Lucifer and Prometheus

A STUDY OF MILTON'S SATAN

R J Z WERBLOWSKY

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136303234
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965. The titles include works by key figures such asC.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Otto Rank, James Hillman, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Susan Isaacs. Each volume is available on its own, as part of a themed mini-set, or as part of a specially-priced 204-volume set. A brochure listing each title in the "International Library of Psychology" series is available upon request.

Chapter One

HERO AND FOOL

IT is one of the interesting characteristics of most human activities, that with the progress of time, developments and changes take place at an ever quicker rate. Miltonic criticism has been no exception to this rule. Whereas the ‘romantic’ critical tradition, culminating at the beginning of the twentieth century, could look back on more than a century of steady, albeit unequal growth, the first half of the twentieth century has already seen at least two significant revolutions. If dates must needs be assigned, we may consider Raleigh’s Milton (1900) as the last great expression of the romantic tradition before the turning of the tide, which set in in 1917 with Greenlaw’s now classic article, ‘A Better Teacher than Aquinas’.¹ There followed a period of much scholarly activity, mainly in America and on the Continent, in the course of which a new Milton seemed to emerge: a somewhat depuritanized renaissance artist. Particularly the European group, headed by Professor Liljegren, did much to bring out the renaissance traits in Milton’s character and art, and one of them, the ‘diabolic’ Mutschmann, undertook to lead the movement ad absurdum by pushing their methods and conclusions to fantastical extremes. The work of Professor Saurat, though lying outside these groups,² nevertheless tended to strengthen the impression of Milton as a bold, adventurous personality, a man whose basic emotions were a monumental pride and powerful egotism, and a thinker of terrible thoughts, who would drink heresies from any of the many ‘turbid streams’ of contemporary mystical and sectarian speculation. Meanwhile a new turning-point was reached when much detailed and patient, mainly American research had amassed overwhelming evidence of the traditional, conventional, and orthodox commonplaces embedded in almost every line of Milton. The dashing Satanist had given way to the conventional poet who would not say anything unless seventeen people had said it before,³ and the pendulum has now gradually swung back to a definitely Christian, though not precisely puritan interpretation of Milton’s poetry.

Ultimately all discussions of Miltonic problems in their wider sense are centred round Paradise Lost. For the purpose of this study, these will be taken notice of to the extent that they bear on the problem of Satan. For Satan too has had a sort of revival, ranging from sober academic survey to downright abuse and moderate defence. Obviously the appreciation of Paradise Lost generally, and of the vicissitudes of Satan in particular is dependent on, though not always identical with the critical movements outlined above. At times they run parallel, at other times they cut across each other. A detailed survey of Paradise Lost and Satanic criticism is unnecessary at this stage, as this will be done when we come to analyse more closely the problem of Satan.⁴ It will suffice here to give a short list of some of the more important titles.

These are Dr. E. W. M. Tillyard’s Milton (part iii) (1930), Mr. Charles Williams’ introduction to the ‘World’s Classics’ edition of the English Poems (1940), Mr. C. S. Lewis’ A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942), Professor E. E. Stoll’s ‘Give the Devil his Due: a reply to Mr. Lewis’ (1944),⁵ Mr. G. Rostrevor Hamilton’s Hero or Fool? A Study of Milton’s Satan (1944), Professor S. Musgrove’s article ‘Is the Devil an Ass?’⁶ and finally two recent studies, both of 1947: Professor A. J. A. Waldock’s Paradise Lost and its Critics and B. Rajan’s Paradise Lost and the Seventeenth-century Reader. There are of course many more authors and critics to be mentioned, and the above selection is not free from arbitrariness. Some of them will be mentioned later in the course of our analysis, others must be passed over, as Milton-criticism has grown so enormously that it is wellnigh impossible to do justice to every writer, unless one is prepared to convert one’s study into a catalogue or another Milton bibliography.

Yet in spite of the formidable bulk and critical penetration of all that has been said and written about the Satan of Paradise Lost, there is still very much that has been left unsaid and unwritten. This is not due to any diabolic resistance on the part of Satan to having himself dismembered into his elements, analysed and critically re-examined. The far more diabolic reason is the lack of agreement as to who and what this Satan of the poem actually is. Ask ten critics to read through Paradise Lost, and then put to them the simplest and most fundamental of all questions: How does Satan strike you? and you will receive ten different answers. It is to these answers, and to the simple question: How does Satan strike you? that the following sections of this chapter are devoted.

Largely, and therefore inaccurately speaking, there have been two main schools: the Satanists and the anti-Satanists. The latter can be subdivided into two not very sharply distinguished groups: those who loathe Satan as the originator or personification of Evil, and those who consider him a mean and contemptible fool. The Satanists too can be divided into perverse extollers of Satan and all he stands for, and into gallant and chivalrous opponents who feel bound in honour to pay homage to the Great Enemy’s nobler qualities, his loyalty in leadership, fortitude in adversity, unflinching courage and splendid recklessness, in short, all the qualities usually comprehended by the adjective ‘Promethean’.

Now the first interesting fact to be noted in this connection is that until Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell (about 1790), nobody ever appears to have been seduced by Satan’s Promethean charms.⁷ His greatness was recognized and admitted, not so much to magnify, let alone admire him, but to communicate the awareness that Satan was and is a redoubtable enemy, that the war in heaven was worthy of its protagonists and setting, and that the fall of the angels was no mean event. For the rest Satan was not regarded as particularly inspiring or fascinating. One knew of course that he was actually far worse than the Miltonic presentation of him, but this presentation was appreciated as tactful considerateness for the reader’s Christian touchiness, ‘A devil all made up of wickedness would be too shocking to any reader or writer’.⁸ Already Addison had similarly praised Milton’s delicacy of feeling: ‘His [Satan’s] sentiments . . . suitable to a created being of the most exalted and most depraved nature.... Amid those impieties which this enraged spirit utters . . . the author has taken care to introduce none that is not big with absurdity, and incapable of shocking a religious reader.’

Dryden’s remark that Satan was the hero of Paradise Lost, can be left out of account here, as Dryden was thinking in terms of epic technique only. But Blake⁹ was in deadly earnest with his ‘revaluation of all values’.

In writing his remarks, Blake became the father of what is now broadly termed the romantic school of Miltonic criticism, a label which is used to cover the extreme attitudes of Blake and Shelley; in a more moderate form such nineteenth-century critics as Hazlitt, Landor, Ruskin and Macauley;¹⁰ Sir Walter Raleigh, whose Milton ‘may fairly be said to represent the standard opinion of the romantic school’;¹¹ and, according to Professor Musgrove,¹² also such modern critics as Mr. Hamilton, Professor Stoll, and Professor Waldock. Many other names might be added to that list: C. H. Herford, Lascelles Abercrombie,¹³ and to mention but two more of the great Miltonic scholars, Denis Saurat, and, in a way, even Dr. Tillyard.

The anti-Satanist party is best represented by the late Mr. C. Williams, Mr. C. S. Lewis, and Professor Musgrove.¹⁴ Their main line of attack consists in denying the Satanists’ silent assumptions: that we may take the Satan of Books I and II at his face value; that we should give ourselves up to these primary impressions; and that we are allowed to forget for a while that Satan is unrelentingly wicked, nay, that he is Evil. Once these axioms are repudiated, and we start with ‘a good morning’s hate’ of Satan, his appearances and speeches will be seen and heard in a different light. We shall then be able to see his wickedness and meanness, his cruelty, falseness and intellectual hollowness. As it is no far cry from intellectual hollowness to complete idiocy, it is no wonder that Mr. Lewis has taken this step too. After all Milton himself is often at pains to depict his Satan as ugly and repellent and ‘big with absurdity’.

But before embarking on a more detailed analysis of these divergent Satan-appreciations, it will not be amiss to state clearly what at the bottom the whole controversy is actually about. As far as I can see, it boils down to two different questions, the one purely literary and historical, the other mainly psychological, both with reference to the primary issue already mentioned: ‘How does Satan strike us?’ The first question concerns the validity of any answer to the ‘How does Satan strike us’ as a relevant factor for Paradise Lost criticism. In other words, our own reactions, however closely argued and justified, can have no value for determining the meaning of the poem Milton wrote. In order to do this, ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• The International Library of Psychology
• Title Page
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION BY PROFESSOR C. G. JUNG
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• PREFACE
• I. HERO AND FOOL
• II. PRIDE AND WORSE AMBITION
• III. ANTAGONIST OF HEAVEN’S ALMIGHTY KING
• IV. THE KINGDOM, THE POWER, AND THE GLORY
• V. SIN IS BEHOVELY
• VI. TO OBEY IS BEST
• APPENDIX A
• APPENDIX B
• QUOTATIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX