Paradise Lost (Modern Library Classics) (62 page)

500.
carbuncle
: red gem.

505–10.
Lovelier … Rome:
Satan is compared to serpents in classical literature into which men and gods were transformed.
Cadmus
, founder of Thebes, was changed into a snake, as was his wife,
Hermione
, when she embraced his serpentine form. The god of healing, Asclepius, journeyed as a serpent from his shrine in
Epidaurus
to Rome in order to stop a plague. In Plutarch’s
Life of Alexander
, we learn that Philip of Macedonia saw his wife in bed with a snake. The oracle identified the serpent as Jupiter-Ammon. He was thus the divine father of Alexander the Great, foreshadowing Jupiter Capitolinus, who would assume a serpent body in siring
Scipio
Africanus.

510–14.
Klemp (1977) noticed that the first letters of these lines spell
Satan
.

522.
The sorceress Circe transformed men into obedient animals (
Od
. 10.212–19).

525.
turret
: towering;
enamelled:
smooth and variegated in color like enamel.

526.
Here Satan, who balked at “prostration vile” in Heaven (5.782), invents
proskynesis
, the prostrate devotion paid to tyrants; Alexander the Great tried unsuccessfully to introduce this Persian custom into his court (Kerrigan 1998, 130).

529–30.
with … air:
Satan caused the serpent to speak either by using its tongue as an instrument or by impressing his words on the nearby air (A. Williams 116–117).

532.
Wonder not
: punningly announcing the theme of one, oneness, and singularity that winds through the speech.

544.
shallow to discern
: without the intelligence to discern.

549.
glozed
: spoke flatteringly;
proem:
prelude.

558.
demur
: hesitate over.

563.
speakable
: able to speak.

571–612.
The fourth and final of the major autobiographies in the poem: Sin’s (2.747–809), Eve’s (4.449–91), Adam’s (8.250–520), and now the serpent’s fraudulent story.

581.
fennel
: Serpents were supposed to be fond of this herb (Pliny,
Natural History
19.9); they were also thought to suck the teats of sheep and goats. Serpent lore aside, it is brilliant strategy to present the Tree of Knowledge as, metaphorically, an unappreciated mother.

585.
apples
: The double sense of the Latin
malum
(apple, evil) sponsored a tradition identifying the forbidden fruit as an apple.

586.
defer
: delay.

596–97.
Adam and Eve will entertain the same high estimate of the forbidden fruit’s taste (ll. 786–87, 1022–24).

598–612.
Having the serpent represent his powers of speech and reasoning as the effects of eating the forbidden fruit is a masterstroke. Evans (276–77) maintains that Milton’s only precedent was Joseph Beaumont’s
Psyche
(1648), a long and uninspired poem whose serpent does indeed claim to have gained language and wisdom from the fruit (canto 6, ll. 1699–1710), and tempts Eve with the idea that she may gain even loftier wisdom from such a meal, since she is starting at a higher level than the brute (1711–22). But Beaumont only vaguely anticipates the crisp argument to be advanced by Milton’s Satan (see 710–12n).

605.
middle
: the air.

606–608.
But … beheld:
Cp. 8.472–74.

613.
spirited sly snake
: a sibilant phrase, anticipating the prolonged hissing of 10.508–77.

616.
virtue
: power.

623.
their provision
: the fruits provided for them.

629.
blowing
: blooming.

634.
wand’ring fire
: the
ignis fatuus
or “will-o’-the-wisp,” as in
Masque
433. See Winny 168–70 and Burton,
The Anatomy of Melancholy
166.

635.
Compact of
: composed of.

640.
amazed
: both perplexed and lost, as in a labyrinth.

641.
pond or pool
: an indication that Eve is being led not just to the Tree of Knowledge but back to her initial infatuation with her own image (4.456–65).

644–45.
“ ‘Into fraud led Eve …’ overlaps magnificently with ‘… led Eve to the Tree,’ so that what begins as a moving and ancient moral metaphor (lead us not into temptation) crystallizes with terrifying literalness” (Ricks 1963, 76).

648.
Fruitless
: pointless, but also literally fruitless, since she cannot eat this fruit; Milton anticipates the fully fallen sense of the word at line 1188.

668.
Fluctuates
: undulates.

672.
since mute
: Eloquence itself is said to be extinct, not just in Greece and Rome; judging from
PR
4.356–60, Milton may not have regarded the loss to be altogether negative.

674.
Motion
: gesture;
audience:
attention.

679–83.
This speech, a brief travesty of
Paradise
Lost
intending to prove the ways of God to man unjust, begins appropriately with an invocation to the
power
of the forbidden fruit inside the serpent and (so he claims) manifest in his very words. Cp. the four invocations at the beginnings of Books 1, 3, 7, and 9.

680.
science
: in the wide original sense of the Latin
scientia
, “knowledge.”

698–99.
Of evil … shunned?:
A potent bit of sophistry stemming from the double meaning of
known:
(1) known by rational apprehension; (2) known by experience. Eve knows in sense 1 that eating the fruit is evil. But if eating the fruit becomes known in sense 2, she can hardly use that knowledge to shun evil. For in that case, she will have done evil. It is the difference between innocence and experience.

710–12.
The power of speech becomes Satan’s most tangible argument: as eating the fruit allowed him to change from brute to human, rising a notch in the chain of being, so eating the fruit will allow Eve to change from human to angel, a
proportion meet
. See 598–612n. The irony is pointed. The snake has not ascended the scale of being; Satan has in fact descended into the snake (ll. 163–71).

717.
participating
: partaking of.

720.
question
: Cp. 5.853–63, where Satan doubts whether the Son or anyone else created angels. The introduction of questioning is crucial; note the high proportion of questions in lines 686–732, 747–79.

722.
if they all things
: if they author all things.

732.
humane
: gracious, as in 2.109 and
PR 1.221
.

735–43.
A passage built on the structure of the five senses, moving from sight to sound to smell, then to the desire
to touch or taste
, given imperative force in Satan’s last words (
reach then, and freely taste
, l. 732), and in the end circling back to
her longing eye
.

744.
to herself she mused
: the first time in the poem that Milton represents the silent inward speech of Adam or Eve.

756–57.
good unknown:
good unexperienced;
yet unknown:
good not apprehended rationally. The word-tree derived from “knowledge” has become a treacherous labyrinth. See 698–99 n.

771.
author unsuspect
: authority above suspicion.

776.
cure
: Eve means “remedy,” but editors hear an unintended pun on the Latin
cura
, “care.”

780.
hand
: Is hand the subject or object of
reaching
in line 781? (Evans in Broadbent);
evil hour:
noon.

784.
all was lost
: The poem has arrived at the meaning of its title.

792.
knew not eating death
: At least four meanings are copresent: “She did not experience death while eating”; “She did not know death, which devours”; “She did not know she was eating death”; “She did not gain knowledge when eating death.”

797.
sapience
: knowledge, from the Latin
sapere
, “to taste.”

820.
odds
: advantage; see 4.447n.

823.
more equal
: The first words that Milton uses to define gender differences are “Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed” (4.296).

825.
for inferior who is free?
: as Satan has maintained (6.164–70).

827.
I shall be no more
: Heard at the opening of this book,
no more
is here applied to death and oblivion (see 1n).

835.
low reverence
: “She … now worships a vegetable” (Lewis 122).

837.
sciential
: conferring knowledge on those who partake of it.

845.
divine of something ill
: A stricken heart often signals a bad omen or premonition, as in
HAM
5.2.208: “How ill all’s here about my heart.”

846.
falt’ring measure
: The elision of the middle syllable in
faltering
keeps Adam’s
measure
or heartbeat in an iambic mold; the pun on
falt/fault
(
fault’ring
was the original spelling) suggests cardiac problems to come.

851.
downy smiled
: seemed attractive covered with down.

853–54.
in her face … prompt:
“Excuse, the pleading expression on her face, was the prologue to Apology [Justification], and continued to serve as this actor’s prompter.”

855.
bland
: smooth, containing blandishments.

868.
Or … or
: either … or.

890.
Astonied
: astonished, with pun on “as stone”;
horror chill:
cp. Vergil’s
frigidus horror
(
Aen
. 3.29).

893.
faded roses
: A first instance of decay in Eden (Fowler). Evans thinks the faded roses symbolize Eve’s mortality. But since fallen roses will acquire thorns (4.256), and since these woven flowers were intended to crown (l. 841), the decayed garland may also be meant to evoke Christ’s crown of thorns.

895.
he inward silence broke
: as Eve also did before her fall (744n).

896.
last and best
: last but not best, Raphael warned (8.565–66).

901.
deflow’red
: Accounts of the Fall sometimes made use of sexual metaphors such as ravishment, seduction, and infidelity (A. Williams 120, 125), and sometimes included speculations about the actual deterioration of human sexuality (Turner 124–73).
devote:
consecrated.

911.
another Eve
: Eve also rejected this idea (ll. 828–30).

916.
bliss or woe
: echoing Eve at line 831.

924.
sacred
: set apart, unlike all other fruits (in being subject to abstinence).

926.
The line contains two nearly synonymous proverbs: “Things past cannot be recalled” (Tilley T203) and “Things done cannot be undone” (Tilley T200).

928.
fact
: deed and crime.

936.
Proportional ascent
: echoing Satan at lines 710–12.

947–51.
lest … foe:
And indeed, Satan will not be allowed to gloat—a first intuition of the protevangelium (10.175–81n) and its enactment in Hell (10.504–77).

954.
death is to me as life
: Editors hear an echo of Satan’s “Evil be thou my good” (4.110), but the resemblance is more verbal than moral or psychological.

980.
oblige
: make liable to a penalty (Lat.
obligare
).

988.
freely taste
: echoing Satan at line 732.

998.
not deceived
: Cp. 1 Tim. 2.14: “Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.”

999.
fondly
: foolishly.

1003–1004.
sin/Original:
The only appearance of the famous theological phrase in the poem; for Milton’s understanding of it, see
CD
1.11.

1016.
dalliance
: amorous play.

1017–20.
Eve … judicious:
The idea, somewhat tortuously expressed, is that we apply words like
savor
and
judicious
to both questions of taste and questions of wisdom—hence the word
sapience
, epitomizing such usages, brilliantly denotes both taste and wisdom.

1018.
elegant
: in the sense of the Latin
elegans
, “refined in taste.”

1025–26.
it … ten:
His fond wish will be granted when God delivers the Ten Commandments to Moses.

1028.
meet
: “appropriate,” the deliciousness of the meal having awakened an appetite for its delicious purveyor; also glancing at
help meet
, one of Eve’s titles, and by a pun on
meat
(meaning food in general), anticipating their new carnivorous diet.