Wounds of time: Paradiso 32 -> 33

προαιρεῖσθαί τε δεῖ ἀδύνατα εἰκότα μᾶλλον ἢ δυνατὰ ἀπίθανα

What is convincing though impossible should always be preferred to what is possible and unconvincing. Aristotle, Poetics, 1460a

A final thought -- more like a trial balloon -- on Paradiso 32, in an effort to put this enigmatic canto in some "light" that takes note of its critical place in the Commedia.

The absence of voice, song, and light (luce appears not at all, and lume appears once in the canto - each word appears five times in canto 33) sets it apart from what we've been used to in the canticle.

Bernard carefully delineates the divisions that run like cicatrices through the Rose, but no systematic explanation for this order rather than any other is revealed. Historical facts are presented, but not illuminated by reason (logos). Also, the finite detail of these 18 beings stands in stark contrast to many precedent scenes of illimitable constellations of angels and souls.

Women from Eve down through the Old Testament form the wall, bracketed by Mary, linked through the piaga, the opening wound marking the genesis and inscription of human history upon flesh. The stories from the Old Testament involve love, wiles, violence, seduction, willingness to take heroic risks, and merciful, healing care.

Grandgent and others have noted that the "seating" in the Rose has no apparent order. Mary is clearly the solar pinnacle of the Rose; next comes Eve; the series continues, but disobeys categories such as historical or ethnic order. One can say that the persons in this wall (except Mary) are women whose names are found in the Old Testament.

Readers seeking rational closure will pull out their hair asking "why these people and not these people?" Bernard is a subtle and sophisticated interpreter of the Song of Songs and other Old Testament texts. But, when he says . . .

Ne l'ordine che fanno i terzi sedi,
siede Rachel di sotto da costei
con Bëatrice, sì come tu vedi.

Within that order which the third seats make
  Is seated Rachel, lower than the other,
  With Beatrice, in manner as thou seest. (32: 7-9)

. . . perhaps we've not learned to take him literally enough. If i terzi sedi make the order, then the third seats are the third seats because they are the third seats. There is no cryptic mystery here, no arcane interpretive decoding. Rather, the order is sì come tu vedi - such as you see. No point in asking why Ruth or Judith are listed. They are what you see because they're what you see.

The series of Old Testament figures stubbornly defeats neat ordering schemes, just as the history of the stiff-necked Jews is a broken tale, rich in promise, failure, disaster, and unforeseeable rescues. We are left with an incomplete, seemingly arbitrary, unspeaking, dimly lit congeries of names and events, which we call the word of God.

τούς τε λόγους μὴσυνίστασθαι ἐκ μερῶν ἀλόγων, ἀλλὰ μάλιστα μὲν μηδὲν ἔχειν ἄλογον, εἰ δὲ μή, ἔξωτοῦ μυθεύματος, 

so far as possible there should be nothing inexplicable, or, if there is, it should lie outside the story. Poetics 1460a.

The first and culminating figure in the wall, Mary, enjoys a pivotal place in the scheme of things. She is described -- not with mimetic sensory depiction, but with elation that suspends gravity:

Io vidi sopra lei tanta allegrezza
 piover, portata ne le menti sante
 create a trasvolar per quella altezza,

che quantunque io avea visto davante,
 di tanta ammirazion non mi sospese,
 né mi mostrò di Dio tanto sembiante;

On her did I behold so great a gladness
  Rain down, borne onward in the holy minds
  Created through that altitude to fly, 

That whatsoever I had seen before
  Did not suspend me in such admiration,
  Nor show me such similitude of God.   (32: 88-93)

With the affetto of this allegrezza, the silence of the canto turns to music. Courtly Gabriel gracefully enacts the anomalous grace of the Annunciation, bringing an unthinkable choice to receive the divine seed, logos spermatikos.

Zeus is not bearing off a bull-beguiled Europa; Apollo is not frustrated by unwilling Daphne; Hades is not dragging the virgin Persephone into the Underworld. The pivotal moment of human history hangs in this suspension, waiting upon the free consent of a young girl.

Nel ventre tuo si raccese l'amore,
 per lo cui caldo ne l'etterna pace
 così è germinato questo fiore.  (Par. 33:7-9)

When in the final canto Bernard echoes Gabriel's greeting, he puts into narrative form the betrothed virgin's's unforced assent to plant that seed in her ventre, grounding the fiore of immortal life in history.

What divine power would allow the fall, the damnation and so much suffering to flow from one couple's decision in a garden, then provide his beloved own son as sacrifice so that the species of those who killed him could accede to the possibility of a seat in heaven? You couldn't make this up --- it lies "outside the story."

As we stand with the pilgrim in the Rose, the realization of this order is self-evident, because we know what imposed that meaningful order from without -- ἔξωτοῦ μυθεύματος.

This is not what sensible people like Aristotle would describe as probable (mimetic) behavior. The twists and turns of the Jewish people, the story of the Virgin and her son and the entire history of Creation achieve intelligibility only if we accept an ebullient suspension, a wounding rift in the logic and conventions of history. It breaks into two covenants, one before, one after, Mary's assent.

So here's my trial balloon: Canto 32 is unadorned and fails to have an ending because it stands in relation to Paradiso 33 as the Old Covenant to the New. The literal features of canto 32 -- the obvious lack of poetry -- stripped of imaginative fire, of light, of sonority -- lend a forbidding aspect to this bewildering tale that arrives at no conclusion.

What other poet would do what Dante does here? At the portal to the godhead, Canto 32 remembers the human experience of being in the dark. When, like Ugolino, we are imprisoned, groping in darkness, discovering to our horror that we are stumbling on the bodies of our children whose death is our paternal legacy, the canto leaves one thing left to do: To act, to pray with all one's affetto.

E cominciò questa santa orazione:

Canto 32 is to Paradiso 33 as the Old Testament is to the New, or as the dim human realm is to exorbitant splendor and sweetness of the Rose. One turns, as the Creator did, to the Virgin and asks for help.

Note there are no male heroes named in 32. No Joseph, no Abraham. Moses and David get a sideways glance. The wings of this poet are powered by the oriafiamme. Cherchez la femme.

The Fractured Rose: Paradiso 32 (Part II)

Paradiso 32 comes across as dry and devoid of embellishment when compared with the cantos immediately preceding and the stunning final canto 33.

Numerous critics have noted its "wooden," coldly depersonalized affect. "It is a plan which must seem to us pedantic and unimaginative and out of keeping with the visionary rapture of this part of Dante's pilgrimage," notes John D. Sinclair. And G.L. Bickersteth describes the focus on the construction of the edifice of the Rose as "an intellectual process resulting in a static formal image, mercilessly formal in its absolute symmetry, a mere geometrical design, lifeless . . .."

We might ask ourselves why, at this penultimate moment when all is tending upward toward the light, toward love and synthesis of the Alpha and Omega, we are treated to a set of names, familiar figures from the Testaments and from Church history, but here like icons in niches, more inert than the figures on along the paths of Purgatorio which the poet beautifully calls visibile parlare.

None who are named speaks, none is described, or has anything of the vivid individuality and animation of souls met throughout this journey. Something besides their historical personhood is of concern here. When Benedict promised Dante that he would see the blessed con imagine scoverta, little did we think this unveiling would drain their presence to a set of letters spelling their names.

The effect is skeletal, as if we are experiencing not the plenitude of the Rose, but rather the barest bones of Scripture inscribed in the Rose. The names have a somber, distanced air -- as if chiseled on a gravestone.

The Rose, all ebullience in the previous cantos, is now dissected by Bernard. The order he limns marks the breaking points of the strange interface between terrestrial man and his Creator: Those Before and After Christ; the matrilineal line, or wall, from Eve to Christ -- itself a jagged line that crosses boundaries of ethnicity and nationhood, and women without children, and women who killed kings. Then, three classes of innocents.

The one person from the Old Testament whose words - "miserere me" - we hear quoted by Bernard is David, the king who took another man's wife, and arranged that man's death. David not only committed a grave sin, for which he sang many a penitential psalm. With Bathsheba he fathered Solomon.

We're moving toward the close of the Commedia. That the final canto is coming is certain. Before we arrive, one last walk through a valley of wounds, balm, and the deepest doubt. What a remarkable artistic calculation: the poet has us with him, no one is going to stop reading his poem now. We've experienced some of the lowest and highest characters, tales and perils a reader could wish for. But Paradise is not only about God's sacred totality. It is also about the wounds, sins, and sorry history of the creature whose eternal life was purchased at horrific cost.

The face of heaven is broken, not unlike the broken god that provided human access there. The geometry of the Rose is disfigured by these markings of difference, this wall of nurturing, devious mothers, one assassin, and the horrors of sin issuing from the original piaga opened by Eve.

Piaga - "wound" - is given high prominence by Bernard - so high it is striking:

La piaga che Maria richiuse e unse,
quella ch'è tanto bella da' suoi piedi
è colei che l'aperse e che la punse.

Preceding even the name of Maria, la piaga opened by Eve, closed by Mary, stains the canto. The geometry of the Rose is crossed by lines of human error that disfigure it. The face of Heaven bears the sutures of a care incomprehensibly extended in the wake the nightmarish incisions of human history. To approach heaven without having contemplated this agony, this unaccountable rescue; without having confronted still more troubling doubts is not to approach this poet's sacral place at all.

The canto next turns to a last, deepest doubt: what of the children who died before their choices had authority to decide their fates? Doubts accompanying the pilgrim since he was lost in the wood.

This will be next.

A sensitive reader

The Genesis of Desire, a reading of some of the best known stories of Genesis with Avivah Zornberg. Scots-born Zornberg brings a lot to her reading of the Bible, including modern psychological study coupled with a deep knowledge of the Zohar and the Midrash. The Bible via this sensitive reader begins to seem a very strange, numinous place.

On the flood story:

Ms. Zornberg: Ah, what's happening there. I mean, everything is happening. I think whatever you can read in the text is happening. What I'm interested in is the issue of language and silence, a kind of defensive silence, and the basis for this apparently very modern theme actually is in the Zohar, in the source of Kabbalah.

Ms. Tippett: That's interesting too because we never — when that story is told to children, for example, I think it's mostly children who hear the Flood story — we never reflect on the life in the ark. You get the two by two coming on and then coming out at the end.

[snip]

Ms. Zornberg: Yes, yes.

Ms. Tippett: So how does the Zohar …

Ms. Zornberg: The Zohar and Midrashic sources — first of all, how did they all eat? How did the animals eat? It's a big …

Ms. Tippett: Right [laugh].

Ms. Zornberg: Yes. I mean, all right, maybe they brought on food for the animals, but how did they get at it? So Zohar imagines very beautifully that Noah spends his whole time, morning and night, day and night, feeding the animals. That's an expression of his desire to preserve the world. And he feeds each animal according to its own timing, it's own feeding schedule, so he's really rather fully occupied feeding the world. He doesn't get a wink of sleep, again, in these Midrashic sources. He has no sexual relations with his wife and no one does. There is no sex. Even the animals on the ark, you know, don't have relations.

[snip]

Ms. Zornberg: Absolutely. And on top of that, I think precisely the things that he can't do in the ark or he mustn't do, like sexual relations, sleeping, the way he spends all his time feeding, it occurred to me that these are descriptions of God. God feeds all living beings and God doesn't sleep. He doesn't slumber nor sleep and God, of course, has no partner. So in a sense, there's a kind of omnipotence that Noah is experiencing in this prison, which is, again, very natural that, once you have deprived yourself of life and you see that in some way as an ideal and as an expression of ultimate power because you are not compromised now in any way by the messy world of talk, of communication. So to me, it's a defense mechanism and he refuses to let go of it.

On reading:

Ms. Zornberg: You know, you don't read; you study. You study the text and that implies that you don't really understand it, first off. You read it and then you read it again and then you notice things and things don't work and things don't make sense and then you're exorcised by it. And that's what I call desire, because something is not. Something that should be there is not there and that's what gets people going. That's what gets people involved and this very intimate connection between the human being and the text, between Jews and this text, is a result of that.

A transcript of the full interview with Zornberg.

Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg
Zornberg is a celebrated literary teacher of Torah. Her books include The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious and The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis.

Another, briefer interview here.

High matter, warring spirits

The natural language and ordering of the world as found in Adam and Eve's morning orison, and in Raphael's description of the system of nature -- essentially a kind of heliotropism, all in keeping with the metaphorics of dawn in Book V -- seem to be jettisoned as the angel, in response to Adam's request, begins to tell the origin of the war in heaven.

High matter thou injoinst me, O prime of men,
Sad task and hard, for how shall I relate
To human sense th' invisible exploits [ 565 ]
Of warring Spirits;

It might be worth asking some straightforward questions about how Raphael/Milton choose to tell this story. For example, while it seems to narrate a tale with a clear beginning, a sharp conflict, and a definite ending (at the end of Book VI, which leads right into the opening scene of Book I), does it reflect the natural ordering of time, space, agency, etc. that belong to nature and science, or is this a different kind of telling? Does it obey what we normally think of as the dictates of Reason?

In the description of the angelic congregation (580 ff), much is made of hierarchies, degrees, flags, a kind of militant order, and geometry is invoked:

Thus when in Orbes
Of circuit inexpressible they stood, [ 595 ]
Orb within Orb

Any observations about this sort of mathematical ordering?

How does the angels' meal compare with that of Adam, Eve and Raphael?

Since all the angels were used to worshiping the Father, why does Satan begin to conceive malice when he hears the decree about the Son?

How odd is it to find God smiling, and the Son joining in his laughter at Satan?

How cogent is Satan's reasoning when he says:

rememberst thou
Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being?
We know no time when we were not as now;

How is Abdiel "seeing" when he says:

I see thy fall
Determind,

How does he hear/know of these decrees:

other Decrees
Against thee are gon forth without recall;

Why does Abdiel leave the towers of Satan behind?

What other questions come to mind?

Constituting happiness

Latent in Milton's rendering of Paradise in PL V is a richly imagined understanding of the world, humanity, the creator, and the purpose/meaning of this inaugural state. Clearly we were meant to be happy; the beauty of the world carried significance; as fallen descendants, we must turn back to understand our present through an imagined glimpse of the world before all went astray.

A few snippets from a multi-faith conversation about pursuing happiness (from Krista Tippett's On Being) might be relevant.

Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks: The definition of a Jew, Israel is as it says in Genesis 34, one who struggles, wrestles, with God and with humanity and prevails. And Jacob says something very profound to the angel. He says, "I will not let you go until you bless me." And that I feel about suffering. When something bad happens, I will not let go of that bad thing until I have discovered the blessing that lies within it.

Most Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori: There's this ongoing tension between seeing happiness as joining with God, as communion with God, that's only possible in the afterlife, and the insistence that human beings are created to be happy, that happiness is possible in this life. There's the particular piece of Christianity that insists that sometimes suffering is a root to happiness for the larger community. That kind of suffering may not be chosen, but it contains blessing within it. The sense that our goal is this fully restored creation at right relationship with all that is and sometimes the journey there requires us to enter into suffering and to demand, to insist, that there is blessing in the midst of that, wrestling with the angel. It must be there. You have created us to be happy, you have created us to be good, now show us. Show us the way through this. Show us the possibility for which all that is is created.

Professor Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr: First of all, in the Arabic language, the word for beauty and virtue is the same, and goodness, all three. In the Islam — Muslim mind, they're not separated from each other. In the deepest sense, goodness — in the ordinary sense, these were external actions. In a deeper sense, virtue is within us. Beauty can deal also with external forms and it can deal with beauty of the soul, beauty of the spirit, within us. But beauty in a sense is a more interiorizing. Beauty is what draws us directly to the Divine, to the Divine reality.

The Dalai Lama: I always believe and also share with the people, the very purpose of our life is for happiness. Those nonbeliever also they felt that religion — religious faith is a — brings a lot of sort of complication. So without that, they feel the easier to achieve happy life. So I think the very purpose of our existence is for happiness. So that mentioned, your constitution. And then also is equally their right. You see, happiness not come from sky, but we must make a happy life. So we have a responsibility. The government cannot provide happiness. Happiness must create within ourselves and our family. So ultimately, our own responsibility, isn't it?

At the point we are in Milton's idea of humankind's trajectory, Adam and Eve need not wrestle with the angel. See Dore's image here.

Prometheus

Prometheus bound, Laconian black-figure amphoriskos C6th B.C., Vatican City Museums

PROMETHEUS was the Titan god of forethought and crafty counsel who was entrusted with the task of moulding mankind out of clay. His attempts to better the lives of his creation brought him into direct conflict with Zeus. Firstly he tricked the gods out of the best portion of the sacrificial feast, acquiring the meat for the feasting of man. Then, when Zeus withheld fire, he stole it from heaven and delivered it to mortal kind hidden inside a fennel-stalk. 


As punishment for these rebellious acts, Zeus ordered the creation of Pandora (the first woman) as a means to deliver misfortune into the house of man, or as a way to cheat mankind of the company of the good spirits. Prometheus meanwhile, was arrested and bound to a stake on Mount Kaukasos where an eagle was set to feed upon his ever-regenerating liver (or, some say, heart). Generations later the great hero Herakles came along and released the old Titan from his torture.

Prometheus was loosely identified in cult and myth with the fire-god Hephaistos and the giant Tityos.

More at Theoi. See also below.

Eve, Pandora and Prometheus

But wherfore all night long shine these, for whom
This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all eyes?


Eve's question leads to a passage that moves from astronomical conjecture to Greek myth, ending with:

More lovely then Pandora, whom the Gods
Endowd with all thir gifts, and O too like [ 715 ]
In sad event, when to the unwiser Son
Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she ensnar'd
Mankind with her faire looks, to be aveng'd
On him who had stole Joves authentic fire.

 The linking of light, fire, woman, curiosity, forbidden knowledge and disaster has roots both in Eden and in Greece. Here's the gift of Pandora from Hesiod's Theogony:

But the noble son of Iapetus outwitted him and stole the far-seen gleam of unwearying fire in a hollow fennel stalk. And Zeus who thunders on high was stung in spirit, and his dear heart was angered when he saw amongst men the far-seen ray of fire. Forthwith he made an evil thing for men as the price of fire; for the very famous Limping God formed of earth the likeness of a shy maiden as the son of Cronos willed. And the goddess bright-eyed Athene girded and clothed her with silvery raiment, and down from her head she spread with her hands a broidered veil, a wonder to see; and she, Pallas Athene, put about her head lovely garlands, flowers of new-grown herbs. Also she put upon her head a crown of gold which the very famous Limping God made himself and worked with his own hands as a favour to Zeus his father. On it was much curious work, wonderful to see; for of the many creatures which the land and sea rear up, he put most upon it, wonderful things, like living beings with voices: and great beauty shone out from it.

[585] But when he had made the beautiful evil to be the price for the blessing, he brought her out, delighting in the finery which the bright-eyed daughter of a mighty father had given her, to the place where the other gods and men were. And wonder took hold of the deathless gods and mortal men when they saw that which was sheer guile, not to be withstood by men.

[590] For from her is the race of women and female kind: of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who live amongst mortal men to their great trouble, no helpmeets in hateful poverty, but only in wealth. And as in thatched hives bees feed the drones whose nature is to do mischief -- by day and throughout the day until the sun goes down the bees are busy and lay the white combs, while the drones stay at home in the covered skeps and reap the toil of others into their own bellies – even so Zeus who thunders on high made women to be an evil to mortal men, with a nature to do evil. And he gave them a second evil to be the price for the good they had: whoever avoids marriage and the sorrows that women cause, and will not wed, reaches deadly old age without anyone to tend his years, and though he at least has no lack of livelihood while he lives, yet, when he is dead, his kinsfolk divide his possessions amongst them. And as for the man who chooses the lot of marriage and takes a good wife suited to his mind, evil continually contends with good; for whoever happens to have mischievous children, lives always with unceasing grief in his spirit and heart within him; and this evil cannot be healed.

[613] So it is not possible to deceive or go beyond the will of Zeus; for not even the son of Iapetus, kindly Prometheus, escaped his heavy anger, but of necessity strong bands confined him, although he knew many a wile.

Images of Pandora from Theoi.

Laughable otherworldliness

Apropos the deep association of silliness and philosophy, Mussy points us to this essay by Simon Critchley. A snippet:

"What is a philosopher, then? The answer is clear: a laughing stock, an absent-minded buffoon, the butt of countless jokes from Aristophanes’ “The Clouds” to Mel Brooks’s “History of the World, part one.” Whenever the philosopher is compelled to talk about the things at his feet, he gives not only the Thracian girl but the rest of the crowd a belly laugh. The philosopher’s clumsiness in worldly affairs makes him appear stupid or, “gives the impression of plain silliness.” We are left with a rather Monty Pythonesque definition of the philosopher: the one who is silly."

Paul pilpul

As we found yesterday with regard to I Corinthians 11, it's less easy to "follow" Paul, to read him, than it first might seem. 

Two footnotes: Paul's word for "follow" is the greek mimetai, the root of mimesis - to imitate, copy - the same word the Greeks used to speak of art, as when Aristotle says a plot is the "imitation of an action."

Paul's word for "glory" is doxa - this word seems to have undergone a curious transformation when the Bible was translated into Greek (the Septuagint, in Alexandria in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC). For Aristotle and Plato, the word carried the sense of "opinion" in contrast with "knowledge," scientific certitude. The translators of the Old Testament used doxa to render the Hebrew kavod, "glory," according to this note. New Testament writers seem to have employed that acceptation.

Here's a modern English translation of Paul's passage, from the World English Bible.

The passage in question, I Corinthians 11 1-13, is sufficiently intractable as to have permitted radically incompatible readings, according to this note in Wikipedia:

Bushnell view

A minority translate the passage as commanding women to uncover their heads. This idea was pioneered by John Lightfoot and expanded by Katharine Bushnell. In their view, Paul commanded women to uncover because they were made in the image of God, Eve was created for Adam's incapacity to exist alone, all men are born from women, because of her angels, nature does not teach otherwise, and the churches have no such custom. The passage is not actually a repression of women but a herald for equality. However, no printed Bibles have accepted this translation.

Pilpul indeed!

Following Paul

After situating mankind vis a vis the other living creatures, Paradise Lost turns to the relation of the sexes in IV.300 ff:

Not equal, as thir sex not equal seemd;

For contemplation hee and valour formd,

For softness shee and sweet attractive Grace,

Hee for God only, shee for God in him

:His fair large Front and Eye sublime declar'd [ 300 ]

Absolute rule; and Hyacinthin Locks

Round from his parted forelock manly hung

Clustring, but not beneath his shoulders broad:

Shee as a vail down to the slender waste

Her unadorned golden tresses wore [ 305 ]

Disheveld, but in wanton ringlets wav'd

As the Vine curles her tendrils, which impli'd

Subjection, but requir'd with gentle sway,

And by her yielded, by him best receivd,

Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, [ 310 ]

And sweet reluctant amorous delay.

Nor those mysterious parts were then conceald,

Then was not guiltie shame, dishonest shame

Of natures works, honor dishonorable,

Sin-bred, how have ye troubl'd all mankind [ 315 ]

With shews instead, meer shews of seeming pure,

And banisht from mans life his happiest life,

Simplicitie and spotless innocence.

So passd they naked on, nor shund the sight

Of God or Angel, for they thought no ill: [ 320 ]

So hand in hand they passd, the lovliest pair

That ever since in loves imbraces met,

Adam the goodliest man of men since borne

His Sons, the fairest of her Daughters Eve.

As noted, Milton is largely following Paul, who begins the chapter from Paul's I Corinthians Ch. 11 by talking about following. Here it is in the KJV:

1 Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.

2 Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you. 

 ³ But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.

 ⁴Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head.

 ⁵But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven.

 ⁶For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered.

 ⁷For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.

 ⁸For the man is not of the woman: but the woman of the man.

 ⁹Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.

 ¹⁰For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels.

 ¹¹Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.

 ¹²For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God.

 ¹³Judge in yourselves: is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered?

 ¹⁴Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?

 ¹⁵But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.

Pico's Creation of Man

Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was all of 23 in 1486 when he published his 900 Theses to the world, proposing to defend them against all comers, and even to pay travelling expenses for scholars coming from afar. More about Pico here.

His Oration on the Dignity of Man was composed to accompany and introduce the theses. Nearly at the beginning Pico offers his own version of the creation story, which immediately assumed a key place in the history of Renaissance thought and of Humanism. The entire oration, which he never gave (his initiative was suppressed by the Church), is worth reading; here's his story of the creation of Man:

God the Father, the Mightiest Architect, had already raised, according to the precepts of His hidden wisdom, this world we see, the cosmic dwelling of divinity, a temple most august. He had already adorned the supercelestial region with Intelligences, infused the heavenly globes with the life of immortal souls and set the fermenting dung-heap of the inferior world teeming with every form of animal life. But when this work was done, the Divine Artificer still longed for some creature which might comprehend the meaning of so vast an achievement, which might be moved with love at its beauty and smitten with awe at its grandeur. When, consequently, all else had been completed (as both Moses and Timaeus testify), in the very last place, He bethought Himself of bringing forth man. Truth was, however, that there remained no archetype according to which He might fashion a new offspring, nor in His treasure-houses the wherewithal to endow a new son with a fitting inheritance, nor any place, among the seats of the universe, where this new creature might dispose himself to contemplate the world. All space was already filled; all things had been distributed in the highest, the middle and the lowest orders. Still, it was not in the nature of the power of the Father to fail in this last creative élan; nor was it in the nature of that supreme Wisdom to hesitate through lack of counsel in so crucial a matter; nor, finally, in the nature of His beneficent love to compel the creature destined to praise the divine generosity in all other things to find it wanting in himself.

At last, the Supreme Maker decreed that this creature, to whom He could give nothing wholly his own, should have a share in the particular endowment of every other creature. Taking man, therefore, this creature of indeterminate image, He set him in the middle of the world and thus spoke to him:

``We have given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess through your own judgement and decision. The nature of all other creatures is defined and restricted within laws which We have laid down; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, to whose custody We have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature. I have placed you at the very center of the world, so that from that vantage point you may with greater ease glance round about you on all that the world contains. We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.''

... a pure contemplator, unmindful of the body, wholly withdrawn into the inner chambers of the mind, here indeed is neither a creature of earth nor a heavenly creature, but some higher divinity, clothed in human flesh....

Enter: Two

PL IV 288 ff:

Two of far nobler shape erect and tall,

Godlike erect, with native Honour clad

In naked Majestie seemd Lords of all, [ 290 ]

And worthie seemd, for in thir looks Divine

The image of thir glorious Maker shon,

Truth, wisdome, Sanctitude severe and pure,

Severe but in true filial freedom plac't;

Whence true autority in men; though both [ 295 ]

Not equal, as thir sex not equal seemd;

For contemplation hee and valour formd,

For softness shee and sweet attractive Grace,

Hee for God only, shee for God in him:

Our first view of Adam and Eve is a crucial moment in the poem -- this is where Milton in a sense has to declare himself -- present and situate humanity in its moment of origin, carrying, if you will, the pristine image of the intention of the maker.

Presumably Hobbes would have given us a different image.

Before we look at other images of man to compare, it's worth pondering some of the words Milton chooses here:

Lords, image, severe, filial freedom, native honour, naked majestie, looks, truth, wisdome, sanctitude, true autority, contemplation, valour, softness, attractive, Grace. Let's not forget some other key parts of speech: erect, tall, shon, severe, pure, seemed, not equal, for and in.

Guarding the issue: Divine Children and their defenses

In a preceding post, ("The Air Jordan of English Poetry") we looked somewhat closely at an instance where a poetic hairball of allusions seems to have gone astray, and asked:

Has a bastardization of myths taken place here? ... The divine stories have wandered, or gotten torn from, from the original springs of inspired speech. They've gotten polluted, contaminated; there's no clear stream.

I don't want to convey the impression we're accusing Milton of nodding, although the blind poet might readily be forgiven if he did happen to slip on one or another bit of arcana. But moving from a description of the passage to an initial effort at interpretation, I wish to argue that Milton knows very well what he's doing here, and that the "mash-up" of gods, mortals and fabled gardens from various literary tributaries here suggests larger thematic and poetic concerns. After all, consider what's at stake: the stable continuity of divine and royal houses through the survival of the children.

Look at where in the text this happens: Milton is about to describe our and Satan's first view of our forebears in Paradise. Before getting to this, we go on a detour through four major ancient myths involving divine or royal children protected or unprotected by gods or kings: Proserpina, Daphne, Dionysus and the Ethiop line of Abassin Kings.

The series begins with the daughter of Demeter who was raped by Hades -- the god of the Underworld, brother of Zeus, took her, made her his queen, and later allowed Demeter to share her -- accounting for the birth of the diversity of seasons. Daphne was about to be raped by Apollo when she became a laurel. Dionysus, born of a woman then re-born of Zeus, had to be hidden from the wrath of Hera; of the Abassin kings, we have no myth, just the tale of their high secret garden at the headwaters of the Nile.

In other words, we are reminded at this crucial juncture of a world in which helpless children must be hidden, concealed, protected -- from other gods as well as from men and beastly predators. Dynasties are fragile, and children in this world are defenseless unless a wise and nurturing divinity, or a concealment or strategic defensive position, protect them from harm.

We've seen that Paradise is also a high place, protected by thorns and bramble, but the dangers here are not those of overpowering force. Adam and Eve are not defenseless babes. They are lordly, serene, and, though naked, fully capable of defending themselves, like David before Goliath, or Daniel in the lions' den. They are unexampled among pagan children of gods, since they were made to take care of themselves: sufficient to have stood, tho' free to fall. Angels surround them to ward off bad spirits, but bad spirits can and will gain access. The entire burden of defense is placed upon the children of God, because they have free will.

In light of Milton's portrait of the first couple, the preceding fables of hidden gods, including Ammon and Zeus himself, serve a key function. They offer a vision of a contrasting fallen world, in which even the highest deities and royal progeny are subject to the vicissitudes of force and desire. Only here in Paradise are found first-born children who are equipped to handle all comers. The ancient fables, Milton's web of allusions suggests, spoke of a world of mere nature, a Hobbesian dog-eat-dog and devil-take-the-hindmost world, in which the linear order of generations goes astray, bloodlines and families are muddled or disrupted, and nations share (or blend) gods as children share crayons. The series of allusions end in fruitless confusion when, at the very secluded (and very legendary) source of the Nile, we are driven to question the purity of our sources, the authority of their genesis. For Milton, so much depends upon beginnings. The passage turns out to concern the purity of the memory of origins and of poetic filiation as well as royal and biological generation.

Unlike the pagan fables, Milton's tale will sing of how the devil took the foremost. But not without the understanding that it didn't have to be that way.

Who himself beginning knew?

If time permits, when we get to Eve's account of her memory of her beginning, we might want to compare it with that of Adam. Adam's description of his first moments is found in Book VIII, beginning with line 253:

As new-waked from soundest sleep 

Soft on the flow'ry herb I found me laid...

Structurally, they come before and after the central accounts of the War in Heaven, and the Creation of the World. We'll want to look at some ways in which the two accounts, while superficially similar, may be seen to have interesting differences -- not unlike their descendants ever since.

(I'll develop this post in more detail later.)