Pound in Paradise

Pound in Paradise

From babe unto lad as from tadpole to toad,
Pound grew up fast on the Paradise Road.
He learned to expound
and how to confound,
Which both come in handy if need be to goad.

Stephen Louis A. Dillard's Good Literary Judgment

Good Literary Judgment

Georgia Court of Appeals

Milton scholar Jeffrey Shoulson, over at the Milton List, posted a message titled "A Judge with a Miltonic sense of humor" to share something one wouldn't ordinarily expect to find amusing, namely, a passage via link to the legal blog Above the Law, in which David Lat, in a post titled "A Fun Little Footnote" (October 11, 2012), has excerpted the following from Judge Stephen Louis A. Dillard's remarks in Manhertz v. State, a decision handed down on October 9, 2012 by the Georgia Court of Appeals concerning identity theft enabled by a certain Nicole Joyner, a hapless lawbreaker:

Joyner explained that she met a [female] dancer at a strip club, who went by the stage name Paradise. After a brief conversation, Paradise asked Joyner how she was employed, and Joyner informed her that she worked as an assistant manager at an apartment complex. Paradise responded by informing Joyner that she had a friend named Kane, who would pay $1,000 for tenants' names, social-security numbers, driver's-license numbers, and copies of signed checks. Joyner agreed to do so and later provided Paradise with the requested information. However, Joyner asserted that she was never paid any money. And although Joyner claimed that she went back to the strip club on one or two occasions in an attempt to collect the promised payment, she was unable to find Paradise -- no doubt finding little comfort in the axiom that "solitude sometimes is best society."

As Mr. Lat points out, Judge Dillard has exhibited "a sense of humor and literary flair," for the quote comes from words spoken by Adam shortly before Eve goes off by herself to work alone in the Garden of Eden, but encounters the serpent:

John Milton, Paradise Lost 234, bk. IX, ll. 249 (G. Routledge and sons ed. 1905) (1674).

In response to the humor, Carol Barton posted:

Sounds to me as though Paradise got lost, Jeffrey [Shoulson] . . . thanks for the grin!

Appreciating Carol's pun, I added:

But Paradise gained . . .

To which Carol rejoined:

Yes -- right before she got lost!

The puns, just to make them obvious, are on Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Milton really ought to have written a trilogy -- Paradise Gained, Paradise Lost, and Paradise Regained -- the better to reflect my pun, but I suppose he wasn't prophet enough to foresee this future wordplay. Anyway, Carol and I had our pun-fun, though our humor doesn't really measure up to Judge Dillard's humorous use of the Milton quote, but neither of us can pass up an opportunity to pun . . . or, at least, I cannot.

Fallen Language: Falsely Defined Terms in Paradise Lost?

Abdiel

(Image from Comic Book Religion)

Some students at Christs College, Cambridge have put together a high-quality site on John Milton called Darkness Visible, and I've come upon a page there titled "Milton's Language" that might be useful for thinking about 'fallen language' in Paradise Lost, for the page offers a section on "Dark Satanic Language" -- which later on the same page is characterized as "fallen language" -- and this section informs us:

Satan is an inveterate liar who abuses language for his own evil purposes. Satan's language is 'Ambiguous and with double sense deluding' (Paradise Regained, I.435), whereas the Son's language (and by extension God's) enforces a kind of linguistic harmony where 'Thy actions to thy words accord' (Paradise Regained, III.9). In Paradise Lost, Satan's 'ambiguous words' (V.703, VI.568) act as 'persuasive' traps, 'replete with guile' (IX.737, 733). He utters 'high words, that bore / Semblance of worth not substance' (I.528), and it is worth bearing this in mind should you be tempted to succumb to his enticing rhetoric, as Eve or, more recently the poets Shelley and Blake have been known to do! God's words are necessarily congruent with their meaning (God is unable to lie). But while Satan lacks the power of speech acts, he has the sophistical ability to dissemble.

Satan uses ambiguous words in Paradise Lost to mislead, but in many cases, the two different meanings of a word are both correct, and such a word is not necessarily 'fallen'. Rather, it is being misused by Satan, "who abuses language for his own evil purposes" and plays upon one meaning to legitimate acting upon the other meaning. For instance, if Satan were to urge Eve to cleave to God but persuade her that this means cutting herself off from God -- playing on the word's two meanings, "cling to" and "sever from" -- then this would be an example of using a word's double meaning to deceive. Both meanings are legitimate, however, or at least arguably so. They merely need to be kept distinct.

But what of Satan's famous redefinition of evil in Paradise Lost 4.108-112, which he states in his famous speech upon Mount Niphates after briefly considering repentance but deciding that he cannot be forgiven because he cannot truly repent:

So farewel Hope, and with Hope farewel Fear,
Farewel Remorse: all Good to me is lost;
Evil be thou my Good; by thee at least
Divided Empire with Heav'ns King I hold
By thee, and more then half perhaps will reigne; (PL 4.108-112)

Note the redefinition: "Evil be thou my Good" (PL 4.110). As C. S. Lewis notes in his Preface to Paradise Lost (page 95), such a statement is about the same as saying, "Nonsense be thou my sense." This is a special case of linguistic ambiguity, for evil cannot be its opposite, the good. Thus, one of the two meanings is manifestly false, so perhaps one can say that in this sense, a postlapsarian language can be fallen. The language in this case is not merely used to deceive; it is, in part (or parts), intrinsically deceptive.

Which leads me to a point raised in yesterday's post, where I noted the following about that angel loyal to God, Abdiel:

Speaking of Abdiel's words, when he meets Satan on the field of battle and says, "This greeting on thy impious Crest receive" (PL 6.188), and then brings down upon Satan's helmeted head his righteous sword, isn't he using the term "greeting" in a sense so ironic as to be contradictory, in that it contains two meanings that contradict each other, as in some puns?

And I inquired:

Does Abdiel thus speak in a postlapsarian, 'fallen' tongue?

Today, I can press this a bit further, for one could argue that a "greeting" defined as "a blow on the head" is a false definition and that Abdiel is using fallen language. This would be not so dissimilar from Satan saying, "Evil be thou my Good." On the other hand, and unlike Satan, Abdiel is speaking ironically, even sarcastically, so nobody is deceived, nor is any deception intended.

But the question then to be raised is this: would there be any use for irony in language in an unfallen world? Perhaps not, but there might be a legitimate use for it by unfallen beings confronted by fallen beings and a fallen world. What do readers think, is Abdiel a little bit fallen . . . or not?

He certainly looks somewhat fallen in that image above.

A Resounding Pun in Paradise Lost

Thomas Sprat

"mathematical plainness"

(Image from Wikipedia)

I've just recently read an interesting paper by Paul Sutton, "Puns Lost, Puns Regain'd: The Pun in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regain'd," which appears to have been a presentation given at the ANZAMEMS Conference in Adelaide, 7-10 2007, i.e., the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Mr. Sutton was a PhD student at the time and was expecting to finish his thesis later in 2007, though I've not yet discovered if he wrote more on puns in works by John Milton.

But his paper will suffice. Mr. Sutton helpfully points out that "What we term an act of punning would, in actual fact, be one of five rhetorical techniques . . . . Paranomasia, Antanaclasis, Asteismus, Syllepsis, and Polyptoton." By "one of five," he means any of them, not just one. In other words, all five are types of puns . . . though things are a bit more complicated than that, as we shall see. (I'm also now no longer sure that I used "Paronomasia" in a strictly technical sense, though I think that I spelled it correctly, whereas Mr. Sutton appears to have misspelled, or used a variant spelling.)

One problem that punning occasions for language is that with overuse, it "tests the limits of the word . . . to signify meaning." Recognition of this tendency moved some to radical solutions:

The poets and critics of the eighteenth century were well aware of this problem inherent in language. Several times people called for language to be cleaned up and become more mathmatical in nature, most famously, perhaps, by Thomas Sprat in his History of the Royal Society who piped up with a call for a "mathematical plainness" in language. As we are all well aware, theory and practice rarely meet. (Sutton, "Puns Lost, Puns Regain'd," page 2)

What does Milton think about such a mathematical solution? He does have Jesus tell Satan in Paradise Regain'd 1.434-5, "But what have been thy answers, what but dark / Ambiguous and with double sense deluding" (Sutton, page 3). A reader might therefore imagine that Milton favored simplicity and plainness in language, much as Sprat praised in the Royal Society's usage:

They have exacted from all their members, a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expressions; clear senses; a native easiness: bringing all things as near the Mathematical plainness, as they can. (Thomas Sprat, The History of the Royal Society of London, 1667, page 113)

The "naked, natural way" would surely fit the prelapsarian Adam and Eve -- perhaps some of the other characteristics would as well -- and Mr. Sutton notes that "common view of critics, as expressed by Christ in Paradise Regain'd, is that ambiguity is a hallmark of the Satanic style" (Sutton, page 4), so a bit of mathematical plainness might help since Milton believed that "[t]he end . . . of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents" and "that language is . . . the instrument conveying to us things useful to be known" (Of Education).

Milton, however, has the Son use at least one pun, possibly several, as a passage from Mr. Sutton's paper demonstrates:

It is polyptoton that becomes the central pun technique of Milton's new poetic because it is the favoured technique of Christ. Polyptoton, is where a word is repeated but in a different case or inflection. As evidenced here, in book 3 [lines 144-155] of Paradise Lost where we first meet Christ:

O Father, gracious was that word which clos'd
Thy sovran sentence, that Man should find grace;
For which both Heav'n and Earth shall high extoll
Thy praises, with th'innumerable sound
Of Hymns and sacred Songs, wherewith thy Throne
Encompass'd shall resound thee ever blest.
For should Man finally be lost, should Man
Thy creature late so lov'd, thy youngest Son
Fall circumvented thus by fraud, though joynd
With his own folly? that be from thee farr,
That farr be from thee, Father, who art Judg
Of all things made, and judgest onely right.

. . . What I would claim is that polyptoton is a rhetorical technique that works in English but that it only carries the disruption of being a pun in some instances. The changing of 'gracious' to 'grace' and 'judge' to 'judgest' do not stike me as being puns but are instances of polyptoton. 'Sound' to 'resound', is a pun and a polyptoton. What polyptoton allows the poet to do is to utilize the polysemous potential of language by explicitly calling attention to the changing of the word and meaning. Instead of making one word, or one sound, or the repetition of one word carry multiple denotations, polyptoton allows multiple meanings to build up through multiple words. It shows how language is linked, how one sound is linked to another similar sound and how meanings are built up and differentiated. (Sutton, "Puns Lost, Puns Regain'd," pages 7-8)

Mr. Sutton admits of only one pun -- "resound" upon "sound" -- but of several instances of polyptoton, which are at least some sorts of wordplay. Punning and wordplay are thus not intrinsically qualities of fallen language, so long as they're not being used deceptively. All the more interesting, then, the following passage from Mr. Sutton:

Milton attempts to redeem language through Christ and . . . . [move] from a freer, Satanic, play to a more restrained, more focussed, Christ like play, where the ideal is not necessarily for one word one meaning -- that is a pipe dream, as Milton knew and Paradise Lost is a testament to that. Much of the power and sublimity of Paradise Lost comes from Milton's struggle to represent God, Christ, and Paradise through an imperfect, fallen, language. Milton, as I hope I have demonstrated in some small way in this paper, attempted to compensate for the Satanic elements in our fallen language through the use of polyptoton . . . . [and thereby] subdue the logic of the pun" (Sutton, "Puns Lost, Puns Regain'd," page 9).

I think that we can all see a taint of tension here in subduing the logic of the pun even while allowing the Son his one use of a pun in heaven. My point is that the 'fallenness' of language lies not in the polysemous quality of words but in the use of multiple meanings to deceive. I'd thus like to know more about what Mr. Sutton meant by "the Satanic elements in our fallen language."

Knowing that would offer food for thought . . .

Eruption Disruption: Milton's Prophetic Voice in the LA Times?

"Which way I fly is hell"

Hence the 'helicopter'?

Eyjafjallajokul, Iceland

(Image from Toronto Sun)

The epic poet John Milton considered himself a prophet, and though he didn't actually foresee the current air-travel chaos in Europe, the words that he attributed to Satan in Paradise Lost came to mind as perfectly descriptive:

"Me miserable! . . . Which way I fly is hell."

That's Henry Chu quoting Milton for the Los Angeles Times in his report from London: "Volcanic ash continues to disrupt Europe flights" (April 16, 2010). More fully rendered:

To the thousands of glum and despairing passengers marooned across Europe on Friday by an unforeseen act of God, it may have seemed like a page from "Paradise Lost."

"Me miserable!" John Milton wrote 350 years ago. ". . . Which way I fly is hell."

Many had grappled with the tribulations of bad weather, veteran fliers for whom snow and rain held no mystery. But a volcano spewing fire and ash from the bowels of Earth? Hell didn't seem too far-fetched a metaphor.

Hell for travelers, but not for those people who live near airports:

Yet as the unlucky brooded over missed weddings and conferences, or how to reach the bedside of a sick relative, for others there was a sense of paradise regained, a return to a time before the infernal roar of jet engines and the smell of aviation fuel.

"It's gloriously peaceful. I could hear the birds singing . . . even through the double-glazed windows," exulted 63-year-old Loraine Martin.

The literate Mr. Chu thus managed to weave in a reference to yet another of Milton's epic works! I found myself wondering who this man is who can cite Milton so well and found the answer in a 'memo' offered by the LA Times: "Henry Chu new London Bureau chief" (June 5, 2008). According to Foreign Editor Marjorie Miller, Mr. Chu's was highly qualified for the position of London Bureau Chief at the time of his promotion:

In his decade on Foreign, Henry has served as Bureau Chief in Beijing, Rio de Janeiro and New Delhi. He has covered armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Israel and Iraq, and political conflicts such as the fallout from the 1999 NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia. Henry is a terrific news reporter, but also a wonderful feature writer who has brought us unforgettable Column Ones on Poetry in Pakistan, Sun Tzu’s Art of War from China, the Laborer Librarian from Brazil and -- my favorite -- Bullied by the Eunuchs from New Delhi. He has written about mental illness and the middle class in the Middle Kingdom; he’s brought us stories from Nepal and Bhutan.

Ms. Miller adds, "He is a graduate of Harvard University with a BA in History and Literature." That would explain the literary quality of Mr. Chu's report.

For readers interested in sources, here's the Milton passage from Paradise Lost alluded to by Mr. Chu:

Me miserable! which way shall I flie
Infinite wrauth, and infinite despaire?
Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell (PL 4.73-75)

[Thomas H. Luxon, ed., The Milton Reading Room, April, 2010]

Like Mr. Chu's London passengers, Satan was also grounded . . . though on a mountain called Niphates in Asia Minor's Taurus range, and only briefly.

Um . . . so he really is Obamessiah?

Stanley Fish

"smiling wisdom from the epicine . . . picine . . . piscine era"

(Image from NYT)

In his NYT column "Think Again" of October 26th, "The Power of Passive Campaigning," Stanley Fish reaches for a literary analogy to describe Obama's campaign style.

Fish reminds us of Obama's unusual calm -- what Charles Krauthammer calls a "first-class temperament" -- during the past few weeks' swirling chaos:

We saw it in the 10 days when the activity around the mounting economic crisis was at its height. Henry Paulson alternated between scaring members of Congress and scaring the public. Nancy Pelosi alternated between playing the responsible Congressional statesperson and playing the partisan attack dog. Media commentators went from one hysterical prediction to another. John McCain went from saying there's nothing to worry about to saying there's everything to worry about to saying that he would fix everything by suspending his campaign to saying that he was not suspending his campaign and that he would debate after all.

And Barack Obama? He didn't do much and he said less (O.K., he did say some reassuring, optimistic things), and his poll numbers went up.

Fish doesn't cite Krauthammer but does turn to another conservative pundit to make his point:

He just stands there looking languid (George Will called him the Fred Astaire of politics), always smiling and never raising his voice.

Meanwhile, John McCain gets angry -- not that there's anything wrong with that -- and ever more energetically attacks Obama, who does nothing. Fish asks:

What's going on here? I find an answer in a most unlikely place, John Milton's "Paradise Regained," a four-book poem in which a very busy and agitated Satan dances around a preternaturally still Jesus until, driven half-crazy by the response he's not getting, the arch-rebel (i.e., maverick) loses it, crying in exasperation, "What dost thou in this world?"

Fish assures us that he doesn't "mean to suggest that McCain is the devil or that Obama is the Messiah (although some of his supporters think of him that way), just that the rhetorical strategies the two literary figures employ match up with the strategies employed by the two candidates."

Concluding his analogy to Paradise Regained, Fish gives Milton's explanation for why Obama's strategy works:

Toward the end, the poem describes the mighty contest in a metaphor that captures its odd and negative dynamic. Jesus is "a solid rock" continually assaulted by "surging waves"; and even though the repeated assaults result only in the waves being "all to shivers dashed," they keep on coming until they exhaust themselves "in froth or bubbles." The power Jesus generates is the power of not moving from the still center of his being and refusing to step into an arena of action defined by his opponent. So it is with Obama, who barely exerts himself and absorbs attack after attack, each of which, rather than wounding him, leaves him stronger. It's rope-a-dope on a grand scale.

In short, Obama need do nothing at all, but simply remain calm within the chaos that buffets about him, and he wins? Well . . . maybe. It's not over yet, and unlike in Paradise Regained, there's no predetermined winner.

But Fish is clearly onto something with this analysis, and it need only be turned around for some obscure Milton scholar to offer a new perspective on Milton's depiction of Jesus: "The Son's Rope-a-Dope Strategy in Paradise Regained?"

Expat Living: "The fruit of all evil"

Michael Pacher, Saint Wolfgang and the Devil (1483)

"Okay, okay, you're right . . . it doesn't say apple."

(Image from Wikipedia)

My most recent language column has appeared in today's issue of the Korea Herald (note: pop-up at newspaper), so I'll now post it here:

The fruit of all evil

In "Areopagitica," that famous 17th-century defense of free expression, John Milton wrote, "It was from out the rinde of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evill as two twins cleaving together leapt forth into the World. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evill, that is to say of knowing good by evill."

Milton's opinion presupposes a sin-fallen world where we necessarily experience evil with good and thereby learn to distinguish these mortal opposites that cleave together -- a clever pun, incidentally, upon the ambiguous meaning of "cleave" as both "cling" and "cut."

Doomed as we are to know good by experiencing evil, Milton infers that any attempt to promote goodness by overly restricting bad speech would be . . . well, fruitless. But why does Milton call the fruit that Eve plucked and offered to Adam an apple? The biblical passage specifies no apple, but leaves the fruit unnamed.

That never stopped the pious from naming it, of course. Biblical reticence invites speculation. The extracanonical "Book of Enoch" calls the fruit grape-like, as do several rabbinical passages. Other rabbis name the fruit a fig, perhaps on the scriptural evidence that Adam and Eve, their fallen eyes first perceiving their nakedness, covered their pudenda with fig leaves. Other speculations about the unnamed fruit abound -- even the wild suggestion "wheat"!

Milton, however, says apple. Why?

He was hardly alone, for the Western Christian tradition in literature and art had largely settled on the apple as the fruit from the tree of knowledge, probably based on a pun in Latin between evil (malum) and apple (malus). The scriptural text in Latin reads "lignumque scientiae boni et mali" -- or, in plain English, "and the tree of knowledge of good and of evil," but the genitive singular form mali can be translated either "of evil" or "of apple." The "tree of knowledge of good and of apple" might sound slightly ludicrous, but we are talking wordplay, hence all in good pun.

Milton, however, might have had other thoughts in calling that fatal fruit an apple, for the word has an interesting history. The most ambitious English lexicon of all, the intimidating Oxford English Dictionary, notes that from early on, the word "apple" included "any fruit." Intriguingly, the English cleric Edward Topsell reveals that the English language held to this broader range of meaning as late as 1607, for in his book "The History of Four-footed Beasts," he refers to the "Apples of Palm-trees," and the book was republished some fifty years later. Moreover, nearly a hundred years after Milton, as late as 1765, the country gentleman Abraham Tucker observed in his multi-volume book "The Light of Nature Pursued" that the "fly injects her juices into the oak-leaf, to raise an apple for hatching her young," thereby demonstrating a still-extant, rather broad range of meaning.

Consequently, when Milton referred in "Areopagitica" to "the rinde of one apple tasted," when he had his narrator in "Paradise Regained" mention "that crude Apple that diverted Eve," and when he showed Satan in "Paradise Lost" tempting Eve with "tasting those fair Apples" and later boasting before the other demons of having seduced mankind "with an Apple," he might not have meant specifically what we today mean by "apple" but more indefinitely what we now mean by "fruit."

Therefore -- no two ways about it -- fear all fruit. You could study hard in school. You could even get a good job. But then, you might unwittingly eat some foreboding fruit . . . and just die!

Originally, the column above was intended for early July, but one of the other columnists who writes on language misunderstood and missed the deadline, resulting in a long delay before the printing of that language-column page, so my article has only appeared in print now, about an entire month later. During that lost month, I had actually sent in a revision of the penultimate paragraph, but the time delay resulted in those changes being lost. Here's what I had intended for the final form of that next-to-last paragraph:

Consequently, when Milton referred in "Areopagitica" to "the rinde of one apple tasted," when he had his narrator in "Paradise Regained" mention "that crude Apple that diverted Eve," and when he showed Satan in "Paradise Lost" tempt Eve with "tasting those fair Apples" and later boast before the other demons of having seduced mankind "with an Apple," Milton might not have meant specifically what we today mean by "apple" but more indefinitely what we now mean by "fruit."

Just for the sake of clarity.

John Milton: Curious Curiosity

John Milton

Unenamored of curiosity?

(Image from Wikipedia)

One of the immediate summer projects that I have before me is a report on "curiosity" that I have agreed to write for Warren Reich, who is researching and writing a history of "care," and because one of the scholars on the Milton List asked if the angel Raphael was right to rebuke Adam for his curiosity, I decided to look into this and see what Milton thinks of curiosity (and all passages are borrowed from Thomas H. Luxon, ed., The Milton Reading Room, July, 2008).

Milton doesn't actually use the term "curiosity" in Paradise Lost, but he does use it in Samson Agonistes 775, where Dalila (Delilah), the Philistine woman who betrayed Samson to his Philistine enemies, admits to curiosity as a weakness:

Samson Agonistes 773-777:

First granting, as I do, it was a weakness
In me, but incident to all our sex,
Curiosity, inquisitive, importune
Of secrets, then with like infirmity
To publish them, both common female faults:

We ought to note that Dalila is speaking here, not Milton, but the reader can hardly overlook the apparent allusion to Eve's curiosity in the Edenic temptation scene under the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil . . . except that Milton never uses the word "curiosity" in Paradise Lost, let alone employ it to describe Eve's interest in the forbidden tree.

However, we do find Milton in Tetrachordon (Matthew Places) quoting St. Augustine to support his own opinion about those who ask "curious" questions:

Tetrachordon, Matthew Places:

This also may be thought not improbable, that Christ, stirr'd up in his spirit against these tempting Pharisees, answer'd them in a certain form of indignation usual among good authors; wherby the question, or the truth is not directly answer'd, but something which is fitter for them, who ask, to hear. So in the Ecclesiastical stories, one demanding how God imploy'd himself before the world was made? had answer, that he was making hell for curious questioners.

By "curious questioners," Milton in this instance means those who pose questions not out of a serious intent to discover the truth but as an attempt to mislead.

And elsewhere, in The Reason of Church Government, Book 2, Milton explains the motivation for all his writing, which he describes himself as having already been conscious as a young man on his European wanderings, and assures his readers that the motive was "not to make verbal curiosities" his aim:

These thoughts at once possest me, and these other. That if I were certain to write as men buy Leases, for three lives and downward, there ought no regard be sooner had, then to Gods glory by the honour and instruction of my country. For which cause, and not only for that I knew it would be hard to arrive at the second rank among the Latines, I apply'd my selfe to that resolution which Ariosto follow'd against the perswasions of Bembo, to fix all the industry and art I could unite to the adorning of my native tongue; not to make verbal curiosities the end, that were a toylsom vanity, but to be an interpreter & relater of the best and sagest things among mine own Citizens throughout this Iland in the mother dialect.

In this instance, Milton does not refer to curiosity in the sense of a misdirected search for knowledge but as an overwrought and artificial literary construction. Milton intends for us to know that his aim is serious, for he wishes to artfully adorn the "best and sagest things."

Use of the term "curious" to describe overwrought artifice occurs in Paradise Lost 4.242, where Milton contrasts the natural wonders of Eden, watered by a "Saphire Fount," to the artificial gardens of England:

PL 4.237-243

How from that Saphire Fount the crisped Brooks,
Rowling on Orient Pearl and sands of Gold,
With mazie error under pendant shades
Ran Nectar, visiting each plant, and fed
Flours worthy of Paradise which not nice Art
In Beds and curious Knots, but Nature boon
Powrd forth profuse on Hill and Dale and Plaine

Concerning "Beds and curious Knots," Thomas Luxon informs us that "Tudor formal gardens were often very intricate affairs, carefully planned and tended . . . [but that the] late 17th and 18th century began to prefer more natural looking landscapes and views (The Milton Reading Room).

In Paradise Regained 1.319, Satan, in the guise of an "aged man," is described as having a "curious eye," in the context meaning that he looked with curiosity, and some 14 lines further, in 1.333, Satan himself acknowledges being "curious" to hear what is new:

PR 1.314-334

But now an aged man in Rural weeds,
Following, as seem'd, the quest of some stray Ewe,
Or wither'd sticks to gather; which might serve
Against a Winters day when winds blow keen,
To warm him wet return'd from field at Eve,
He saw approach; who first with curious eye
Perus'd him, then with words thus utt'red spake.
Sir, what ill chance hath brought thee to this place
So far from path or road of men, who pass
In Troop or Caravan, for single none
Durst ever, who return'd, and dropt not here
His Carcass, pin'd with hunger and with droughth?
I ask the rather, and the more admire,
For that to me thou seem'st the man, whom late
Our new baptizing Prophet at the Ford
Of Jordan honour'd so, and call'd thee Son
Of God; I saw and heard, for we sometimes
Who dwell this wild, constrain'd by want, come forth
To Town or Village nigh (nighest is far)
Where ought we hear, and curious are to hear,
What happ'ns new; Fame also finds us out.

Given that the devil is portrayed as "curious," we can probably infer that Milton is using the term in a negative sense, which is also likely the case in Paradise Regained 4.42, where the context refers to a Satan tempting Jesus:

PR 4.25-43

He brought our Saviour to the western side
Of that high mountain, whence he might behold
Another plain, long but in bredth not wide;
Wash'd by the Southern Sea, and on the North
To equal length back'd with a ridge of hills
That screen'd the fruits of the earth and seats of men
From cold Septentrion blasts, thence in the midst
Divided by a river, of whose banks
On each side an Imperial City stood,
With Towers and Temples proudly elevate
On seven small Hills, with Palaces adorn'd,
Porches and Theatres, Baths, Aqueducts,
Statues and Trophees, and Triumphal Arcs,
Gardens and Groves presented to his eyes,
Above the highth of Mountains interpos'd:
By what strange Parallax or Optic skill
Of vision multiplyed through air, or glass
Of Telescope, were curious to enquire:
And now the Tempter thus his silence broke.

Here, the narrator uses "curious" to designate an activity of the mind that would be tangential to the issue at hand, a distraction from the central point.

I've already noted that in The Reason of Church Government, Milton uses "curiosities" to refer to overwrought artifice, and he does so twice more in the same text:

The Reason of Church Government, Book 1

But so exquisit and lively the description is in portraying the new state of the Church, and especially in those points where government seemes to be most active, that both Jewes and Gentiles might have good cause to be assur'd, that God when ever he meant to reforme his Church, never intended to leave the governement thereof delineated here in such curious architecture, to be patch't afterwards, and varnish't over with the devices and imbellishings of mans imagination.

The Reason of Church Government, Book 2

Next if I were wise only to mine own ends, I would certainly take such a subject as of it self might catch applause, whereas this hath all the disadvantages on the contrary, and such a subject as the publishing whereof might be delayd at pleasure, and time enough to pencill it over with all the curious touches of art, even to the perfection of a faultlesse picture, whenas in this argument the not deferring is of great moment to the good speeding, that if solidity have leisure to doe her office, art cannot have much.

Also, in Tetrachordon (Deuteronomy Places), Milton uses "curious" in a less negative sense to refer to the "care" displayed by the Law of Moses about washing vessels and vestures:

Tetrachordon, Deuteronomy Places:

What more unlike to God, what more like that God should hate, than that his Law should be so curious to wash vessels, and vestures, and so careless to leave unwash'd, unregarded, so foul a scab of Egypt in their Souls? what would we more? the Statutes of the Lord are all pure and just: and if all, then this of Divorce.

Here, Milton does not imply anything wrong with the Law, but does imply that to be "curious" about purifying ritual objects while neglecting the purifying of something far more important.

In short, Milton seems to share the traditional, negative view of curiosity held by so many in the Medieval Church. Nevertheless, he does not use the term to describe Eve's interest in the fruit of the forbidden tree . . . a point that I find curious.

John Milton: "How do you like them apples?"

Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve (1507)

Apple (malus) as Evil (malus)

(Image from Wikipedia)

On the Milton List yesterday, someone inquired about Milton's view of Adam and Eve's fall, specifically, the point at which they fell into sin, and since I've published on this, I posted the following:

On the falling process of Adam (and Eve), I've actually published an article that I'll send by attachment to anyone interested. Here's the title and abstract:

When Did Adam Fall in Paradise Lost?

Horace Jeffery Hodges

"Human love, the love of Adam and Eve, is mortal and sinful unto death." - Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

MEMES 17.2 (2007.11): 363-381

Abstract

The specific moment of Adam's fall in Paradise Lost would seem unambiguous. It occurs at the moment that he accepts and eats the apple. One might object that these are two slightly distinct moments and that Adam is breaking two slightly different prohibitions, i.e., neither to touch the tree nor to eat the fruit, but Milton plays upon an etymological ambiguity in the word "taste" (="touch") to conflate God's two commands and Adam's two violations. Thus does one sort of ambiguity appear to resolve the other sort. If we look more carefully, however, the precise moment in which Adam falls dissolves into a process of falling that was prepared for through Adam's idolatrous worship of Eve, confirmed by Adam's inner assent to the evil of placing Eve before God by deciding to accept her gift of the apple, and completed in Adam's act of taking and eating the fruit of the tree. This process has the effect of stretching out Adam's sin, making his fall a process of falling, but it has the advantage of making understandable Adam's decision for Eve and death over God and life.

I don't, however, talk about Abdiel.

To this, Professor Salwa Khoddam remarked:

Jeffery, I don't think Milton uses the word "apple" in PL. Satan uses the term in order to trivialize it. N'est pas?

Professor Khoddam's remark isn't a quibble, for we cannot assume that Milton considered the fruit of the tree of knowledge an "apple" merely because Satan uses the term. Indeed, that would be reason for suspicion. So . . . I checked:

Salwa, that's an interesting point . . . though I don't think that it affects my argument . . . but I ought to be more careful, I suppose. Let me take a look:

Paradise Lost 9.584-588

[Satan tempting Eve:]

To satisfie the sharp desire I had
Of tasting those fair Apples, I resolv'd [ 585 ]
Not to deferr; hunger and thirst at once,
Powerful perswaders, quick'nd at the scent
Of that alluring fruit, urg'd me so keene.

Paradise Lost 10.481-487

[Satan bragging to his fellow demons:]

The new created World, which fame in Heav'n
Long had foretold, a Fabrick wonderful
Of absolute perfection, therein Man
Plac't in a Paradise, by our exile
Made happie: Him by fraud I have seduc'd [ 485 ]
From his Creator, and the more to increase
Your wonder, with an Apple;

Satan does seem to be trivializing the fruit, as you point out. On the other hand, Milton has the narrator of Paradise Regained refer to the fruit as an apple:

Paradise Regained 2.338-349:

[Narrator describing Satan's temptation of Jesus:]

Our Saviour lifting up his eyes beheld
In ample space under the broadest shade
A Table richly spred, in regal mode, [ 340 ]
With dishes pil'd, and meats of noblest sort
And savour, Beasts of chase, or Fowl of game,
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boyl'd,
Gris-amber-steam'd; all Fish from Sea or Shore,
Freshet, or purling Brook, of shell or fin, [ 345 ]
And exquisitest name, for which was drain'd
Pontus and Lucrine Bay, and Afric Coast.
Alas how simple, to these Cates compar'd,
Was that crude Apple that diverted Eve!

And there are Milton's famous words from Areopagitica:

"It was from out the rinde of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evill as two twins cleaving together leapt forth into the World."

But Paradise Regained and Areopagitica are not Paradise Lost, so I wouldn't want to press them for any significance, not without more thought devoted to the issue first.

Thanks for the information.

[All texts cited from: Luxon, Thomas H., ed. The Milton Reading Room, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton, June, 25.]

If I had my "Abstract" to do all over again -- since I guess that I don't "like them apples" -- I'd avoid the term "apple" and use simply "fruit."

Live and learn...

Milton's Satan quoting Macbeth in Paradise Regained?

Johann Heinrich Füssli
Macbeth and Banquo with the Witches

(Image from Wikipedia)

In an interesting Times Online review of Anna Beer's recent book, Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer and Patriot, literary expert John Carey writes:

Some poems -- Arcades and At a Solemn Music, for example – go quite unnoticed by Beer. So does his first published poem, the sonnet on Shakespeare. Written when he was 22 and prefaced to the second folio of Shakespeare's works, it is one of the earliest tributes to his genius, and might have been expected to prompt Milton's biographer to trace the influence of Shakespeare on his art from the brilliant pastiche of Comus to Satan's despairing quotation of Macbeth at a key moment in Paradise Regained.

As readily perceived from this short selection, Carey is less than impressed by Beer's biography, but I'm not quoting it for that reason. I have a different motive.

I have not yet found "Satan's despairing quotation of Macbeth at a key moment in Paradise Regained" but wonder if a reader more literate than I might help me out here.

Does anyone know the Macbeth quote alluded to by Carey?

Watchtower Society: From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained

From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained

Watchtower Society Publication

(New York: International Bible Students Association, 1958)

(Image by Tanya Olmstead, at Amazon.com)

Yesterday, I posted an entry about the Jehovah's Witnesses' interest in John Milton's theological views, which bear some similarities to their own that have not gone unnoticed.

A visitor with the intriguing name "Eklektekuria" posted a comment to inform me that the Jehovah's Witnesses had earlier published on themes familar to readers of Milton:

In 1958, the Watchtower Society published a book entitled "From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained". It was commonly used with children, but was not originally intended to be a children's book, and it gives a JW view of the Bible from creation to Armageddon and the future millennium. The book is best remembered for its graphic portrayal of Armageddon on pp. 208-209 which terrified many a JW child.

I was curious:

Eklektekuria, thanks for visiting and for the interesting detail. Was the book From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained dependent in any way on Milton's two, similarly titled poems? I can imagine that Milton's depiction of Hell would frighten many a child as well...

I haven't heard back from Eklektekuria on this point, nor have I been able to discover any substantive link to Milton from my online search for the book mentioned. Perhaps other readers will know.

Here's another angle on what the book's cover looked like, this one from Tanya Olmstead, also at Amazon.com:
I wonder why the Watchtower Society chose the color red for their book's cover. In 1958, the color red was strongly associated with Communism, a connection to iconic that merely six years later, in 1964, the Chinese government published Quotations from Chairman Mao ZeDong as the famous "Little Red Book."

The book From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained, however, was more frightening than anything Mao said. Here's an image from the book supplied by an ex-JW at Watch the Tower:


With images like this one, no wonder that the book "terrified many a JW child," as Eklektekuria phrased it. Still, it's not much more frightening than Milton's depiction of hell:

Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night [50]
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe
Confounded though immortal: But his doom
Reserv'd him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain [55]
Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes
That witness'd huge affliction and dismay
Mixt with obdurate pride and stedfast hate:
At once as far as Angels kenn he views
The dismal Situation waste and wilde, [60]
A Dungeon horrible, on all sides round
As one great Furnace flam'd, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Serv'd onely to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace [65]
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed
With ever-burning Sulphur unconsum'd: (PL 1.50-69)

Here's a related scene from Paradise Lost, as visualized by Terrance Lindall:

Terrance Lindall, John Milton's Paradise lost:

Synopsized and with illustrations (1982)

(Image from Williamsburg Art and Historical Center)

Not an especially comforting sight, even if the image does depict the fate endured by the enemy of God and mankind.

While we ponder the doom reserved for Satan and his angels, perhaps some kind reader will inform us if the Watchtower Society had Milton's poems in mind when they titled their book From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained...

UPDATE: Apparently, the image above depicting Jehovah's wrath comes not from the book but from a JW brochure depicting the end of the world.

Excursus on Postlapsarian Language in Milton's Paradise Lost

John Milton

"On evil dayes though fall'n, and evil tongues" (PL 7.26)

(Image from Wikipedia)

Recently on the Milton List, a rather energetic debate over "fallen language" in Paradise Lost has taken place. At issue is whether Milton believed in a distinction between pre- and postlapsarian language -- and if he did so believe, did he attempt to distinguish these two in his epic poem, Paradise Lost.

Four years ago, I published an article in Milton Studies of Korea (13.2, November 2003, 321‐54). The article was titled "Free‐Will Theodicy, Middle‐Knowledge Theology, Ramist Linguistics, and Satanic Psychology in Paradise Lost," and it included an exursus on "fallen language," not only in Milton's thought but also in the thought of others around the same time as Milton.

In case anyone might be interested, I have posted that excursus here. The entire article can be read online in a pdf format, but some of my footnotes were lost in the editing process, partly due to a different computer program used by the editors and an incomplete reconstruction of my text (as I discovered after publication). I have put some of the missing notes back in in the material posted below:

"Excursus on Ramus and Language" (from Horace Jeffery Hodges, "Free‐Will Theodicy...," Milton Studies of Korea 13.2, November 2003, pages 336-42)

Of more consequence to my own argument [concerning Satan's use of ambiguous language], however, is a line that occurs in Paradise Regained. In God's own words, spoken to the archangel Gabriel, humanity will regain through Christ:

what the first man lost
By fallacy surprised. (Carey, John Milton, 437: PR 1.154‐55)

Milton's choice of the term "fallacy" suggests an interest in the proper use of logic. In fact, as is well known, Milton prepared a textbook on the subject, The Art of Logic, an abbreviated version of the logic of Peter Ramus. This strongly implies two things, 1) that Milton's interest in the proper use of logic was rather serious indeed and 2) that Milton's interest lay in a very particular kind of logic called "Ramist." One should note that Ramist logic was openly anti‐Aristotelian. Whereas Aristotle's logic was rigorously syllogistic, Ramus emphasized a different approach that used clear distinctions between paired concepts to form dichotomies of ever‐greater precision and thereby purge language of ambiguity. According to John Carey, Ramus's logical system was intended to guide one to absolute truths through the construction of tabular diagrams illustrating the dichotomies (Carey, John Donne, 218).

Given this understanding of logic, what was the fallacy that engendered the fall? Fowler strongly implies that the fallacy was one of equivocation, for he states that in tempting Eve, "Satan . . . argues . . . fallaciously altering the meaning of knowledge in mid‐sorites" (Fowler, 511, n. 9.698-9), a linguistic skill previously perfected by him during his rebellion in heaven, where he already is "scoffing in ambiguous words" (Fowler, 367, PL 6.568; cf. 5.703). A similar equivocation occurs in 9.713‐14, where Satan shifts the meaning of "death." Eve finds his words "impregned / With reason, to her seeming, and with truth" (Fowler, 513, PL 9.737‐738), thus falling for the equivocations. This recalls Adam's warning in 9.351‐356:

. . . what obeys
Reason, is free, and reason . . . [God] made right
But bid her well beware, and still erect,
Lest by some fair appearing good surprised
She dictate false, and misinform the will
To do what God expressly hath forbid. (Fowler, 489, PL 9.351‐56)

The phrase "by some fair appearing good surprised" finds its concise equivalent in the phrase "by fallacy surprised," and this equivalence is supported by reference to the tree of knowledge's produce as "fallacious fruit" (Fowler, 530, PL 9.1046). The fallacy of equivocation here implied, i.e., that something appears to have one sense but really has another, is a danger to which human discursive reason is prone because it must pursue truth through language, unlike angelic intuitive reason, which has immediate perception of truth (cf. Fowler, 312, PL 5.487-90; Bennett, 109). Ramus's dichotomies were intended to avoid fallacious reasoning of this sort by making clear distinctions, and Milton specifically discusses the fallacy of equivocation in his Art of Logic.

Intriguingly, for our interests, Ramus allows that poetry can be used to present logical arguments. According to Walter J. Ong:

Ramus . . . , assigning the discovery of all arguments and their arrangement to the one sole 'art' which he styled indifferently dialectic or logic, maintained adamantly that logic was logic, the same in poetry as in mathematics. (Ong, 43a‐b)

Ong further notes that the process of:

. . . bipartite division employed . . . in Ramist dialectic . . . was . . . 'method,' one of the two types of reasoning processes, of which the other was syllogism. Syllogism handled shorter structures of thought, method all longer structures, whether scientific treatises (including those on dialectic itself), classroom teaching, orations (including sermons), letters, narrations, and poetry. (Ong, 43b)

Clearly, such a view on the capacity of poetry to pursue absolute truths as effectively as mathematics would appeal to a rational poet like Milton.

Just as clearly, however, it would not exhaust his reasons for turning to poetry to resolve a logical problem. Poetry, of course, shares the limitations of all postlapsarian language. As Robert L. Entzminger notes:

When Adam falls in Paradise Lost, so does his language . . . . Milton's Adam forfeits at the Fall the insight into things that their Edenic names express, and thus his postlapsarian speech bears at most an external resemblance to the purity and clarity of innocent words. (Entzminger, 1)

Original sin introduced the qualities of confusion and ambiguity into human speech, and Babel made them permanent features of the language. . . . (Entzminger, 169)

To counter this problem, Milton followed other Reformation thinkers in considering "Pentecost . . . the dispensation which counters the curse, converting the degeneration of language to a felix culpa" (Entzminger, 89). He even partly retrojects this Pentecostal blessing back upon Babel itself by stating in his Art of Logic that every language, "both that first one which Adam spoke in Eden, and those varied ones . . . which the builders of the tower of Babel suddenly received, are without doubt divinely given" (Entzminger, 89). Still, human nature, human language, and human reason remain fallen, even for those regenerated by grace, so Milton must repeatedly invoke and directly appeal to the Holy Spirit to inspire his poem and guarantee its truth:

. . . O Spirit . . .
Instruct me, for thou knowest; thou from the first
Wast present. . . . (Fowler, 59-60, PL 1.17‐20)

. . . govern thou my song. . . . (Fowler, 391, PL 7.30)

Milton even claims, quite explicitly, to be "Taught by the heavenly Muse" (Fowler, 167, PL 3.19) who visits him each night as he sleeps (Fowler, 391, PL 7.28-9) and conveys to him exactly what he should say:

. . . my celestial patroness . . . deigns
Her nightly visitation unimplored,
And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires
Easy my unpremeditated verse. . . . (Fowler, 469, PL 9.21‐4)

Despite this claim, he fears that he may fail in his quest as he wings his way toward a higher argument:

. . . higher argument
Remains, sufficient of itself
. . . unless an age too late, or cold
Climate, or years damp my intended wing
Depressed, and much they may, if all be mine,
Not hers who brings it nightly to my ear. (Fowler, 470-1, PL 9.42‐47)

All three of these factors ― "cultural belatedness and nature's general corruption," a "cold / Climate," and Milton's 58 "years" ― ultimately "follow from [God's commands to his mighty angels in Book] X 651ff, [which put into effect] the macrocosmicconsequences of the Fall" (Fowler, 471, n. 44-47) and threaten Milton's ability to find an "answerable style" (Fowler, 468, PL 9.20) to the Holy Spirit's nightly dictates.

Thus, the problematic that Karl Barth and Emmanuel Levinas identify as "the divine Word within words," i.e., God's Word in the human words of scripture (Ward, 151; cf. 147-70), characterizes Milton's poetry. Yet even if Milton should manage to attain a language adequate to divine truths, this language would not be, for instance, "the mathematically precise language projected by the Royal Society" (Entzminger, 169; cf. 21-2), whose members:

. . . sought . . . to purify language through a program of deliberate linguistic reform, eliminating its ambiguities and imprecisions and achieving thereby a verbal system possessing the clarity and accuracy necessary for an instrument of scientific inquiry. (Entzminger, 168)

Despite his Ramist logic, Milton did not attempt to eliminate ambiguity in language. As Entzminger notes, not even prelapsarian language was mathematically precise:

In his presentation of unfallen language, Milton offers metaphor and pun where the linguists expect mathematical precision, opulent redundancy where they imagine terseness. Employing this verbal play, Adam and Eve are able to express their thoughts immediately and fully, and their words identify their referents without becoming a substitute for them. (Entzminger, 43)

These rhetorical tropes of metaphor and wordplay remain a part of fallen language, as does the ambiguity introduced by original sin. Indeed, Milton makes very effective rhetorical use of linguistic ambiguity. Raman Selden and Peter Widdowson note an example of this:

Describing the fallen angels' state of awareness, having plummeted from heaven to hell, Milton wrote in Paradise Lost: 'Nor did they not perceive the evil plight' [(PL 1.335)]. This cannot be treated as a statement equivalent to 'they perceived the evil plight.' We must attend, argues [Stanley] Fish [(Fish, 25-6; 33-4)], to the sequence of words which creates a state of suspension in the reader, who hangs between two views of the fallen angels' awareness. . . . [Such a syntactic technique] prevents the reader from establishing a definite or stable image in the mind, and at each stage in the sentence forces the reader to make an adjustment in expectation. . . . (Selden and Widdowson, 58)

Milton's effective technique of destabilizing the image that his readers form as they follow the sequence of his words recalls the unstable, shifting images used in Gestalt psychology. The Korean literary critic Sun‐Ae Hwang draws upon Gestalt theory to illustrate the way in which the modernist Austrian writer Robert Musil employs language to evoke unstable and sometimes even paradoxical images in the minds of readers in order to convey aesthetic truths (cf. Hwang, passim), and it might be fruitful to think of Milton's imagery in terms of shifting Gestalts for conveying truths that reason cannot fully elucidate.

There is thus in the act of interpretation a nonrational moment necessary for securing a place for rationality, and Milton makes the most of it. Indeed, it is part and parcel of a turn from a Ramist logos to Baroque mythos. Hans Blumenberg, for example, has argued that Socrates turns from logos to mythos:

. . . in order to answer . . . questions that under the strict claim to knowledge would not be answerable . . . . The floating, uncategorical, almost poetical form of assertion that is characteristic of myth is the vehicle by means of which, after Socrates's great turning toward logic and ethics, the philosophy of nature returns to philosophical thought, widely visible and with lasting influence in the demiurgic myth of the Timaeus. (Blumenberg, 251)

In effect, mythos secures logos. Milton is doing something similar, using mythos to secure theo‐logos. But he is treading upon dangerous ground. Ambiguity overlaps with deception, the realm of the Satanic. It is the linguistic equivalent of the formlessness of chaos and of Satan's metamorphic ability.

Bibliography:

Bennett, Joan S. Reviving Liberty: Radical Christian Humanism in Milton's Great Poems (London: Harvard University Press, 1989).

Blumenberg, Hans. The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. Translated by Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983).

Carey, John, editor. John Donne: Life, Mind and Art (London: Faber and Faber, 1981).

Carey, John, editor. John Milton, Paradise Regained. In John Milton: Complete Shorter Poems (London: Longman, 1971).

Entzminger, Robert L. Divine Word: Milton and the Redemption of Language (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1985).

Fowler, Alastair. Paradise Lost (London: Longman, 1998).

Hwang, Sun-Ae. Liebe als aesthetische Kategorie: Zu "Drei Frauen" von Robert Musil (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1996).

Ong, Walter Jackson. "Ramus." In Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973).

Selden, Raman and Peter Widdowson, A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993).

Ward, Graham, Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

"Deep verst in books and shallow in himself..."

Johann Georg Faust

... a Faustian bargainer?

(Image from Wikipedia)

Reflections toward the close of a final semester at Korea University turn me to Milton and Newton on the gathering of knowledge ... and the danger of Faustian pacts.

John Milton (1608-1674), in his late work Paradise Regained, has Christ reply to Satan's tempting, Faustian offer of the knowledge that books offer:

... However many books
Wise men have said are wearisom; who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior
(And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek) [ 325 ]
Uncertain and unsettl'd still remains,
Deep verst in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys,
And trifles for choice matters, worth a spunge;
As Children gathering pibles on the shore. (PR 4.321-330)

Christ resists the proffered Faustian bargain, possibly because he had no need of what it offered, but the offer is a tempting one for us despite his reply.

Consider the singular case of Isaac Newton (1642-1727). As an old man, Newton was asked what he thought of his achievements, to which he replied:

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

We have this from Sir David Brewster (1781-1868), Memoirs of Newton (1855) Vol. 2, Chapter 27, which I don't have before me, but I assume that Brewster is citing a letter.

Newton had perhaps been reading Milton, but did he then place himself among those fallen prey to the temptation of knowledge?

Yet, a child is such a figure of innocence, hardly Faustian, and Newton -- not usually known as a humble man -- frames his words with humility in admitting ignorance of the great ocean of truth that stretched out unexplored before his childlike eyes.

All the while, however, he was secretly working on alchemical researches -- like Johann Georg Faust himself -- and calculating the end of the world based on his investigations of the biblical works of Daniel and the Apocalypse of John.

Perhaps he believed, but did not say, that had already launched himself onto that enormous ocean of Faustian knowledge...