Knowledge and Falling in Milton's Paradise Lost and Imre Madach's

Knowledge and Falling in Milton's Paradise Lost and Imre Madach's The Tragedy ofMan A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Thesis Only in English in the University of Canterbury by Elisabeth Liebert University of Canterbury 2003 Contents Abstract..................................................................................... 1 Acknowledgements. .. 2 Introduction. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .... 3 Chapter 1....... ... ...... .... .......................... ......... .. .......... ......... ........ 9 Chapter 2. .. 25 Chapter 3. .. 41 Chapter 4...................... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ... .... 63 Chapter 5. .. 73 Chapter 6. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 91 Conclusion....... 109 Works Cited. .. 11 7 1 Abstract Milton's Paradise Lost and Ilnre Madach's Az ember tragediaja [The Tragedy of Man] were written in different centuries, in different languages. Yet as reworkings of the story of the Fall of Man both attempt to explicate the phenomenon of human self awareness. A comparison of their treatment of knowledge and its relationship to the Fall discloses this similarity of intent, as well as the fundamental difference that underlies the philosophical position of the two authors. The thesis is divided into chapters that examine prelapsarian knowledge, the Fall itself, and postlapsarian knowledge in Paradise Lost and The Tragedy of Man respectively, with occasional reference to the Biblical story and literary analogues in order to illustrate the development of central themes. As elements of the story are considered - Adam's conversation with God in Eden, the injunction against the Tree of Knowledge, the role of Satan or Lucifer, Eve's otherness, the consequences of the Fall, expulsion from the garden, and Adam's postlapsarian [re]discovery of knowledge - it becomes clear that Milton and Madach deploy them differently to different ends: for Milton self-knowledge is only possible within the context of a relationship with God, while for Madach self knowledge begins when man has abandoned God and, although the final stage of self understanding can only be achieved by returning to a relationship with the divine, certain knowledge is never possible. The comparison of Paradise Lost and The Tragedy of Man illustrates the fact that the desire to know remains a constant through the vagaries of human development, but the approach to knowledge taken by different generations shifts, drawing the story of the Fall away from its original context of religious mythology into the realms of anthropocentric philosophy. 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors, Professor David Gunby and Professor Adam Makkai of the University of Illinois at Chicago, whose enthusiasm and support made this thesis possible. Professor Makkai's assistance with obscure vocabulary and difficult constructions in translating passages from The Tragedy of Man was particularly invaluable. Thanks, too, to Associate Professor Chris Ackerley who offered to read the final draft and discovered those spelling errors still lurking among its lines. I would also like to express my gratitude to Dr Karoly Kokas of the University of Szeged, who not only introduced me to Hungarian language and literature, but also sent me copies of Madach' s work in English and Hungarian, and indefatigably hunted down, scanned, and emailed articles that would otherwise have been difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. 3 Introduction Know thyself - Delphic Oracle In Genesis, the desirability of forbidden knowledge is the catalyst that precipitates the Fall of Man. The serpent's suggestion that whoever eats the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge will become "as gods, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3.5) effects a change in Eve's perception: considering (or reconsidering) the Tree, she sees that it is "to be desired to make one wise" (Gen. 3.6). Whether or not Adam also finds the fruit and its properties desirable is left to the reader's imagination. That he succumbs to temptation is summarily expressed in the words "and he did eat," but the object and means of seduction are not identified, leaving subsequent tradition free to represent Eve as temptress and Adam's fall not as a thirst for forbidden knowledge but as a fatal lapse into uxorious weakness that overcomes his better judgement. Tradition generally represents Adam as impervious to the appeal of illicit knowledge. In the sixth century account of the Fall by Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus the serpent approaches Eve because he fears "he could not seduce the man I From the firm resolution of his mind" (10-11). 1 Similarly, in Adamus Exul (1601) and Adamo Caduto (1647) Adam eats the fruit in full realisation of what he does, compelled not by a thirst for knowledge but rather by his love of Eve. Despite discriminating between these two sources of temptation, knowledge and love, as appropriate to Eve and Adam respectively, the literary tradition that preserves and develops the story of the Fall maintains the centrality of the symbol of the Tree of Knowledge. In the Biblical account, the Tree is situated in the midst of the garden, and knowledge is likewise centrally located in the story of the Fall. Understanding the relationship between knowledge and falling in any given version of the story is critical to an appreciation of its underlying philosophical intent, and a comparison between versions illustrates the way in which the story is utilised to explore the phenomenon of the human capacity for knowing. For the purposes of this thesis, I have chosen to compare the relationship between knowledge and falling in Milton's Paradise Lost with a version of the Fall story comparatively unfamiliar to English readers, Imre Madach's 19th century Hungarian dramatic poem, Az ember tragediaja [The Tragedy of Man]. While Milton's 4 reinterpretation of the relationship between knowledge and the Fall as far as Adam is concerned has received significant critical attention, The Tragedy of Man has not, in general, been approached as a revision of the Fall story. Yet here the interconnection between knowledge and falling receives another twist, one that takes it further from the original Biblical source and aligns it with contemporary philosophical thought, challenging the assumption that underlies Milton's epistemology, that man can only know himself within the context of a relationship with God. The choice of Madach's The Tragedy of Man as a companion work and point of contrast to Paradise Lost may well give rise to questions among students of Hungarian literature as well as among Miltonists. The two works were written in different centuries and different languages, after all, and little scholarship has attempted to link them. In an article that explores literary precursors for Madach's Adam, Karoly Horvath enumerates those details of The Tragedy that suggest Madach's familiarity with Paradise Lost, but more frequently critics have identified the poem as an example of the Romantic poeme d'humanite, or analysed it in terms of its Faustian influences or the Hegelian dialectic evident the structure of the dream sequence. Others have approached it by means of discussing its broad philosophical message.2 Given that criticism has by and large avoided the comparison between Milton and Mada.ch, it is reasonable to ask, why examine that comparison now? Why read The Tragedy as a reworking of the story of the Fall of Man and in connection with Paradise Lost? I All references to versions of the Fall story antecedent to Paradise Lost are drawn from Watson Kirkconnell's The Celestial Cycle; reference is given by page number rather than line. 2 Karoly Horvath. "Adam alakjanak vilagirodalmi elozmenyeihez." For the Faustian influence see Leser; Lotze also looks at parallels between The Tragedy and Lessing's fragments of a Faust drama. Soter points out that although Goethe's Faust and The Tragedy ask some similar questions, the answers they give are very different, and many of the similarities between the two works are merely external and incidental: "Helyesen akkor jarunk el, ha leszogezziik, hogy Madach nemcsak formailag, de eszmeileg is ugyanugy inditja a Tragediat, mint Goethe a Faustot, - majd pedig csupan formailag hasonl6, de lenyegileg nagyon is eltero vegkifejlettel zarja" (180) [We proceed correctly, ifwe posit that not merely in terms of form but also ideologically Madach opens The Tragedy as Goethe does Faust. He closes it, however, with a denouement that is merely formally similar but in terms of substance is very different.] The Hegelian dialectic is treated in depth by Lotze (74-104). Of those critics who deal with the underlying philosophical message of The Tragedy, Lengyel offers the most compelling analysis in his article "A filoz6fia alapproblemaja 'Az ember tragediaja'-ban." 5 The answer lies in Madach's choice of Adam as the protagonist for his dramatic poem. In 1852, in the wake of Hungary's failed revolution against the Hapsburg empire, Madach was imprisoned for sheltering a political fugitive. Detained for close to a year, he read and reread Goethe's Faust (Leser 44) and his familiarity with that work is evident in The Tragedy; at many levels implicitly and explicitly the text refers to Faust. That he subsequently chose not Faust but Adam as the hero through which to explore the individual's approach to the problems of existence suggests that his aims are consciously different to Goethe's. In Adam and the story of the Fall, Madach discovered an element of character and subject matter not available to him through the story of Faust. MacCallum, discussing Milton's choice of Adam as the hero of his epic, observes that "Adam's experience contains the experience of mankind" (Sons 165). Hubay, discussing Madach' s use of Adam, goes one step further: not only does Adam's experience encapsulate the experience of all mankind, but, as the first father of humanity, Adam contains in himself the entire human race. If the human race is able to produce autocracy and democracy, Epicureanism and Christianity, orthodoxy and revolution, then all this must have been present as potential in Adam (1176).

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