All posts tagged Eve

The Very Model of a Man by Howard Jacobson (1992)

There is something to be said for inhabiting the gloomy corners of yourself; there are surprises to be gleaned there, jewels of the soul that only those willing to mine underground will ever find. (p.153)

This is an extraordinarily imaginative, powerful and original novel – quite a stunning bravura performance and mind-blowing conception. Its dense 340 pages describe the adventures of Cain, the Biblical son of Adam and Eve who murders his brother Abel, in a richly rhetorical, biblically heavy and sometimes impenetrable style.

The narrative alternates between third person descriptions of the young earth and the teeming mysterious creation, and Cain’s first person narrative – well after the murder – when he has become an outcast among men detailing, in particular, his experiences in the cosmopolitan and confusing city of Babel.

Jacobson’s natural prose style tends to the rhetorical and pontificatory. In this ancient, elevated subject matter it finds its natural home, raising itself to a permanent orotundity, incorporating Biblical phraseology, high-flown rhetorical tropes and repetitions, with extended meditations on membership of the First Family, of the nature of the jealous God, the passions of angels, the devious hero worship of the sectaries of Babel, and so on.

But, at moments, the book showcases something completely new in his work – an extraordinary visionary quality in the descriptions of the new-minted earth and heavens, still sparkling with freshness, unstable and experimental, of weird creatures, strange astronomical phenomena, of angels and mythical beasts, rendered in the style of a hallucinatory science fiction.

And then, all smiles, the skies opened and poured down shafts of rosy light; beams, in every sense of the word – great grinning girders of lambency in whose brilliant refractions the merest specks of dirt shone magnified like jewels hung around one gorgeous universal neck. The earth jolted, rocked once, then fell upon its axle. Stopped in its tracks, the engorged sun bounced as weightless as a bubble, pricking its circumference against mountains, leaking redness. (p.143)

It is an astonishing, visionary, strange and disturbing book.

The plot

There are two storylines. In one Cain in the first person reminisces about coping with his parents, the first humans, who are strange, puzzled, innocent, confused. His father does conjuring tricks and imitations  of the first animals, crand gets cross with God that he’s not allowed to have sex with Eve while she is still unclean from giving birth to Abel. Cain spends a lot of time naming all the new and puzzling things.

Eve, set apart in her impurity, is distant, remote. They are visited by two scruffy angels and Cain sees close up how badly designed they are, their great wings chafing against their arms. The biggest of them, Semyaza, returns to try and ravish Eve but, as he carries her screaming into the sky, the Almighty does his thing and suddenly the weakened angel falls to the ground, depositing Eve and shrinking away into dust.

These events are interwoven with the second storyline, a third-person account of Cain’s sojourn in Babel. He meets Naaman, his daughter Zilpah, Sisobk the Scryer, Preplen the satirical poet. Cain is now a performer, a lecturer, who addresses theatres full of fans and oglers keen to hear his story and the long-winded conclusions he draws from it. Cain has periodic conversations with Preplen who takes the mickey. Skinny Zilpah tails him and, in a memorable scene, in his bedroom, adopts a doggy position for him, pulling her buttocks apart to reveal her swart orifice, emitting its sour arable flavour (p.171), inveigling her way into his bed, pleading to be his slave and dog.

And Sisobk the Scryer appears to be the gateway to yet a third timeline: for he has visions and foresees biblical events far in the future: in one thread Moses and Aaron impose seemingly endless new divine regulations on the Israelites wandering in the wilderness until they rebel under the leadership of Korah at which God opens a crack in the earth into which the rebels fall screaming. Then Sisobk skips forward to the birth of Esau and Jacob from the womb of Rebekah, giving rise to lengthy and inconsequential meditations on the meaning of this Stone Age story.

Cain kills Abel

In the end Cain is overcome by Abel’s goody-goodiness, snaps and murders him, punching him to the ground then kicking his prone body, then covering his corpse in dust and rubble and stone until only his lifeless face remains. He is retelling and reliving the moment to the audience in the theatre in Babel, and abruptly we cut back to them, embarrassed by what they’ve hear, by the nakedness of Cain’s story, and the performance stops while they visit the rest room or order a refreshing sherbert. Cain stands dazed at the memory of what he did.

During this pause Naaman sidles up to him and – wishing to sever Cain’s unhealthy connection with his submissive daughter – says he’s heard about the murderer’s ambition of building a tower, here in Babel. Well Naaman just happens to know one which has been started, and can supply a troop of builders.

A lot of the warm puzzlement and ingenuity, the enthusiasm at the start of the book, the life, has drained out of the book by now. More and more characters are described as sad, melancholy, and the story feels abandoned. At some point it began to feel to me like a bleak modern allegory, like Beckett’s Waiting For Godot.

After Cain has murdered his brother and is sitting pointlessly, abandoned, derelict, cradling his dead body  there is a powerful sequence when a talking raven asks him what he has done and then offers to dig a grave for him. It reminded me of the set of harsh modern myths Ted Hughes wove around the figure of his trickster bird, the crow. Harsh, dry, barren. For all its gorgeous rhetoric the lingering aftertaste of the book is of dust and ashes.

The Tower of Babel as envisioned by Pieter Breugel the Elder (1563)

The Tower of Babel as envisioned by Pieter Breugel the Elder (1563)

A Jacobson stylistics

The Very Model of a Man is a powerful and bizarre creation but quite hard going in places. Even when I understood the events of the plot, they seemed strangely inconsequential compared to the tremendous wall of prose which Jacobson deploys, which far swamps the ostensible subject matter and drowns any ‘moral’ or ‘philosophical’ content which the book may be intended to have.

Most of the enjoyment, for me, came from analysing the techniques Jacobson uses to generate his magniloquent style. Almost all of the book is written in a high, ornate and ritualised poetic prose which few modern authors would dare or could achieve.

Repetition of clauses

As the German proverb has it, All Dinge sind drei, buses come in threes and so do clauses from orators who wish to grandstand and impress with the sonority of their rhetoric. These sets of three clauses, or phrases, occur liberally throughout the book; these are just from one page:

  • It wasn’t always a joy to him to be pierced by their mineral blue-green eyes, to be irradiated by the gold-filled tusks they showed in laughter always laughter, to be dazzled by the electric frizz of orange hair which many of them left uncovered.. (p.35)
  • They were brilliant, they were stellar, they were a moving mosaic of light… (p.35)
  • … a grandeur of feature, a weight of expression, an extravagance of facial swoops and circumflections. (p.35)

Using three booming clauses make it sound like you’ve said something deep and moving. Throw in a rhetorical question or a sweeping generalisation and you are moving into Cicero and Churchill territory:

  • Was this not proof of the generosity of their minds, the receptivity of their intelligences, the breadth and scope of their sympathies? (p.37)
  • He sees, for the first time, that it is artificially enlarged, the lobe distended, weighed down by a hanging ball of lead, the porch to the cavity itself gaping obscenely with the promise of infinite attention, infinite indulgence, infinite receptivity. (p.40)
  • Blind, blind, every woman in the hour of her adoration. Blind to reason. Blind to refusal. Blind to herself. (p.41)
  • He needed to speak further to his wife, repeat his performance for her, watch the dagger flashing in her glance. (p.82)
  • The other outdoor venues – the market squares where the prophets and pranksters gather, the parks and river banks that are popular with acrobats and near-sighted poetesses, the temple steps favoured by the little brown fairy-tellers from beyond the Indus… (p.114)
  • A slight woman confirms all his worst fears about existence. A slight woman proves the nugatoriness of things. A slight woman proves there is no hereafter. (p.171)
  • There he would be, up before any of us, already in the dirt, already rigid, already crying. (p.180)
  • All I knew of death was in his voice. It was without music, without colour, without desire. (p.251)
  • [God is] an indefatigable Proscriber. A rigorous Segregationalist. And a most fastidious Picker at food. (p.256)
  • It was up to me in other words. There was no order, no promise, no prediction. (p.260)

At some point repetition bursts the bounds of the threesome and just goes for it, the sophisticated rhetorician rejoicing in the fecundity of his proliferating periods.

  • Babel was thus ultimately the centre of every story, the haven to which all exiles dreamed of returning, the goal of every traveller, the reward of every virtue, the pattern for every striving, the paradise by whose loss every sinner calculated his deprivation and every criminal his fall. (p.38)
  • In Adam’s case a blow to the heart and to the soul, a stab in the back, a poisoning of the central nervous system, a torture to the mind, a suffocation and a braining and a garrotting… (p.54)

Eventually, if pressed in this direction, the prose spills over from numbered clauses to become a list and lists have a pleasure all of their own, conveying a sense of giddy profusion, the abundance of creation or, at least, of the author’s limitless lexicon.

In the cities of Shinar a shuri is assumed to be capable of discharging the simultaneous duties of daughter, sister, mother, companion, interpreter of dreams, reader of palms and minds and foreheads, laundress, seamstress, manicurist, pedicurist, defiled virgin, chaste harlot, contortionist, singer, dancer, looker, listener, linguist, mute, physician for all ailments of body or soul. (p.39)

Rhetorical questions

There are hundreds of these liberally scattered throughout the book, they are a fundamental building block of the style.

  • Who can go on dining on the gruel of fact once they have tasted the rich meats of uncertainty? (p.61)
  • Who would dare adjudicate between two such liberties taken with the name and justice-mechanism of the Almighty? (p.73)
  • How could I possibly have been ignorant of what was taking place? What kind of a son would I have been to my mother had I not seized every opportunity to observe her in her finest hour, captor and mistress of her Creator’s heart? (p.85)
  • [Eve] had always been weak before the power of art? What woman is not? Which of them is proof against a little culture laced with compliment? A song, a dance, a pretty turn of wit, for which she might conceivably be credited with the inspiration? (p.88)
  • You find me too sophistical in this matter? You would have a spade called a spade and greed and grudging given their proper names? (p.90)
  • When God smelled the smoke of Abel’s sacrifice, spread wide his nostrils to accommodate every pungent wisp and curl of it, do you think I fretted over the bounty He was sure to extend my brother in return? Do you think there were any cubits of inhospitable crawling scrub or homers of rotting straw to be handed over, that I could not bear to be without? (p.91)
  • Where would gods be without the devotion of women? (p.96)
  • Does it surprise you that I could feel concern for my brother’s safety, when it was I who at the very hour of his birth had passed a death sentence on him? It shouldn’t. Who can you possibly care more for than a person whose continuing existence depends largely on yourself? (p.104)
  • What else is a First Cause to do to spice up the tedium of predestined effect? (p.131)

The dense profusion of rhetorical questions suggests at least two sources. 1. Jacobson was a university teacher for a long time and asking rhetorical questions of your students is a basic pedagogic technique.

What else makes envy the most excruciating of the passions if not the dread of discovering your utter redundancy in the world’s business? (p.90)

2. The book is about Jewish history, Jewish teaching and Jewish hermeneutics. It powerfully suggests something particularly disputatious in a tradition so cluttered with hundreds of minute stipulations, all of which must be weighed and considered, and discussed and debated, never really reaching a conclusion.

Should he remove his clothing and then recite the ordinance, or should he recite the ordinance and then remove his clothing? (p.75)

Years ago I read the entire Old Testament and some books about Judaism and Paul Johnson’s epic history of the Jews, my conclusion was that it is a tradition designed to prompt endless questioning and debate about its plethora of prohibitions. The joy, the pleasure, is not necessarily in reaching any conclusion – because there are no conclusions – but in the learning and wisdom and intricacy and subtle humour of the argumentation.

Thou shalt? How did the grammar of that work? Was it an order? A prediction? A promise? Was the kingdom of sin being dangled before me as an enticement, a reward if I did such and such? Or had it been given to me, there and then, with no strings attached? (p.260)

However, there are risks. For a start, the addiction to questions sometimes topples over into questionable territory, posing posers which, on closer examination, don’t make too much sense.

What father does not want to hear his daughter confess an ugly and, if possible, unrequited infatuation? What father does not nurse the furtive ambition of having the old jealous dread – the humiliation of rivalry, the vicarious ignominy of rejection – realised just once? (p.265)

Not every statement which can be put into the grammatical form of a question deserves answering. And so isn’t there a risk that after the first hundred or so questions, the reader starts caring less and less about the answers?

Who would settle for being merely the apple of his mother’s eye, when he could be the arrow in her side, the thorn in her flesh, the pestilence in her blood? (p.283)

That the average reader, requiring some substantial points of narrative to cling onto, to orientate himself by, might eventually come to feel he is adrift in a never-ending surf of inquisition? That – on the 217th question, worn down by this cornucopia of quizzicality – the harassed target of these questions might simply reply: ‘I don’t know. You’re the bloody author. You tell me.’

Word play

Related to the joy of questions is a mindset which enjoys puns and quibbles over meaning. The simplest form is a thesaurus-like repetition of synonyms, or near-synonyms, which jostle a definition, cajole and cosset a concept, towards its unclear centre:

  • My father’s incautiousness, or absent-mindedness, or inability simply to feign knowledge when he lacked it… (p.47)
  • … the place we fled from: the fertile valley, our teeming cradle, omphalos, hell, home. (p.52)
  • The teeming land sent up more monsters in an afternoon than I could have catalogued in a year, but its store of validating commendation was exhaustible, finite, dwindling. (p.56)
  • his apostasy, disloyalty, defection (p.123)
  • The word is invariably grotesque to him now – overblown, foolish, laughable. (p.123)
  • He is as particular about his floor as he is about his appearance. Traveller’s scruples. Fugitive’s fastidiousness. (p.213)

Chiasmus and inversion. Jacobson is fond of using sentences which rework clauses, reword them, invert word orders or use the same word orders to extend or modify the concept.

  • They see into each other; she with pity threatening to be love, he with disinclination determined to be hate. (p.112)
  • He would like to lie down for a while. Rest his feet. Close his eyes. And try not to imagine all the ways he has inadvertently amused Naaman. To say nothing of inadvertently unamusing Naaman’s daughter. (p.113)
  • Had Moses been an early Freud – as Freud surely was, for the purposes of another sort of Jewish deliverance, a later Moses… (p.119)
  • He would not want to swear that he has heard what he has heard. But then again he would not want to swear that he has not… If he is unsure what he’s sure of, he is at least sure of what he isn’t. (p.325)

The narrator frequently uses homophonous words, multiples of words which sound around a notion, slinking and sliding around a concept’s slippery centre.

That’s the way to leave; that’s the way to turn your back on home. Fly like a stone out of a sling. Not slink, as he had. Not slope. Not sneak. Not snake. (p.270)

The pedantic correction

A variation on this is a professorial fussiness which insists on correcting itself, making a song and dance about its fossicking and finicketying, about how subtle and refined its perceptions are, a habit of self-adjustment which gives a (spurious) sense of precision to the narrator’s meditations. But not necessarily to the reader’s enlightenment.

  • And so saying – so intuning – … (p.111)
  • It could almost be said that although he hasn’t met her he has talked to her, for she regularly, no, she religiously, attends his recitals… (p.112)
  • His audience was exactly as Naaman had predicted it… with the exception – that’s to say, with the inclusion – of Naaman’s own daughter. (p.115)
  • ‘I intend – that’s too grand a verb – I think, only of a tower.’ (p.125)
  • And the someone else in question – the someone else I do not hesitate to put in question – (p.144)
  • All right, my mother said, let us suppose. But first what am I to suppose is the purpose of this supposition? (p.146)
  • I was man enough. Man enough to think I was man enough, anyway. (p.149)
  • He is in love with his own vagrancy. Would be in love with his own vagrancy. (p.153)
  • He isn’t a cause of Cain’s spongy fungoid blight – he is Cain’s spongy fungoid blight. (p.153)
  • He didn’t love her. He didn’t, that’s to say, discretely love her. (p.155)
  • She stopped what she was doing – what she was undoing – (p.178)
  • Over a shallow stream that we could wade across in three strides my father had thrown – no, had erected – a bridge… (p.178)
  • I do not believe it is his beauty that inspires this heaving love in me. That imposes this heavy love on me. (p.184)
  • He is in the womb of Rebekah… no… no… he is the womb of Rebekah. (p.217)
  • In the case of the last motive – no, I must return to my original word: the last prompting I have attributed to him. (p.245)
  • Which is a claim I am at least prepared to make for the disgust I felt – no, the digust I mensurated – (p.251)
  • An expression of the finest, most unadulterated angelic distaste passed over his features. Passed? No. (p.254)
  • He looked surprised that I needed to ask. No, not surprised – how could any of us surprise him? – sickened. (p.255)
  • She cannot conceal her shame. Or rather, she cannot conceal her awkwardness, and that is a cause of shame. (p.263)

The author is aware of this pedantic fossicking, the habit of never letting one word do when you can turn it over, examine it and try out several synonyms, as if searching for ever-diminishing, finer distinctions. He has the characters address it. In a late section of the book, when the character Sisobk the Scryer appears to have a convoluted dialogue with a roomful of rabbis, the narrator specifically attributes it to the Jewish tradition of learned exegesis, explication, which is described as ‘bookish and biblical’, characterised by a’passion for exegesis prevailing over all other passions’, making it:

Scholiastic. Disputatious. Talmudical. (p.272)

Learnèd tags

The verbal mannerisms of a pompous professor litter the discourse, as if it is an old-fashioned scholarly article.

There is an argument that says… A word of caution here… There is a rumour in circulation that… Accounts vary as to how long… It is sometimes said that… Who would dare adjudicate between… It could almost be said that…. so to speak… It may be a fact that… It could be said… I have a theory to explain… not to beat about the bush… in short… Suffice it to say… I have heard it said… It could be argued…

On a less high-falutin’ plane, he also uses more everyday phrases to give an air of adjudication and authority, using tags which sometimes remind me of civil service pomposity and at others veer closer to classic football manager rhetoric.

as chance would have it… in so far as he can be said to possess… as it were… it could be argued… to wit… if the truth is told… come to that… that’s to say… it goes without saying… when all is said and done…

Learnèd vocabulary

The text evinces a steady enjoyment of words as objects in themselves, as rare and precious as Biblical unguents:

  • ossicle – The ossicles are three bones in either middle ear that are among the smallest bones in the human body.
  • verrucose – Covered with warts or wartlike projections.
  • bacillophobic – An abnormal and persistent fear of bacilli (bacteria).
  • collops – a small slice of meat, especially a small rasher of bacon.
  • venereous – Relating to sexual desire or sexual intercourse; Addicted to sexual pleasure; lustful
  • frit – the mixture of silica and fluxes which is fused at high temperature to make glass.
  • sciolist – One who exhibits only superficial knowledge; a self-proclaimed expert with little real understanding.
  • feldspar – an abundant rock-forming mineral typically occurring as colourless or pale-coloured crystals and consisting of aluminosilicates of potassium, sodium, and calcium.
  • slub – a lump or thick place in yarn or thread.
  • squab – In culinary terminology, squab is a young domestic pigeon, typically under four weeks old or its meat.
  • epiphytic – A plant, such as a tropical orchid or a staghorn fern, that grows on another plant upon which it depends for mechanical support but not for nutrients.
  • funebral – belonging to a funeral, fr. funus funeral. Pertaining to a funeral or funerals; funeral; funereal.
  • alacrious – Brisk; joyously active; lively.
  • hin – A unit of liquid measure used by the ancient Hebrews, equal to about five litres.
  • mendicaments – a substance used for medical treatment.
  • nigrescent – The process of becoming black or dark. Blackness or darkness, as of complexion.
  • allopathic – a system of medicine that aims to combat disease by using remedies (as drugs or surgery) which produce effects that are different from or incompatible with those of the disease being treated. The opposite of homeopahic.
  • coccygeal – a small triangular bone forming the lower extremity of the spinal column in humans, consisting of four ankylosed rudimentary vertebrae.
  • tenuity – lack of solidity or substance; thinness.
  • ensorcelled – enchanted, fascinated.
  • homer – an ancient Hebrew unit of capacity equal to about 10.5 or later 11.5 bushels or 100 US gallons.
  • foison – a plentiful supply or yield.
  • sacrarium – the sanctuary of a church. (in the Roman Catholic Church) a piscina; (in the ancient Roman world) a shrine, in particular the room in a house containing the penates.
  • fugacy – banishment.

Generalisations

Paradoxical generalisations infest the text like weeds. Jacobson is like a mordant Oscar Wilde, Wilde without the lightness or wit, Wilde with blood in his mouth and slub in his heart.

  • You have to be verbal to be disgusted. (p.51)
  • Words are power, and power has no truck with sensibilities. (p.51)
  • Ridicule is the jealous man’s salvation, the breath of all our being. (p.85)
  • Treachery stokes its own fires. It needs no circumstances or pretexts or motives. Motivelessness is the very thing it thrives on. (p.100)
  • What we call infatuation is nothing other than being mesmerised by the realisation that we can juggle violence. (p.105)
  • All obsessional behaviour this side of madness must make a concession to normality somewhere. (p.107)
  • Despair drives men to believe that riches and salvation are incompatible; and so, sometimes, does repletion. But seldom hope; and never hope in its infancy. (p.119)
  • As with mortals, so with gods: we lose ourselves in ill-definition and crave elucidation – heroic elucidation if we can find it – of who we are. (p.142)
  • Barring exceptional circumstances, there are only two reasons why a man of marriageable age remains a bachelor: either he doesn’t love women at all, or he loves them too much. (p.154)
  • A serious man talks to no-one but himself. (p.185)
  • The more a thing grows, the smaller its capacity to amuse itself. (p.189)
  • Mothers, of course, are always sad. (p.209)

There are scores of sweeping generalisations like this, part of the book’s discourse-creating machinery – but I don’t think there’s a single sententious sentiment which, upon reflection I don’t think is bogus. They sound high and mighty but – like a lot of the text – in the morning have melted and gone like snow.

Rhetoric instead of character

All this goes partly to explain why it’s difficult to remember much of what goes on in a Jacobson novel. In the texture of the prose there is an never-ending display of rhetorical fireworks, but events, actions ‘in the real world’? Which are structured into a sequence which creates a ‘plot’? Harder to discern. Often invisible, buried beneath the magnificent tapestry of rhetoric.

Teachers of creative writing say that character in a novel is revealed by dialogue and action but there is little of either in a Jacobson novel. Not much gets in the way of the ceaseless enchanter’s weaving of the ornate narratorial prosody. The 23-page chapter Cain Expatiates describes Cain’s feelings as he spies on his mother, Eve, nursing baby Abel and being wooed – sort of – impressed, and shown off to by a surprisingly anthropomorphic God. Cain expatiates exactly describes the scene, because in the entire long meditation on what it means for the Creator to be so attracted to one of his muddy creations, we get a beguiling and bewitching 20 pages of Cain’s elaborately rhetorical thoughts – and not a word from Eve. She does and says nothing. At one point Cain describes her character – ‘she was brittle, obstinate, unadaptable, impervious’ (p.93) and I realised, once these fine words had stopped dazzling me – that I had no idea what they meant, was not even sure, in fact, if they mean anything.

And so for all its gorgeous tapestries of words, for all its peculiar and intense inhabitation of Cain’s tortured consciousness and its imaginatively weird descriptions of the First Family, for all the appearance of scrupulous moral and psychological investigation created by the professorial tags and scholarly discriminations – for all its bizarre Talmudical reincarnations –  after I put the book down, the ornate baroque music of the prose rang on in my head for a while, humming and reverberating but… the plot, the meaning, the message of it all, whatever the book was actually about – evaporated from my memory like dew in the desert.

Cain murdering Abel by Peter Paul Rubens (1608)

Cain murdering Abel by Peter Paul Rubens (1608)

Credit

The Very Model of a Man by Howard Jacobson by Howard Jacobson was published in 1992 by Viking Books. All quotes are from the 1993 Penguin paperback edition.

Related links

Howard Jacobson’s novels

1983 Coming From Behind – Introducing miserable 35-year-old, failed English lecturer, frustrated lecher and anxious Jew, Sefton Goldberg, trapped in the seedy environs of Wrottesley Polytechnic in the rainy Midlands. Saddled with argumentative colleagues, noisy neighbours and the mad scheme of merging the poly with the local football club, can Sefton escape all this when he is invited to interview for the job of his dreams at Cambridge?
1984 Peeping Tom – Sex-obsessed Jewish Barney Fugelman looks back over his life, his early marriage to big-breasted Sharon at whose whim he undergoes hypnosis and discovers he can channel the spirit of Thomas Hardy, then, when she reveals she’s pregnant, his move to Cornwall and submissive affair with a full-blown Hardy expert, the Amazonian Camilla before she, too, dumps him.
1986 Redback – Weedy northerner Leon Forelock escapes his narrow childhood in rainy Partington, first for eccentric Cambridge, and then as a CIA-funded right-wing writer and agitator on an extended sojourn in Australia, where Jacobson’s comic gift really flowers in extravagant fugues and riffs about Antipodean culture and characters.
1992 The Very Model of a Man – An extraordinary achievement, a bizarre and rhetorical imagining into the mind of Cain – son of Adam and Eve and murderer of his brother Abel – as he tortuously remembers the events leading up to the first fratricide, and spends his days as an outcast in the corrupt and cosmopolitan city of Babel.
1998 No More Mister Nice Guy –
1999 The Mighty Walzer –
2002 Who’s Sorry Now? –
2004 The Making of Henry –
2006 Kalooki Nights –
2008 The Act of Love –
2010 The Finkler Question –
2012 Zoo Time –
2014 J –

Leave a comment
by Simon on August 19, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Books, Novel
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Simon on August 19, 2016

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/the-very-model-of-a-man-howard-jacobson/

Johnson’s Life of Milton (1777)

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason.

Since the end of poetry is pleasure, that cannot be unpoetical with which all are pleased.

The characteristic quality of his poem [Paradise Lost] is sublimity… Its end is to raise the thoughts above sublunary cares or pleasures… his natural port is gigantic loftiness… he can please when pleasure is required, but it is his peculiar power to astonish… his great excellence is amplitude.

Johnson’s Lives of the Poets

Johnson’s Lives of the Poets are not pleasurable to read because they are not underpinned by a strong central thesis. Instead he relates separate facts about each poet and comments on them in discrete paragraphs. They feel bitty.

Given Johnson’s complete lack of sympathy with Milton’s politics – and his critique of Milton’s appalling selfishness and beastly behaviour to his two daughters – it is notable how generous he is to Milton the poet.

It is striking how profoundly Johnson misunderstands Milton the man, for example:

  • He deplores Milton’s lack of regular church attendance; Johnson thinks the discipline of church attendance is vital; this is what makes him a Tory; he can’t conceive of people whose spirituality is more free, independent, no less sincere.
  • Similarly, he attributes Milton’s republicanism to jealousy of power, and surly resentment, ‘an envious hatred of greatness… a petulance impatient of control’ – utterly failing to grasp Milton’s ideas about freedom – that everyone should be free to express themselves & rule themselves; that hirelings shouldn’t be appointed in the church just as men shouldn’t be subjected to arbitrary power in civil life.

Paradise Lost

With respect to design, it is the ‘first’ i.e. greatest product of the human mind.

Le Bossu says an epic requires first a moral – Johnson concurs that to justify the ways of God to men is the highest conceivable moral.

Second, the moral has to be enacted in a fable, i.e. a plot: ‘a narration artfully constructed so as to excite curiosity and surprise expectation.’ In this Milton equals every other poet in his design i.e. the creation of the world, its end, and everything in between, are carefully placed.

Johnson then considers the various characters, the angels, Satan, Adam & Eve.

Of episodes

Johnson correctly points out ‘episodes’ i.e. passages extraneous to the main action, as being:

  • Raphael’s long account of the war in heaven, the creation, the universe
  • Michael’s second book vision into the future as far as the crucifixion and resurrection and second coming

Between them they prepare the background, and then explain the sequel, to the Main Event.

The hero

Dryden says Adam can’t be the hero; but why not? His posterity will triumph and the feeling of the end of the poem is upbeat.

Style

Milton chose a subject appropriate to the vast luxuriance of his imagination and powers. ‘Sublimity is the general and prevailing quality of the poem.’

Moral sentiments

‘In Milton every line breathes sanctity of thought and purity of manners.’

Criticism

Johnson’s criticism is that the super-elevated subject of the poem matter allows for very little human interest. Milton’s achievement is vast in bringing to bear a lifetime’s reading and knowledge to adorn and vary a well-known story – but in the end it feels heavy. ‘None ever wished it longer than it is.’

The poem is undermined by the confusion of spirit and matter: the angels are sometimes pure spirit, other times hit and wounded in battle. Incongruity.

Johnson dislikes the incorporation of Sin and Death – abstract ideas – as real actors in the narration: ‘one of the greatest faults of the poem’. It is mixing allegory with story. I actively like this because it makes the story a) vivid b) highly visual c) Spenser made a career out of bringing allegorical figures to life e.g. Rumour. But I agree that it feels different in kind and style from, say, Michael’s discourse.

Faults in the narrative

  • Why did Gabriel let Satan simply go away after he was arrested by the angels?
  • If Man is created to fill the void left by the fall of the rebel angels, how come Satan had heard a rumour about man before his fall? Presumably because God foresees all.

Fault of tone

Johnson particularly deprecates the Limbo of Fools in Book II, as inappropriate satire, as lowering the tone.

Diction

Both in prose and verse he had formed his style by a perverse and pedantic principle. He was desirous to use English words with a foreign idiom.

Nonetheless, Johnson judges that this large fault is overwhelmed by the sheer imaginative power of the poem.

Rhyme

Johnson thinks rhyme is superior to blank verse because it distinguishes poetry more easily (rather as he thinks a Christian ought to physically attend church rather than just pray in his house because it distinguishes holy thoughts from mundane thoughts).

Nonetheless, Johnson can’t wish Paradise Lost rhymed. (It’s a shame he makes no comment on Dryden’s rhyming version of the same subject, State of Innocence.)

He correctly points out that nobody in their right mind would wish Paradise Lost any longer.

Related links

Milton reviews

More seventeenth century reviews

More eighteenth century reviews

Leave a comment
by Simon on July 19, 2006  •  Permalink
Posted in English literature, Literary criticism, Poetry
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by Simon on July 19, 2006

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2006/07/19/johnson-life-of-milton/

Paradise Lost, Book 11 by John Milton (1667)

Paradise Lost, Book 11 (901 lines)

The ostensible subject of this book is Michael showing Adam visions of the future. More generally Michael is inducting Adam into the implications of the Fall – fighting, murder, disease, old age, God’s anger, one sole holy man standing out against the giddy crowd, Enoch, Noah (a self portrait of Milton embattled among he returning Royalists).

And Michael imparts simple wisdom: the Middle Way. Moderation.

Summary

1-21 Adam and Eve stand penitent. Their prayers go up to heaven.

22-44 The Son intercedes on their behalf, reminding everyone he will eventually die for them.

45-71 The Father agrees forgiveness but they cannot stay in Eden.

72-83 a trumpet blown to assemble all the angelic host.

84-125 The Father explains that, lest the man also eat of the fruit of the tree of eternal life, he will expel him. The father calls & instructs Michael to expel man from paradise, but to do it gently and give him a vision of the future; and set up cherubim to guard the entrance to the garden.

126-140 Michael prepares to descend. Cut to Adam and Eve.

141-161 Adam says he thinks God is listening to their prayers; their lives shall be meliorated; he ends by blessing Eve for being mother of mankind. [We’ve come a long way from their suicide pact].

162-180 Resigned, Eve says let’s get to work.

181-192 But they both notice a change: the sky lours; a bird of prey chases another; a bear chases fawns. The world is Fallen.

193-207 Adam points this all out to Eve, plus he’s seen lights falling from heaven.

208-225 Michael and his cherubim touch down.

226-250 Michael approaches, manly not dazzling.

251-262 Michael announces he’s exiling them.

263-285 Eve laments having to leave the flowers and bower she has dressed.

286-292 Michael says there’s no choice: they will be together.

293-333 Adam manfully acquiesces: if Eve will miss the flowers, Adam will miss meeting with God face to face.

334-369 Michael assures Adam God will be everywhere and his grace follow him, with signs. Come up this hill & I’ll show you the future.

370-422 Adam ascends the hill whence he can see the whole world, and Michael closes his eyes with magic drops.

423-460 Vision 1 They foresee Cain murdering Abel.

461-499 Adam asks, Is this Death? Vision 2 Michael shows him a cave full of desperate sick people dominated by Death…

500-514 Adam asks, Why are we born when life is so horrible? Can the image of the Maker be so degraded?

515-525 They don’t degrade God’s image; they degrade their own, says Michael.

526-546 Michael says it is best to live in moderation; however old age and its infirmities cannot be avoided…

547-552 Why prolong life, asks Adam, to which Michael replies:

Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv’st
Live well, how long or short permit to heav’n.

556-637 Vision 3 the Giants marry the daughters of Cain. Seems happy, but Michael explains the daughters of Cain are atheists and wantons.

638-673 Vision 4 a populous plain and city, but war breaks out between the two populations, waste and destruction: a prophet, Enoch, rises up and appeals for peace but everyone turns on him and he is whirled up to Heaven.

674-711 Michael makes it plain he disapproves of the warrior code & ethos, the worshipping of might. Enoch’s righteousness is praised and an example of all the righteous whom God will save.

712-762 Vision 5 amid a world of decadence Noah builds his ark, and Adam watches while his entire posterity is wiped out in the great Flood.

763-786 Adam is appalled: he hoped things would improve not decline. What next?

787–839 Michael makes Milton’s ethics crystal clear: all military might and heroism is an empty sham; it leads to luxury and wantonness, and then to extermination. Only one man in a dark age shall sound the note of warning (cf Abdiel brave in the concourse of the fallen angels) a self-portrait of Milton. But also a crystal clear rejection of the entire ‘heroic’ ethos of Satan.

840-901 Vision 6 Adam sees the ark alight on a mountaintop and the waters recede and a rainbow in the sky and Michael interprets it as God’s promise never again to flood the earth.

Related links

Reviews

More seventeenth century reviews

Leave a comment
by Simon on July 18, 2006  •  Permalink
Posted in Christianity, History, Literary criticism, Poetry
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by Simon on July 18, 2006

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2006/07/18/paradise-lost-book-xi-john-milton/

Aspects of Paradise Lost

Theology

Does Paradise Lost succeed in justifying the ways of God to man?

No. The whole argument hangs on four or five very debatable points:

  • Whether you accept the assertion, repeated over and over by God, the Son, the angels and the narrator – that worship from created beings is only meaningful if it is freely given i.e. created beings have to be free – and that freedom involves the freedom to do wrong and well as right. To which one replies: a) couldn’t God have created a world in which there was no evil? Hence, no temptation? Lost of freedom and choices: just nothing Evil. b) couldn’t God have intervened at various points to prevent the tragedy? The obvious answer is, Yes.
  • Whether you accept the assertion that all mankind deserves to be punished for something done before they were born. Obviously not.
  • Whether God could have forgiven them there and then and said, I’ll give you a second chance. Why not?
  • (All this is accepting the hard-to-understand but much-repeated point that merely because God foresees something, does not make it pre-ordained. Let’s accept that.)
  • (And accepting the strange idea that God makes a universe knowing it will be wrecked – why?)

The solution to the entire problem with Milton’s theology is to realise that Christianity is not designed to tell a logical story of the creation: Christianity has devised a myth which explains the current state of mankind, society and people.

For those who buy into the myth it has tremendous psychological power but it is a myth, created retroactively to make sense of the status quo – if you examine the same myth as if it were a logical story explaining the origin of the universe then it becomes highly questionable, because you are essentially saying that God created an imperfect world – and there’s no way out of the paradoxes that throws up – because the Christian response – that, no, God created a perfect world and we, humanity, screwed it up – certainly works if you relate that myth to your own personal life story, which will inevitably involve screw-ups and failings (that’s what the whole myth is designed to do). But fails as a stand-alone account of the creation of the whole world, viewed in the abstract.

Thus Milton tries heroically, epically, but fails to justify the ways of God to man. God’s ways seem harsh, cruel and arbitrary.

After all, if Paradise Lost succeeded in its big ambition, surely it would be snapped up to be part of the syllabus at any Catholic or Protestant seminary school. But no because, by taking the story so literally, Milton lets the cat out of the bag.

Architecture

Does the poem lay out its pretty well-known story in a suitable way?

Milton succeeds admirably in taking the well-known story and adapting it for the traditional methodology of epics i.e. starting in media res and telling key events in flashback – just as Odysseus tells all his exotic adventures in flashback, or Aeneas tells the people of Carthage his story ditto, thus Raphael tells the origins of the rebellion and the War in heaven and the Creation of the universe in flashback; and just as Aeneas is vouchsafed a vision of the futurity of Rome, so Adam is given a vision of the future of humanity. Top marks.

However, it is a major flaw that the poem tails off as it drags on – that Raphael’s account of the Creation or Michael’s prophecy are so boring. Why? Because we’ve read them before, described much more snappily, in the Bible.

Style

Does Milton’s style help or hinder one’s reading? Is it answerable to the subject matter?

Although the essence of Milton’s style remains the same throughout (the Latinate grammar, the odd use of syntax, Latinate vocabulary) no-once can doubt that the poem goes off. The best books are the first four. Why? Several reasons:

  • In Hell Milton is free-est to invent episodes; thereafter he is more constrained by the Biblical account. Thus in Book X it is a breath of fresh air when Satan encounters Sin and Death again, making their way up to the Universe.
  • Milton seems to have put more effort into fully imagining these early books: one simple indicator is that they are packed with epic similes – whereas the long books of Raphael’s are almost barren of similes – making you realise how refreshing they had been, to add variety to the style and rhythm.
  • If books VI, VII, X, XI and XII are boring because they have to retell large chunks of Genesis without using similes, other sections of books V and so on are just as boring because they have to convey long gobbets of Christian theology. Long stretches are not much more than versified pamphlets.

Epic poem

Does PL succeed as an epic poem in the tradition of Homer, Virgil, Camoes, Tasso?

Yes.

Aesthetics

Taken all in all, is Paradise Lost a success?

A limited one, or Yes, with reservations. These reservations stem from:

  • The failure of the theology to allay big doubts about God, its fundamental aim.
  • The failure of the later books to maintain the imaginative force and novel subject matter of the earlier ones.
  • The consequent flattening or failure of the style, which becomes pedestrian and boring for long stretches.

It seems to me axiomatic that Milton was a devout Christian who wrote the poem with the explicit aim of justifying the ways of God to men. The facts are the following: the first four or so books are the best. ‘Best’ means they are most enjoyable to read because containing the highest proportion of vivid and memorable language.

From Book 5 onwards the poem becomes more stodgy – the Raphael books: his account of the origins of the devil rebellion i.e. Satan’s revolt against the Son up till Abdiel standing up against the rebels (5), the actual War in Heaven (6), the creation of the universe and of Man – all this feels already-read (7), and then Raphael’s deliberately vague description of the Universe; then Adam’s memories of waking & meeting God (8).

The whole of Book 9 is an account, told in real time, of Eve leaving Adam, then being seduced by the serpent to eat the fruit, then persuading Adam to eat it. This ought to be the dramatic centrepiece of the poem but is the dullest – we know what’s going to happen so there’s no drama – instead there is lengthy and hard-to-follow argumentation between the snake and Eve – she eats – and then more argumentation between Eve and Adam – he eats – they make love – then feel guilt and shame.

Given a choice, which would you rather read – books 1, 2 and 3 or books 9, 10 and 11?

Book 10 where the Son quickly judges the pair is only enlivened by the great scenes of Sin and Death building a path up to the earth.

Book 11 where Michael lays out the future of the human race is dull.

Milton’s style

Debate ranges over Milton’s style: at one end of the spectrum, people say it’s recognisably English phrasing and syntax – at the other end, Dr Johnson and co say it’s written in a style heavily influenced by Latin and unlike any English ever spoken. I’m at the Dr Johnson end, but then most poetry is unlike the language actually spoken by ordinary people. The question is not the disputed source or origin of Milton’s style, it’s whether it works for what he intends.

Christopher Ricks’ book shows in minute detail that Milton’s style is highly considered, carefully wrought, and meaningful i.e. for long stretches. On other words, it does work.

Related links

Related reviews

More seventeenth century reviews

Leave a comment
by Simon on July 17, 2006  •  Permalink
Posted in Books, Christianity, History, Literary criticism
Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Simon on July 17, 2006

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2006/07/17/aspects-of-paradise-lost/

Milton’s Satan and the Classical World

The whole debate about whether Satan is the ‘hero’ of Paradise Lost is wrong-headed. It is based on three premises:

  1. The poetry is most vivid when describing Satan – hence Blake’s claim that “The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it.”
  2. Satan is the protagonist of the plot, moving the action along while the other characters – God, Son, Adam – are in various ways passive recipients of actions.
  3. Satan fits neatly into Milton’s classical frames of reference and discourse i.e. Satan is dynamic like a character in a Greek play, he is described using multitudes of epic similes, themselves generally taken from pagan examples etc.

1. The devil scenes are more vivid because Milton has more freedom to invent and write freely than in the Bible-based scenes where he has to stick very closely to what he thought of as a literal version of history. But it is a delusive attractiveness. Satan quite clearly shrinks and mangles in size and scope as the poem continues and as his superficial attractiveness is reduced to bestiality.

2. Satan is without doubt the main engine of the plot – but this implies no superiority. Everything Milton stands, his whole theology denies and rejects the claim.

3. The identity of Satan with everything classical and pagan is one of the ways Milton condemns him. Milton takes every opportunity to make it absolutely clear that he considers his epic superior to the classic ones because he deals with Christian virtues of justice and forgiveness.

Ways Milton denigrates the Classical world

1. He explicitly says so:

… Sad task, yet argument
Not less but more heroic than the wrath
Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued
Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage
Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused…
…the better fortitude
Of patience and heroic martyrdom
Usung…” (IX 14-17, 31-3)

2. As a learnèd humanist Milton’s mind adverts continually to analogies from the pagan ancient world but he continually undercuts them to emphasise that they are feigned – NOT TRUE – unlike his Christian analogies taken from the Bible.

At every turn Milton critiques and criticises the very techniques and references he is so learnedly, so deftly, copying from the ancient world.

There is a steady stream of examples of the way Milton downplays, undermines, undercuts his own classical analogies – with its basis in militarism and paganism – in order to foreground his preferred Christian values of fortitude and martyrdom. Remember: ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’

Examples

Pandemonium is described in classical terms – using all the terminology of the Pantheon or Parthenon. It is a palace of devils. Compare and contrast with the unfeigned simplicity of Adam and Eve’s rural bower and of their simple morning worship.

When Satan puffs himself up to persuade Eve to eat the apple he is explicitly compared to an orator from the ancient world, pulling every trick in the rhetorician’s book – and clearly judged bad and immoral for doing so.

When Satan addresses the devils in his palace, reporting on his adventure, he couches his story in all the self-aggrandisement of a Great Hero; and yet what is the result of all this ‘heroism’ – he and all his audience are turned by God into hissing reptiles.

Related links

Related reviews

More seventeenth century reviews

Leave a comment
by Simon on July 17, 2006  •  Permalink
Posted in Christianity, History, Literary criticism
Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Simon on July 17, 2006

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2006/07/17/miltons-satan-and-the-classical-world/

Paradise Lost, Book 9 by John Milton (1667)

Synopsis of Paradise Lost, Book 9 (1,189 lines)

1-47 semi-invocation: Milton describes his subject matter as fitter than Greek or medieval legend; introduces the concept of ‘answerable style’; and describes the way the poetry comes to him at night ‘Easy my unpremeditated verse.’

No more of talk where God or Angel Guest
With Man, as with his Friend, familiar us’d
To sit indulgent, and with him partake
Rural repast, permitting him the while
Venial discourse unblam’d: I now must change [ 5 ]
Those Notes to Tragic; foul distrust, and breach
Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt,
And disobedience: On the part of Heav’n
Now alienated, distance and distaste,
Anger and just rebuke, and judgement giv’n, [ 10 ]
That brought into this World a world of woe,
Sinne and her shadow Death, and Miserie
Deaths Harbinger: Sad task, yet argument
Not less but more Heroic then the wrauth
Of stern Achilles on his Foe pursu’d [ 15 ]
Thrice Fugitive about Troy Wall; or rage
Of Turnus for Lavinia disespous’d,
Or Neptun’s ire or Juno’s, that so long
Perplex’d the Greek and Cytherea’s Son;
If answerable style I can obtaine [ 20 ]
Of my Celestial Patroness, who deignes
Her nightly visitation unimplor’d,
And dictates to me slumb’ring, or inspires
Easie my unpremeditated Verse:

48-98 Satan returns to Paradise after circling the globe for a week avoiding sight of the sun from where Uriel spotted him in Book IV. Descends through the River Tigris which appears as a fountain at the foot of the Tree of Life.

99-178 Satan’s 1st soliloquy: bemoaning how low he has fallen, seeking disguise in a suitable beast.

179-191 Satan slips into the mouth of the serpent.

192-204 Morning wakes Adam and Eve who pray to God.

205-225 Eve suggests they labour apart in the garden since a) everything keeps growing faster than they can train it b) if in sight of each other they keep interrupting each other.

226-269 Adam replies: a) God hasn’t strictly assigned them to do everything and not exchange smiles and words b) God made us for delight, after all c) soon little hands will help us d) it’s true separation leads to happy reunion but e) Adam warns of the devil lurking somewhere: Eve should stay with him.

270-289 Eve is hurt that Adam thinks that she can be so easily beguiled.

290-317 Adam replies if the Devil was strong enough to tempt angels he can tempt them both: best to stay together.

318-341 Eve argues that a) if they’re so insecure Eden is no longer Eden b) what is faith, love, virtue, ‘unassayed?’ i.e. these virtues only mean something if tested (cf the Areopagitica) c) are you really saying God left us in such an imperfect state?

342-375 Adam replies that the fault is not in Eden which is perfect; it is in themselves whose Reason is free, thus continually liable to err. Thus it follows they will be less likely to err if there’s 2 of them together. But if she thinks ‘trial unsought may find us both securer’, Go.

376-384 Eve insists on the last word. Sexism. She can’t believe the foe will attack the weaker – vain confidence!

385-411 Eve goes forward beautiful and confident as a dryad from Greek myth. Vain confidence.

412-72 Satan is waiting amid the green delights of Eden; and when he sees Eve is momentarily transported by her beauty; but hate and envy return.

473-493 Satan’s second soliloquy of hate, envy, revenge.

494-531 Satan sidles up in the shape of a magnificent though sycophantic snake. It’s notable that he has two epic similes in these 30 lines. Whenever Satan appears there are heroic similes, giving variety and power to the verse (this may be a tactic of Milton’s to associate paganism, and the fallen simile form itself, with Satan – but it makes for greater dynamism, variety).

532-548 Satan flatters Eve.

549-566 Eve wonders that the snake can speak. How come?

567-612 Satan says he ate of the fruit of the tree and a) understood the universe and b) could talk and c) realised Eve was the divinest thing in the garden. Flattery.

615-624 Eve asks which tree?

625-630 Satan says he’ll take her there.

631-646 Satan leads Eve to the tree and is compared to an ignis fatuus in another epic simile.

647-654 Eve tells the snake she is forbidden to touch the tree.

655-58 Satan pretends surprise. Not allowed to eat fruit?

659-663 Only of this tree, Eve explains.

664-678 Satan then rises up like an ancient orator (another epic simile)

679-732 Satan gives reasons to eat the fruit: a) it has allowed a beast to speak b) he is not dead, as threatened c) God won’t punish the appetite for knowledge of good and evil, that would itself by unjust d) it was only forbidden to keep you in awe e) whereas if you taste you could become gods f) if she will die it will be the human dies to become a god. Meanwhile, g) who says the gods made earth? Whereas everything good seems to come from the earth h) how can your knowledge hurt him? I) how can eating it do any harm against His will if He is omnipotent? [An impressive list of reasons]

733-744 plus lunchtime draws on and Eve is hungry i.e. physiology contributes to flawed reason – body and soul together.

745-779 Eve soliloquises: a) it’s made the serpent speak b) it’s obviously valuable or else why be banned? c) a prohibition against knowledge binds not d) the serpent has not died e) she trusts the serpent as bringing good news to man. [Eve’s soliloquy doesn’t echo Satan’s only 5 of Satan’s 9 reasons are repeated…]

780-794 Eve eats the fruit. ‘Greedily she engorged without restraint.’

795-833 Eve soliloquises a list of errors: a) she will dress and praise the Tree each morning (instead of God); b) under the impression that she will soon be equal with the gods c) she praises Experience over Wisdom d) thinks God can’t see her e) shall she share her knowledge with Adam or keep it selfishly? f) this will make her more equal with Adam, maybe superior (and thus more loved – completely failing to understand the Scale of Being) g) she will entice Adam because she can’t bear the thought of her dying & he having a second Eve – selfishness.

834-855 Eve bows low to the Tree (blasphemy) and then goes to meet Adam who meets her coming, carrying a garland of flowers.

856-885 Eve tells Adam she’s eaten of the Tree: and lies that she did it chiefly for him.

886-895 Adam is astonished, drops the garland whose petals fade.

896-916 Adam soliloquises: he immediately casts his lot with her, and can’t imagine life without her.

921-960 Adam addresses Eve: a) perhaps they won’t die b) surely God won’t punish them, his own creation c) he will go with her: so forcible is ‘the bond of nature’.

961-989 Eve rejoices that this trial has proved Adam’s love; but she assures him they won’t die; and she’s never tasted anything so sweet.

990-1016 Adam eats ‘not deceived, but overcome with female charm’. Earth groans. They are intoxicated then inflamed with lust. They acquiesce in sex, sleep, then awaken to their shame, like Samson epic simile.

1067-1098 Adam laments the effects of the fall: a) good lost and evil got; b) knowledge of their nakedness, innocence lost, c) how shall he face the angels? d) he wants to pull the woods and tress over him e) meanwhile, best to weave coverings for their parts.

1099-1133 They make coverings from trees. Now reason is overthrown by appetite and passion and so they fall into arguing.

1134-1142 Adam blames Eve for wanting to go out alone.

1143-1161 Eve says don’t blame her: a) the serpent could as well have tempted Adam as her b) why didn’t he absolutely forbid her from going off? It’s all his fault.

1162 Adam is for the first time in his life angry: a) he’s just chosen death over life for her, ungrateful bitch b) he warned her as much as anyone could, short of physically stopping her, which defeats the idea of free will c) her overconfidence d) his delusion in her beauty and perfections. Ends with the sexist thought that men should never let women rule because they will choose the evil route then blame the man.

Thus they in mutual accusation spent
The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning,
And of their vain contest appeared no end.
(line 1187 to 1189)

Thoughts

Milton is the most intellectual poet. The entire plot, structure, shape and pattern of the poetry are dictated by a logical argument: even individual words are carefully chosen and placed for their multiple meanings.

You have to work quite hard to understand the many arguments in Satan’s temptations, or the gradual way Eve leaves Adam.

Thus, the few ‘poetic’ touches: Satan like the will o’ the wisp; the garland dropping from Adam’s hand – come as a great relief because there is no logical argument embedded in them, although they are, of course, packed with symbolism and meaning.

60% of the lines are dialogue, itself consisting of versified argumentation. But it feels like more because you have to make proportionately more effort to follow the logic.

Descriptive verse: Lines 98, 179-204 (26), 1, 3, 1, 4, 1, 2, 385-472 (88), 493-531 (39), 4, 1, 2, 1, 631-646 (16), 2, 664-678 (15), 12, 780-794 (15), 834-855 (22), 886-895 (10), 4, 1, 990-1016 (27), 1034-1066 (33), 1099-1133 (35), 1, 1, 3 = 468 40%

Speech: Lines 99-178, 205-225, 227-269, 273-289, 290-317, 322-341, 343-375, 376-384, 473-493, 532-548, 553-566, 568-612, 615-624, 626-630=5, 647-654, 3, 5, 679-732, 745-779, 795-833, 856-885, 896-916, 921-959, 961-989, 1017-1033, 1067-1098, 1134-1142, 1144-1161, 1163-1186 = 721 60%

Related links

Related reviews

More seventeenth century reviews

1 Comment
by Simon on July 17, 2006  •  Permalink
Posted in Books, Christianity, English literature, History, Literary criticism, Poetry
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by Simon on July 17, 2006

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2006/07/17/paradise-lost-book-ix/