Sarah R. Morrison on Eve and the "Accommodating Serpent"

Studies

in

English Literature

(Image from Project Muse SEL Website)

I'm still looking around the scholarly literature for material on Eve's similarity to the Serpent in Milton's epic poem, so I'm posting today an excerpt from Sarah R. Morrison's article of last year, "The Accommodating Serpent and God's Grace in Paradise Lost" (Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Volume 49, Number 1, Winter 2009, pp. 173-195).

Here's the excerpt, which questions the putative similarity between the two:

Much has been made of Eve's "affinities with the serpent," as well as with the "Snakie Sorceress" Sin (2.724) and Satan, all of which connections mutually reinforce one another.[16] King-Kok Cheung recognizes that Milton exploits "the traditional association between the serpent and Eve" and "persistently intertwines the two in his poem,"[17] and critics have argued variously that Eve is strongly tainted or relatively uncontaminated by these associations. The tendency has been to stress the connections between Eve and the satanic -- and phallicized -- Serpent rather than those between Eve and the naturalistic -- and feminized -- Serpent. Wolfgang E. H. Rudat argues that the movement of the Serpent and the descriptive language in the temptation scene in Paradise Lost mimic that of much "Elizabethan and seventeenth-century" erotic poetry and reinforce the identification of Satan with the male sexual member and human sexuality.[18] Cheung follows Rudat in insisting on the Serpent's phallicism throughout.[19] But because the Serpent (albeit traditionally a phallic symbol and most obviously treated as such in the temptation scene) has previously been feminized, the contrast between the phallic imagery in the temptation scene -- with the Serpent, as described by [Niel] Forsyth, "sexily upright and appealing as he undulates toward Eve (erect at IX 501)"[20] -- and other descriptions of the Serpent's form and movement that emphasize its graceful curves and coiling could thus equally be taken as an indicator that the dark force operating here is at a considerable remove from the natures of both Eve and the Serpent. It is even possible to see the image of the Serpent as rehabilitated in some degree by its association with Eve. When Adam addresses Eve as "thou Serpent" (10.867), [John] Leonard charges him with "a misnaming of her nature."[21] It is important to note that Adam is here mistaking the naturalistic Serpent's nature as well. Adam's use of the label "Serpent" to defame Eve reveals his divide at this moment from nature and nature's God as well as from his spouse. (page 177)

Here are the endnotes for the above citations, should anyone want to check further:

[16] King-Kok Cheung, "Beauty and the Beast: A Sinuous Reflection of Milton's Eve," Milton Studies 23 (1987): 197–214, 197.

[17] Cheung, p. 197. In terms of iconographic tradition, the serpent in the Garden has been variously depicted as "a natural-looking snake wound around the trunk of a tree," "a winged monster something like a dragon," and a creature "where the top part is a woman and the lower part is a snake," with each artistic choice having theological implications (Sydney Higgins, "Playing the Serpent: Devil, Virgin, or Mythical Beast?," European Medieval Drama 2 [1998]: Papers from the Second International Conference on European Medieval Drama, Camerino, 4–6 July 1997, ed. Higgins, with the European Medieval Drama Council [Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1998], pp. 207–14, 207). See Nora C. Flores for an account of the belief that the serpent who seduced Eve was a "dracontopede, or virgin-faced dragon," an idea Flores traces to "Peter Comestor's Historia Scholastica in the last half of the twelfth century," which Comestor in turn attributes to Saint Bede, the Venerable ("'Effigies Amicitiae . . . Veritas Inimicitiae': Antifeminism in the Iconography of the Woman-Headed Serpent in Medieval and Renaissance Art and Literature," in Animals in the Middle Ages, ed. Flores [New York and London: Routledge, 1996; 2000], pp. 167–95, 168, 167).

[18] Wolfgang E. H. Rudat, "'Back to the Thicket Slunk': Another Look at Milton's Serpent," American Notes & Queries 22, 1–2 (September–October 1983): 7–9, 8.

[19] See Cheung, especially pp. 205–6. That the Serpent as it suggests concupiscence is clearly a phallic symbol poses some difficulties, as Eve or Woman might then appear to fall victim to male sexuality -- which, of course, runs counter to the more standard view that Woman’s carnality caused Man's fall. Rudat, however, argues elsewhere that "Milton endows Eve with the Circean power to transform Satan into a phallic serpent," which again puts the onus on Eve ("'Thy Beauty's Heav'nly Ray': Milton's Satan and the Circean Eve," Milton Quarterly 19,1 [March 1985]: 17–9, 18).

[20] Neil Forsyth, "At the Sign of the Dove and Serpent," Milton Quarterly 34, 2 (May 2000): 57–65, 58.

[21] John Leonard, Naming in Paradise: Milton and the Language of Adam and Eve (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 230.

This excerpt and its citations make the paper also look interesting, but as with yesterday's article by Sandra M. Gilbert, I've not yet had time to read it. I would for now simply note this from the excerpt, and take mild exception to the inference drawn:

[B]ecause the Serpent . . . has previously been feminized, the contrast between the phallic imagery in the temptation scene . . . and other descriptions of the Serpent's form and movement that emphasize its graceful curves and coiling could thus equally be taken as an indicator that the dark force operating here is at a considerable remove from the natures of both Eve and the Serpent.

I would say, rather, that the Serpent's masculine phallic imagery and the graceful feminine curves suggest that both Adam and Eve are implicated in the 'demon-possessed' Serpent's Satanic nature when they fall into their first sin, which fits with one of the points made in my blog entry of several days ago.

More later . . .

John Milton: Eve as Serpent in Paradise Lost?

Adam and Eve and Feminine Serpent

Entrance to Notre Dame Cathedral

(Image from Wikipedia)

I want to return to a passage from Paradise Lost that I cited a few days ago, in which Adam castigates Eve as a "Serpent" for having tempted him to sin, and look briefly into some linguistic speculations on Eve's similarity to the Satanic serpent that tempted her:

Out of my sight, thou Serpent, that name best
Befits thee with him leagu'd, thy self as false
And hateful; nothing wants, but that thy shape,
Like his, and colour Serpentine may shew [ 870 ]
Thy inward fraud, to warn all Creatures from thee
Henceforth; (PL 10.867-872)

Thomas H. Luxon, ed. The Milton Reading Room, September 2010.

On "thou Serpent," the note by Thomas Luxon in his annotated Paradise Lost cites Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg, eds. The Oxford Authors John Milton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), who state: "It has been noted as early as the ancient rabbinic commentators that the name Eve is related to old Semitic words, that is, in Phoenician and Aramaic, for 'serpent'" (page 913). I don't have access to that book, so I don't know what evidence they give.

My copy of Alastair Fowler's 1998 edition of Paradise Lost, on its note for Adam's choice of "name" in line 867, states that "Some commentators interpreted 'Eve' as 'serpent.'" Fowler cites page 229f of John Leonard, Naming in Paradise: Milton and the Language of Adam and Eve (Oxford, 1990). I don't have access to that precise passage of that book, but I do have access to Leonard's annotated Paradise Lost (Penguin Classics, 2003), which says: "Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius had claimed that 'Eve' aspirated means 'serpent'" (page 431, lin 867). Leonard cites D. C. Allen, Modern Language Notes, 74, 1959, pages 681-683. According to Allen:

[The] statement appears in the Protrepticus of Clement of Alexandria, an author whose Paedagogus and Stromata were well known to Milton. In the Hebrew, says Clement[,] if the name of Eve is aspirated it is the same as the feminine of serpent . . . . Clement ties all of this in with the Bacchic orgies, the handling of serpents, and the shouts of [the name Eve] . . . . The same story is repeated in the Praeparationis Evangelicae libri XV of Eusebius, another of Milton's known authorities; this somewhat fuller account translates:

The Bacchants celebrate in their orgies the madness of Dionysus, holding a holiday every month with a raw flesh dinner, and, when they distribute the flesh of the slaughtered victims, they are crowned with garlands of serpents and call upon Eve, that Eve, through whom deceit came in and death followed closely. A consecrated serpent is the symbol of the Bacchic orgies. Therefore, according to the exact Hebrew pronunciation, the name Heva with an aspitate, is interpreted as a female serpent. (citing Ed. Heinichen (Leipzig, 1842), I, 70-1.)

So when Adam tells his wife that the name of serpent befits her best, neither he nor Milton is talking off the top of the head. (page 682)

Allen also notes:

The same account is found again in the fourth century S. Epiphanius, Adversus Haereses, PG, XLII, 802, an author who is mentioned by Milton, but I cannot find evidence that he read him. The chronologically first suggestion of Eve : snake appears in S. Theophilus, Ad Autolycum, PG, VI, 1098 where there is a simple statement that Eve translates as serpent. I can establish no connection between this text and Milton. (page 682)

I'll need to look into this further. I do know that the Gnostics played with a belief that Eve and the serpent were linked in some way, perhaps etymologically. I have my doubts that there's any real etymological relation -- in fact, I'm pretty sure that there is none, and that this is merely a bad pun -- but the wordplay could be something that Milton worked into his text.

But I have to say that the evidence isn't strong, and a lot of speculation rests on Adam's intemperate words "thou Serpent" and "name." Adam does later pun angrily on "Eve" and "evil," so such a libelous wordplay might be present in the passage above, but I'm not yet persuaded.

John Milton: Eve as 'Serpent' in Paradise Lost

Serpent with Eve

Terrance Lindall

(Image from Hake's Americana and Collectibles)

I'm still considering Milton's portrayal of Eve in the temptation scene of Paradise Lost, specifically, the moment in Book 9 when 'Death' is introduced through the fact of Eve's eating of the fruit of knowledge. But before focusing on that, I need to consider another passage first. In Paradise Lost 10.867f, Adam curses Eve as a "Serpent":

Out of my sight, thou Serpent, that name best
Befits thee with him leagu'd, thy self as false
And hateful; nothing wants, but that thy shape,
Like his, and colour Serpentine may shew [ 870 ]
Thy inward fraud, to warn all Creatures from thee
Henceforth; least that too heav'nly form, pretended
To hellish falshood, snare them. But for thee
I had persisted happie, had not thy pride
And wandring vanitie, when lest was safe, [ 875 ]
Rejected my forewarning, and disdain'd
Not to be trusted, longing to be seen
Though by the Devil himself, him overweening
To over-reach, but with the Serpent meeting
Fool'd and beguil'd, by him thou, I by thee . . . (PL 10.867-880)

(Thomas H. Luxon, ed. The Milton Reading Room, September, 2010.)

In this typically Miltonic passage, a thicket of clauses and allusions, Adam calls Eve a serpent in "heav'nly form" who is "pretended / To hellish falshood," which is puzzling until one remembers an earlier meaning of "pretended" as "stretched in front as a covering (OED 1)," as Alastair Fowler notes in his 1998 annotated edition of Paradise Lost (London and New York: Longman, page 587, line 872). In other words, her "heav'nly form" hides "hellish falshood." She's really just another serpent like Satan, the Devil himself, with whom she pridefully sought to vie in wandering from Adam's side, disdaining Adam's prelapsarian warning about temptation.

Is Adam right? Fowler notes that "[s]ome commentators interpreted 'Eve' as 'serpent,'" a linguistic point perhaps worthy of a blog post of its own. What's Milton's own view? Is he speaking through Adam? Paula Harms Payne, in A search for Meaning: Critical Essays on Early Modern Literature (Peter Lang, 2004), notes that this "misogynous speech" is made by the fallen Adam, implying that Milton does not agree with Adam shifting of blame onto Eve (pages 134-135). But does Milton let Eve off so easily? Like Adam, he portrays Eve as serpent-like. Recall my argument of August 4th (2010), on Eve eating 'Death':

Greedily she ingorg'd without restraint,
And knew not eating Death: Satiate at length,
And hight'nd as with Wine, jocond and boon,
Thus to her self she pleasingly began. (PL 9.791-4)

(Thomas H. Luxon, ed. The Milton Reading Room, September, 2010.)

After quoting this passage, I went on to not that the line "And knew not eating Death: Satiate at length" has a caesura, with an implication:

After that break, after that pause, Eve becomes evil, Satanic, "satiate at length," as though serpentine in sound and shape -- if one might draw out the length to which Milton goes to emphasize Eve's radical alteration. Think on the description of Satan "stretcht out huge in length" (PL 1.209), or even more clearly in Satan's own description of being "sated at length" (PL 9.598; emphasis again mine) in his deceptive claim to have himself eaten the forbidden fruit, an unmistakable verbal parallel that conforms Eve to Satan's image.

We might then think that Milton entirely agrees with Adam . . . except that Milton also portrays Adam as serpentine. Early in the passage where Eve is being tempted by Satan, she is told by the 'Serpent':

Amid the Tree now got, where plenty hung
Tempting so nigh, to pluck and eat my fill [ 595 ]
I spar'd not, for such pleasure till that hour
At Feed or Fountain never had I found. (PL 9.594-597)

(Thomas H. Luxon, ed. The Milton Reading Room, September, 2010.)

Now in fact, the 'Serpent' possessed by Satan never did take even a single bite from the Tree of Knowledge, but note the Devil's claim: "I spar'd not" to "eat my fill." As with the verbal parallel between the 'Serpent' being "sated at length" and Eve being "satiate at length," a verbal parallel links "eat my fill" with Adam in his own temptation scene, specifically, when he is described as eating:

. . . Adam took no thought,
Eating his fill . . . (PL 9.1004-1005)

(Thomas H. Luxon, ed. The Milton Reading Room, September, 2010.)

Adam is thus precisely as 'serpentine' as Eve, for this verbal parallel from PL 9.595 comes just in advance of the verbal parallel to Eve in PL 9.598. Milton is implicating both Adam and Eve as Satanic in the same foreshadowing passage of PL 9.594-601, for the Fall has parallel effects upon both of them, as the second eating of the fruit 'iterates' the first (cf. PL 9.1005-1006) and thereby 'completes' the original, deadly sin (cf. PL 9.1003-1004).

Adam is thus correct that Eve has become a 'Serpent,' but so has Adam himself, unbeknownst to him, for the fruit of knowledge has left him ignorant of self-knowledge, and he projects onto Eve his own fallen nature, though he happens to be right since she is also fallen.

More on this another time . . .

Christopher Eagle: Adam as 'Serpentine'?

Adam and Eve, 1509-11

Raphael

Fresco, 120 x 105 cm

Stanza della Segnatura

Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican

(Image from Web Gallery of Art)

Today's serpentine teaser is from Christopher Eagle's article, "'Thou Serpent That Name Best': On Adamic Language and Obscurity in Paradise Lost," from Milton Quarterly (Vol. 41, No. 3, 2007, 183-194), which argues that Adam is assimilated to the Serpent by his misuse of language, an abusive use of words which arises from a "disjunction between the inward reality and the outward shape of things" after the fall:

[W]e should . . . point out that Adam's rhetoric in the confrontation with Eve bears out [a] lapse of accurate signification . . . . In the world's first domestic squabble, we find a cuckolded Adam making the metaphoric connection of Eve to Satan:

Out of my sight, thou Serpent, that name best
Befits thee with him leagu'd, thyself as false,
And hateful; nothing wants, but that thy shape,
Like his, and color Serpentine may show
Thy inward fraud, to warn all Creatures from thee
Henceforth; lest that too heav'nly form, pretended
To hellish falsehood, snare them. (10.867-73)

In what many critics consider to be Adam's weakest moment as a character, we have already noted the progressive weakening of his nomination [i.e., his skill in naming things]. In the lines that follow, Adam tropes [i.e., makes a figure of speech about] Eve's serpentine deceitfulness as the disparity between her inward and outward shape, evidently contrasted with what he hopes is his everpresent wholeness. The glaring irony here, of course, is that Adam's likening of Eve to the Serpent is a figurative act (metaphor), itself an equally "serpentine" use of language. Because the possibility of figurativeness depends upon a disjunction from the literal, a disjunction between the inward reality and the outward shape of things, Adam's words would seem not to be ontologically possible before the Fall, because such a split between being and appearing would not yet have taken place.[10] For this reason, it is often said that in Paradise Lost, "with the Fall of man, language falls too" (Ricks 109). Like Eve's outward shape, words now pretend, in the "proper and primary signification" of the word, meaning they stretch in front as a covering. They assume this covering-over of their proper and primary signification (the linguistic fig leaf, so to speak), not only by meaning figuratively, but by meaning obscurely . . . . (pages 189-190)

Here are some endnotes for the excerpt:

[10] Umberto Eco, "On the Possibility of Generating Aesthetic Messages in an Edenic Language," The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1979, 90-104.

Christopher Ricks, Milton's Grand Style, Oxford: Clarendon, 1963

Professor Eagle's point is that Satan had first learned to misuse language by exploiting a 'fallen' disjunction between appearance and reality, that Satan had then used the Serpent to mislead Eve through this disjunction, and that a Satanic Adam is now acting like the 'Serpent' in his verbal abuse of Eve by means of this disjunction. The result is that words now "assume this covering-over of their proper and primary signification . . . , not only by meaning figuratively, but by meaning obscurely."

I'll need to consider this argument carefully, though it's similar to an argument that I once made in a paper, but I'll have to read Professor Eagle's entire article first and check some prelapsarian passages in Paradise Lost. I say this because I have come to see matters as a bit more complex. The figurative use of language surely precedes the fall, though the deceptive use of language to obscure truth is, of course, postlapsarian, but is Adam misusing words to obscure inward reality in the passage above from Paradise Lost? If there is now a postlapsarian disjunction between appearance and reality, then Adam is correct in calling Eve "thou Serpent," for she has inwardly become one -- meaning that she has become Satanic, somewhat as the Serpent, albeit inadvertently, became inwardly Satanic when the Devil possessed it, the better to tempt Eve.

The dramatic irony of Adam's words is that he himself has also become 'Serpentine', as we have already seen in previous posts, but his accusation that Eve is a "Serpent" is correct. Both Adam and Eve are now 'Serpentine'.

As I said, however, I'll need to read the entire article, and I will do so, just as soon as I get through a big batch of student writing that I have to check for its own 'Serpentine' misuse of language.

Laughter, the best medicine?

Eduard von Grützner, Falstaff

Shakespearean Humor

(Image from Wikipedia)

As an old man now, I must lean on a rickety false staff to support myself with good humor as I continue this pilgrimage of mine through life, still climbing up along my chosen career path despite the many detours that I've taken.

But my humor often gets misread, as my longsuffering Uncle Cran has reported since yesterday's humorous blog entry. For instance, in his anecdote concerning the high school reunion where everyone present was expected to offer a brief biography of life's events since graduation, he originally related:

When I got to the part about meeting Gay and our marriage, I stated, "When we got married, we were both young, shy, inexperienced, and inhibited."

Then I continued, "Our first son was born 10 and 1/2 months later," and I heard someone, (who will not be identified), make the snide remark, "Sounds like Cran got over his inhibitions!"

There were a few (shall we say, sniggers?) as those two near but unconnected comments of mine were somehow mis-applied. This demonstrates that this lady, and perhaps others of my classmates, still had thoughts in their minds not exactly appropriate for such a gathering. But I will forgive and try to forget! As only I should.

That was Uncle Cran's summary of his brief remark, and he now reports in a circular sent out to those who might have misconstrued:

Some of our classmates have written, thanking me for my report on the 52nd class reunion. One (or more?) thought I might have had my feelings hurt about the cute remarks and giggles following my account of my and Gay's marriage and son's birth. That was actually intended to elicit such a response, and is a demonstration of my twisted humor.

Others, apparently, were worried that my gentle ribbing of my dear Uncle Cran throughout yesterday's blog entry might have been intended as harsh sarcasm or as some sort of criticism

Uncle Cran, however, has reassured them:

Nephew Jeffery has again placed my account on his blog. We have a good time doing this, and all comments are meant to be funny, as he is afflicted with the same family trait of wry (some would call 'strange') humor.

I've replied to Uncle Cran:

I can well imagine that some readers might lack the [peculiar] sense of humor . . . to recognize that we are just kidding. People have often thought that my posts on fan death are serious, a severe misreading that I cannot fathom. So . . . I sometimes wonder if we should be less 'humorous'. Except that it entertains the two of us and makes my blog more interesting . . . I think . . . . As for the comment made at the reunion itself -- the one about your loss of inhibitions -- I suspected that you'd been fishing for that. Yes, we share a sense of humor, unfortunately. Both our humors are radioactive, it seems, for when your humor and mine meet on my blog, there's a nuclear reaction. We ought to threaten North Korea.

As an aside, I'd note that humor probably would be felt as a threat by the Beloved Leader, General King Jong-il.

Anyway, speaking of humor, that 'paramour of scholarly virtue', Wikipedia, offers some theories on how humor works. One of these is the "superiority theory," which says that we laugh at the misfortunes of other people because such misfortunes imply our superiority to others in their failings. Superficially, this seems to be my humor at Uncle Cran's expense, and some people might read my humor this way and take offense on Uncle Cran's part. Those people are not in on the joke, so let me explain to any who haven't understood -- my jokes about Uncle Cran do not belong to this category of humor. A different theory better conveys my meaning, the "incongruity theory," which is a bit more complicated to explain, but this theory basically says that humor is conveyed through the incongruity between what is said and what is meant. What makes my humor at Uncle Cran's expense difficult to catch is that I pretend to laugh at his misfortunes (superiority) but depend upon readers to understand that I surely don't mean what I seem to be saying (incongruity). But, as I noted, not everybody is in on the joke. Well . . . I suppose that they now are.

Humor is often complex when it occurs in literature. Take the case of Falstaff. Are we intended to laugh at him? Or with him? Our reason for laughing says something about us. On the Milton List a couple of weeks ago, a question was raised about humor in Paradise Lost. Several scholars gave examples, and I offered a line by Eve in which she responds to the serpent's multiple, excessively over-the-top compliments on her wonderful qualities by doubting that the forbidden fruit truly conveys wisdom:

In my opinion, Eve has the funniest line in Paradise Lost. Immediately after Satan in serpent form has praised Eve with excessive compliments, she retorts:

Serpent, thy overpraising leaves in doubt
The vertue of that Fruit, in thee first prov'd: (PL 9.615-6)

I always have to laugh when I read Eve's remark. But is she aware of the humor . . . or is this solely Milton's joke?

In a recent offlist email, I received a belated response to my question from the scholar David Ainsworth:

Nothing like this time of year for a delayed response.

I think unquestionably that there's a joke here, on several layers. If Eve doesn't mean the contradiction, then she must be using "prov'd" in the sense of being tested or made trial of. Milton would unquestionably appreciate that this other usage of the word aligns itself not just with testing but with *tasting* in particular. The OED [Oxford English Dictionary] doesn't list many usages specific to tasting, but the quibble on test/taste was common enough even outside circumstances like this one.

I suspect there's plenty of bilingual or trilingual plays on words in Milton's poetry which slip past readers.

As for Eve's awareness -- I guess that depends on how close to falling one believes her at this moment. The more she's chiding Satan for praise which she has secretly embraced, the more calculated this response will seem. For me, part of what I appreciate about lines like these is that Eve can mean the joke regardless of how she's taking in the situation, but that the purpose of the humor shifts -- she's either expressing false humility by affirming the serpent's judgment by affirming the fruit's virtue, or she's genuinely chiding the serpent.

Sadly, I suspect in context that Eve's doubt of the fruit must be seen as her humor, deployed precisely in a situation where Satan's overpraising genuinely ought to lead her to genuine doubt.

I take Professor Ainsworth's point to be that Eve only pretends to doubt the fruit's power to bring wisdom, for she secretly enjoys the serpent's attentions and wants to believe the serpent truly wise and therefore correct. As Professor Ainsworth notes, the humor can work on several levels. One possibility is that the reader will react as the superiority theory might predict -- with a sort of judgemental humor, as though one felt superior to Eve and were silently thinking I wouldn't fall for that flattery! Milton, however, thinks that we would fall for it -- if Stanley Fish is right about Milton tempting the reader to fall into sin along with Eve and Adam by encouraging us to identify with Satan. If so, there comes a moment of grim, ironic incongruity as we recognize that Milton is not merely describing Eve but also describing us. If such is the case, then echoing Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennet, I can say, "That is a failing indeed, . . . [but] I really cannot laugh at it."

And with those words, I must now exit this stage and begin my day.

Dante's Geryon and a 'Serpentine' Adam?

Geryon

Gustave Doré

(Image from Wikipedia)

In a couple of recent posts, I've suggested that not just Eve, but Adam himself is somewhat 'Serpentine' in Paradise Lost. The first post was on September 27, 2010:

Milton also portrays Adam as serpentine. Early in the passage where Eve is being tempted by Satan, she is told by the 'Serpent':

Amid the Tree now got, where plenty hung
Tempting so nigh, to pluck and eat my fill [ 595 ]
I spar'd not, for such pleasure till that hour
At Feed or Fountain never had I found. (PL 9.594-597)

(Thomas H. Luxon, ed. The Milton Reading Room, September, 2010.)

Now in fact, the 'Serpent' possessed by Satan never did take even a single bite from the Tree of Knowledge, but note the Devil's claim: "I spar'd not" to "eat my fill." As with the verbal parallel between the 'Serpent' being "sated at length" and Eve being "satiate at length," a verbal parallel links "eat my fill" with Adam in his own temptation scene, specifically, when he is described as eating:

. . . Adam took no thought,
Eating his fill . . . (PL 9.1004-1005)

(Thomas H. Luxon, ed. The Milton Reading Room, September, 2010.)

Adam is thus precisely as 'serpentine' as Eve, for this verbal parallel from PL 9.595 comes just in advance of the verbal parallel to Eve in PL 9.598. Milton is implicating both Adam and Eve as Satanic in the same foreshadowing passage of PL 9.594-601, for the Fall has parallel effects upon both of them, as the second eating of the fruit 'iterates' the first (cf. PL 9.1005-1006) and thereby 'completes' the original, deadly sin (cf. PL 9.1003-1004).

The second post was from October 2, 2010, a commentary on an article by Christopher Eagle:

Professor Eagle's point is that Satan had first learned to misuse language by exploiting a 'fallen' disjunction between appearance and reality, that Satan had then used the Serpent to mislead Eve through this disjunction, and that a Satanic Adam is now acting like the 'Serpent' in his verbal abuse of Eve by means of this disjunction. The result is that words now "assume this covering-over of their proper and primary signification . . . , not only by meaning figuratively, but by meaning obscurely."

As noted there in that latter post, I shall need to think about this argument. Here's a thought to consider: we ought to distinguish between becoming 'Serpentine' and becoming 'Satanic', at least in principle, though the two can coincide. More on that some other time.

Fellow Miltonist Dario Rivarossa read the remarks on Eagle's article and suggested that I look at the figure of Geryon in Dante's Inferno 17.1-18 for a possible source of Adam as 'Serpentine', so I've checked it out:

"Ecco la fiera con la coda aguzza,
'Behold the beast with pointed tail, that leaps

che passa i monti e rompe i muri e l'armi!
past mountains, shatters walls and weapons!

Ecco colei che tutto 'l mondo appuzza!"
Behold the one whose stench afflicts the world!'

Sì cominciò lo mio duca a parlarmi;
was how my guide began.

accennolle che venisse a proda,
Then he signaled to the beast to come ashore

vicino al fin d'i passeggiati marmi.
close to the border of our stony pathway.

E quella sozza imagine di froda
And that foul effigy of fraud came forward,

sen venne, e arrivò la testa e 'l busto,
beached its head and chest

ma 'n su la riva non trasse la coda.
but did not draw its tail up on the bank.

La faccia sua era faccia d'uom giusto,
It had the features of a righteous man,

tanto benigna avea di fuor la pelle,
benevolent in countenance,

e d'un serpente tutto l'altro fusto;
but all the rest of it was serpent.

due branche avea pilose insin l'ascelle;
It had forepaws, hairy to the armpits,

lo dosso e 'l petto e ambedue le coste
and back and chest and both its flanks

dipinti avea di nodi e di rotelle.
were painted and inscribed with rings and curlicues.

Con più color, sommesse e sovraposte
So many vivid colors Turk or Tartar never wove

non fer mai drappi Tartari né Turchi,
in warp and woof or in embroidery on top,

né fuor tai tele per Aragne imposte.
nor were such colors patterned on Arachne's loom.

The Italian text is from Divina Commedia edited by Giorgio Petrocchi and published by Mondadori (Milan, Italy, 1966-67), which I've borrowoed from the Princeton Dante Project, which supplies the English as well.

Is this a source for Milton's hints of a 'Serpentine' Adam? The emphasis upon "fraud" would fit the misuse of language noted by Eagle, and Geryon is certainly serpent-like. There are similarities as well to Milton's depiction of "Sin," for which Milton drew on the depiction of "Error" in Edmund Spenser's Fairie Queene, though both "Sin" and "Error" are both feminine in these depictions. At any rate, I don't find clear dependence of a 'Serpentine' Adam, so I leave it as a mere possibility.

Back to grading . . .

"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.

More on John Milton's 'Vitiated' Serpent

Nastassja Kinski with Serpent
Vitiated in Nature?
Photo by Richard Avedon
Google Images

Several days ago, I posted a blog entry on "Milton's Vitiated Serpent" in Paradise Lost, and it received some positive remarks from a few scholars on the Milton List -- Professor Michael Gillum, Professor Richard Strier, and Professor James Rovira -- though one of them, Professor Rovira, also raised objections to my analysis of the term "judgment," so I responded to that on the listserve and have finally gotten around to posting my reply here:

Thanks to Michael Gillum, Richard Strier, and James Rovira for their kind words. I have since proofread and corrected several inglorious typos that they were too polite to mention.

James raises some good points, and I need to look more closely at the issue of judgment. There are two things to consider concerning the term's meaning:

1) two senses of judgment - sentencing vs. evaluation

2) two processes of judgment - active vs. passive

I need to sort these out, but I don't have time now. For the nonce, I can only point to a couple of things to be considered in reflecting on the judgment issue.

First, consider the judgment of Adam: "On Adam last thus judgment he pronounced" (10.197) This language looks unambiguous to me, i.e., God is sentencing Adam (and in a rather different manner from "And on the serpent thus his curse let fall" [10.174]).

Second, consider that 9.784-785 tells us that "Back to the thicket slunk / The guilty serpent" and that Old English slincan meant "to creep, crawl (of reptiles)" (OED, Compact Edition, p. 2866) -- and even today, "slink" retains the sense of not entirely upright, of a movement hunched over from the upright position -- and with respect to the "guilty serpent," the choice of "slunk" seems a nod in the direction of "Upon thy belly grovelling thou shalt go" (10.177), as though the serpent is already accursed as Satan's instrument at the moment of the successful temptation.

These are intended merely as food for thought. I do not have a fixed view on my suggestion concerning God's judgment with respect to the serpent.

My point -- just to iterate for clarity -- is that Milton may have been presenting the serpent as already slithering upon its belly immediately after the successful temptation of Eve. Tainted through its possession by Satan, a spirit of impurity, the serpent is already polluted, vitiated in nature. God's judgment would thus seem more of an evaluation than a sentencing. But a question yet remained, so I posted another comment on the Milton List:

Much of the "curse" on the serpent simply notes what is already the case about the serpent due to its "vitiated" nature. Arguably, it already goes about on the ground, if "slunk" (9.784) is intended to suggest this point. The only expression that depicts God actively judging the serpent is when he says "I will put enmity" between the serpent and mankind, but let us note that the enmity is also already present in mankind, for Adam has already called it a "false worm" (9.1068), and Eve has already noted the "Fraud in the serpent"' (9.1150) and exculpated herself for having been unaware, in her earlier innocence, of "enmity between" her and the serpent (9.1151).

None of this, of course, resolves the tension in Milton's thought between so-called 'ritual' impurity and ethical guilt; Milton's language merely renders that tension less noticeable.

I need to give this issue more thought, but that will have to wait until I have more time . . .

Milton's Vitiated Serpent?

Serpent

Biblia Pauperum

Wikipedia

Over on the Milton List, there has been an interesting discussion concerning the 'punishment' of the hapless serpent, mere guiltless instrument of Satan's malice in his temptation of Eve to eat the fruit of knowledge, a verdict rendered in PL 10.163-182, immediately following Eve's 'displacement' of guilt onto the poor reptile:

Which when the Lord God heard, without delay
To Judgement he proceeded on th' accus'd
Serpent though brute, unable to transferre [ 165 ]
The Guilt on him who made him instrument
Of mischief, and polluted from the end
Of his Creation; justly then accurst,
As vitiated in Nature: more to know
Concern'd not Man (since he no further knew) [ 170 ]
Nor alter'd his offence; yet God at last
To Satan first in sin his doom apply'd
Though in mysterious terms, judg'd as then best:
And on the Serpent thus his curse let fall.

Because thou hast done this, thou art accurst [ 175 ]
Above all Cattle, each Beast of the Field;
Upon thy Belly groveling thou shalt goe,
And dust shalt eat all the dayes of thy Life.
Between Thee and the Woman I will put
Enmitie, and between thine and her Seed; [ 180 ]
Her Seed shall bruise thy head, thou bruise his heel.

Thomas H. Luxon, ed. The Milton Reading Room, April 2012.

The lines 175 to 181 are taken over by Milton from the Genesis account, which Milton accepted as inspired, so he had to make do with the scene, though it doesn't accord well with his theory of justice, where guilt is attributed solely to those who are moral agents, namely, those with free will -- those whose reason remains in control.

The central lines to examine are descriptive of the serpent as "polluted from the end / Of his Creation; justly then accurst, / As vitiated in Nature." According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "pollute" in Milton's time can mean "to render ceremonially or morally impure," and the word "vitiate" in Milton's time could mean "to make impure" (OED, Compact Edition, Vol. 2, 1988, pp. 2230 and 3645). The word "end" of line 166 refers to the purpose, or telos, for which God created the serpent.

Milton is combining biblical concepts and Greek philosophical concepts -- the former concerning impurity, the latter concerning teleology -- and he's perhaps interpreting the former in terms of the latter, though the two cohere only uncertainly. The crux is this: impurity is an active, unholy force that penetrates and pollutes, whereas the telos ("the end") allows for a more passive, instrumental misuse, namely, the serpent's use as an instrument to pervert rather than effect God's purposes. The problem for Milton lies in explaining how the misuse of a creature without free will leaves its mark upon that creature. For such to be the case, impurity would have to be an active force remaining in the serpent even after Satan has withdrawn from that creature. Otherwise, the serpent would simply return to its prior purity and its previous role in God's purposes. Milton, indeed, seems uncomfortable with impurity as a force, else he wouldn't write that the serpent had been used as "instrument / Of mischief, and polluted from the end / Of his Creation," for in expressing the term "polluted" in the context of the words "instrument" and "end," he assimilates "polluted" to "perverted," mere misuse. But why should a one-time misuse leave the serpent tainted? In Milton's system of justice, creatures with free will can cetainly misuse God's creation, for absent that power for misuse, free will would be without effect, but justice would require punishment of the guilty alone, not of their hapless instruments. Milton thus draws upon the connotation of the term "polluted" for its sense of 'taint' -- even though this is repugnant to his system of justice -- because he needs to account for God's judgment upon the serpent.

Milton's discomfort with this 'solution' shows through in the rather passive manner in whch God 'judges' the serpent ("judg'd as then best: / And on the Serpent thus his curse let fall"), as though the judging is meant in the sense of evaluating, namely, seeing that the serpent is accursed ("thou art accurst") and stating that as a fact.

Judge for yourselves . . .

O Eve, in evil hour...

This third-century fresco from Rome's Catacomb of St Piretro and St. Marcellino shows Adam and Eve being tempted by Satan in the form of a serpent. For this image and others presenting various artistic renderings of the original sinners, see Alan Humm's website at the University of Pennsylvania.

I post this image as preface because I recently posed a query, on a listserve to which I belong, about Milton's depiction of Adam and Eve's sin, and while I'm waiting for their responses, I thought that I'd rework my query and pose it here as well.

The Milton scholar Christopher Ricks has cited Paradise Lost 9.1067, "O Eve, in evil hour...", and argued that Adam puns here on "Eve" and "evil" to "proclaim . . . that the word evil is derived from Eve, and that evil derives from her" (Ricks, Milton's Grand Style (Oxford University Press,1963) p. 103).

I have a question related to this: Has anyone noted the possibility of a double pun here?

"evil" = "Eve ill"?

Since Milton has used the term "ill" to mean "evil" just twelve lines earlier, in 9.1055, then the following sequence could be derived:

"evil" = "Eve ill" --> "Eve evil" = "Eve Eve ill" --> "Eve Eve evil" = "Eve Eve Eve ill" --> "Eve Eve Eve evil" . . . ad infinitum.

This sequence fascinates me for two reasons:

First, one can read the sequence as ontological but delving endlessly into levels of sameness, and thereby understand it to suggest a vicious regression in which evil has no ground other than evil itself.

Second, one can read the sequence as temporal and extending endlessly into the future, and thereby understand it to suggest that evil inevitably generates ever more evil from out of itself.

I propose that Milton intends for us to read his double pun both ways, for each of the two readings fits Milton's view of evil as a lack of being that generates ever more lack of being.

Incidentally, I don't think that Milton shares Adam's misogynistic view of Eve, for Adam is speaking as one fallen and equally to blame for evil.

But that's another story.

Milton's 'Satanic' Serpent: How Big Was It?

Paradise Lost by John Milton:

Parallel Prose Edition

Dennis Danielson

Cover Art by Kirsten Behee

(Image from Danielson's UCB Website)

Milton scholar Dennis Danielson has published a parallel prose edition of Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost. By "parallel" is meant that on the lefthand page appears the original poem and on the righthand page appears Danielson's prose 'translation'.

That ought to be useful for some readers, but I have a question or two concerning the serpent depicted on the cover, so I posted a query at the Milton List that I'll also post here:

Concerning his parallel prose edition of Paradise Lost, Dennis Danielson wrote:

"For a look at Kirsten Behee's original cover art, which Amazon hasn't yet posted, please see link."

I finally clicked to see this cover art and was impressed. I also have a question that derives from that cover image:

How large was the serpent that Satan chose to possess for Eve's temptation?

The artwork shows the serpent as pythonesque -- perhaps large enough to swallow Eve . . . and Adam. Does this depiction of the serpent's size represent Satan as serpent during the punishment inflicted upon him annually for his crime?

His Visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare,
His Armes clung to his Ribs, his Leggs entwining
Each other, till supplanted down he fell
A monstrous Serpent on his Belly prone,
Reluctant, but in vaine: a greater power
Now rul'd him, punisht in the shape he sin'd,
According to his doom: (PL 10.511-517)

Or does Kirsten Behee's original cover art depict the serpent possessed by Satan?

So spake the Enemie of Mankind, enclos'd
In Serpent, Inmate bad, and toward Eve
Address'd his way, not with indented wave,
Prone on the ground, as since, but on his reare,
Circular base of rising foulds, that tour'd
Fould above fould a surging Maze, his Head
Crested aloft, and Carbuncle his Eyes;
With burnisht Neck of verdant Gold, erect
Amidst his circling Spires, that on the grass
Floted redundant: (PL 9.494-503)

Since the rising folds tower fold above fold, up to a head held aloft, his serpent also appears to be large . . . but how large?

This isn't an especially important question, I suppose, but I am curious.

(Quoted PL Passages: Thomas H. Luxon, ed., The Milton Reading Room, November, 2008)

If any readers of this blog know the answer to my curious question, please weigh in with comments.

Sandra M. Gilbert on Satan and the Serpentine Eve

Sandra M. Gilbert

Poet and Scholar

(Image from Sandra M. Gilbert Website)

I'm still looking into ways in which John Milton depicts the fallen Eve as 'serpentine' in Paradise Lost. I'm not the only one who's ever thought about this, as yesterday's blog entry demonstrated. Today, I want to excerpt a passage by the feminist scholar Sandra M. Gilbert, from her article of 1978, "Patriarchal Poetry and Women Readers: Reflections on Milton's Bogey," in which she argues that Milton assimilates Eve to Satan:

[E]ven the briefest reflection on Paradise Lost should remind us that, despite Eve's apparent passivity and domesticity, Milton himself seems deliberately to have sketched so many parallels between her and Satan that it is hard at times for the unwary reader to distinguish the sinfulness of one from that of the other. As Stanley Fish has pointed out, for instance, Eve's temptation speech to Adam in Book IX is "a tissue of Satanic echoes," with its central argument, "Look on me. / Do not believe," an exact duplicate of the antireligious empiricism embedded in Satan's earlier temptation speech to her. Moreover, where Adam falls out of uxorious "fondness," out of a self-sacrificing love for Eve, which, at least to the modern reader, seems quite noble, Milton's Eve falls for exactly the same reason that Satan does: because she wants to be "as Gods" and because, like him, she is secretly dissatisfied with her place, secretly preoccupied with questions of "equality." After his fall, Satan makes a pseudo-libertarian speech to his fellow angels in which he asks, "Who can in reason then or right assume / Monarchy over such as live by right / His equals, if in power and splendor less, / In freedom equal?" (V.794-97). After her fall, Eve considers the possibility of keeping the fruit to herself "so to add what wants / In Female Sex, the more to draw [Adam's] Love, / And render me more equal" (IX.821-23).

Again, just as Milton's Satan -- despite his pretensions to equality with the divine -- dwindles from an angel into a dreadful (though subtle) serpent, so Eve is gradually reduced from an angelic being to a monstrous and serpentine creature, listening sadly as Adam thunders, "Out of my sight, thou Serpent, that name best/ Befits thee with him leagu'd, thyself as false / And hateful; nothing wants, but that thy shape, / Like his, and colour Serpentine may show / Thy inward fraud" (X.867-71). (Sandra M. Gilbert, "Patriarchal Poetry and Women Readers: Reflections on Milton's Bogey," Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, Vol. 93, No. 3 (May, 1978), page 372B)

I excerpted this passage from Gilbert's article after skimming the entire text, but I don't have time to deal with it fully this morning, and I'd first like to read the entire article carefully before commenting -- other than to observe that this looks interesting. Gilbert has noted various parallels in Paradise Lost between the falling and fallen Eve and the falling and fallen Satan, particularly in their reason for rebellion and their manner of tempting others.

More tomorrow, perhaps, but don't forget meantime that Adam is also partly assimilated to the serpentine Satan, as we have already seen in the fact that both are depicted as eating their fill.

Terrance Lindall's Lost Bifolia . . .

Terrance Lindall was rummaging through his earlier oeuvre and sent me some images of what he'd found, along with permission to post them. I'll include his remarks, posted in block-quote form beneath each image. First comes the room of his rummaging:

Note those black tea and coffee urns. That's silver that has nor been polished in 35 years. The coffee urn belonged to the Tiny Tim Society, whatever that was.

A bit of alchemy will bring those 'Dorian Gray' urns to shine again, even while purifying the soul of its baser material. While Terrance contemplates those musings, let us go forth into the past and gaze into the outpourings of his amusing muse, what at first glance appears to stem from his days as illustrator for such magazines as Creepy . . . except for what Terrance tells us:

I once spent about a year writing notes for what I thought was going to be great philosophical short story. Recently in sorting my notes from the past forty years I came across it. It was about Beauty and the Beast. In it a man has a conversation with the animal side of his character. It is like Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov where the prince has a conversation with the devil. It was sort of like CS Lewis' Screwtape Letters too. The beast argued that all that is worthy comes about through desire passion and eagerness to possess, whether it is to possess beauty or love, or indulge in sensual pleasures, etc. The beast also argues that pursuit of knowledge also is by urge of the passions. Without desire, we desire nothing. Thus without the beast in us, our animal nature, life is empty and nothing. Fear is good too, we fear and run from pain and death. I have to go back and look at it. It is a jumble. It has some pen sketches of the beast too.

"A thing of Beauty is a joy forever." Is it? Or is it precious and beautiful because it is fleeting. Even if it is fleeting, is it still a joy forever? In what way? Is that just a poetic throw off or a philosophical truth? If one cannot believe it, is it good poetry?

Does not one become indifferent to beauty as one becomes indifferent to any stimulus? The animal in us becomes sated once glutted.

Interesting musings for a Beast. Perhaps alchemy is working its magic. I hope that Terrance returns to that story and reworks it. But let us turn to his Paradise Lost images. This one's titled "Satan Summoning His Legions" . . . but note the fullcaps caption:

SATAN SUMMONING HER TROOPS FROM OFF THE FIERY POOL

That's a bit unexpected, a differently gendered Satan! But why, after all, should we be sexist and always use the masculine for Satan? Anyway, on a sheet associated with this image are Terrance's musings on the theme of Paradise Lost -- and look, an alchemical trope!

No caption to that one, but you can click on the image and read what Terrance wrote. Let's move on to the next image, titled "Eve Sees Her Reflection" and reflect on its significance:

Again, no caption, but we can read of Eve's captured, captivating image below -- in the image of the writing itself as well as in Lindall's further musings, including remarks prefatory to the final image of Eve and the Serpent:

Eve is reflecting on her image in the pool. She is mesmerized by the beauty and yet is loathe to look, subconsciously aware that this is the fascination akin to that of a mesmerizing snake! Yes, there is fasciation and perhaps a bit of horror by the strong attraction she feels. Can this be lust? Horror and beauty are somehow related. Consider the swirling eddies of colliding star clusters in the galaxy -- creation and desctruction -- the beauty and the horror, Krishna and Kali, aspects of the same God! Notice in my final painting of Eve and the Serpent that they have the same blue irises for eyes! They are aspects of each other. Both are tempters. She is tempted by the Serpent and Adam is tempted by her. How many parallels are there?

Good questions about parallels between Eve and the Serpent, and these demonstrate something that I posted some years back, namely, that Terrance is an artist of ideas. Not all artist are, though all perhaps have conceptions of what they want to create, but Terrance has consciously thought-out ideas that fit together in a system of thought. He is an intellectual as well as an artist. And we see this all because he was cleaning house:

Looking behind a large piece of Victorian furniture I knew there was a shallow box standing upright that I thought contained our complete Fugaku hyakkei 'One hundred views of Mt. Fuji' by Hokusai.

No indeed, it contained my lost bifolia drawings of Paradise Lost. These were missing for about 20 years. The bifolia are \t 15 x 15 which, when you open the page, contains notes on the ideas illustrated on the first page.

"Bifolia," Terrance says.

"Biophilia," I say . . .

Milton's Paradise Lost: Adam and Eve Should Have Known Better!

Eve and the Serpent
You'd think she'd have suspected . . .
By hawanja

I previously said that with respect to Adam and Eve's awareness of the foe's aims, the alert reader should consider PL 9.351-356, in which Adam elucidates faculty psychology further:

But God left free the Will, for what obeyes
Reason, is free, and Reason he made right
But bid her well beware, and still erect,
Least by some faire appeering good surpris'd
She dictate false, and misinforme the Will
To do what God expresly hath forbid . . .

On the Milton List I noted an implication of what God had forbidden, for God had forbidden only one thing, eating from the tree of knowledge:

Given that Adam said (9.356), "To do what God expresly hath forbid," Adam and Eve would seem to have an inkling that the foe would somehow try to get them to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, for what else could Adam be referring to? And what else could Eve have understood him to be referring to? Yet, Eve seems not to remember this . . .

I was challenged on my statement that Eve had forgotten the command, but I actually meant something a bit different, as I clarified:

[P]erhaps I wasn't clear. I meant that Adam's warning about doing what God had expressly forbidden implies that Adam knows - and that Eve should realize - that the foe they face will use the tree of knowledge in some way to try to mislead them, yet they also seem simultaneously not to know this, since otherwise they would speak more directly about avoiding the tree.

I also think that if Eve was expecting the foe to use the tree, she should have recognized that she had met the foe as soon as the serpent led her to the Tree of Knowledge.

Why didn't she?

Vertiginous Acrophobia and a Return to Paradise

Edvard Munch, The Scream (1893)

Depicting JK's Visceral Abhorrence of Evil!

(Image from Wikipedia)

After yesterday's debacle -- the poem from my juvenilia that so grated on the nerves of poor, longsuffering JK -- perhaps we had best return to the Paradise Lost and learn to distinguish good (e.g., the good poem by John Milton) from evil (e.g., the bad poem by yours truly).

The Milton List has an ongoing discussion about Adam and Eve's knowledge of good and evil prior to eating from the tree of knowledge. A distinction has been drawn between an abstract, conceptual knowledge of evil and a concrete, experiential knowledge of evil. In their prelapsarian state, Adam and Eve have the former but not the latter. On this point, the Milton scholar Jim Rovira appears to disagree with the Milton scholars Michael Gillum and Harold Skulsky:

Jim Rovira wrote:

"My argument is that for Adam and Eve there is only one possible prohibition: do not learn about evil. So what is a multitude of rules for us is only a single rule for them."

Michael Gillum has already responded to this in his remarks about the natural law to which Adam and Eve are attuned through their reason -- "in all things else, our
reason is our law" -- but I will agree and also quote the precise lines from Paradise Lost in their larger context:

Serpent, we might have spar'd our coming hither,
Fruitless to mee, though Fruit be here to excess,
The credit of whose vertue rest with thee,
Wondrous indeed, if cause of such effects.
But of this Tree we may not taste nor touch;
God so commanded, and left that Command
Sole Daughter of his voice; the rest, we live
Law to our selves, our Reason is our Law.
(Paradise Lost 9.647-654)

(Luxon, Thomas H., ed. The Milton Reading Room, July, 2008.)

There is only one explicit command (the Bat Qol, "daughter of a voice," as Harold Skulsky has noted), a rule that would otherwise be unknown and therefore has to be revealed, but there is also reason to guide Adam and Eve, enabling them to freely choose good over evil based on their abstract (as opposed to experiential) knowledge of evil. Eve emphasizes: "our Reason is our Law." I take this to mean that Adam and Eve follow moral 'rules' discoverable by reason, 'rules' that need not be made known through revelation -- and thus not explicitly formulated as rules but nevertheless rules.

The revealed command is arbitrary, for God could instead have chosen some other command to test Adam and Eve, and as an arbitrary rule, this command falls outside the bounds of reason in the sense that Adam and Eve would never be led to it by rational thought.

Satan, incidentally, is able to make use of the arbitrariness of God's command not to eat of the tree of knowledge. This is the one rule opaque to reason, a rule not discoverable through reasoning. By reason alone, Eve cannot defend herself against Satan's seemingly plausible arguments. There is no rational defense of the command not to eat of the tree of knowledge; on this point, Eve (via Adam) must rely upon trust in God's revelation beyond reason, and on this, she pointedly fails. Trust in God would be reasonable in Paradise, of course, and Eve 'knows' that eating the fruit leads to 'death' . . . but as to why it leads to something called 'death'? Reason fails because the command is arbitrary.

This arbitrary command, however, is not the only law; it is simply the only arbitrary law.

In yesterday's poem, "Nocturne Eternal," poor JK had a close encounter with the 'experience' of evil but chose to reject it as 'bad' -- trusting in some inner voice of an arbitrary but true revelation -- and thereby remain in his prelapsarian state.

By his good example, JK thus reminds us about the fact of acrophobia, the real and present danger of vertigo, and the cautionary principle of not straying far away toward but of staying far away from edges.

Reynolds Price: Eve as 'Hero' of Paradise Lost?

Reynolds Price

Teacher of Milton

(Image from Duke Magazine)

Novelist, poet, and Miltonist Reynolds Price has written a short, personal piece of his experience of teaching Milton at Duke University since 1958, and in the penultimate paragraph, he makes an intriguing suggestion:

A majority of my students today lack certainty about the literal truth of the Genesis story of a fall or the scar of original sin, but I think I convince many of them of the gravity with which Milton advances the old story and his conviction of our ongoing guilt as the children of Adam and Eve. And in recent years, I've found my own answer to the long-unsolved question of the identity of Milton's hero in the poem -- is it Satan (as so many believe), Adam, or the Son of God Himself? Surely, though, we gradually learn that the hero of the poem is Eve, when she concludes that salvation for herself, and the husband whom she has cheated, lies in her falling suppliant and imploring Adam's forgiveness. Milton sees that the human race could literally not have continued without her generous gesture. (Reynolds Price, "Teaching Milton," Duke Magazine, Volume 94, No. 6, November-December 2008)

Perhaps we should take a look at the scene, which follows Milton's depiction of the lowest depths to which Adam and Eve have fallen in their postlapsarian corruption, a state in which they have spent fruitless hours in mutual accusation, neither one self-condemning, in a vain contest that appears to have no end (PL 9.1187-89) . . . but it does have an end, for at their lowest point, where Adam calls Eve a "Serpent" and thrusts her away, Eve acknowledges her own guilt:

Forsake me not thus, Adam, witness Heav'n
What love sincere, and reverence in my heart [ 915 ]
I beare thee, and unweeting have offended,
Unhappilie deceav'd; thy suppliant
I beg, and clasp thy knees; bereave me not,
Whereon I live, thy gentle looks, thy aid,
Thy counsel in this uttermost distress, [ 920 ]
My onely strength and stay: forlorn of thee,
Whither shall I betake me, where subsist?
While yet we live, scarse one short hour perhaps,
Between us two let there be peace, both joyning,
As joyn'd in injuries, one enmitie [ 925 ]
Against a Foe by doom express assign'd us,
That cruel Serpent: On me exercise not
Thy hatred for this miserie befall'n,
On me alreadie lost, mee then thy self
More miserable; both have sin'd, but thou [ 930 ]
Against God onely, I against God and thee,
And to the place of judgment will return,
There with my cries importune Heaven, that all
The sentence from thy head remov'd may light
On me, sole cause to thee of all this woe, [ 935 ]
Mee mee onely just object of his ire.

She ended weeping, and her lowlie plight,
Immovable till peace obtain'd from fault
Acknowledg'd and deplor'd, in Adam wraught
Commiseration; soon his heart relented [ 940 ]
Towards her, his life so late and sole delight,
Now at his feet submissive in distress,
Creature so faire his reconcilement seeking,
His counsel whom she had displeas'd, his aide;
As one disarm'd, his anger all he lost, [ 945 ]
And thus with peaceful words uprais'd her soon. (PL 10.914-45)

(Thomas H. Luxon, ed. The Milton Reading Room, March, 2008.)

Of this scene, Price observes, "The scene of Eve's begging and Adam's raising her to upright forgiveness is as moving as any in Shakespeare's tragedies." Perhaps it is, though the degree to which it moves a reader depends on subjective response, but Price's suggestion that Eve is the 'hero' has opened up a way of looking at the poem that I had never before noticed.

Let me briefly explain. By the time that Milton wrote Paradise Lost, he was no longer a Calvinist and is generally considered an Arminian -- the difference being that the former emphasized divine predestination but the latter human choice. Arminius had broken with Calvinism on this issue, and Milton's soteriology generally agrees with that of Arminius.

Yet, there is a subtle difference . . . I think. Arminius believes that God grants to human beings a grace prior to saving grace, and the earlier grace is called "prevenient grace." Without this prevenient grace, human beings would not be capable of seeking forgiveness, for they would be as "totally depraved" as Calvinist anthropology claims. Prevenient grace restores human free will and is -- in Arminian theology -- extended to all humans. Where Milton seems to differ even from Arminius is in the fact that Eve is capable of freely offering herself as the one alone on whom God's condemnation should fall, for her generous act takes place prior to God's gift of prevenient grace, which takes place only subsequent to this (PL 11.1-8).

This implies that even prior to the gift of prevenient grace, Adam and Eve were not "totally depraved" but retained some degree of freedom, perhaps by virtue of having been made in God's image . . . but I am simply speculating on this point.

Perhaps this is worth investigating.

The Moment of Prevenient Grace in Paradise Lost

On the Milton listserve that I belong to, we've recently been discussing postlapsarian free will, i.e., the free will that Adam and Eve possess after the fall that enables them to accept or reject saving grace.

I inquired online about the precise moment when prevenient grace -- that grace preceding saving grace -- confers the power of free will on Adam and Eve.

One candidate for such a precise moment occurs in Paradise Lost 10.220-223. However, it does not clearly say so. In this passage, the Son of God has covered Adam and Eve with a robe of righteousness, which perhaps extends them no grace (whether prevenient or saving) and thus has no effect on their hearts but merely acts as a shield against the Father's judgement:

Nor he their outward only with the skins
Of beasts, but inward nakedness, much more.
Opprobrious, with his robe of righteousness,
Arraying, covered from his Father's sight. (PL 10.220-223)

Although inward nakedness receives a covering, the reason given only concerns hiding the opprobriousness of sin from the Father's sight.

But I wonder if something of grace doesn't begin here. The robe of righteousnes comes as a gift, undeserved and therefore characteristic of grace. And by 10.1087ff, even though Adam only contemplates repentance in his mind, he would seem to differ from Satan, who also contemplates repentance mentally but never quite accepts it even intellectually.

Adam and Eve who awaken from sleep after their rough, postlapsarian sex in 9.1046ff seem to me to be totally depraved in the Calvinist sense, by which I mean that they are unable to turn spiritual eyes onto their own faults but ever blame each other. This continues up to the scene of the Son's judgement in 10.103-208, where they continue to blame each other (and the serpent) but are pitied by the Son, who then extends to them in 10.220-223 the covering robe of righteousness. The scene then shifts away from Adam and Eve for some 500 lines.

When we next meet Adam, in 10.720ff, he is blaming not only Eve but also himself. Eve, in turn, blames herself (rather than the serpent). Her appeal to Adam in 10.914ff that he not reject her and his compassionate response in 10.937ff set the stage for their common appeal to God for forgiveness (cf. Mt. 5:23-24) but also imply, along with the self-blame mentioned, that some good alteration has already taken place in their hearts.

Isaiah 61:10-11 perhaps stands behind the "robe of righteousness" of PL 10.222:

10 I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 11 For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations. (Isaiah 61:10-11 (AV))

Since the robe of righteousness here in Isaiah 61:10-11 doesn't just cover but also causes righteousness and praise to spring up, then similarly, the robe of righteousness mentioned in PL 10.222 may therefore have a more intimate effect than simply that of covering. Perhaps it initiates the process of grace and could thus be seen as the moment that prevenient grace begins to have effect.

If so, then this might be the moment when postlapsarian free will comes to Adam and Eve.