The invocation opening Book 9 of Paradise Lost is a difficult piece of text, fraught with problems of identity. Here, Milton struggles with his dual identification as poet and Christian, and strives to reconcile lofty poetic ambitions with his place in the universal hierarchy of being. At its essence, the struggle is a search for humility, and Milton directs his efforts toward understanding the implications of this virtue. It is a perversion of humility, after all, to squander personal talents, to pretend that they do not exist; but how can a man exploit his talents without running into pride and delusions of grandeur? For Milton, the answer lies in the fact that personal talents are in truth not so personal, insofar as they do not originate in the person; instead, they come from God, and it is to God that man owes any successes he may enjoy. Therefore does Milton invoke heavenly help, without which he is an old and tired poet, unsuited for carrying out the great objectives of his poem. But his humble dependence on the divine does not always appear by so clear a light. For, indeed, sometimes Milton seems to play the part of God – becoming not simply author, but Author of creation – and thus trespasses against the very foundations of humility. In his epic, Milton marvels at man’s unique relationship with the divine as modeled by his first forebears, Adam and Eve. But he also examines the relationship at a local level, probing the limits of his own poetic identity and discerning where, precisely, he stands relative to his Creator.
The Christian soul cannot forget humility, for it is a virtue which figures most importantly in his religion. Humility is the essence of the first Beatitude (“Blessed are the poor in spirit”), and those who possess it shall be given “the kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5:3). Let us consider for a moment the history of humility in human discourse. In the Middle Ages, imagery of the Seven Deadly Sins was widespread and dominated lay conceptions of theology. Pride was considered to be the gravest of the Sins, for pride meant pretending to Godliness and risked alienating man from his Master. But one does not avoid sin by simply dwelling on its demerits; rather, one must displace sin by filling the mind with thoughts of good. Therefore did medieval church officials proclaim a set of seven virtues to oppose the well-known vices, advancing “humility” as the counterpoint of pride. We may thus think of humility as anti-pride, or meek acceptance of man’s place as a creation of God. Thus defined, humility appears as a solution to the problems encountered in Paradise Lost: in the context of, first, the error of Adam and Eve, and second, the troubling questions of Milton’s own identity. Concerning the first, we must remember that Eve ate of the forbidden tree because the serpent promised her: “ye shall be as gods, / Knowing both good and evil as they know” (9.708-709).[1] In other words, Eve ate of the forbidden tree, and provoked the fall of mankind, because of pride, a pretending-to-Godliness. Humility would have required respect for God’s authority and obedience to His commandment, permitting of no opportunity to fall from grace. To reach this conclusion – to recognize humility as at least a partial antidote to man’s fallen state – leads naturally to the question: What is the place of humility in my own life? It is this question which underlies Milton’s search for poetic identity and serves as the matter of our discussion.
What is the place of humility in Milton’s life? We have said that humility is anti-pride, or being careful not to usurp God’s authority as Creator of all. But humility can be a nuanced, and at times difficult, concept. For while it means avoiding pretensions to divinity, it also remembers that humans are children of God, bearing traces of the divine; while it means taking store of human frailty, it also recalls that there is dignity in being named a creation of God. It is only false humility that denies a particular asset and hides it under a frowzy exterior, calling it a sin, for example, to be successful in studies or career or athletics. Thus it is wrong to say that Milton “must dismiss his superior writing talents, since it would be vain and proud to make a show of them.” For we must see that his talents come as a gift from God, and by exercising them properly, he glorifies God, not himself.[2] Milton acknowledges this inheritance by way of several invocations in Paradise Lost. At one level, the invocations act as a common epic convention, borrowed from the writings of poets like Horace and Homer, who called on the classical muses to guide their poems. But Milton’s muse belongs to a higher order than the figures of mythology. It is true that, when he speaks of his “celestial patroness” (9.21), he refers to Urania, the muse of astronomy. Yet he insists that it is “the meaning, not the name I call” (7.5), reminding us that “Urania” means “the heavenly one” and thus that his muse, so designated, is a divine power: if not God the Father, then the fruit of His Spirit and Wisdom (indeed, Milton describes Urania as the sister of Wisdom (7.9-10)). Milton says that his muse “inspires / Easy my unpremeditated verse” (9.23-24, emphasis added), and if we consider the etymology of inspire – to breathe in – we see clear connections to the Holy Spirit, that member of the Trinity who is called also the Breath of Life (John 20:22). A heavenly power breathes into Milton the stuff of his verse, “bring[ing] it nightly to [his] ear” (9.47).
How easy seems this process of divine inspiration! The muse “deigns / Her nightly visitation unimplored” (9.21-22) and “dictates” (9.23) to Milton lines of verse. Even the syntax of the invocation betrays a fluid grace. Most often, lines are heavily end-stopped and full of clauses; Paradise Lost is famous for its intricate grammar. But when Milton speaks of his muse, the verse becomes suddenly quick and rolling. Let us read, for example, the following:
If answerable style I can obtain
Of my celestial patroness who deigns
Her nightly visitation unimplored
And dictates to me slumbering or inspires
Easy my unpremeditated verse[.] (9.20-24)
Five lines of verse uninterrupted by punctuation: what a rare occasion! There is something whole and beautiful about divine inspiration, something enjambed, unbound by the severe constraints of human grammar. For counter-reference, let us look at a passage in the invocation which talks of chivalrous jousts, the subject of epic literature prior to Milton:
… or to describe races and games,
Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields,
Impresas quaint, caparisons and steeds,
Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights
At joust and tournament … (9.33-37)
Here, the trappings of humanity – in particular, those which serve to decorate and make a pomp of mankind – are given in catalog, spliced by commas, and stopped with heavy consonant sounds. We may almost call the language distrustful: for it begins, then stops, as if unwilling to proceed, then begins, only to stop again. Can we not hear in these lines a reminder of Eve’s hesitation before the serpent, and the jolting rhythm of life that had to accompany the fall? The sound of the verse is sympathetic to its sense.
Now, even human industry, presumably so noble, cannot attain the same heights as heavenly things in their easy poise. Adam and Eve must toil after the fall, laboring as never before, but they remain banished from Paradise. Milton likewise recognizes the limitations of human toil in writing verse. He says that he is neither “skilled nor studious” (9.42) of certain subjects, yet still may his verse hope to succeed. This is because “higher argument / Remains sufficient of itself” to raise the epic to a sound morality (9.42-43); that is to say, the divine content of Paradise Lost, and not Milton’s role in penning it, redeems and elevates the poem. In these examples, Milton appears more stenographer than author proper, receiving and transcribing “dictate[d]” (9.23) words rather than fashioning them from his own imagination. This quality – of receiving rather than creating – is important, for it rests on humility. It recalls that man is “but the brush in the hand of the artist, and nothing more” and goes on to query: “what is a brush good for if it doesn’t let the artist do his work?”[3]
But here we come to a complicated distinction, for while God is Artist, Milton makes his living in the human realm by the same title: he is author, poet, artist. So who holds the brush? Sometimes it seems that Milton makes so bold as to hold it. It is true that he invokes the help of Heaven and admits that, “if all be mine” (9.46) and not the work of God, then his verse will surely fail – but even so, his humility falters. Subtle clues in his language point out the inconsistency. When, for example, Milton laments the fallibility of his verse – “unless an age too late, or cold / Climate, or years, damp my intended wing / Depressed” (9.44-46, emphasis added) – he also casts himself among the angels with his vocabulary: he gives himself a “wing.” And when Milton opens his invocation, he presents a hierarchy of the universe, but syntactically excludes himself from its chain of descent:
No more of talk where God or angel guest
With man, as with his friend, familiar used
To sit indulgent and with him partake
Rural repast, permitting him the while
Venial discourse unblamed; I now must change
Those notes to tragic … (9.1-6, emphasis added)
We observe how the lineage naturally moves from God to angel to man in the course of a sentence; but when the I of Milton’s own self arrives, it is set apart from the previous logic by a semicolon. Presumably Milton (like Socrates in the famous syllogism) is a man, and so assumes his proper place in the universal hierarchy beneath God and celestial beings. But the syntax of the verse suggests that Milton belongs to a separate category from, not a subcategory of, mankind.
It is especially germane that the action ascribed to Milton’s I is active and authorial: “I now must change / Those notes to tragic” (9.5-6). He no longer appears to receive wisdom from on high; instead, he willfully introduces tragedy; he changes the course of the narrative and, in parallel, the course of human history. What power is his! Appropriately, he depicts himself as omnipotent. He claims knowledge of all the universal spheres, writing of Earth and Heaven as though they were weights on a balance: “foul distrust and breach / Disloyal on the part of man, revolt / And disobedience; on the part of Heaven, Now alienated, distance and distaste” (9.6-9, emphasis added). And through his verse rings the bell of judgment: he writes of “just rebuke” (9.10) and determines his poem to be “not less but more heroic” (9.14) than its predecessors. Is not judgment a faculty generally reserved for God (think of the Final Judgment prophesied in the Bible)? By declaring such authoritative opinions, Milton takes on the absolute character of the divine, at least in part. Indeed, it is sometimes unclear whether Milton means to refer to himself or to a heavenly power; as when, for example, he writes: “[The muse] dictates to me slumbering,” and leaves slumbering with an unclear referent (9.23). He is caught between his identity as human author, Christian author, child of God; and his aspirations to a higher, capital Authorship.
Throughout Paradise Lost, Milton examines the relationship of man to the divine generally, in the narrative of Adam and Eve; but also particularly, in a study of his own identity. Underlying both levels of analysis is a conflict between pride and humility. The latter would give all credit and authority to a higher power and accept God as supreme Author. In his invocations, Milton makes several gestures of humility and proclaims his lowly place in the universal hierarchy. But the gestures coexist with opposite linguistic cues, which blur the borders between Milton’s existence and God’s. If we recall that the etymology of inspire is to breathe in, we can perhaps think of the conflict as a problem of breath. If Milton depends on heavenly help, and acknowledges the necessity of his dependence, then his verse is divinely inspired: breathed in with life. But if, instead, he overreaches, and aspires to an Authorship that is not his, then the poem becomes bloated, too puffed up with pride.
[1] References are made using the following text: John Milton, Paradise Lost (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2005). Numerals indicate Book, then line number. E.g., 9.708 reads “Book 9, line 708.”
[2] A nice way of thinking about this concept is seen in the 20th-century novelist James Joyce, who would write at the top of his paper “AMDG,” the initials of the Latin phrase meaning “For the greater glory of God.”
[3] The quotation is taken from The Way, a seminal collection of meditations by the saint, and founder of Opus Dei, Josemaría Escrivá. See Josemaría Escrivá, The Way (New York: Doubleday, 1982), 106.