‘Paradise Lost’ and Sublimity
To quote Dr. Samuel Johnson, and to give what I consider to be a true flavor of Milton’s poem, consider this: “The characteristic quality of his poem is sublimity. He sometimes descends to the elegant, but his element is the great. He can occasionally invest himself with grace; but his natural port is gigantic loftiness. He can please when pleasure is required; but it is his peculiar power to astonish.”How, then, does Milton do this?
This excerpt I have chosen begins at a highly significant and charged moment: Satan has escaped from Hell, crossed the void of Chaos and Anarchy, and arrived in Paradise, the Garden of Eden. We almost sympathize with him as he grieves to see the innocence before him, and which he has lost, but which he is determined to corrupt.
“… these to the bower direct In search of whom they sought: Him there they found Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, Assaying by his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy...”
Unexpectedly, the great adversary of God Almighty is “squat like a toad” at the ear of Eve. In this one compressed image—compressing the very frame and form of Satan—we perceive how changed he is, how far fallen from the great “hero” who fought in heaven’s fields.“Him thus intent Ithuriel with his spear Touched lightly; for no falsehood can endure Touch of celestial temper, but returns Of force to its own likeness: Up he starts Discovered and surprised. As when a spark Lights on a heap of nitrous powder, laid Fit for the tun some magazine to store Against a rumored war, the smutty grain, With sudden blaze diffused, inflames the air; So started up in his own shape the Fiend. Back stepped those two fair angels, half amazed So sudden to behold the grisly king; Yet thus, unmoved with fear, accost him soon.”
The “spear” that touches lightly in this case is “truth,” which “no falsehood can endure.” Under its touch, Satan must appear as he is. What brilliant and surprising imagery: “spark … lights … nitrous powder” and then the rumor proves true. Satan has brought the war to Paradise. This is not a toad, and as the “smutty” (like a bad firework) grain explodes, we see him. Note how “inflames the air” not only connotes the firing of gunpowder but also has that secondary sense of “inflammation”: Wherever he is, Satan causes inflammation of the system.The toad has now become the “grisly king”—normal size, as it were. And this is where we begin to see the parallel with Keats’s poem. Like the book in Keats, we now have the toad in Milton—both are small things that suddenly increase in size. In Keats, the book inflates to the mountain peak on Darien; in Milton, we have the toad become the full-sized devil himself.
A Great Confrontation
But then they exchange words. Satan is not going to come along easily! A brilliant exchange of sarcasm and threats ensues, and Gabriel joins the fray:“So threatened he [Gabriel]; but Satan to no threats Gave heed, but waxing more in rage replied. Then when I am thy captive talk of chains, Proud limitary Cherub, but ere then Far heavier load thyself expect to feel From my prevailing arm, though Heaven’s King Ride on thy wings, and thou with thy compeers, Used to the yoke, drawest his triumphant wheels In progress through the road of Heaven star-paved. While thus he spake, the angelic squadron bright Turned fiery red, sharpening in mooned horns Their phalanx, and began to hem him round With ported spears, as thick as when a field Of Ceres ripe for harvest waving bends Her bearded grove of ears, which way the wind Sways them; the careful plowman doubting stands, Left on the threshing floor his hopeless sheaves Prove chaff. On the other side, Satan, alarmed, Collecting all his might, dilated stood, Like Tenerife or Atlas, unremoved: His stature reached the sky, and on his crest Sat Horror plumed; nor wanted in his grasp What seemed both spear and shield: ...”
In this excerpt alone, can one not feel the heroic pulse of the verse as two great adversaries confront one another? I particularly love that detail “While thus he spake, the angelic squadron bright/ Turned fiery red, sharpening in mooned horns/ Their phalanx, …” The fiery red, the color of blood and war.“... Satan, alarmed, Collecting all his might, dilated stood, Like Tenerife or Atlas, unremoved: His stature reached the sky ...”
Suddenly, from being merely devil-sized, he is now “dilated” like a giant mountain, like a Titan (as Atlas was), enormous in strength and power. And this corresponds to the third transmutation in Keats’s poem. In Keats we have the book, the mountain Darien, and then the Pacific Ocean. Here we have the toad, the devil-sized Satan, and finally the mountain tall as the sky in this epic confrontation. These changes in scale, whether we are conscious of them or not, excite us and begin to amaze us, too. Where will this end?When The Eternal Enters the Fray
Satan is all worked up, ready to slug it out, but Gabriel is clearly “in the moment,” alert to all the signs—whatever they be—of the cosmos, and looking “up” so spies:“The Eternal, to prevent such horrid fray, Hung forth in Heaven his golden scales, yet seen Betwixt Astraea and the Scorpion sign, Wherein all things created first he weighed,”
We get the amazing sense that to prevent the destruction of Earth in such a “horrid fray,” The Eternal creates in this one moment (though this is left ambiguously open) the seventh sign of the zodiac, Libra.Aside from anything else, the sheer concept of it is sublime. Just imagine it: Dwarfing in size Atlas or Earth itself is a sign from Heaven. (Keats, too, packs into his poem an astronomical reference to the planet Uranus, recently discovered at the time, though it isn’t as critical or sublime as in Milton’s usage for various reasons.)
Surely, this is the highest form of poetry, and like some incredible Gothic cathedral is not the result of chance or random ideas or jottings, but of inspiration and technique.
In my third article in this series on the sublime, we will look at some amazing aspects of this fourth level of transformation, as well as how Milton achieves the sublime in an almost reverse way as well.