Paradise Lost (Modern Library Classics) (68 page)

458.
Congratulant
: expressing congratulation.

460.
The Father, when exalting his Son, was the first to use these titles (5.601), the meaning of which Satan (5.772) and Abdiel (5.840) dispute. Satan now declares the titles to be theirs not only by right but by possession (of estates formerly controlled by God).

471.
unreal
: formless, the equivalent of unreality in Aristotelian metaphysics.

475.
uncouth
: strange, unusual.

477.
unoriginal
: without origin, uncreated.

477–78.
Chaos … opposed:
Though the journey through Chaos was difficult, Chaos and Night hardly opposed Satan (2.910–1009); but see Chaos’s indignation at lines 415–18.

480.
Protesting fate supreme
: Satan here identifies himself with supreme Fate, as usual parodying God (7.173).

481–82.
fame … foretold:
See 1.651–56, 2.345–76.

494–99.
Like most of the biblical commentators (A. Williams 128), Satan supposes that the first part of the protevangelium (see 175–81n), condemning the serpent to grovel in the dust, applies only to the snake, whereas the second part, in which the seed of the woman will bruise the serpent in the head and be itself bruised in the heel, applies to him (Satan). He is about to be proven wrong. On the transformation of the devils into serpents, see Kerrigan 2004.

508–9.
universal hiss … scorn:
There is only one sound intelligible within the sign system of human language that both men and snakes can produce, and that is the hiss that greets a bad show. See Shakespeare’s “serpent’s tongue” (
MND
5.1.433). On scorn, see Kerrigan 2000, 150–52.

509.
wondered
: ironically remembering Eve, who found the human speech of the serpent a “wonder” (9.566), as Satan now wonders at the serpentine hiss of his audience.

511–15.
The passage imitates the serpent metamorphoses in Ovid,
Met
. 4.572–603, and Dante,
Inf
. 24, 25.

513.
supplanted
: tripped up, overthrown.

515.
Reluctant
: primarily in the sense of “writhing or struggling against” (Lat.
reluctari
).

517.
doom
: the judgment at lines 175–81.

524.
amphisbaena
: mythical snake with a head at both ends.

525.
Cerastes horned
: a snake with four horns;
hydrus … ellops:
water snakes.

526.
dipsas
: The bite of
dipsas
(from the Gk. word for “thirst”) caused
scalding thirst
(l.

528.
Ophiusa
: a Mediterranean island, from the Gk. “full of snakes.”

529.
dragon
Satan had long been identified with the “great dragon” of Rev. 12.9. Cp. Fletcher,
The Purple Island
7.11.

530.
Pythian vale
: Delphi.

531.
Python
: the great serpent born of the
slime
left behind by Deucalion’s flood (Ovid,
Met
. 1.438) and eventually slain by Apollo.

536.
Sublime
: exalted, elated.

556.
526–27.
soil … Gorgon:
As Perseus flew over Libya with the head of Medusa, drops of her blood fell to the earth and became snakes—which explains why, according to Ovid,
Met
. 3.616, and Lucan,
Pharsalia
9.696, serpents are so common there.

559–60.
snaky locks … Megaera:
Her hair, like Medusa’s, was serpents (Ovid,
Met
. 4.771).

560–68.
the
bituminous lake
is the Dead Sea, beside which Sodom and Gomorrah were situated. According to Josephus,
Wars
4.8.4, the ashes of Sodom grow in the fruit of the area, which when plucked dissolve into smoke and ashes.

565.
gust
: gusto.

568.
drugged
: nauseated.

575.
some say
: A source has not been found for Milton’s account of the annual metamorphosis of the devils.

578–84.
Fowler notes that
purchase
can mean “annual return or rent from land,” and thus alludes to the annual metamorphosis. According to some authorities, Milton says, the devils spread stories of primordial serpents in the ancient world, among them that of Ophion (from Gk. for “serpent”) and
Eurynome
, the first rulers of Olympus.

584.
Dictaean
: Jove was raised in Crete, in the vicinity of Mount Dicte.

586–87.
there … body:
a brief history of sin in Paradise: there by
power
or potential before the Fall, then
actual
at the Fall,
now in body
, as the character Sin arrives.

590.
pale horse
: See Rev. 6.8.

601.
unhidebound
: skin so loose that it can hold a great deal.

611.
unimmortal
: mortal; the negative of
immortal
neatly conveys the effect of the Fall.

617.
havoc
: Kings victorious on the battlefield had the privilege of shouting “havoc,” a signal that no quarter should be given in slaughter and pillage. See Shakespeare,
JC
3.1.273.

627.
quitted
: handed over.

630.
draff
: refuse, swill.

633–34.
at one sling … arm:
“The souls of thine enemies, them shall he sling out, as out of the middle of a sling” (1 Sam. 25.29).

640.
precedes
: has precedence.

645.
extenuate
: disparage.

656.
blank
: pale.

658.
aspects
: astrological positions.

659.
A list of aspects:
sextile
(60°),
square
(90°),
trine
(
120
°), and
opposite
(180°).

661.
synod
: conjunction; cp. 6.156n;
fixed:
fixed stars.

668–87.
Before the Fall, the ecliptic follows the
equinoctial road
(l. 672) or equator, which produces
spring/Perpetual
(ll. 678–79), and a sun always in Aries. There are two ways to modify these conditions in order to produce a result consistent with astrological observations in the fallen world. In a heliocentric (Copernican) system, the axis of the earth must be tilted around 23°. In a terracentric (Ptolemaic) system, the plane of the sun’s orbit must be tilted
like distant breadth
(that is, around 23°). Milton presents both explanations and does not choose between them.
Some say
(l. 668) the one,
some say
(l. 671) the other.

672–77.
Was bid … Capricorn:
Once resident in Aries, the sun now travels through the zodiac.

686.
Estotiland
: northern Labrador.

687.
Magellan
: Strait of Magellan.

688.
Thyestean banquet
: In Seneca’s tragedy
Thyestes
, the sun turns aside in horror from the sight of Thyestes eating his sons. A chorus (789–881) wonders if the sun’s departure might not signal a return to “formless chaos” (832).

693.
sideral blast
: probably not malign astral influences, as Fowler and Leonard suggest, because Milton has shifted from celestial to terrestial change; perhaps exhalations or vapors released from the earth, drawn toward the stars (
sideral
) by the sun’s heat, and thought to produce various
blasts
or explosions, such as shooting stars and comets.

696.
Norumbega
: a province of North America;
Samoed:
northeastern Siberia.

697.
brazen dungeon
: where Aeolus imprisoned the winds (
Aen
. 1.141).

699–706.
The northern winds of
Boreas, Caecias, Argestes
, and
Thrascias
are opposed by the southern winds of
Notus
and
Afer
. This system is attacked at various side angles to the east and west (
thwart
) by winds named
Levant
et cetera.

714–17.
these … within:
a beautiful effect: the chain of bad external causes in lines 651–714 has led to the
part
(l. 716) Adam already sees, whereupon Milton shifts to his inner turbulence, which Adam then seeks to
disburden
through externalizing speech. We have moved back in time before the arrival of Sin and Death on Earth (342–45n).

729.
propagated curse
: the curses of Adam’s children upon their original forefather, increased and multiplied by the act of propagation. The commandment to “increase and multiply” is now literally transformed into ramifying curses, as Milton, an author much concerned with fame, has Adam confront the terror of infamy.

740–41.
On me … place:
When a body occupies its
natural center
in Aristotle’s physics, it is weightless, but the curses of Adam’s children are mysteriously
heavy
.

743–46.
Isa. 45.9: “Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! … Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou?”

748.
equal
: equitable.

758.
Thou
: “I myself.” Adam here addresses himself, not his Maker, as in lines 743–55.

762.
Isa. 45.10: “Woe unto him that saith unto his father, ‘What begettest thou?’ ”

782.
one doubt
: The same doubt reroutes the thoughts of Hamlet in his “To be, or not to be” soliloquy (3.1.56–88).

783.
all
: altogether, entirely.

786–92.
then … die:
Adam’s reasoning here closely follows Milton’s formulation of the mortalist heresy—the idea that body and soul die together (
CD
1.13).

791.
The body properly hath neither
: Augustine,
City of God
14.3.

798–801.
“The power of God is not exerted in those kinds of things which … imply a contradiction” (
CD
1.2 in
MLM
1150).

815–16.
Death and I take
the singular verb
am
because they are
incorporate
, united in one body.

831.
conviction
: See 84n.

831–34.
first and last … wish!:
Eve later gives voice to the same fond wish (ll. 933–36). The only being with the power to realize this desire is the Son (3.236–37).

837–38.
what thou desir’st:
Death;
what thou fear’st:
Death.

842–44.
O conscience … plunged!:
evoking 4.75–78, and thus indeed
To Satan only like
(l. 841).

849–50.
Which … terror:
Greville observes that frightening hallucinations provoked by darkness “proper reflections of the error [original sin] be,/And images of self-confusednesses/ Which hurt imaginations only see;/And from this nothing seen, tells news of devils,/Which but expressions be of inward evils” (
Caelica
C).

853–54.
since … offense:
“since it was announced that death would fall on the day man ate the fruit.” Adam forgets that the sentence was delayed (see ll. 209–11).

867–908.
The speech bristles with misogyny, some of it standard, such as the opening allusion to a false etymology deriving
Eve
from
hevia
(Heb. for “snake”), the insult terming Eve
but a rib/Crooked by nature
(ll. 884–85), or the disparagement of the act of propagation, and some of it Miltonic, such as the closing catalog of the ways in which marriage will fail in the fallen world, which echoes complaints in the poet’s divorce tracts. But it would be a mistake to confuse Adam’s sour diatribe with Milton’s own attitudes. His representation of Adam and Eve’s subsequent behavior shows that the author did not subscribe to the articles of Adam’s vituperation.

872–73.
pretended/To:
masking.

886.
sinister
: literally “left,” figuratively “unlucky.”

887.
The line itself contains, in its feminine ending, a
supernumerary
syllable.

888–95.
O why … Mankind:
Adam’s lament that God created woman at all follows Euripides,
Hippolytus
616–19.

890.
spirits masculine
: Although, as we have earlier been told (1.424), angels (or at least fallen angels) can assume either sex, the ability to take on female form is evidently not the same thing as being female in sex. The angels of the poem are unwaveringly masculine in look and attitude.

891–92.
defect/Of nature:
as Aristotle had maintained in
On Generation
737a28, 766a31–32, 766b8–15, 767b8–9.

925.
Eve calls attention to the joint
enmity
against the serpent foretold in the protevangelium (175–81n).

940.
Commiseration
: compassion for another’s misery, precisely what was missing in his misogynistic diatribe (ll. 867–908).