Milton

Paradise Lost 17: Skipping Over Legions of Fallen Angels

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Single Red Camellia  18 February

A quick explanation for anyone who wouldn’t naturally find themselves reading such a poem:   I’m interested in acts of translation from one way of thinking to another, particularly from Christian  thinking in poetry – Dante, Milton, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan and many others – to  my own a-religious thoughts. Many years ago, when I wrote my Ph.D, on what I called ‘Visionary Realism’, I realised that I was interested in what happens to religious experience when people no longer believe in religion. Are there, for example, still experiences of ‘grace’? Do we ever  experience ‘miracles’? Are there trials and tribulations of the soul? Is there ‘soul’? …and so on.  I came into this area of thinking through Doris Lessing’s novel-series Canopus in Argos, and particularly the first novel in that series,  Shikasta. There’s a partial account of this in previous blog post, ‘Lifesavers’.

You’ll find a good online text here.

In the last reading of Paradise Lost I had I short half hour and managed to read a couple of lines. That brought me to about line 375 in Book 1.  Now Milton asks his Muse to help him list the names  of fallen angels:

Say, Muse, thir Names then known, who first, who last,
Rous’d from the slumber, on that fiery Couch,
At thir great Emperors call, as next in worth
Came singly where he stood on the bare strand,
While the promiscuous croud stood yet aloof? [ 380 ]

In what order of power/evil/fallenness do they appear? What is, Milton’s eyes most evil?

The chief were those who from the Pit of Hell
Roaming to seek thir prey on earth, durst fix
Thir Seats long after next the Seat of God,
Thir Altars by his Altar, Gods ador’d
Among the Nations round, and durst abide [ 385 ]
Jehovah thundring out of Sion, thron’d
Between the Cherubim; yea, often plac’d
Within his Sanctuary it self thir Shrines,
Abominations; and with cursed things
His holy Rites, and solemn Feasts profan’d, [ 390 ]
And with thir darkness durst affront his light.

Those pagan gods whose shrines resided inside the temple come first. This is interesting to me, as someone who has shied away from organised religion since the age of  nine or ten.  Are there still false gods intertwined with real God? can bad stuff be housed within good?  I move from thinking about religion to say thinking about Social Care.  Is Social Care, paid for from our taxes a good idea? I believe so.  Is some very bad stuff done within Social Care? I’m sure so.  Is Milton’s thinking about his religious  universe a different layer of the same reality I think of in terms of  Social Care?  That thought is what  keeps me going in this very long – two hundred lines long – list of fallen angels. I read through it, but I’m reading very fast, getting the rough outline, looking for anything that interests me, that connects to something I know. I rush through  the ancient middle Eastern deities and places of  Old Testament history, and stop for a moment at this:

For Spirits when they please
Can either Sex assume, or both; so soft
And uncompounded is thirEssence pure, [ 425 ]
Not ti’d or manacl’d with joynt or limb,
Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,
Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose
Dilated or condens’t, bright or obscure,
Can execute thir aerie purposes, [ 430 ]
And works of love or enmity fulfill.

I wonder if Milton has been reading The Tempest and met Shakespeare’s Aeriel? It’s interesting, too, that the nature of spirits does not change even after the fall – they are still pure Essence, uncompounded and can take any shape they choose in order to do their works of love or emnity. What does that say to me abou t the way works of love or emnity come to me/from me?

I wonder what purpose this lists serves or served?

It has to be a different experience for us reading now, mostly not knowing any of the Biblical source material. But to Milton and his contemporary audience (fit audience, though few, as he says)  is it a making live an old  text, is it reanimating the old material and making it now: here  they are, those ancient names of bad gods, and here they are – somehow – with us still –

Belial came last, then whom a Spirit more lewd [ 490 ]
Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love
Vice for it self: To him no Temple stood
Or Altar smoak’d; yet who more oft then hee
In Temples and at Altars, when the Priest
Turns Atheist, as did Ely’s Sons, who fill’d [ 495 ]
With lust and violence the house of God.
In Courts and Palaces he also Reigns
And in luxurious Cities, where the noyse
Of riot ascends above thir loftiest Towrs,
And injury and outrage: And when Night [ 500 ]
Darkens the Streets, then wander forth the Sons
Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.

We move from Old Testament (To him no Temple stood/Or Altar smoak’d😉   into the present tense:

In Courts and Palaces he also Reigns
And in luxurious Cities, where the noyse
Of riot ascends above thir loftiest Towrs,
And injury and outrage: And when Night [ 500 ]
Darkens the Streets, then wander forth the Sons
Of Belial,flown with insolence and wine.

and then we move from the Old Testament to another mode of being, Ancient Greece, so that Milton is covering all knowledge bases: whichever civilisation you trace it through – Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian – same story: the fall from Heaven and corruption  brought to Earth:

These were the prime in order and in might;
The rest were long to tell, though far renown’d,
Th’ Ionian Gods, of Javans Issue held
Gods, yet confest later then Heav’n and Earth
Thir boasted Parents; Titan Heav’ns first born [ 510 ]
With his enormous brood, and birthright seis’d
By younger Saturn, he from mightier Jove
His own and Rhea’s Son like measure found;
So Jove usurping reign’d: these first in Creet
And Ida known, thence on the Snowy top [ 515 ]
Of cold Olympus rul’d the middle Air
Thir highest Heav’n; or on the Delphian Cliff,
Or in Dodona, and through all the bounds
Of Doric Land;

I’m reading very fast, because there is not much here for me. But as the list begins to wind down, I pay more attention:

All these and more came flocking; but with looks
Down cast and damp, yet such wherein appear’d
Obscure some glimps of joy, to have found thir chief
Not in despair, to have found themselves not lost [ 525 ]
In loss it self; which on his count’nance cast
Like doubtful hue: but he his wonted pride
Soon recollecting, with high words, that bore
Semblance of worth, not substance, gently rais’d
Thir fainting courage, and dispel’d thir fears. [ 530 ]

I’m thinking about the psychology of mass despair and mass revival: the fallen angels see  their chief  ‘not in despair, ‘  Good, isn’t it,  the way Milton puts it so that the key word, ‘despair’ is still hugely present, only slightly made negative by the much smaller ‘not’. The fallen angels still see loss in him, ‘which on his count’nance cast/Like doubtful hue’ yet their sense of despair is overcome by Satan’s  semblence, his appearance  of ‘not despair’, his pride carries him through , and carries the fallen angels through, too. I can imagine in  real life being carried by such pride, or allowing myself to be tricked. I think of dictators and false leaders, the willingness to follow, to be duped.

That’s my time up for the day. Must get out into the garden while the sun is shining.

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Paradise Lost 15 : From Blundering About like Dogberry to the Barbarian Hordes in a Couple of Lines

drjanedavisLeave a comment

hellebores.JPGI’ve been on the road this week travelling between Edinburgh, London and Liverpool and I’ve been reading and rereading 4  business books and a novel, A Bowl of Cherries, by Sheena McKay. Have not bothered to do any ‘Just Started’ on them but will do that this week, a little out of kilter, but that’s ok. ‘Just Started’ is really there as record of what I have read.  It’s hard to keep a routine on the road – well, hard for me, struggling with routines at the quietest of times, so my Daily Practice has been out of the window. As has daily exercise, off the menu since I was unwell in November. But now February approaches, and my thought turn to the necessity of daily exercise. the winter dark and down time is drawing to an end.

Is will power limited, as psychologists now tell us? Mine certainly seems depleted, so I’m sticking to minimalist achievements at this lightless  time of year: get your work done, spend time with husband, don’t neglect your expenses causing the fiance team grief.

You can see why I like Yeats’ line ‘forgive myself the lot’  (‘A Dialogue of Self and Soul’).

But to today’s reading from Paradise Lost.

A quick explanation for anyone who wouldn’t naturally find themselves reading such a poem:   I’m interested in acts of translation from one way of thinking to another, particularly from Christian  thinking in poetry – Dante, Milton, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan and many others – to  my own a-religious thoughts. Many years ago, when I wrote my Ph.D, on what I called ‘Visionary Realism’, I realised that I was interested in what happens to religious experience when people no longer believe in religion. Are there, for example, still experiences of ‘grace’? Do we ever  experience ‘miracles’? Are there trials and tribulations of the soul? Is there ‘soul’? …and so on.  I came into this area of thinking through Doris Lessing’s novel-series Canopus in Argos, and particularly the first novel in that series,  Shikasta. There’s a partial account of this in previous blog post, ‘Lifesavers’.

If you are joining me new today, I’d suggest a read  through from the beginning first. You’ll find a good online edition here.  But if there’s no time for that, well, just start here and now.

Last week I’d read as far as Satan’s call to his fallen troops, which ended with the exhortation, ‘Awake, arise, or be for ever fall’n. ‘ Lets now make a start on the next couple of  sentences:

They heard, and were abasht, and up they sprung
Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch
On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread,
Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake.
Nor did they not perceave the evil plight [ 335 ]
In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel;
Yet to thir Generals Voyce they soon obeyd
Innumerable. As when the potent Rod
Of Amrams Son in Egypts evill day
Wav’d round the Coast, up call’d a pitchy cloud [ 340 ]
Of Locusts, warping on the Eastern Wind,
That ore the Realm of impious Pharaoh hung
Like Night, and darken’d all the Land of Nile:
So numberless were those bad Angels seen
Hovering on wing under the Cope of Hell [ 345 ]
‘Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding Fires;
Till, as a signal giv’n, th’ uplifted Spear
Of thir great Sultan waving to direct
Thir course, in even ballance down they light
On the firm brimstone, and fill all the Plain; [ 350 ]
A multitude, like which the populous North
Pour’d never from her frozen loyns, to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous Sons
Came like a Deluge on the South, and spread
Beneath Gibralter to the Lybian sands. [ 355 ]

So ordinary and recognisable as well as so enormous and unimaginable, isn’t it ? To begin to give us the enormous perspective of the entirety of Satan’s army ( how many things there are which are out to get us!) Milton sets us off with something we might have seen or could imagine:

They heard, and were abasht, and up they sprung
Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch
On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread,
Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake.

Almost Shakespearean comic, isn’t it, that  stumbling into not awake liveliness? Dogberry,  or the soldiers on watch when the ghost appears inHamlet? Being bestirred before being fully awake, they no doubt bump into each other and  stub their toes, getting their spears interlocked like hapless skiers. But Milton only wants us to see them, not to laugh at them:

Nor did they not perceave the evil plight [ 335 ]
In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel;
Yet to thir Generals Voyce they soon obeyd
Innumerable.

Even as they blunder into wakeful life, they know how bad things are and they feel the pain of burning in hell. I’m just wondering about the negatives  in that sentence , ‘nor’ , ‘not perceave’ ‘fierce pains not feel’: and asking myself, why are they negatives?

Perhaps they make a good transition from the semi-comic previous, which seems to be arise out of unconsciousness, to the full consciousness implied in ‘thir Generals Voyce they soon obeyd/Innumerable’.

Satan’s call seems to bring them to conscious life, and before obedience to him, as they wake into consciousness,  they must endure consciousness of pain.  Which they do.

Oddly, I’m thinking of murderers and other offenders here and wondering, when  people are encouraged into crime by another, would there be a similar pattern?  I can imagine such a thing, the one who is egged-on, who goes along, with the other more intelligent or more manipulative one. You know you are goingto do what he says, and what he is going tosay is terrible. Would there be a moment of pain, of full agonising, knowledge? , about to do /be a bad thing?

As when the potent Rod
Of Amrams Son in Egypts evill day
Wav’d round the Coast, up call’d a pitchy cloud [ 340 ]
Of Locusts, warping on the Eastern Wind,
That ore the Realm of impious Pharaoh hung
Like Night, and darken’d all the Land of Nile:
So numberless were those bad Angels seen
Hovering on wing under the Cope of Hell [ 345 ]
‘Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding Fires;

Now we return to the unimaginable picture of this mass uprising, and Milton draws on a biblical image to help us see.  This is hard for many contemporary readers as we don’t know, as Milton and his readers certainly would, many of these images.  So, if I was reading this in a group, I’d use the footnotes, possibly even go back to the original Biblical text to see the source of the analogy: the main thing we need to know is that those locusts were so many that they made Egypt a place of darkness by day. i’dwant to show my fellow readers that  there’s not a lot to these analogies once you’ve got the footnotes,  and sometimes it pays to look:

And Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day, and all that night; and when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts.

14 And the locust went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt: very grievous were they; before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such.

15 For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt.

We’ve gone from something close to comedy to something terrifying, to fear, in a few lines. And if those locust images weren’t enough Milton also gives  us images of the terrible Northern barbarians, the  Vikings, the Norsemen, Celts, the northern hoardes coming out of the mist to end the Roman empire.

So numberless were those bad Angels seen
Hovering on wing under the Cope of Hell [ 345 ]
‘Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding Fires;
Till, as a signal giv’n, th’ uplifted Spear
Of thir great Sultan waving to direct
Thir course, in even ballance down they light
On the firm brimstone, and fill all the Plain; [ 350 ]
A multitude, like which the populous North
Pour’d never from her frozen loyns, to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous Sons
Came like a Deluge on the South, and spread
Beneath Gibralter to the Lybian sands. [ 355]

Forthwith from every Squadron and each Band
The Heads and Leaders thither hast where stood
Thir great Commander; Godlike shapes and forms
Excelling human, Princely Dignities,
And Powers that earst in Heaven sat on Thrones; [ 360 ]
Though of thir Names in heav’nly Records now
Be no memorial blotted out and ras’d
By thir Rebellion, from the Books of Life.
Nor had they yet among the Sons of Eve
Got them new Names, till wandring ore the Earth, [ 365 ]
Through Gods high sufferance for the tryal of man,
By falsities and lyes the greatest part
Of Mankind they corrupted to forsake
God thir Creator, and th’ invisible
Glory of him that made them, to transform [ 370 ]
Oft to the Image of a Brute, adorn’d
With gay Religions full of Pomp and Gold,
And Devils to adore for Deities:
Then were they known to men by various Names,
And various Idols through the Heathen World. [ 375 ]

The speed with which this shift of perspective happens is breathtaking: it’s like applying a different lens to something that seemed blurry- they were nothing, they were like undistinguishable slime on the burning lake until Satan  addressed them: now , suddenly they are up and moving and they are forces to be reckoned with. They have form, social organisations: squadron, band, heads and leaders, they are Godlike. In heaven they sat on thrones.  No more blurry mess.

What is a leader that he can bring about such a transition? I’m thinking of Hitler and the German armies – could broken forces have been brought back to life by his presence? Could the same thing have worked for Churchill?  Is it only war-time leaders who raise broken people up in this way? Alas, no.

So what is it? the presence of the leader is like the presence of the pure idea. The idea might have gone, under pain of defeat, loss, suffering: each devil suffering his own pain, alone.  But then when Satan appears and rouses them, and they take, or find they are able to generate, energy. why?  Because they  believe in something again.

Milton puts an interesting stop to this growth at line 360, once he’s got us imagining the devils on thrones: remember! they are blotted out now! It as if he fears we might be swept along:

And Powers that earst in Heaven sat on Thrones; [ 360 ]
Though of thir Names in heav’nly Records now
Be no memorial blotted out and ras’d
By thir Rebellion, from the Books of Life.

That’s a good pun: ras’d and raised. They are rising up, raising themselves. That’s one perspective, one way to see it. But ras’d  also means knocked down, razed to the ground. Are they up or down? Which way is up? For these corrupted devils there is no way to know: hell is heaven, heaven’s hell.

Is that what human corruption is? Not being able to tell good from bad? Thinking bad is good? There was a great soundbite from Samuel Johnson on this about no man thinking that what he desires is bad, it’s all good to him. Can’t track that one down but will  continue to look.

More next week.

 

Paradise Lost 2: Written in the Heart

drjanedavis2 Comments

 

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Front Garden early morning 27 August

Last Sunday I started my online reading of Paradise Lost in honor of Milton’s Cottage celebratory reading aloud  of the whole poem – which they undertook in order to celebrate 350 years since the poem was first published.

Last week in Paradise Lost 1 I set out  my way of reading this poem, and the some of the reasons why  I  read it. I had  started to read the first sentence, thinking about Milton the writer, setting out to do this great thing, knowing it was or should be great, and consciously setting himself across two human cultural traditions, the Classical and Biblical :

OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, [ 5 ]
Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill [ 10 ]
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s Brook that flow’d
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’Aonian Mount, while it pursues [ 15 ]
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.

Before we go further, I want to read the original as it appears in Genesis Chapter 2 , in the King James Version which Milton would have read. I’ve posted the Genesis text at the bottom of this page. It’s the original of the main story.  If you are interested in this, there is a comprehensive world of scholarship looking at the creation of  the Genesis text and the wikipedia entry looks to me a good introduction to it.

But let us  just take it that  the Genesis text existed and was well known to Milton, and was accepted as a sacred text. Trying to imagine Milton, I try to imagine such a sacred text as a reality to me. Not sacred in the sense of untouchable, for after all, the puritan revolution had  made the text available (the King James Version was thestandard  English bible, the Bible in English, not Latin) to everyone who could read or listen. But sacred in the sense of being applied at all times to life.

Milton began to think that he could make something – something as yet ‘unattempted in prose or rhyme’ – from this Biblical text – and it is in a sense as if the poem is a  complex responsive reading. But what impulses lie behind the  need for this imaginative leap to remake the text?

OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,

This is the subject of and the impulse behind the poem. This is the story of the ‘first’ disobedience and  all subsequent ones, their ‘fruit’.

Disobedience is a hard word for a contemporary reader like myself. I have to translate it  into my own language. For Milton, for Genesis, it is about  there being an order or way set by God: humans are asked to obey. When we look at Genesis, we see a commandment:

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

For some reason my mind jumps back to the Emerson I was reading while I was on holiday earlier this summer.  I’m trying to think of the idea of a commandment or law as a natural experience. The water acting upon a rock teaches a fisherman ( Emerson said). The natural law one may deduce from that is that even stone can be changed by persistence. If you wanted to translate that into a law of God you could say something like ‘ God said,  ‘let the weak have powers to change the strong’.

I’m thinking of the people who existed pre-Genesis and the priests and others who wrote it, of the Cuneiform tablet with the Atra-Hasis Epic in British Museum.  These ancient people see actions in the world and create stories explaining them. Those stories are built around the concept of Gods or God. Those Gods or God demand obedience. People’s real daily actions are changed in order to  meet those  (Godly/story-based/idea-based) demands. A religion, a cultural artefact of great complexity, is built up over hundreds of years.  Milton grows up in that culture. He accepts it as his own.  He believes that each heart has its own relation to God – priests, Rome, fancy stuff, even churches,  not needed. He wishes to remake it all  afresh for himself, and for perhaps his world. After all it is plural pronoun he uses:

OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,

I’m going to go on now to the next sentence, where Milton calls for help:

And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know’st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread [ 20 ]
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad’st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumin, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence, [ 25 ]
And justifie the wayes of God to men.

He asks  God, the  creator, to come to him,  asking the power that created the heavens and the earth in the beginning, to instruct him. ‘Instruct’ is  not ‘inspire’, a verb more about building than breathing: Milton is asking for very clear and definite direction.

What in me is dark
Illumin, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence, [ 25 ]
And justifie the wayes of God to men.

This is going to be an argument,  he tells us: not a story or a myth but  series of logical propositions which will be in effect a proof that the ways of God are right, are justified. But it will come from ‘me’. It’s personal. Milton is going to bring everything he has got.

All of which seems to suggest someone may feel that the ways of God, as they currently stand, do not seem justified or justifiable, that ‘eternal providence’  does not seem to be asserted. Or they need help.  Or perhaps it is just that this is the best subject Milton can imagine for an epic poem? It’s a strange mixture of ego, ambition, intellect, learning and then suddenly, the cry for help. ‘The upright heart and pure’ is the place Milton believes his God prefers. Milton’s heart – is it upright? Is it pure? as anhonest man he will know that althoug he tries, it is not. Nothing works properly here, in a world afterthe great fall.

Do you start such an enterprise from a position of certainty?  Do you start it to ensure  or to build certainty? When I read ‘ what in me is dark’ I can’t help but remember that Milton is blind.

What Milton has  in the way of  equipment for his epic journey, is a  back story, the cultural artefact that is the Genesis myth, or to put it in Milton’s voice, his own reading of the Holy Bible. And he has classical exemplars, Virgil, Homer and others. He has is human experience,  which has been large, as he has lived through and been involved in the English revolution and the execution of a King. And he has his heart. He has what the poem will later call the ‘umpire conscience’. He has his darkness, too.

Interpreting the Bible without church or priest was  the religious revolution of Milton’s age. He’s going to do that now, in this profoundly personal endeavour, using his own heart as his raw material, fleshing out the Bible story.

—————————————————————————————————————————————

GENESIS ORIGINAL :

5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
9 And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.
14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.
15 And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
18 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
19 And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22 And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

3 1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
8 And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
9 And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
13 And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
14 And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
20 And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.
21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them.
22 And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
23 Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

Paradise Lost 1: fanfic for messed-up beginners

drjanedavis1 Comment

 

tree in flower.JPG
Unrecognised shrub in flower, Japanese Garden, Calderstones,  18 August

Congratulations to Milton’s Cottage on staging their 350 person reading aloud of Paradise Lost today, in honour of the anniversary of the first publication of  the poem 350 years ago!  A lovely occasion and event – wish I could be there! I  hope you will video some of it and get it online.

In my own celebration of that  event  I’m starting a reading  of the poem here and will continue to read it, on Sundays,  from now on. Use the search box and search for  ‘Milton’ or  ‘Paradise Lost‘.

How I’m going to do this

I’m going to paste in some lines for each week’s reading.

I’ll be pasting from the Dartmouth college site and I’ll leave the links to footnotes in so you can get to them if you want.  Try not to, in the first instance, they often don’t help with the most difficult bits but they distract you away from the text. But sometimes they are useful – today’s reading (opening 16 lines) for example, useful just to see that the poem is grown from a  dual tradition, the Bible and the Classics, and that Milton looks back to and calls on both. He’s using everything he’s got.

I want to read without history as far as possible. I’m treating the poem as a piece of literature in the first instance. History is distracting from text. Can come later. Again, there may be footnotes we really need, but we’ll try to skim along.

This is a sort of scanning exercise, want to get the lay of the land, the rough  outline of things.

I will be leaving out big chunks which I find boring.

I will sometimes spend  a post on a line I find fascinating.

Finally, I’m reading with assumption of no knowledge at all on the part of my readers (or my self). This is Paradise Lost for absolute beginners.  But I  hope some readers will be more than beginners: I’m hoping they will be like me, very messed-up beginners.  This is Milton for readers who know they need some help.

To get ready to begin

I came to Milton via Wordsworth. The two poets are connected in that Wordsworth wanted to emulate what Milton had done in Paradise Lost, and so Milton’s poem is one of the models and  creative impulses behind Wordsworth’s great poem, The Prelude.  If you  aren’t into Wordsworth – take my word for it – he’s worth reading. And his recommendation, in this case, is worth taking. I needed that recommendation because initial instinct about Milton was that I didn’t like him. I was afraid of him and feared his moral judgement and inexorability. I still do, but I have found over  thirty-five years of reading Milton that  there is much to love and be grateful for – even as he shouts me down.

The  mess I personally was in, and the additional and wider mess that we as a society are in,  is a long one – Wordsworth saw it more than 200 years ago, when he wrote ‘London 1802’.

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life’s common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

Ah, the missing dower of inward happiness!

I might have read Paradise Lost as part of my undergraduate degree,  but if I did, it made no impression on me at all except perhaps to set off ‘keep away’ warning bells. I don’t recall writing about it, which is often the most intense form of reading. But in the first year of my Ph.D. I began to know the poem in earnest. That three-year post-doc study, which I began in 1983, was not for me an academic exercise. I was undertaking it to build or discover for myself a way of understanding and making sense of my own real life.  I needed to work something out. I needed to know what I believed.

That sounds pretentious, and in my own defence, I can only say that I needed  this understanding, this firm ground of believing something because I didn’t have boundaries or beliefs and I was scared by that. Earlier, in my teens and early twenties, a life of no boundaries – do what you want, drink what you want, behave as you want, take whatever drugs you want –  had seemed exciting and brave and revolutionary. But now, with deaths both literal and metaphorical  behind me, and my mother, with whom I had fallen out, dying from alcoholism,  a disease of despair, I was desperate to find a way of being that would keep me alive and help me, as E.T. says, be good. George Eliot nodded me towards Wordsworth, Wordsworth gave me a shove in the direction of Milton, and here I was, face to face with these opening lines:

BOOK 1

THE ARGUMENT

This first Book proposes, first in brief, the whole Subject, Mans disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was plac’t: Then touches the prime cause of his fall, the Serpent, or rather Satan in the Serpent; who revolting from God, and drawing to his side many Legions of Angels, was by the command of God driven out of Heaven with all his Crew into the great Deep. Which action past over, the Poem hasts into the midst of things,presenting Satan with his Angels now fallen into Hell, describ’dhere, not in the Center (for Heaven and Earth may be suppos’d as yet not made, certainly not yet accurst) but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest call’d Chaos: Here Satan with his Angels lying on the burning Lake, thunder-struck and astonisht, after a certain space recovers, as from confusion, calls up him who next in Order and Dignity lay by him; they confer of thir miserable fall. Satan awakens all his Legions, who lay till then in the same manner confounded; They rise, thir Numbers, array of Battel, thir chief Leaders nam’d, according to the Idols known afterwards in Canaan and the Countries adjoyning. To these Satan directs his Speech, comforts them with hope yet of regaining Heaven, but tells them lastly of a new World and new kind of Creature to be created, according to an ancient Prophesie or report in Heaven; for that Angels were long before this visible Creation, was the opinion of many ancient Fathers. To find out the truth of this Prophesie, and what to determin thereon he refers to a full Councel. What his Associates thence attempt. Pandemonium the Palace of Satan rises, suddenly built out of the Deep: The infernal Peers there sit in Councel.

OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, [ 5 ]
Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill [ 10 ]
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s Brook that flow’d
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues [ 15 ]
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.

Shall we start?

The poem is divided into  ‘books’,  and each book starts with a summation of its content, which Milton calls, ‘the argument.’ I tend not to read the argument, or  only to come back to it later, because the range of what is to be covered is so vast, I can’t take it in. I prefer to jump into the poem and read it sentence by sentence. So let’s start with that.

One of the things you have to get used to in this poem is the need to find main verbs. Reading aloud is a good way to do this, and if you want  sense of the rhythm of the lines  I like this reading by Tom O’Bedlam. When you are first reading,  try reading along with Tom for a while – see how he doesn’t stop at line endings but tries to read along the sentences, or within sentences, the clauses. Head for a piece of punctuation!

The opening lines are heading towards the verb ‘sing’ at the opening of line 6. But first we get  a tiny precis of what the song is  going to be about:

OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,

Words to think about here:

Disobedience, forbidden, mortal, death, woe, loss… these words are clues to us that this is about things going wrong or being done wrong and the awful consequences of that wrongness. Which starts with ‘disobedience’.  A word to get my 27 year old back up if ever there was one!  Who makes laws anyway! Old patriarchs!  God with a white beard! I don’t obey you.

I rant,  I remembering my ranting, but  I read on.

Translation into modern English: it’s about how humanity broke the law and the fallout from that – death and human woe – and the persistence of that fallout until  ‘one greater man’ (Christ) fixes it.

Because the notes are there in the Dartmouth edition, I couldn’t help myself clicking on the note about ‘of man’s first disobedience’ and as you’ll see if you click on it, it tells us that Milton’s opening, while being totally about this subject (the Bible story of the fall of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the garden of Eden) yet it is also in the tradition of more ancient epic texts – all of them beginning with an announcement that we’re going to hear a story that explains how some bad stuff came about.  That’s a good and all-too-human place to make start. After all, everyone over the age of thirteen and some people younger than that, knows that the world is broken.

And Milton connects himself to the biggest human voices of the past. That’s quite interesting to me, because one of the things I get  interested in as I read is the sense of Milton as the writer of this poem – it used to offend me, but now I’m interested in the fact that  like Mohammed Ali getting ready for a fight, Milton has to big himself up in his own mind in order to do this big thing. I’m the greatest! I’m the greatest! And yet, for Ali, some of the time, that was just true.

I’ll notice that stuff as we go. But let’s reread those first sixteen lines and get the run of them in our mind again :

OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, [ 5 ]
Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill [ 10 ]
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s Brook that flow’d
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues [ 15 ]
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.

When we hit the main verb, ‘sing’ in line six, Milton is addressing it to the ‘Heavenly Muse’. But it is Milton who is going to be singing – this is him writing, composing and composing by reciting aloud while his daughter writes it down, this poem. He is asking to be inspired and more than that – claiming, stating that he is inspired by the same muse that spoke to or inspired many biblical figures.

This muse

on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos:

I have to look up Oreb and Sinai, because my knowledge of the Old Testament is weak. In those places, that shepherd must be Moses.  Moses, inspired by the holy muse taught the Israelites the story of creation, and that story is to be found in Genesis.

I want to note that John Milton is here connecting himself directly to one of the key figures of the Judeo-Christian tradition. My younger self would have scoffed at Milton’s ego. My older self is in awe of his ambition and sense of involvement. One of the You Tube comments I’ve read called Paradise Lost  fanfic, and I think that is  right. Milton is so completely in tune with the Bible, at one with it, engrossed in it. And he feels able to join in and respond to it, calling on the same muse to help him write a poem that is unsurpassed:

I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues [ 15 ]
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.

I do not know why my younger self was so appalled at the ambition of this – it isn’t as if I consciously rated the great traditions of the Bible or classical literature. I just didn’t like Milton’s self-assurance. But as I read this morning, I can’t help seeing that self-assurance has real grounds – it’s like seeing a great  sportsperson or any artist displaying the ease of great skill, practice, developed talent. It’s there, and you have to acknowledge it.  so – we’re off…let’s see how he sings this adventurous song.

A final point to think on – if he was so at ease in his Bible, why did he want retell the story? But we’ll pick this up next time.

To finish, read that chunk again. It’s import to get the sound of the lines into your head.

 

Paradise Lost for Beginners: in which, with no critical apparatus, and only my own consciousness for a tool, I almost begin to read one of the greatest poems ever written

drjanedavis1 Comment
jap gdn.JPG
The Japanese Garden at Calderstones, 18 August, after heavy rain

Celebrating 350 years since the first publication of Paradise Lost, tomorrow at Milton’s Cottage, readers will stage a complete promenade-style reading of the poem. I wish I could be there! So in spirit of gratitude to Milton, tomorrow I am going to make a start on  the poem and I plan to add it to my list of things I’m working here on this blog.

The event brings together three things I love, Paradise Lost, reading aloud shared among a group of people, and an ancient and lovely Grade 1 building and its  garden (filled with plants mentioned by Milton.)

For Reader Leaders running Shared Reading  groups in  care homes,  prisons or probation hostels,  community libraries, cafes, or mental health drop-ins, chronic pain clinics or addiction rehabs, Paradise Lost might look a step too far. As someone who has read in each of the above I have to agree, it is no easy sell.  But do not be daunted. This is one of the greatest works of art ever created – why not try it?

Don’t rush into it.  Take it as you’d take a trip to Everest: do some prep, get some fellow-explorers, get some tents and provisions, and get a guide.

But that’s the problem, I think. For Paradise Lost there are no oxygen tanks and very little in the way of guides. And if you chose a guide, very likely, it would be an academic guide, which would make it hard to understand, more like an engineering manual.  We need straight from the box usability.  As anyone who has ever  got a new phone or new computer or even a new coffee maker, knows, straight from the box usability is never as simple as it sounds – you will have to set aside time and brace yourself as you  learn to press the on/off switch. Where is that one/off switch anyway?

I begin by taking courage from  a line in Book 4 of the poem:

And I will place within them as a guide
My Umpire Conscience, whom if they will hear, 
Light after light well us’d they shall attain,
And to the end persisting, safe arrive.

For me, in Paradise Lost, as in any work of literature,  I begin, unashamedly, with myself. I’m reading this to get something huge and complex in my head, to learn some things about being human, and to  go through a long meeting of minds with Milton. Only I can really do that – it is an experience I’m going to have. It’s not something someone else – however  well-versed in history, critically intelligent or well-practiced they are – can do for me.  I have within me this thing Milton calls  an umpire, ‘conscience’, and that piece of human equipment is what I’m going to use to make a start on this poem. I’m going to  ask myself what I think, I’m going to make judgement calls, I’m going to think.  You might be asking the following questions:

Question: There will be many things I don’t understand – doesn’t that matter?

Answer: Reading Milton is like (I imagine ) going to China. You have to expect there will be millions of things you don’t understand.  Don’t let that put you off.  Go!

Question: The language is difficult, I won’t be able to understand it

Answer: That’s not a question. Accept that the language is foreign to you but so what? Read aloud slowly, learn about the rhythm of sentences as you go,  and perhaps listen to other readings (you tube, bbc, naxos)  to get your ear tuned to it. Don’t panic – you’ll get into it.

Question: It’s religious and I’m not!

Answer: Again, not a question. These are simply statements of anxiety! This is the big one, though.  For  people who are not religious there’s a mental, spiritual leap to made. You have to read the poem as a story. Which is how Milton sets it up – it’s a human trying  to explain a puzzling state of affairs in the experience of the world. It’s worth reading Genesis, the first book of the Bible,  Milton’s source,  to have an idea of the differences. You read it as a story but then you let the story come to life.

For the reading, I like the old Longman edition, edited by Alastair Fowler, which is what I used for my first readings of the poem thirty odd years go. I know its shape, can remember particular pages. But Oxford World’s Classics is also good, and there are lots of online texts (I like this one with each line numbered, and this one from Dartmouth College, which has sometimes helpful  notes. Think of those notes as what mountain climbers call pitons.  You might be glad of them, other times they may seem irrelevant or even dangerous).

I’m very choosy – some parts bore me and I skip over them. I’m here for the bits that don’t bore me, that burst into life in my head and seem to offer  creative fire to make me think thoughts about some of the most difficult bits of life. That’s why I’m doing this! I need help.

 

Tomorrow, I’ll make a start on the opening:

BOOK 1

THE ARGUMENT

This first Book proposes, first in brief, the whole Subject, Mans disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was plac’t: Then touches the prime cause of his fall, the Serpent, or rather Satan in the Serpent; who revolting from God, and drawing to his side many Legions of Angels, was by the command of God driven out of Heaven with all his Crew into the great Deep. Which action past over, the Poem hasts into the midst of things,presenting Satan with his Angels now fallen into Hell, describ’dhere, not in the Center (for Heaven and Earth may be suppos’d as yet not made, certainly not yet accurst) but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest call’d Chaos: Here Satan with his Angels lying on the burning Lake, thunder-struck and astonisht, after a certain space recovers, as from confusion, calls up him who next in Order and Dignity lay by him; they confer of thir miserable fall. Satan awakens all his Legions, who lay till then in the same manner confounded; They rise, thir Numbers, array of Battel, thir chief Leaders nam’d, according to the Idols known afterwards in Canaan and the Countries adjoyning. To these Satan directs his Speech, comforts them with hope yet of regaining Heaven, but tells them lastly of a new World and new kind of Creature to be created, according to an ancient Prophesie or report in Heaven; for that Angels were long before this visible Creation, was the opinion of many ancient Fathers. To find out the truth of this Prophesie, and what to determin thereon he refers to a full Councel. What his Associates thence attempt. Pandemonium the Palace of Satan rises, suddenly built out of the Deep: The infernal Peers there sit in Councel.

OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, [ 5 ]
Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill [ 10 ]
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s Brook that flow’d
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues [ 15 ]
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.
And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know’st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread [ 20 ]
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad’st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumin, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence, [ 25 ]
And justifie the wayes of God to men

 

Finally: Paradise Lost  translated…

 

 

 

Silas Marner Day 28: I want more Dolly

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agapanthus and alstromeria at Kew.JPG
Agapanthus and Red Hot Pokers at Kew. 

I’ve been reading Silas Marner very slowly here (search ‘Silas Marner’) and  intermittently for a few months. I’m in Chapter 15 today.  Yesterday’s post was continuing that slow read –  in chapter 14 – but today I’m speeding up a little. I’m thinking about how I time things when running a Shared Reading group. Not everything goes at the same speed. sometimes Shared Reading is a slow canal boat, sometimes a walk, but sometimes you get in the car and go fast.

People who have read with me a lot will say, ‘You don’t time things! You always go slowly!’ and I have to admit that’s true in the sense that I’d be happy to spend two hours going deeply into some lines… but then to make up time – and not get bored –  I’m going to rush past lots of other stuff.  Whole chapters sometimes. Whole books of  Paradise Lost – the war in Heaven, pah! But these lines, from Book 4, seem worth staying in for an hour or two:

                                                             for now
Satan, now first inflam’d with rage, came down,
The Tempter ere th’ Accuser of man-kind, [ 10 ]
To wreck on innocent frail man his loss
Of that first Battel, and his flight to Hell:
Yet not rejoycing in his speed, though bold,
Far off and fearless, nor with cause to boast,
Begins his dire attempt, which nigh the birth [ 15 ]
Now rowling, boiles in his tumultuous brest,
And like a devellish engine back recoiles
Upon himself; horror and doubt distract
His troubl’d thoughts, and from the bottom stirr
The Hell within him for within him Hell [ 20 ]
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step no more then from himself can fly
By change of place:

Paradise Lost is in my mind because Megg sent me a notice about @Milton’sCottage ( http://www.miltonscottage.org/) and I’m excited by the idea of their all-day reading aloud of Paradise Lost coming up on Sunday,  the 350th anniversary of the  poem’s publication. Hurray!

I’m going to read  some lines from Paradise Lost here on this blog so I can join in, in spirit. But that’s Sunday! Jane – get back to today’s text.

So deep slow waters, getting to the bottom of things, then  the passing over. We left Silas dressing the baby, and now I  float through the rest of the chapter – where Silas gives the baby his mother and sister’s name, Eppie (Hepzibah) and we’re into chapter 14.

As Silas becomes Eppie’s parent, we turn back to Godfrey, still trammelled in his inability to be honest:

There was one person, as you will believe, who watched with keener though more hidden interest than any other, the prosperous growth of Eppie under the weaver’s care. He dared not do anything that would imply a stronger interest in a poor man’s adopted child than could be expected from the kindliness of the young Squire, when a chance meeting suggested a little present to a simple old fellow whom others noticed with goodwill; but he told himself that the time would come when he might do something towards furthering the welfare of his daughter without incurring suspicion.

Do you find yourself judging Godfrey? I do. I get angry with him and I dislike his hiddeness ,and yet I can’t help identifying with him, too.  He’s here father but the  exigency of class and Godfrey’s desire to married to Nancy Lammeter override that. He’s weak! ‘He dared not’… but he comforts himself with the thought that he might ‘do’ something later. And George Eliot pushes it a bit further, go on, ask yourself, those things you’ve left undone, do they bother you?

Was he very uneasy in the meantime at his inability to give his daughter her birthright? I cannot say that he was. The child was being taken care of, and would very likely be happy, as people in humble stations often were– happier, perhaps, than those brought up in luxury.

It is easier for Godfrey to assume all’s well ( and it is, luckily for Eppie). Do you sense an edge of self-pity in his thought that those in humble stations are often happier than those brought up in luxury, such as himself ?

That famous ring that pricked its owner when he forgot duty and followed desire–I wonder if it pricked very hard when he set out on the chase, or whether it pricked but lightly then, and only pierced to the quick when the chase had long been ended, and hope, folding her wings, looked backward and became regret?

I don’t remember the story of this ring – have to look it up in the notes. But I haven’t got any notes here this morning, so I’m guessing – as I would do in a group, if our books had no notes,  this is a reference to some myth or fairytale  but George Eliot is  putting the metaphor of that ring into reality:  when do you feel the pain of putting your own desire before a duty?  Probably not at the moment of  indulging the desire  – which she calls here the chase, the hunt –  but much, much later, when it is all over when ‘hope’ becomes ‘regret’. Ouch.

George Eliot is going to show us that change from ‘hope’ to ‘regret’ in Godfrey – and as her work as novelist unfolds, in many, many people – but it is going to take some unfolding. It’s going to take time. Meanwhile, with a lucky escape behind him (lucky for him that his wife, the drug-addict Molly, died before she could expose him) and the prospect of marrying Nancy before him, he is feeling pretty good;

He felt a reformed man, delivered from temptation; and the vision of his future life seemed to him as a promised land for which he had no cause to fight. He saw himself with all his happiness centred on his own hearth, while Nancy would smile on him as he played with the children.

And that other child–not on the hearth–he would not forget it; he would see that it was well provided for. That was a father’s duty.

The key word here is ‘felt’.  He felt a reformed man but he was not a reformed man,  nothing had changed. He is lying to himself, tricking himself, lettinghimself off. He is not ‘delivered from temptation’ – he’s had a narrow escape but he hasn’t resisted or fought temptation in any way. He just got lucky. Now the promised land  of Nancy is going to slide towards him with ‘no cause to fight’.  He’s not going to win a life, he’s going to get it, but with very little effort.  Easy living. And as for Eppie –  not recognised as one of his own children, not playing on his own hearth – he’ll salve his conscience. He won’t feel bad. He will let himself off the hook. He’ll be at ease.

Next chapter  takes us forward 16 years, so we’ll stop here for now.

Phew, that Godfrey Cass has got me into a pretty bad temper. I need more Dolly Winthrop!