Milton

It was a time of turmoil, confusion and frustration. The people were without a leader, they had no direction. The Parliament had rebelled against King Charles I. England blamed God and did not understand why God would put the country in such a state of misery. The people turned to one of the greatest writers of their time, John Milton, for answers. In 1667 John Milton published his magnum opus: Paradise Lost. It is the greatest long poem in the English literature. It was recognised as an extraordinary achievement shortly after it appeared. In this work I would like to discuss how did Milton manage to create an epic, complex, Odysseus – like character from Satan, who was the one-sided Evil in the Bible. „He was a true Poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it” said William Blake (1790) about Milton, after reading Paradise Lost. Why did he say such a thing then' First of all, it is important to know that Blake was an atheist, so this is by no means an insult. Secondary, he stated this, because Milton’s Satan was some kind of hero, he wasn’t pure wickedness, like they used to portrait him, he had charisma, strong will, ambition, pride, and even doubt in himself at some point. Attributes, which describe extraordinary people such as Odysseus or Aeneas. Obviously this is something very different, than they usually pictured Lucifer. The original date, when they first published Paradise Lost was 1667. Religion was a completely distinct thing, than it is nowadays. Its rules, and the so called dogmas were part of the everyday life, surrounded everything, and even though it wasn’t as strict and cruel as it was in the golden age of the Inquisition, it was still very hard to oppose it, or even try to say something slightly else than it considered to be true. This is a very important fact in understanding, why it is such a pioneer act, to actually give a bit likeable personality to the Antichrist, when all the priests and catholic writers did was the following: alienate the audience from Satan, and put fear in their hearts. Empiricism, which stated, „that all rationally acceptable beliefs or propositions are justifiable or knowable only through experience”(source: Encyclopedia Britannica ), and rationalism had an influence on the greatest minds of the era, who passed their knowledge on the next generations, and this slowly changed the way people think. They didn’t use The Bible or its symbols for mere and mindless propaganda anymore, instead they began to use them as tools and speaking-tubes in philosophical dissertations and in moral and ethical discussions, to point out social problems, they dared to ask questions and even raise doubt too. We can not forget this is polite literature, and its ultimate purpose is to entertain, so it needs to be multidimensional, cannot have black and white, simple characters. ”Because for a poem such as Paradise Lost is natural to read internally in many different ways which interrogate and yet articulate the poem”(Gary, 2000). Moreover its subgenre is -as the hungraian language term so aptly describes – „Drama of Humanity”, and its goal is to show us the eternal struggle between good and evil, the undisguised human nature, our curiosity, which lead to our downfall, and the conflict between free will and God’s eternal foresight. Actually its not just Adam and Eve, whose free will is on the line, but Lucifers too. He is the disharmony, the mark of interrogation on the footnote of the otherwise perfect Creation. His denial, self-suffiency and disobedience is necessary, because it brings balance to the world. He can not accept the fact, that he is created by the Almighty, and thus he can’t accept the Lord’s authority over himself either. With this kind of delineation Milton created an archetype, which was followed by many, such as Goethe, Madách Imre, and even Byron. Faust and The Tragedy of Man has the same tone, and the same protagonist. They just extended the story or showed it from a different point of view, but the centre is a bipolar Devil, with mundane thinking, and with an appetite for proving God wrong by tempting and corrupting the mind of humans. Definiately not good, but not nearly malicious either. More like misanthropic and bitter. As we see the first two is kind of obvious, but the third needs a bit of explanation. Byron’s heros - and the so called spleen they have – is rooted in Milton’s character according to many critics. And this can be easily justified if we look at how self-pitying Lucifer is in Paradise Lost and by the fact that he is driven by his own misery and „cant-let-go” attitude. One of the most interesting scenes morally is in the third book, when God realises the Devil’s plans, and as he is all-knowing, he can foretell „the success of Satan in perverting mankind” ( Milton, J. 2003). He states, that mankind dooms itself, they aren’t mature enough to take responsibility and they pursuit the illusion of free will. He remains passiv against a very proactive Satan, who is willing to take risks and face the consequences no matter what. Either it is rebelling against the Lord, gathering forces amongst angels, dominate Hell, or trying to reach Paradise and twist the innocence of Adam and Eve. He is enduring, purposeful, resourceful and persuasive. Even when doubt settles in his soul, he overcomes it and learns how to forge it into hate, which works toward his goals. But after all this, his victory is only pseudo, actually God’s idleness causes it, because he knew all along what he is planning. He could stop him, he has the power to do that. But did not. Actually all the characters in the story have their own thoughts, intentions and they are all willing to take sacrifices in order to reach it except for him. Jesus offers his own life as a ransom to save the fallen mankind, Adam eats from the forbidden fruit, however he knows exactly what he is doing, and he is aware, that there will be punishment upon him and his race for this, but he undertakes it, rather then being forced apart from Eve, and Satan was already mentioned. This leaves the Almighty the only one, who sits back and do nothing. And this willingly, or not, but works toward building up symphaty for the Devil. Considering that Milton wanted to write an epic, we must assume he know by letting Satan to be in the spotlight, he needs to portrait him as a trully epic character.Firstly, lets compare him to Odysseus: Both of them were shown as smart generals in the middle of a war, who are able to motivate people, even facing seemingly impossible tasks. They both use trickery to defeat their enemies, in fact they both use animal disguises (wooden horse (( serpent skin). After reaching their goal (returning home (( corrupting Adam and Eve), they are not able to settle down and rest because they are both driven by their inner flame (Odysseus goes to another trip (( Satan continues to wage war on God). All in all, we can say, that Milton achieved something truly remarkable, and something which succeeded on setting a trend for centuries to come, namely: he was able to take a pure maleficent icon, and transform it into something more complex. Sources: • Blake, W. (1790) The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; ( http://www.newi.ac.uk/RDOVER/blake/the_mar2.htm found on 01.12.2009) • Encyclopedia Britannica,: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/186146/empiricism found : 01.12.2009 • Rajan, B. (1947) Paradise Lost and the Seventeenth Century Reader, London: Chatto & Windus • Gary, A.A. (2000) The Fall of Satan in the Thought of St. Ephrem and John Milton (link: http://syrcom.cua.edu/Hugoye/Vol3No1/HV3N1Anderson.html found: 01.12. 2009) Inspirations: - Imre Madách: Tragedy of Man - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust