Berghahn Books
An Analysis of Milton's "Paradise Lost", Book One, Lines 589-669
Author(s): STEVIE DAVIES
Source: Critical Survey, Vol. 6, No. 1/2 (SUMMER 1973), pp. 21-25
Published by: Berghahn Books
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41553904
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STEVIE DAVIES
An Analysis of Milton's
Paradise Lost ,
Book One, Lines 589-669
He above the rest
630
590 In shape and gesture proudly eminent
Stood like a tow'r; his form had yet not lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than Archangel ruined, and th'excess
Of glory obscured ; as when the sun new ris'n 635
595 Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon
In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet shone 640
600 Above them all th'Archangel ; but his face
Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care
Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows
Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride
645
Waiting revenge. Cruel his eye, but cast
605 Signs of remorse and passion to behold
As stood like these, could ever know repulse ?
For who can yet believe, though after loss,
That all these puissant legions, whose exile
Hath emptied heav'n, shall fail to re-ascend
Self-raised, and repossess their native seat ?
For me, be witness all the host of heav'n,
If counsels different, or danger shunned
By me, have lost our hopes. But he who reigns
Monarch in heav'n, till then as one secure
Sat on his throne, upheld by old repute,
Consent or custom, and his regal state
Put forth at full, but still his strength concealed,
Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall.
Henceforth his might we know, and know our own,
So as not either to provoke, or dread
New war, provoked ; our better part remains
To work in close design, by fraud or guile,
What force effected not ; that he no less
The fellows of his crime, the followers rather
At length from us may find, who overcomes
(Far other once beheld in bliss), condemned
For ever now to have their lot in pain,
By force hath overcome but half his foe.
650 Space may produce new worlds; whereof so rife
Millions of Spirits for his fault amerced
There went a fame in heav'n that he ere long
610 Of heav'n, and from eternal splendors flung
Intended to create, and therein plant
For his revolt, yet faithful how they stood,
A generation, whom his choice regard
Their glory withered : as when heaven's fire
Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines, Should favor equal to the sons of heaven.
655 Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps
With singed top their stately growth though bare
Our first eruption, thither or elsewhere ;
615 Stands on the blasted heath. He now prepared
To speak; whereat their doubled ranks they bend For this infernal pit never shall hold
From wing to wing, and half enclose him round Celestial Spirits in bondage, nor th' abyss
Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts
With all his peers: attention held them mute.
Thrice he assayed, and thrice in spite of scorn,660 Full counsel must mature. Peace is despaired,
For who can think submission ? War then, war
620 Tears such as angels weep burst forth; at last
Words interwove with sighs found out their way: Open or understood must be resolved.'
He spake; and to confirm his words, out flew
'О myriads of immortal Spirits, О Powers
Matchless, but with th' Almighty, and that strife Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs
Was not inglorious, though th'event was dire, 665 Of mighty Cherubim; the sudden blaze
Far round illumined hell. Highly they raged
625 As this place testifies, and this dire change
Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arms
Hateful to utter. But what power of mind
Clashed on their sounding shields the din of war,
Forseeing or presaging, from the depth
Of knowledge past or present, could have feared Hurling defiance toward the vault of heav'n.
How such united force of gods, how such
The was author
was in inmiddle
middleage,
of the
and age,
totally
greatblind,
and epic, totally Paradise blind, Lost ,
when he began to write the poem. By the time
it came to be published, in 1667, he had lived
through a period of cataclysm in English
history and within himself, and Paradise had
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22
Stevie
Davies
been lost to him
in
both
sphe
everything can
be defined
in terms of
this
revolutionary
Puritan
who
duality,
which also represents the
criterion of ha
worth. But such a distinction is comthemoral
Cromwellian
forc
and
in
the
plicated because
in the
universe ofInterr
the poem
worked as Secretary
for
Foreig
appearance may not always
correspond
with
the Council of
State,
endorsing
reality:
an entity like Satan
may be radiant
tionary cause with
with
massive
inte
his own hypocrisy,
while the extremity of
votion: but he
had
to
se
God's brightness
maylived
appear to creatures
of
lesser faculties as a kind of darkness.
ideals of the Revolution
disinte
Everything
is instinct with ambiguity.
Satan, auth
welter of power
politics
and
In 1660 the Restoration
the glorious ruin in Hell, still testifies
of
thatthe
he
m
engendered in Heaven. But while Lucifer
him in bitter was
disappointment,
t
regime that had
the
dr
representsreplaced
equivocation, God embodies
parakingdom of liberty
justic
dox. The divine ambiguityand
is sustained by
one
whosethe
potency reveals
itself infrivolou
the creation of
upon earth by
old
government. Paradise
phenomena at their most
was
essential lost
and abon
in terms of politics,
solute, so that Lucifer's
and
'excess Of
within
glory
supported
Civil
Wars,
as
sight
his
obscured' and
(593-4) onlyleft
travesties ahim
Creator
failed
in
These two themes
the
conten
who later, in BookThree,
will be perceived
of light and darkness;
as 'dark with excessive bright'
the
(III, 380),
confl
by
worshipping
who encounter
a light sobe i
tionary politics
- spirits
will
both
intolerably passage
great that it is apprehended
as its
analysis of this
from
opposite.
Paradise Lost, but
the light here i
But Satan's is a real, and not anand
apparent,
spiritual experience,
the
ambiguity. If, as the
defeated hero, hewhere
has the
place on a cosmic
scale
G
argue out the glamour
dialectic
of good a
of his early beauty interestingly
darkened by his fall, that self-contradiction
here, the revolutionary
party rep
had not done in Milton's earlier encounter
will only mirror an ugly equivocation at the
with purely human political struggle, the centre
partyof his nature. Satanic beauty glittering
of evil: the establishment is all virtue. In an
across Hell from his tower-like height (591)
and reflected back from his millions of allies,
heroic language, where syntax and meaning
have been wrenched into unfamiliar form
will lead in his oration to a display of heroism
terrible because it is gloriously faithful to an
through the imposition of Latinate constructions, Milton measures the forces of light
and
obnoxious
ideal, involving unscrupulous
darkness in the universe against one another,
politics, fine phrases and poor grammar. When
as, in this extract, Satan collects his scattered
the speech is over, jingoistic Cherubim,
armies together after the Fall and considers
roaring abuse up at God, respond in a way
that is, equivocally, splendid and ludicrous.
his own position.
Immediately one is impressed withMilton
thesays that the burning swords they draw
'far round
images of light which cluster round Satan.
He illumined hell' (666), and that is,
course,
retains some of his celestial 'brightness' of
(592)
; on one level a moving, awe-inspiring
spectacle.
he is compared with the rising sun (594)
; Fallen spirits, like a reflex of their
leader
and like a parody of God himself, can
ruined, he still 'shines' (599) ; he declares
his
affinity with light (659), and his followers
make light, and for Milton light represents
So far, it is glorious, and there
embody it (666). And perhaps no poemperfection.
ever
could be no drama in the myth or the poem
depended as thoroughly as Milton's Paradise
that were not so, and if one were not made
Lost on a polarisation of experience intoiflight
to feelasvery deeply that the residue of power
and darkness, the one sought and imagined
and the
beauty in Satan is an imposing thing.
probably no seeing person is drawn to do,
other understood because it is the condition
Satan must persuade his comrades to believe
in which all life is lived. In Paradise Lostin ,a kind of Manicheean universe, where good
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An Analysis of Milton's * Paradise Losť 23
and evil forces almost equally contend. The
spirits rage 'highly . . . Against the Highest'
(666-7) : they carry a certain (and as yet not
failed to do what he promised in the invocation
which God represents the superlative. And so
there is the fierce beauty of the light they
oneself to be extremely plausible and exciting,
wholly defined) degree of that quality of
make.
But there is also a sense here of another
Unless the reader experiences this paradox
to the full, the poet may be said to have
to Book One, 'to justify the ways of God to
men' (I, 26), for if Satan does not appear to
if one does not experience seduction by him,
then the poem will not have impressed one
dimension, in terms of which all this manifold
fully, either dramatically or ethically. Blake
shouting and banging of shields is ridiculous,
thought that Milton was of the Devil's party
small. Milton implies this by a multiplewithout
shift knowing it, and felt pleased with that,
of perspective in the passage. From the rolling,
because it is always pleasant to find political
aggressive periods of Satan's speech andallies
thein unlikely places. But it may be argued
sense of his massive personality at the centre
that Milton knew perfectly well that Satan's
of things, one's vision expands to include
the
glamour
would appeal to his audience: it
army of his followers who are perceivedwas
as only
if realistic that it should, since he saw
from a distance: then attention is directed
it happening in spiritual life every day around
away from them altogether, and out into him.
the But that was policy, not accident. He
silence of the sky beyond. The effect is firstly
manoeuvres you into sympathy with Satan
to diminish the stature of the Fallen Angels,
at every point in Book One, but either imand then to bring them into direct relation
plicitly or explicitly supplies the warning
with 'the Highest', who, somewhere infinitely
which should bring to mind the other half of
beyond, past the Vault of heav'n', maythe
beparadox.
As devil's advocate, one could of course
listening, or, not needing to listen, since he
foreknew it all from the beginning, is simply
make an excellent case in analysis of this
present in his own supreme quiet. Who can
extract for Milton's unconscious complicity
imagine that all this thumping of shieldswith
and Satan. Here is a creature who first of all
yelling of abuse fading out into space captures
can
your sympathy because he correshave the least effect on the Creator's peace
of to an archetype which tradition, in the
ponds
mind?
form of the classical epic hero in defeat, and
If Satan in this first book is sardonic, surely the universal human preference for the victim
God's quietude is the greatest irony of all. at the expense of the oppressor, has made very
Containing within his unity all contradictions attractive. So Satan has this immediate
and paradoxes, he can afford to be virtually advantage, which only seems confirmed when
absent from the poem while his fallen subjects we are presented with those haunting images
exercise their own ambiguities - to be at once of the dawning sun, its action atrophied by
the makers of light and the inheritors of
mist, and of the sun eclipsed by the moon,
darkness, to be both menacing and impotent. sending fear into the superstitious consciousMilton's language and his shifting of pers- ness of kings. Satan's appearance was
pective work to sustain the tension of all this
as when the sun new ris'n
paradox in the reader's mind. You are to be
Looks through the horizontal misty air
simultaneously disturbed by sympathy and
Shorn of his beams, or from behind the
disgust for a Satan who is the supreme manimoon
festation of your own fallen state. In a sense,
Milton wants his reader to be taken in by
In dim eclipse disastrous twilight shed
On half the nations, and with fear of
satanic ambiguities, and, because the mind
change
Perplexes monarchs.
Satan, so that he too will feel enmeshed in the
finds contradictions within itself uncomfortable,
the reader will be led to struggle for the moral
(i» 594-9)
resolution which will emancipate him from But Milton's similes are seldom as guileless as
that intellectual distress.
that: they only appear so on a first reading.
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24
Stevie
Davies
When they are related
back
The speech which
follows to
derivesreality,
straight
often reveal deepoutironies
within
thems
of this sorrow, yet
it is a masterpiece
of
If Satan is the rising
sun,
political oratory,
which then
moves from certain
self-pity
carries the attribute
of beauty,
into self-justification,
and ends in abut
rever- daw
in a Hell which Milton
has
as rep
berating war-cry.
It beginsmade
with a remarkable,
as possible, he also
has
a certain
incongr
and very
dramatic,
instance of broken
gramif eclipse appals monarchs,
then
that
mar, which stands out even
from the
strange jus
to show how very
andsuperstitious
complicated syntax which isearthly
Milton's
are. Incidentally,staple
the
censor was
idiom court
in Paradise Lost:
to
have
being
taken
exception
to this passa
'O myriads of immortal Spirits, О Powers
potentially
subversive, and it is
Matchless, but with th' Almighty, and that
true
Milton profoundly
strifedisapproved of king
general and tyrants
particular.
Durin
Was not in
inglorious,
though th'event was
Interregnum he had
justified
the
execut
dire,
Charles
I
holding
in
The
Tenure of Kings and
As this place testifies, and this dire change
that
tyrannous
Hateful to utter.'
kings
verse
for the time
being more
the memory
invite
us
tothan
be
so of
: a
Magist
'may
lawfully deposed and punished
as they
(I, 622-6)
at first elected.' He knew what happens
The peroration to the Fallen
Angels, digni'fear of change Perplexes
monarchs',
an
fying them with their old against
grandiose titles,
himself used arguments
the d
suddenly breaks down
at the word
'and', as
rights of Kings rather
like
Satan's
scof
though reign
the weight of emotion
God had seemed to
'as wrenched
one secure
syntax awry asConsent
a conflicting sense of failure
upheld by old repute,
or custom
and
achievement
forced its way to the
surface
But Milton's own heroically
rebellious
of his mind. It had been a glorious
and republican sympathies
dobattle,
not mean
though
its results were appalling
- but the
he is here playing
devil's
advocate.
If S
repetition of the word 'dire' suggests
that athis arm
grieves for the suffering
that
this moment
gloom and
darkness of Hell
incurred as a result
iftheits
fidelity
to hi
invade Satan's
consciousness, impressing him rhyth
are moved, and the
magnificent
the
blank
glorious cause. Darkness before the Fall had
yet faithful how
they
stood
been an unknown
condition,
and in the
Their glory withered
staggering grammar of that sentence one feels
(I, 6 1 1-2)
Satan's mind straining to accommodate itself
Such tenacity to a loved ideal is, one feels, all
the more admirable because it is in defeat.
to a new world where this is the only given
reality.
But the motive for this accommodation is,
And yet it is worthwhile to remember that
of course, the desire to exploit. Satan the
this current of emotion represents an interior
politician can turn any situation to his own
monologue of Satan's own. It is Satan himself
advantage, so that what we witness in this
who, gazing on his legions, defines them first
speech is a succession of arguments designed
as 'fellows', then as 'followers' of his insurrection
reinstate his own ego at the centre of events.
(606), the one word seeming to derive outtoof
One might narrate it in terms of a Parliathe other, but in fact contradicting it. Vanity
mentary report, and, remembering that
permits one to have subordinates, but never
Milton had endured, and no doubt drawn on,
equals. And vanity, mingled with self-pity,
all
makes it perversely delightful to look roundthe zealous and self-vindicating rhetoric of
pre-Restoration politics, this may be a very
on the sharers of one's damnation, luxuriating
relevant exercise:
in their devotion to oneself. When Satan weeps,
the universe had better look out for itself, Satan maintained that his instigation of
for such sorrow as this, as Milton goes on tothe rebellion was justified on the grounds
demonstrate, turns vicious in a moment.
that the exact extent of God's military
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An Analysis of MiltorC s i Paradise Losť 25
resources had not been at that time ascer-
to that ego. 'Self' is the beginning and the end
tainable, and went on to suggest that, God's
of all intellectual processes, so that the Fallen
Spirits shall reascend to Heaven 'self-raised'
army being so depleted at present, Heaven
might still be won. For himself, he knew
(634), and Satan's anxiety to vindicate him-
that he had acted with integrity and courage.
self is enacted in phrases like 'for me', 'by me',
It was clear that the blame for the revolt
placed at the beginning of a line so as to
should rest with God, for in concealingtake
his all the emphasis (635, 7). Such a dialecpower he had wilfully invited civil war.
tical principle leads to the kind of falsehood
Satan went on to say that, in view of their
that implies that, since he and his legions are
new knowledge, the Fallen Angels might
the only beings that count, and since they
are no longer in Heaven, then Heaven must
now proceed to devise stratagems for outwitting the enemy, who would find to be
hisempty (633). But Satan knows perfectly
cost that mind may triumph over brute
well that the myriads of immortal Spirits
force. He suggested that the rumoured
under his jurisdiction are matched by the
millions who are the friends of God and still
creation of a new world by God would
probably afford opportunity for such
a
populate
Heaven. Hyperbole is one of his
retaliation, the details of which could favourite
be
arts, and he can turn a fine phrase
worked out in due course. He endedwith
by a spectacular feeling for what will
an audience. God will discover :
advocating the necessity of war. There animate
was
applause from all sides of Hell.
who overcomes
By force hath overcome but half his foe.
To report the gist of the speech with such
deadpan neutrality is to reveal both Satan's
(649)
strengths and weaknesses. He is an excellent
But alliteration and the invention of new grand
rationaliser, attributing for instance aphorisms
the
will not conceal the absurdity of
origin of civil war to God's habitual veneer
of
imagining
that the God who was omniscient
mildness, which gave the impression of divine
since the beginning of things, who himself
obsolescence, and reinforcing this by a shifty
created knowledge, has anything to learn that
use of semantics which pretends to deriveSatan's
the intelligence could supply. When the
rebels' 'attempt' from God's 'tempting' (642).
speech is over, one is left with the image of
But he is not a rational creature, for tumbling
the Fallen Angels into whose nature Satan's
headlong into Hell has not cured him ofrhetoric
the has penetrated, at once heroically and
delusion that Heaven is still there for the
absurdly preparing to test out for the second
taking. This illogic stems from the fact
that
time
the satanic system of logic against the
argument for Satan inevitably has as itsCreator
firstwho has already conclusively proved
premiss his own ego, and as its object
theto
himself
conversion of his audience to subordination
be its refutation.
Further Reading: As a useful corrective to the point of view expressed in this article, I would suggest W. Empson's
Milton9 s God, London, 1961, an astringent criticism of the ethos of Paradise Lost . A work by Christopher Ricks called
Milton9 s Grand Style , Oxford, 1963, 1 have found invaluable : iťs an exploration of the way Milton's eccentric, complex
use of language enriches his material. Helen Gardner's A Reading of Paradise Lost , Oxford ,1965, contains some very
interesting ideas on philosophical and aesthetic considerations in Paradise Lost . Dr. Johnson's weighty and often
amusing pronouncements in his Life of Milton (in Lives of the English Poets) are most instructive. An lastly, I would
recommend J. B. Broadbent's Some Graver Subject , London, i960, where you will find amongst other things some fine
analysis of the imagery of Paradise Lost .
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