John Milton (1603-1674)
Wordsworth of Milton: Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart (in London, 1802, a sonnet)
Influence of the Miltonic epic (and pastoral): Blake: Milton
Wordsworth: The Prelude
Keats: Hyperion ; The Fall of Hyperion
Blake of Milton: the covering Cherub (Milton: 9. 51> Ezekiel 28: 16) Cf. Harold Bloom’s theory of the “anxiety of influence
T.S.Eliot: “dissociation of sensibility” (thought and feeling split asunder) started with Milton
Political pamphlets:
Areopagitica (Milton’s speech to the Parliament of England = freedom of the press) (< Areopagus: hill in Athens where the council of the city met) pbl. 1644
Lords and Commons of England, consider what nation is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a Nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy in discourse, not beneath the reach of any point, the highest that human capacity can soar to. Therefore the studies of Learning in her deepest sciences have been so ancient and so eminent among us, that writers of good antiquity and ablest judgement have been persuaded that even the school of Pythagoras and the Persian wisdom took beginning in the old philosophy of this island. And that wise and civil Roman, Julius Agricola, who governed once here for Caesar, preferred the natural wits of Britain before the laboured studies of the French. Nor is it for nothing that the grave and frugal Transylvanian sends out yearly for as far as the mountainous borders of Russia […] not their youth, but their staid men, to learn our language and our theologic arts.
1st and 2nd Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (Defence of the People of England: to defend England against the charge of regicide) : [Of the Greeks and Romans as ideals of virtue and freedom] For as yet, tyrants were not beheld with a superstitious reverence; as yet they were not regarded with tenderness and complacency, as the vicegerents or deputies of Christ, as they have suddenly professed to be; as yet the vulgar, stupefied by the subtle casuistry of the priest, had not degenerated into a state of barbarism, more gross than that which disgraces the most senseless natives of Hindostan….During the mighty struggle, no anarchy, no licentiousness was seen; ; no illusions of glory, no extravagant emulation of the antients inflamed them [the English] with a thirst for ideal liberty; but the rectitude of their lives, and the sobriety of their habits, taught them the only true and safe road to real liberty; and they took up arms only to defend the sanctity of the laws and the rights of conscience. Relying on divine assitance, they used every honourable exertion to break the yoke of slavery….and Britain, which was formerly styled the hot-bed of tyranny, will hereafter deserve to be celebrated for endless ages, as a soil most genial to the growth of liberty…
I. HORTON (Buckinghamshire)
Hymn: On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity (1629)
But peaceful was the night
Wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began:
The winds with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kist,
Whispering new joys to the mild Ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave
Whilt Birds of Calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.
L’Allegro (1632) (=”the cheerful man” in Italian) pastoral idyll
Haste thee Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity…
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter, holding both his sides…
And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The Mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasure free…
Il Penseroso (1632) (=”the contemplative man” in Italian) „meditative” idyll
Or let my Lamp at midnight hour,
Be seen in some high lonely Tower,
Where I may oft outwatch the Bear,
With thrice great Hemes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato to unfold
What Worlds or what vast Regions hold
The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this flesh;y nook…
(>Blake: Songs of Innocence & Experience
Keats: Welcome Joy and Welcome Sorrow
Tower=symbol of the human mind in Shelley and Yeats)
Lycidas (1637) pastoral elegy on the death of Edward King, a fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge at the time of Milton)
Modelled on the form of the Italian canzone: variation of structure of verse paragraphs and length of lines. References to classical elegies, e.g. Bion’s lament for Adonis (c. 100 B.C.), Moschus’s lament for Bion (c. 150 B.C.) and Theocritus’s lament for Daphnis (3d c. B.C.)
Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas, your sorrow is not dead.
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor,
So sinks the day-star in the ocean-bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and woth new-sprangled ore,
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of him who walked the waves,
Where other groves, and other oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdom meek of joy and love.
(>Shelley: Adonais = on the death of Keats)
Tennyson: In Memoriam = on the death of friend Arthur H. Hallam)
II. 1637-1658: Pamphlets, Sonnets
On His Blindness (Matthew 25: 17-30)
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg’d with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning shide;
„Doth God exact day-labour, light deny’d?”
I fondly ask; but patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, „God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best, his state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post ore Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand an d wait.”
Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint
On the Late Massacre in Piedmont
III. Paradise Lost 1658-1663/64
Of Man’s first disobedience, and of the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world […]
Sing, Heav’nly Muse […]
Thou Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples th’upright heart and pure,
[…]what in me is dark
Illumine; what is low, raise and support;
That to the height of this great argument,
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
Book I. 1-26.
Blake: The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true pot and of the Devil’s party without knowing it. (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
Coleridge: [Shakespeare] darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of human character and passion. […] the Proteus of the fire and flood. [Milton] attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own ideal. All things and modes of actions shape themselves anew in the being of Milton; while Shakespeare becomes all things, yet forever remaining himself. (Biographia Literaria, Ch. XV)
1671: Paradise Regained (temptation of Jesus)
Samson Agonistes (Samson prefigures Christ’s redemptive death) (the most autobiographical of all his longer works)
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse
Without the hope of day….
Szenczi Milklós: Milton Agonistes Utószó Milton Válogatott műveihez. Európa, 1978.