An elegy by Catullus

Little could be further from the dramatic turns of Milton's Lycidas than this simple expression of pure, helpless grief:

By ways remote and distant waters sped
by Gaius Valerius Catullus translated by Aubrey Beardsley
By ways remote and distant waters sped, Brother, to thy sad grave-side am I come, That I may give the last gifts to the dead, And vainly parley with thine ashes dumb: Since she who now bestows and now denies Hath ta'en thee, hapless brother, from mine eyes. But lo! these gifts, the heirlooms of past years, Are made sad things to grace thy coffin shell; Take them, all drenched with a brother's tears, And, brother, for all time, hail and farewell! Found on Poets.org

The generous universe

now glow'd the Firmament
With living Saphirs: Hesperus that led [ 605 ]
The starrie Host, rode brightest, till the Moon
Rising in clouded Majestie, at length
Apparent Queen unvaild her peerless light,
And o're the dark her Silver Mantle threw.

This lovely passage in Book IV serves as the transition from day to evening to night, with the glow of the "living Saphirs" granting pride of place to Hesperus, the evening star -- we might recall the evocation of the same star, but charged with Christian significance, in Lycidas:

So sinks the day-star in the Ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled Ore, [ 170 ]
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:

In this pre-Christian, unfallen moment, Hesperus cedes her lead to the mutable moon which, even as it rises, undergoes bewitching tranformation, from veiled Majestie to naked, dominant queen of the night, throwing her silver mantle over the dark. So there are at least four levels of light in this one brief passage, with the unveiling of the moon occurring in unison with the mantling of the earth. (Prof. Rogers noted how in Lycidas there's a tantalizing ambiguity near the end, where the grammar allows for either the sun, or the singer/shepherd, to have "twitch'd his Mantle blew.")

As several of us noted, there is undeniably an element of Fairie, of Midsummer Night and Ariel, in this portion of the poem.

The sense of a world alive with spirit-presences carries forward with Adam's next response to Eve's question about the stars:

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

Adam says:

Millions of spiritual Creatures walk the Earth
Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep:

And

 how often from the steep [ 680 ]
Of echoing Hill or Thicket have we heard
Celestial voices to the midnight air,
Sole, or responsive each to others note
Singing thir great Creator

They hear a lot of night music - as Pythagoras once suggested we once could hear the Music of the Spheres, until it faded.

As discussed, Adam and Eve are in some ways childlike - they know nothing of death, law, or taxes. Property does not loom large; all creatures possess the earth, air, and seas. It is in that first wonderment, the musings of the child, that Milton chooses to situate a sense of utter plenitude - a universe that is seething, infinite, not simply in size, but in populations - teeming with birds, insects, stars.

This apprehension of Being as the opposite of Void - of an overflowing generousness of creative power -- is not uncommon in early myth, and seems to be almost a working hypothesis of any poet you name, be it Hesiod, Shakespeare, or Whitman. It's also, if this is not too Borgesian to suggest, the preferred hypothesis of the Standard Model of particle physics and of string theory. That is to say, our advanced scientific probings of the universe find wheels within wheels, quarks within atoms, strings within all things.

Rogers on theodicy

While we look forward to hearing Milton's verse read aloud, and to thinking about it as we go, it's also possible we might look for some basic premises from which to begin our exploration.

One place that might be of use is a lecture by Prof. John Rogers, Yale University, on Lycidas. Prof. Rogers has no qualms about addressing the extravagant claims made by Milton - for poetry, and in particular his poetry - that emerge in Lycidas as a prelude to the grand, or as some may feel, grandiose task he set for his epic:

Theodicy is the term coined by the eighteenth-century philosopher Leibniz, and he applied this term theodicy to just that kind of philosophical sentiment that's implied by its etymology. The theodicy is an account of the justice (the dike) of God (theos). And so, to use the words with which Milton would begin Paradise Lost, a theodicy is an attempt "to justify the ways of God to men."

Now for a lot of orthodox Christians in Milton's time -- and I think we can say the same for a lot of orthodox Christians in our own time -- to embark upon anything like a theodicy at all can be considered heretical, or at the very least heterodox. A theodicy can be seen as heretical or even blasphemous for the simple reason that it -- think of what it assumes. It assumes that the ways of God are in fact justifiable. A theodicy assumes that God's justice can be witnessed, that it can be accounted for here on earth. A theodicy assumes that things on earth actually make sense and that God's ways are ultimately rationally accessible, that they are comprehensible by human beings, and that God can in some way -- and this is, I think, the central implication of the Elder Brother here -- that God can in some way be held accountable for his actions. To justify the ways of God to men is essentially to put God on trial for the actions that he performs. Of course in the central test case this is what we all care about, for the unfortunate events that befall virtuous people.

The above is from Lecture 6 of Prof. Rogers' free online course on Milton.

The Open Yale Courses series offers video of a wide variety of courses as well as transcripts of each lecture. Rogers devotes two lectures to Lycidas. The second is also quite worthwhile.

A procession of voices

Lycidas has been fraught with strong responses from readers since it first saw the light of print. Considered by many to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest English lyric (it's been called "the high-water mark of English Poesy" and, "the most perfect piece of pure literature in existence,") it also has met with lively displeasure from other distinguished readers:

...it was detested for its artificiality by Samuel Johnson, who found "the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleasing" and complained that "in this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new." [From "Lycidas" in Wikipedia.]

(A comment all the more provocative as it concerns a poem whose final, crucial word is "new.")

What's clear is that the poem seems to leave large areas of itself open to multiple, uncertain, and highly varying readings, despite innumerable learned readings by academics and men of letters. Some of these cruxes are famous, especially the notorious "two-handed engine."

Others, less renowned, still remain problematic, even on the basic level of deciding who is speaking. For example:

It was that fatall and perfidious Bark [ 100 ]
Built in th' eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.

Does the "uncouth swain" make this charge? Or is it a continuation of the reported speech of Triton (who is here speaking for Poseidon), a reported speech which itself encompasses the answer of the winds, brought by sage Hippotades? Here's the entire passage:

But now my Oate proceeds,
And listens to the Herald of the Sea
That came in Neptune's plea, [ 90 ]
He ask'd the Waves, and ask'd the Fellon winds,
What hard mishap hath doom'd this gentle swain?
And question'd every gust of rugged wings
That blows from off each beaked Promontory,
They knew not of his story, [ 95 ]
And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd,
The Ayr was calm, and on the level brine,
Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd.
It was that fatall and perfidious Bark [ 100 ]
Built in th' eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.

Clearly a key word here is "listens": this is a poem that in the act of being sung is listening to other voices, here staged as a kind of coroner's inquest. The culminating apparent accusatory speech, involving perfidy, eclipse, and dark curses (more reported speech: who did the cursing?) depends even for a basic sense of its bearings upon whom we believe we have been listening to.

Navigating this text would appear to require a finely tuned aural compass, along with whatever else we bring. Here we appear to be listening to the poet as uncouth swain, reporting the speech of the winds as reported by Hippotades (perhaps in turn to Triton?) - culminating in a charge of a mysteriously cursed bark voiced by one of these speakers (but who?) -- presenting a further note of murky Miltonic mystery.

This ambiguity of speech and speaker is both underscored and resolved at the end of the poem, when the voice we've identified as the shepherd-friend of Lycidas flows into the voice of the poet, now separate, distinguishing his voice from that the "uncouth swain." This is the "asymmetric frame" we mentioned last time - asymmetric because there is no similar introduction of the swain at the outset of the poem. The question of who is/was speaking comes to the foreground even as the final notes of the poem mark the moment when the voice we thought we were listening to resolves itself into a narrator, who describes the swain, who narrated the poem we have just heard.

Whatever else we are dealing with in Lycidas, it seems there's more, as we heard in Il Penseroso, "than meets the ear."

Winds of Hippotades

The mention of "Hippotades" (for Aeol0s, son of Hippotas, who appears in Lycidas) evokes scenes from the Odyssey, the Aeneid, the Metamorphoses, and other works in which Aeol0s, charged with control (governance) of the winds, binds and loosens the winds.

"Now in their age-old prison Hippotades [Aiolos] had locked the Venti (Winds)." - Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.663

"Hippotades [Aiolos] rules the Venti (Winds) [Anemoi] of heaven, holding imprisoned all their stormy strength, soothing at will the anger of the seas. When once the Venti (Winds) are loosed and seize the main, naught is forbidden them; the continents and oceans cower forsaken; in the sky they drive the clouds and with their wild collisions strike fiery lightnings crashing down the world." - Ovid, Metamorphoses 11.430

Those who remember their Hesiod will recall the origin of the winds:

"Zeus in tumult of anger cast [the typhoon giant] Typhoeus into broad Tartaros. And from Typhoeus come boisterous Winds (Anemoi) which blow damply, except Notos (South Wind) and Boreas (North Wind) and clear Zephyros (West Wind). These are a god-sent kind, and a great blessing to men; but the others blow fitfully upon the seas. Some rush upon the misty sea and work great havoc among men with their evil, raging blasts; for varying with the season they blow, scattering ships and destroying sailors. And men who meet these upon the sea have no help against the mischief. Others again over the boundless, flowering earth spoil the fair fields of men who dwell below, filling them with dust and cruel uproar." - Hesiod, Theogony 869

In the Odyssey he binds them for Odysseus:

"We [Odysseus and his men] came to the Nesos Aiolios (Aiolian island); here lived Aiolos, son of Hippotas; the deathless gods counted him their friend. His island is a floating one; all round it there is a wall of bronze, unbreakable, and rock rises sheer above it ... He gave me a bag made from the hide of a full-grown ox of his, and in the bag he had penned up every Anemos (Wind) that blows whatever its course might be; because Kronion [Zeus] had made him warden of all the Anemoi (Winds), to bid each of them rise or fall at his own pleasure ...

The men [Odysseus' crew] talked among themselves [on the return voyage over the contents of the bag], and the counsels of folly were what prevailed. They undid the bag, the Anemoi (Winds) rushed out all together, and in a moment a tempest (thuella) had seized my crew and was driving them - now all in tears - back to the open sea and away from home.

I myself awoke, and wondered if now I should throw myself overboard and be drowned in ocean or if I should bear it all in silence and stay among the living. I did bear it and did remain, but covered my face as I lay on deck. My own ship and the others with it were carried back by raging storm (anemos thuella) to the Nesos Aioloios (island of Aiolos), amid the groaning of all my company." - Homer, Odyssey 10.1

In other works, Hippotades is asked to let them loose - by Hera, for example, in her effort to prevent Aeneas from reaching his destination:

"The goddess [Hera] came to the storm-cloud country, the womb-land of brawling siroccos, Aeolia. Here in a huge cavern King Aeolus keeps curbed and stalled, chained up in durance to his own will, the heaving Winds and far-reverberating Tempests. Behind the bars they bellow, mightily fretting: the mountain is one immense murmur. Aeolus, aloft on his throne of power, sceptre in hands, gentles and disciplines their fierce spirits. Otherwise, they’d be bolting off with the earth and the ocean and the deep sky - yes, brushing them all away into space. But to guard against this the Father of heaven [Zeus] put the Winds in a dark cavern and laid a heap of mountains upon them, and gave them an overlord who was bound by a firm contract to rein them in or give them their head, as he was ordered. Him Juno [Hera] now petitioned.

Here are the words she used:- `Aeolus, the king of gods and men has granted you the rule of the winds, to lull the waves or lift them. A breed I have no love for now sails the Tyrrhene sea [Aeneas and his Trojans]. Transporting Troy’s defeated gods to Italy. Lash fury into your Winds! Whelm those ships and sink them! Flail the crews apart! Litter the sea with their fragments! Fourteen nymphae I have - their charms are quite out of the common - of whom the fairest in form, Deiopea, I’ll join to you in lasting marriage and seal her yours for ever, a reward for this great favour I ask, to live out all the years with you, and make you the father of handsome children.’

Aeolus answered thus:- `O queen, it is for you to be fully aware what you ask: my duty is to obey. Through you I hold this kingdom, for what it’s worth, as Jove’s viceroy; you grant the right to sit at the gods’ table; you are the one who makes me grand master of cloud and storm.’

Thus he spoke, and pointing his spear at the hollow mountain, pushed at its flank: and the Winds, as it were in a solid mass, hurl themselves through the gates and sweep the land with tornadoes. They have fallen upon the sea, they are heaving it up from its deepest abysses, the whole sea - Euros (East wind), Notos (South), Sou-wester thick with squalls - and bowling great billows at the shore. There follows a shouting of men, a shrilling of stays and halyards. All of a sudden the Storm-clouds are snatching the heavens, the daylight from the eyes of the Trojans; night, black night is fallen on the sea. The welkin explodes, the firmament flickers with thick-and-fast lightning, and everything is threatening the instant death of men …

Even as he cried out thus, a howling gust from Boreas (the North) hit the front of the sail, and a wave climbed the sky. Oars snapped; then the ship yawed, wallowing broadside on to the seas: and then, piled up there, a precipice of sea hung. One vessel was poised on a wave crest; for another the waters, collapsing, showed sea-bottom in the trough: the tide-race boiled with sand. Three times did Notos (the South wind) spin them towards an ambush of rocks (those sea-girt rocks which Italians call by the name of The Altars), rocks like a giant spine on the sea: three times did Euros (the East wind) drive them in to the Syrtes shoal, a piteous spectacle - hammering them on the shallows and hemming them round with sandbanks …

Meanwhile Neptune [Poseidon] has felt how greatly the sea is in turmoil, felt the unbridled storm disturbing the water even down to the sea-bed, and sorely troubled has broken surface; he gazes forth on the seep with a pacific mien. He sees the fleet of Aeneas all over the main, dismembered, the Trojans crushed by waves and the sky in ribbons about them: Juno’s [Hera's] vindictive stratagems do not escape her brother.

He summons the East and the West Winds, and then proceeds to say:- `Does family pride tempt you to such impertinence? Do you really dare, you Winds, without my divine assent to confound earth and sky, and raise this riot of water? You, whom I - ! [Quos ego] Well, you have made the storm, I must lay it. Next time, I shall not let you so lightly redeem your sins. Now leave, and quickly leave, and tell your overlord this - not to him but me was allotted the stern trident dominion over the seas. His domain is the mountain of rock, your domicile, O East Wind. Let Aeolus be king of that castle and let him keep the Winds locked up in its dungeon.’

He spoke; and before he had finished, the insurgent sea was calmed." - Virgil, Aeneid 1.50

Virgil in part is imitating a scene from a post-Homeric follow-up to the Iliad:

"To Aiolia came she [Iris], isle of caves, of echoing dungeons of mad-raging winds with rugged ribs of mountain overarched, whereby the mansion stands of Aiolos Hippotas' son. Him found she therewithin with wife and twelve children; and she told to him Athena's purpose toward the homeward-bound Akhaians. He denied her not, but passed forth of his halls, and in resistless hands upswung his trident, smiting the mountain-side within whose chasm-cell the wild Anemoi (Winds) dwelt tempestuously shrieking. Ever pealed weird roarings of their voices round its vaults. Cleft by his might was the hill-side; forth they poured. He bade them on their wings bear blackest storm to upheave the sea, and shroud Kaphereus' heights.

Swiftly upsprang they, ere their king's command was fully spoken. Mightily moaned the sea as they rushed o'er it; waves like mountain-cliffs from all sides were uprolled." - Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy 14.467

All quotes from here.

An older online edition of Lycidas

Here's an online edition of Lycidas with more copious notes than the Dartmouth.