took largely, of thir mutual guilt the Seale,
The solace of thir sin, till dewie sleep
Oppress'd them, wearied with thir amorous play. [PL 9.1008-1045]

I'd like to see how the director would handle this scene -- not for any prurient reasons, of course, but out of curiosity as to how a director might remain true to Milton's vision while aiming at a contemporary American Christian audience. I remember seeing a 70s television program on Adam and Eve that allowed a glimpse of their prelapsarian backsides, a view that left my aunt feeling distinctly uncomfortable and remarking, "I realize this isn't pornography, but I wish that they'd been a bit less explicit." Spoken from a postlapsarian perspective, of course, as literary critic Stanley Fish might point out.

The producer, Vincent Newman, recognizes the problem:

Mr. Newman, by his own account, told the writers he wanted "less Adam and Eve and more about what's happening with the archangels," the battle in Heaven between God's and Satan's armies.

"In Eden there's the nudity problem," he pointed out, "which would be a big problem for a big studio movie."

I guess this means that sex scenes are out. Too bad. If Harry Potter -- I mean Daniel Radcliffe -- can get away with live nude scenes around horses in Equus, why can't some handsome actor and some stunning Eve portray the first couple exactly as Milton's story does? Christian viewers' discomfort with that would make for some interesting analysis in Christian film critics' reviews of the movie.

The focus, however, will be on a Satan clad in military garb, a sort of heroic antihero -- and that's not without its controversial appeal, as Gross reports Stanley Fish noting in a telephone interview:

The depiction of Satan may be a polarizing one among scholars. Some, in line with Romantic poets like William Blake, will want the dark prince to be the hero; others won't be happy unless Satan is a self-deceiving hypocrite, and the story an education in virtue and obedience.

Yet Stanley Fish, author of "Surprised by Sin: The Reader in 'Paradise Lost,'" said in a telephone interview that the filmmakers "could use these two readings of 'Paradise Lost' in a dramatic fashion, as Milton does."

"In the introductory books," he added, "the figure of Satan is presented with a certain kind of heroic glaze surrounding him, but then, as the poem proceeds, Milton quite deliberately, and for some readers unforgivably, insists that you see the terrible emptiness and self-aggrandizing narcissism at the heart of this character. You could pull the audience in by giving them the kind of romantic rebel that is so easy to respond to, and then pull them up short and ask them to re-think the matter and ask them to think about why this figure has such appeal to them."

Well, you could try to produce that sort of film, but you might have difficulty in getting audiences to see that Satan's "terrible emptiness and self-aggrandizing narcissism" was implicit in his incipent act of rebellion -- especially if you're a producer whose enthusiasm exceeds your understanding, as appears to be the case with Newman, who tells us:

"It's a 400-some-odd-page poem written in Old English."

As Gross points out, Newman's "passion is more for the idea of the poem than for the poem itself," for Paradise Lost is "in blank verse, not Old English." Actually, this doesn't quite state things correctly either. Milton's poem is in Early Modern English, which would prove difficult for many current readers even if the poem were in rhyming couplets rather than in blank verse.

That aside, one of Newman's oddest statements is his off-hand remark that the movie will be:

"made with total adherence and respect to any of the three religions' involvement in the story of God, the Devil and the archangels."

Gross specifies that Newman is "referring to Christianity, Judaism and Islam," an odd sort of political correctness to impose on Milton's poem, which portrays a pre-existent, divine Christ as the poem's true hero who defeats the antihero Satan. How this is going to be "made with total adherence" to Judaism and Islam lies beyond my ken.

Still, as Mr. Newman points out "it's a war movie at the end of the day" -- meaning, forget about Milton's view, explicit in Paradise Lost 9.31-33, that real heroism appears in "the better fortitude / Of Patience and Heroic Martyrdom / Unsung."

Milton inciting violence?

Oh, what inner demons drive me to such cruel violence?

Gustave Doré, Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost

(Image from Wikipedia)

Should we ban Milton's Paradise Lost?

Time Online has an article, "Another Unabomber in the Making?" (February 13, 2007), by Hilary Hilton, reporting on bomb threats -- and even actual pipebombs filled with gunpowder but intentionally lacking a power source to set it off -- sent to a couple of financial firms in the Midwest by someone going by the title "The Bishop":

In late January, the mysterious figure sent a letter bomb to two Midwestern financial services companies. The message inside both packages, which were discovered by mail clerks, read "Bang! You're dead." The boxes arrived at American Century Investments in Kansas City and Perkins, Wolf, McDonnell and Co., a Chicago financial services company. Both had all the makings of a pipe bomb, a PVC pipe filled with buckshot and smokeless powder, plus protruding wires. But the sender had not included a power source, which indicated to investigators that the Bishop, meant to terrify, not kill -- at least not yet. Still, while the devices lacked some components, they could have exploded from static electricity or "even a transmission from a handheld radio," according to Fred Burton, a former State Department counterterrorism expert, now with Stratfor, an Austin-based private security and intelligence agency that is working in conjunction with the FBI in its investigation.

The Bishop first came to Stratfor's attention in October of 2005, when he began sending anonymous, threatening letters (but with no explosive materials) to various financial services companies, one of which was a client. He demanded they manipulate specific stocks to reach a set price, often $6.66, a number with possible Biblical or apocalyptic meaning. In one June, 2006 letter, he ended with the phrase: "IT IS BETTER TO REIGN IN HELL, THAN TO SERVE IN HEAVEN." The Bishop's curious stock-market demands were "delusional" since the companies were not large enough to do the kind of manipulation he demanded, Burton said. Once his demands were not met, his campaign escalated, going from simple demands in 2005 to more serious threats of violence in 2006, and now featuring actual improvised explosive devices, IEDs, being shipped in the mail.

Those are the details in the Time report, which -- oddly -- neglects to point out a possible link to Milton. The statement (not just a 'phrase') "IT IS BETTER TO REIGN IN HELL, THAN TO SERVE IN HEAVEN" echoes Satan's words to Beelzebub in John Milton's Paradise Lost 1.263:

"Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n"

If the Bishop is alluding to Milton, he's been using a modernized version, for he doesn't follow Milton's original spelling -- such as "than" instead of Milton's "then" (a 17th-century spelling for "than"). But he might not be specifically alluding to Milton at all, for he's not quoting the exact wording, as the context in Paradise Lost shows:

Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n. (PL 1.261-263)

Moreover, the words "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven" are a cultural meme, one so widespread that nearly everybody would recall having heard it without even having read Milton. I recall one hellraiser in my Ozark hometown who at a drunken party scribbled off those words on a scrap of paper and signed it with his own name:

"Bobby Weaver."

A friend of mine at the same party, happened to read it and scoff out loud, "This isn't by Bobby Weaver! It's a quote from John Milton!"

The party fell deathly quiet. Bobby gave my friend an evil look and asked, "You sayin' I stole those words."

My friend quickly backpedaled. "Oh, no -- I didn't mean that! You may have read Milton's words somewhere and forgotten about reading them. When you remembered the words later, you assumed that they were your own."

Bobby was a hellraiser and one big, powerful fellow -- dangerous even -- but he wasn't a bully, so he left my friend alone. Bobby, by the way, may have intended to reign in hell, but he went on to serve time in prison. There may be a lesson there.

The Time report calls the Bishop's letters "poorly written," and provides the following evidence:

In one 2006 letter the Bishop refers to both the Unabomber and the D.C. sniper, Lee Boyd Malvo. "You will help, after all it is so easy to kill somebody it is almost scary," the letter states. "Just think it could be as simple as mailing a package just like The Unibomber [sic] use to do simple mail out a package and when the suspecting recipient opens it they don't even know what hit them, or maybe like Salvo [sic] did in the D.C. sniper case just a small hole in the trunk of the car and BANG!!"

The Time reporter notes the two misspellings but doesn't remark on the other problems. I'll quote the Bishop's words, using red-tinted font to show all corrections:

"You will help. After all, it is so easy to kill somebody that it is almost scary . . . . Just think. It could be as simple as mailing a package, just like The Unabomber used to do, simply mail out a package, and when the unsuspecting recipient opens it, they don't even know what hit them, or maybe like Malvo did in the D.C. sniper case, just a small hole in the trunk of the car and BANG!!"

As you can see, the Bishop does have a few problems with diction, spelling, and punctuation, so he might not be a big reader of great literature. Maybe he reads a lot of comic books. Steve Huff, of The True Crime Blog, speculates that the Bishop might have been alluding to a passage of dialogue between Lucifer and Cain in Neil Gaiman's graphic novel The Sandman:

LUCIFER: Still. "Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven." Eh, little brother-killer?

CAIN: Suh-certainly, Lord Lucifer. Whatever you say, Lord Lucifer.

LUCIFER: We didn't say it. Milton said it. And he was blind...

Whether the Bishop is alluding to Milton, Gaiman, or merely a cultural meme, he seems to belong to what William Blake called "the Devil's Party," claiming in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell that Milton:

...was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.

Except that the Bishop, unlike Blake's Milton, knows the party to which he belongs.

On Milton's 'Identity'

"Lady of Christ's"

Fellow Cambridge Students' Epithet for Milton

Christ's College, Cambridge

(Image from Wikipedia)

Someone posed a question on the Milton List about 'Queer' readings of Milton, which naturally (or unnaturally?) led to questions about Milton's 'identity' -- that loaded essentialist term.

This led the discussion into the Foucauldean territory, where we queried (sorry) labels, raising distinctions between identity and acts -- did the pre-Modern mind conceive of a homosexual identity, as opposed to distinct, same-sex acts?

Sodomy, for instance, was recognized in the Medieval world as a sin, and the sodomist was one convicted of the crime of that unnatural act, but did an act of sodomy indicate a sodomist identity? Unclear.

Some scholars argued, however, that that Ancient philosopher Plato would have understood the distinction between the 'normal' pederasty practiced between an adult, aristocratic male and a young male, in which the former also instructed the latter in the masculine virtues required of a grown man, and a different sort of male-on-male sexual relations in which a grown man would accept the role of an 'effeminate' partner and would be recognized as what we today call "homosexual" -- whatever Plato might have chosen to call it.

And so ran the discussion, ranging over Modern, Medieval, and Ancient times . . . eventually leading to a consensus that we were all in general disagreement.

Someone then raised the 'innocent' question as to whether or not Milton had smoked.

This led the scholars to various recollections of evidence that Milton might have indulged but that he was no regular smoker, with no remains of even a smoker's pipe among the belongings mentioned in his estate, in his writings, or among his friends.

The Canadian expert on Milton, John Leonard, also added his own recollection:

I have a recollection that one of the early lives (I don't remember which one) makes reference to Milton's "drinking tobacco," and I am fairly certain that Christopher Hill cites this in his *Milton and the English Revolution* as evidence that Milton knew how to have a good time (again, I don't have the reference, but maybe someone else will).

Interesting that the English of Milton's time called it "drinking tobacco" rather than smoking tobacco -- so maybe we should be asking if Milton was "a drinker"? Or should we not even think about such labels? For on this point, Leonard remarks:

We should be cautious, however, of calling Milton "a smoker." Although the word did exist in the sense "smoker of tobacco" (OED cites this sense from 1617), it may be doubted whether it specifically designated a person's *identity*, and so it did not amount to a constitutive component of early modern high modernity, which is to say, in part, a contributing concept to the distinctly modern organization of knowledge. Moreover, the early modern period did not have a term for NON-smoker, so even "smoker" (which it did have a term for) was meaningless. The smartest scholars will therefore be content to say that Milton might have engaged in occasional smokaditical acts.

Who says that scholars lack an ironic sense of self-deprecating humor?