Heteropoesis

Abstract

One could take a stance somewhere within orthodox Christian boundaries, encompassing much of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, and indeed the Eastern or Orthodox Church, and say that Paradise Lost is not a Christian poem. From the degree of sympathy with Satan shown in the poem, to what many feel is the unusual status of the Son, or the sensuality of the unfallen Adam and Eve, many Christians have been upset. But such views fly in the face of the poem itself. Milton was a most heretical, unorthodox Christian, usually identified in several ways, and the poem is a great work of heretical Christianity, considered in the context of a) Milton's stated belief that only a few fundamentals were necessary for a Christian profession-above all else believing in the Bible and neither adding to nor subtracting from it; b) his own "radical" definition (in the sense of returning to a root meaning) of heresy as not that which is defined to be wrong, unacceptable, and worthy of repression but that which is arrived at through a process of choice by reasoning. For Milton, to be part of a believing community means both agreeing about some things and disagreeing about much else, where it is fine to disagree.The interesting question in my view is what qualities of haeresis are left in the poem, and how they mark the reader's experience; they are certainly there in a great number of ways. Above all else is the sense the reader must have of experiencing intellectual and poetic daring: much of the poem is in forbidden territory, and it makes one feel uneasy as a reader to encounter what we do in the way that we do. George Herbert, by contrast, writes from a position of a humble believer, however tetchy that believer becomes. He could not have written Paradise Lost, and as Richard Strier showed in an important essay, there is little or no humility in Milton, although I am not entirely convinced that this lack is "fundamentally classical." Milton's daring becomes clear when we contrast his epic with that of Guillaume de Salluste, Sieur du Bartas (1544-90), whose biblical epic Les Semaines (1578; 1584-1603), translated by Josuah Sylvester (1592-1608), was widely read in seventeenth-century England and used as a source by Milton. The narrator of that poem promises to pursue a "middle Region" that will not melt the wax of his Muses' wings.He will focus on the creation visible to man, is explicitly Trinitarian, and will not question God's intentions. Milton's God is so bright in heaven, he appears even to angelic sight as both dark and exceedingly bright ("Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear" [3.380]), the paradox of two extremes, whereas in du Bartas / Sylvester he is simply and more tamely very bright: "lightning splendor." God made hell not merely for the first rebels, says du Bartas, but also for later "scoffing Atheists" who question his intentions, ask what he thought before the creation, and who censure him. Creation in du Bartas / Sylvester proceeds according to the homely simile of a grand and highly competent architectura...