Milton Appreciation Week: Paradise Lost, Book IX The Golden Apple Consumed

William Blake, The Temptation and Fall of Eve (1898)

Illustration of Milton's Paradise Lost

What I will be doing is arbitrarily picking scenes and passages from Milton's poems to show my readers how delightful and hence readable Milton's poetry is.

However much Milton has been vilified over the centuries, his messages are timeless.

To read Milton is to show just how relevant he is. 

The scene is Eden...

Eve and her husband have been warned not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, for in that day they will experience death.

In this passage Eve is giving in to her curiosity and is now tempted by Satan in the guise of a snake to become like the Divine-- in knowledge and wisdom. She has just rationalized that the serpent himself has eaten the forbidden fruit and yet lives.

......, her rash hand in evil hour

Forth reaching to the Fruit, she pluck'd, she did eat;

Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat

Sighing through all Worlds gave signs of woe,

That all was lost. Back to the Thicket slunk

The guilty Serpent and well might, for Eve

Intent now wholly on her taste, naught else

Regarded, such delight till then, as seem'd,

In Fruit she never tasted, whether true

Or fancied so, through expectation high

Of knowledge, nor was God-head from her thought

(Paradise Lost, Book IX, Verses 780-790)

Fifty  years have passed since I first read Paradise Lost for my graduate seminar in 17th Century Prose and Poetry conducted by Edward W. Tayler,  Lionel Trilling Professer Emeritus of the the Humanities at Columbia University Graduate School of the Arts and Sciences (GSAS).

I was deeply impressed by this passage then and am even more moved now. I have become more and more fascinated with how Milton perceives evil in the Bible, in history and during his time.

A few years ago, a brilliant student of mine, in a summer cram course on Western Literature from Gilgamesh to Milton, wrote a brilliant research paper on what recent Milton scholarship has to say about good and evil. (this paper, hopefully, will be the subject of a future blog)

Milton is fascinated with the mother of man. She is living in perfect bliss and harmony with nature, flora and fauna as well as her husband. She is living in a garden of earthly delights. She, no doubt, has no idea of how blissful her state is compared to what she will have to experience after she eats.

From a state of harmony (Nature is after all attuned to the peace of Paradise), nature is now thrown out of whack. (italics mine) Renaissance thinkers believed in an ordered state of the stars and universe and this harmony of the spheres is abruptly interrupted.

Milton creates a graphic resonant image of the suffering that will embrace mankind. "Earth felt the wound and Nature from her seat Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe."

I envision Nature as a Supreme Conductor who has until now presided over a universe that runs smoothly like a swiss watch; Nature can also be seen as an orchestrator of a way of life that is predictably serene and orderly.

What a powerful image this is-- and rightly so-- for with one act, mankind is now doomed to pain, suffering and woe.

Woe is only a three letter word. But what a catalog of horrors it entails: Jealousy, hatred, envy, gluttony, incurable disease as HIV, war, stealing, bullying, oppression both mental and physical--all leading to despair......

The list goes on and on. In Milton's day, there was bitter rivalry between the High Church represented by the Episcopal Bishops and the reform minded Presbyters; there was a rivalry between Royalty and the rebellious Roundheads led by Oliver Cromwell which resulted in a regicide.

Doesn't this sound a little like the bitter rivalry in our present day America between a beseiged Democratic Presidents and the Republicans in Congress hell-bent on defeating all the programs that our leader is advancing, from health care reform to extending the Bush and Trump tax cuts for the rich as well as the poor.

Milton says it so well. "...all was lost" Paradise was lost. But not forever

Our challenge, today, as in Milton's times, is to make the most of our 'fallen state.' to take all the tests of life thrown in our path and overcome our personal battles.

All is not woe for us. As the famous bard once said, "Nothing is but thinking makes it so."

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