Milton and the Politics of Orphic Enchantment Martin Dawes Department of English, McGill University, Montreal. August, 2009. A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Ph.D. © Martin Dawes 2009 2 Abstract While Milton‟s ambivalence towards myth has been attributed to pagan- Christian tension or to pressure from a utilitarian culture, I argue that his poetical struggle with Orpheus the enchanting bard is equally political. His attraction to the divinely gifted singer, evident in his juvenilia, was tempered by the need to take account of the myth‟s royalist currency as a figure for the ordering power of monarchy. The court masque epitomized an art of Orphic enchantment designed to spellbind the audience – an art antithetical to Milton‟s quest for a collaborative readership empowered to choose citizenship over subjection. Growing dissident under Charles I, he rejected this royalist art of mastery along with the traditional union of bard and king. Milton used Ovidian irony to reposition Orpheus within a dialogical poetics of engagement that might inspire readers to realize their god-given freedom. I trace the development of Milton‟s poetics to show that, in search of a mutually beneficial relation between artists and audiences, governors and peoples, his poetry weighs Orphic enchantment against more dialogical models. I demonstrate how the more secular poems link the pursuit of Orphic art to escapism and question the passivity of the enchanted audience, implying that we open ourselves all too readily to political subjection. Milton takes on royalist art by gesturing towards a poetics that awakens others to social action. I further argue that the sacred poems harness the Christian concept of trial to such an anti-authoritarian poetics, delving more deeply into the temptations of Orphic power and the problem at their heart: why do we so often prefer enchantment to engagement, too often deserve subjection for failing to 3 earn citizenship? While the poems affirm that art can serve engagement, they warn that Orphic temptations such as nostalgia and melancholy may arrest development and encourage disengagement. Milton builds his epic and his God alike on the levelling model of dialogue. The freedom fostered by that model is fragile, but engaging in debate gives us a taste for the choosing that it requires, stimulating the desire to exercise our free will further. The dialogue through which we flourish as reasoners and choosers demands both chutzpah and humility. The “skilfull and laborious gatherer[s]” expected in Milton‟s prose become the engaged and collaborative readers for whom his poetry calls by refusing merely to enchant us. Tandis que l‟ambivalence de Milton envers le mythe a été attribuée ou à la tension entre les traditions païenne et chrétienne ou à la pression d‟une culture utilitaire, je soutiens que sa lutte poétique contre Orphée le barde enchanteur est également politique. Son admiration pour le chanteur divinement doué, évidente dans ses œuvres de jeunesse, était tempérée par le besoin de tenir compte du crédit dans le milieu royaliste du mythe comme symbole du pouvoir ordinateur de la monarchie. Le masque de la cour a exemplifié un art d‟enchantement orphique destiné à envoûter le public – un art antithétique à la quête de Milton d‟un lectorat participant prêt à choisir la citoyenneté plutôt que la subjugation. En devenant dissident sous Charles Ier, il a rejeté cet art royaliste de la domination ainsi que l‟union traditionnelle du poète et du roi. Milton a employé l‟ironie ovidienne pour replacer Orphée dans une poétique dialogique d‟engagement qui pourrait inspirer ses lecteurs à réaliser leur liberté, donnée par Dieu. 4 Je suis le développement de la poétique de Milton pour montrer comment, à la recherche d‟une relation mutuellement bénéfique entre les artistes et les publics, les gouverneurs et les peuples, sa poésie évalue l‟enchantement orphique par rapport à des modèles plus dialogiques. Je démontre que les poèmes plus séculiers lient la poursuite de l‟art orphique à l‟évasion et mettent en question la passivité des enchantés, en suggérant que nous nous exposons bien trop volontiers à la subjugation politique. Milton affronte l‟art royaliste en signalant une poétique qui incite les autres à l‟action sociale. Je soutiens en plus que les poèmes sacrés exploitent le concept chrétien de l‟épreuve pour cette poétique antiautoritaire, en fouillant plus profondément les tentations du pouvoir orphique et le problème à leur base: pourquoi préférons-nous si souvent l‟enchantement à l‟engagement, pourquoi méritons-nous trop souvent la subjugation en ne réussissant pas à gagner la citoyenneté? Alors que les poèmes affirment que l‟art peut servir l‟engagement, ils avertissent que les tentations orphiques telles que la nostalgie et la mélancolie risquent d‟arrêter le développement et de favoriser le désengagement. Milton construit son épopée et son Dieu d‟après le modèle égalisateur du dialogue. La liberté favorisée par ce modèle est fragile, mais nous lancer dans le débat nous donne le goût de faire les choix que le débat nécessite, en stimulant notre désir d‟exercer encore notre libre arbitre. Le dialogue qui nourrit nos capacités de raisonner et de choisir exige du culot ainsi que de l‟humilité. Les « skilfull and laborious gatherer[s] » attendus dans la prose de Milton deviennent les lecteurs engagés et participants que sa poésie réclame en refusant simplement de nous enchanter. 5 Acknowledgements To the mentors who have nourished my interest in Milton, Professors Maggie Kilgour (McGill) and David Williams (Manitoba), I owe a thousand thanks. I extend my gratitude also to Richard H. Tomlinson and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for the financial support of a Tomlinson Fellowship (2004-7) and a Canada Graduate Scholarship (2004-7). 6 Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………….….…….. 7 Chapter One: Taking on Orpheus: Ironic Deflation versus Nostalgic Inflation…….….……17 Chapter Two: The Quill and the Crown: Orpheus Among the English……………....………47 Chapter Three: “That Orpheus self may heave his head”: Enchantment and Engagement in Milton’s Secular Poetry………….………..81 Chapter Four: “With other notes then to th’ Orphean Lyre”: The Anti-authoritarianism of Milton’s Sacred Poetry……...………………..122 Conclusions: Wanted: Skillful and Laborious Gatherers…………………………………..193 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………202 7 Introduction In Milton‟s fairytale Mask, the Attendant Spirit calls up the river goddess Sabrina to save the Lady from the magic clutches of Comus the “inchanter vile” (l. 907): Sabrina fair Listen where thou art sitting Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of Lillies knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair, Listen for dear honours sake, Goddess of the silver lake, Listen and save. (ll. 859-66) The song is both enchanting and engaging, a thing of beauty that is also a call to action. We hear the water lapping in the L- and S-sounds of “glassie, cool, translucent,” as if the poetry were taking on the qualities of Sabrina‟s realm. But the song and chant of the Spirit do not spellbind or ravish so much as they hail and awaken the goddess: “Gentle swain at thy request/ I am here” (ll. 900-1).1 So too does the best of Milton‟s poetry harness enchantment to engagement, inviting readers still to response and responsibility. Yet his verse gains dramatic depth by confronting the ways in which such a call or challenge to make choices can resemble the song of an “inchanter vile” who would spellbind others into submission. As A Mask suggests, artistic enchantment – the poet‟s “chanting into” the audience from the page or stage – is an exchange fraught with all sorts of perils and potentials. The musical word that enlightens and inspires may equally lull or compel us. For 1 I quote Milton from Riverside with the occasional exception of the Yale edition of the prose (CPW). 8 Milton as for many classically educated poets, the keynote figure for this dubious act dates back as far as the literary tradition that harps on its ambivalence: Orpheus, the Argonauts‟ bard, whose power Apollonios Rhodius and other writers barely distinguish from that of the Sirens. That the archetypal bard appears frequently in Milton‟s poetry has long been remarked. In Sonnet 2 (“Donna leggiadra”), the speaker looks to Heaven to defend him against erotic bewitchment in the form of his lady‟s Orphic singing. “L‟Allegro” and “Il Penseroso” draw on aspects of Orpheus to dramatize contrasting ways of life and art that turn out to be equally stunted. In lamenting the loss at sea of a young poet and pastor, “Lycidas” recalls the helplessness of the Muse Calliope to save “her inchanting son” Orpheus from a death more violent (l. 59). The narrator of Paradise Lost takes care to assure us that he sings “With other notes then to th‟ Orphean Lyre” (3.17). Evidently, the mythic enchanter is not just a presence but also a problem in Milton‟s poems. What I will be suggesting is that Orpheus is a problem for Milton mainly because enchantment is a problem for the dialogical poetics that he develops – a liberating and yet demanding poetics of engagement with readers and traditions that goes hand in hand with his anti- authoritarian politics. By the 1640s with their civil strife, Milton had come to realize that enchantment was not just a poetical matter, something between artists and their audiences, but also a political issue between monarchs and their subjects. Milton‟s prose adds Charles I to the poetry‟s list of enchanters that already included Comus and Orpheus. Answering the late king‟s (in fact ghost-written) memoir Eikon Basilike (1649) and its image of Charles as a saintly martyr, Milton excoriates a portion of the English people as an “Image-doting rabble” who, “begott‟n to servility, and inchanted 9 with these popular institutes of Tyranny, subscrib‟d with a new device of the Kings Picture at his praiers, hold out both thir eares with such delight and ravishment to be stigmatiz‟d and board through in witness of thir own voluntary and beloved baseness” (Eikonoklastes 1095).