“sober certainty of waking bliss”

I have to be honest and say that I am really unsure about “Apology for Smectymnuus” and “The Reason of Church Government.” The sentences go on and on, often somewhat awkwardly (I found this especially in ‘Reason’) and I had so much trouble finding Milton’s meaning while wading through the verbiage. It might just be me; the archaic spellings and sentence structure of the 17th century clearly doesn’t appeal to my brain. While Milton’s poetry made me think about nature, beauty, life, death, religion, and government his prose caused me to think very little. While reading “Reason” I kept searching for something I could recognize as relating to the Episcopal Church or the Catholic Church, or government…Maybe I just totally missed the point. I’m going to reread it before class tomorrow, but this is one I’m going to have to figure out during our discussion.

A few things were clear(ish) to me, however. On page 52 of “The Reason of Church Government” it seems that Milton discusses his own artistic and poetic gifts and how he is grateful for his opportunity to peruse them: “Yet ease and leasure was given thee for thy retired thoughts out of the sweat of other men.” I’m glad that Milton seems to be expressing, if not gratitude, at least acknowledgment for the opportunities he has. His ability to attend school and pursue a career in writing is because of others who do the physical labor he’ll never have to. His privilege and position in society allow him this opportunity; what if Milton was born into a life of hard labor? Perhaps he would have felt the same burning purpose but would be unable to achieve much. What I got out of the rest, though, was kind of a brag-fest. “These abilities, wheresoever they be found, are the inspired gift of God rarely bestow’d, but yet to some (though most abuse) in every Nation” (57). Milton is obviously taking about himself… I wouldn’t go so far to say that he lacks all humility, but he is not afraid of stating what he think about himself. No low self esteem here. That’s something that’s interesting about Milton. Even when questioning his own mortality and ambitions in the poem “Lycidas,” Milton never doubts that God has given him these gifts, given him a great purpose. He just has doubts about his opportunity to reach all his dreams - will God kill him before he’s made something great out of his life (like he’s supposed to)? Goodness, looking at it this way, Milton was an arrogant boy. He must have been pretty annoying at times.

So, I definitely like the poetry better so far… This prose side of Milton is not one I’m fond of. Yet.

EDIT: So I just glanced at the extra reading Prof. Campbell sent and it looks like it has more meat than the excerpt in the book. This might help change my mind about this stuff.

What a beautiful poem. I love the beginning and the end. The middle I am still pretty unsure about; I don’t know if I like it, I don’t know if I understand what it’s about yet. The destruction and despair in the first part of the poem is so heartbreaking. The speaker’s desire to destroy the physical earth, the nature around him seems so right. When a loved one is dead the life on earth, the earth itself, is wrong somehow. It shouldn’t keep on growing and moving and living. It should stop too.

“Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, / Compels me to disturb your season due: / For Lycidas is dead” (lines 6 - 8).

His anguish and frustration, taken out on the nature around him, is clearly yet subtlety expressed. Oh, and the continued despair (”now thou art gone, / Now thou art gone, and never must return”)… I may just be feeling depressed myself, but I can just feel the anguish in those lines - I could practically cry. The injustice and utter horror Milton is feeling…

But this is why I love the end. And I’m beginning to feel like Milton has a thing for binaries (and perhaps a desire to hold both true at once (?), but I digress on that for now). There has been only pain and anger…but is this hope I sense towards the end? The poem feels like Milton is talking himself out of a deep deep depression. At first, he cannot contain himself, actually destroying what is around him, the living plants ripped and dead. But finally, around line 132, “the dread voice is past,” and while nature is wounded by the tragedy, full of tears, shrunken, and pale, the shepherds are told to stop crying. While their sorrow for Lycidas is not yet gone, he is not yet gone either. Milton describes where his friend has gone:

“So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, / Through the dear might of him that walked the waves, / Where other groves, and other streams along, / with nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, / And hears the unexpressive nuptial song, / There entertain him all the saints above, / in solemn troops, and sweet societies / That sing, and singing in their glory move, / And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes” (lines 172 - 182).

Besides being so beautiful, the section above must be describing heaven, where Lycidas has ascended, now “mounted high.” As a Christian, it makes sense for Milton to take comfort in the fact that his friend would live on in heaven, even though his earthly life had ended. His initial reaction makes sense, but a person of faith would eventually find comfort in his belief that we live on in heaven with God. This section of the poem seemed really familiar to me, and something quite similar can be found in the Bible, in the book of Revelation, chapter 21. Basically, the chapter outlines the new earth that God will create after the final judgment, an earth where God will live among men and the dead will rise, basically eliminated the need for us to ascend into heaven.

“Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev 21:3-4)

I think it is very telling that Milton alludes to (heck, he practically quotes it) this part of the Bible, this promise of God’s that one day there will be no more death or mourning. Milton will once again be reunited with his dear friend in heaven, but he must wait for his own death or for the promise of the new earth to be fulfilled. He is comforted by the fact that his friend is experiencing such comfort now, but he must wait. This part of the poem is screaming, “Delay, delay, delay!” (the beginning of the poem is obviously associated with loss, a very personal loss of a friend). I love the last line of the poem also, as the speaker has been sitting and thinking about his friend all day and now the sun is setting…it’s time to get up, “Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.” Milton is deciding to feel hope for his own life and gladness for his own continued existence on earth, which I think is the struggle a person faces in the face of enormous loss. Finding a reason to get up the next morning. I doubt Milton came to that point as quickly as his poem seems to do, but I think it is a fascinating capture of some of those emotions.

I began reading this “masque” (my first experience with this genre, as I guess it would be called) searching for some of Milton’s energizing principles. I struggled to find good examples of them though, which slightly concerned me because they were pretty obvious traces of them in the poetry we read the night before. Brown’s essay Milton’s Ludlow Masque was very informative and helped me understand why this 33 piece didn’t seem as thematically Milton-y as his other poetry (Even though the language was beautiful. I honestly did not expect John Milton to be such a beautiful poet; in fact, most of my preconceived notions are pretty much out the window, on day three). Something that struck me was that Milton was commissioned to write this for a specific occasion and for a specific audience. Obviously he could not have the free reign of topic or philosophy that he had writing poetry for himself. A Masque seems much more restrained and politically correct, in some sense, than the other pieces we read. Another important detail that helped explain my dilemma was that children performed the play, and it clearly has a lesson about virtue and purity woven in to it. The support Milton shows for the protection of virginity and purity was a little startling because such conservative values were not as staunchly expressed in the other poetry. Perhaps womanly virtue was very important to Milton, but I feel as though the pedagogical nature of the piece shows that Milton was strongly influenced by the nature of the event and the young actors. As a supporter of divorce, I doubt that Milton esteemed female virginity above all other virtues.

While the principles pretty much eluded me, the first speech by the Attendant Spirit interested me a lot. The characters in the play were protected and tempted by pagan gods, but the Attendant seems to evoke a world living in sin (line 6 - 10) that doesn’t know God yet or redemption. “Yet some there be that by due steps aspire/To lay their hands on that golden key/That opens the palace to eternity” (lines 12 - 14). This line seems to express both ambition and delay, as this place and these characters are waiting for Christianity and for everything good it brings.

Is Milton saying that a virtuous life is the way to redemption, and he is simply using virginity and purity as an illustration or does he really champion those virtues? Is he really condemning revelry and celebration (because honestly, Comus seems like he’d be pretty fun to party with, minus his excess, I suppose), and if he is, isn’t that ironic because a masque is pretty much a party? Maybe I am missing a larger point here…or missing a key detail to guide my thoughts. Hopefully after class today this will seem less muddled in my head. Milton sort of confused me with this one, but I like it a lot.

and so the blogging begins…