Miltonian Excursus: Chaos and Evil

Satan's Excursion through the Realm of Chaos

"With head, heads, wings, or feet, pursues his way,

And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies" (2.949-950)

(Image from Art Styles in the Industrial 19th Century: Illustrations by Gustave Doré)

I'm still working on my Milton article, which mainly concerns the meaning of "sacred fruit" in Paradise Lost 9.924 (cf. 9.904), which occurs in the passage quoted a couple of posts ago:

Bold deed thou hast presum'd, adventrous Eve
And peril great provok't, who thus hath dar'd
Had it been onely coveting to Eye
That sacred Fruit, sacred to abstinence,
Much more to taste it under banne to touch. [ 925 ]
But past who can recall, or don undoe?
Not God Omnipotent, nor Fate, yet so
Perhaps thou shalt not Die, perhaps the Fact
Is not so hainous now, foretasted Fruit,
Profan'd first by the Serpent, by him first [ 930 ]
Made common and unhallowd ere our taste;
Nor yet on him found deadly, he yet lives,
Lives, as thou saidst, and gaines to live as Man
Higher degree of Life, inducement strong
To us, as likely tasting to attaine [ 935 ]
Proportional ascent, which cannot be
But to be Gods, or Angels
Demi-gods. (PL 9.921-937)

In my article, one of the points that I focus upon is the meaning of "unhallowd" (9.931), which can mean either "made common" or "made impure." I construct an argument (which I won't go into here) for concluding that Adam means it in the former sense but that Milton means it in the latter sense.

This leads by "wandering mazes lost" (PL 2.561) from the link between impurity and chaos into an excursus on "Chaos and Evil," which I render in its sublime impenetrability below.

My view that impurity is linked to the "infernal" dregs of chaos (PL 7.238) touches upon an issue that has received some attention, namely, whether or not chaos is evil. Nearly 60 years ago, A. S. P. Woodhouse located Milton's view of chaos within the Neoplatonic tradition and argued for a basically good chaos but in a footnote acknowledged that "it is difficult to escape the inference ... that this disorder is, or at all events has some affinity with, evil" (A. S. P. Woodhouse, "Notes on Milton's Views on the Creation: The Initial Phase," Philological Quarterly, 28 (1949), 229, n. 30). Over 40 years ago, A. B. Chambers drew upon Hesiod, Plato, Greco-Roman atomism, and Genesis to argue, in "Chaos in Paradise Lost," that "Chaos and Night are the enemies of God" and that "Chaos is as true an exemplar as hell of that state which everywhere prevails when the laws of providence are set, when the ways of God to man are opposed and overturned" (A. B. Chambers, "Chaos in Paradise Lost," Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (1963), 65 and 84). Similarly, Regina Schwartz, in her generally illuminating book Remembering and Repeating: On Milton's Theology and Politics, argues that chaos is evil by virtue of its impurity in not respecting boundaries (Schwartz, 17). Moreover, she argues that God's creation is itself holy:

With [his] ... emphasis upon boundaries, Milton subscribes to that rich category of thinking on the sacred and profane, pollution and purity, that informs Biblical thought. As the creation is first hallowed by separations, so it is remembered and sanctified by observing those original distinctions. (Schwartz, 14; cf. 12: "creation is sanctified by its divisions")

In my opinion, Schwartz's views -- that chaos is impure and that creation is holy -- are mistaken. Creation is not hallowed by separations. It is kept pure in this way, but purity is not synonymous with holiness in biblical thinking, and I see no evidence supporting the view that Milton differed from the Bible on this point. As for chaos, while Milton does present it as not respecting boundaries, this in itself is not enough to qualify it as evil. Chaos does not respect distinctions within its realm because God has not imposed any distinctions upon it, yet only in a system of distinctions can one talk about impurity. This objection also meets the argument presented by Chambers above. God's laws and ways are not opposed by chaos, for they have never been imposed upon chaos. Chaos can be put to evil use, and the great tempter Satan even manages to lure Chaos into league against God, but this simply means that Chaos and his realm can also 'fall' (PL 2.968-1009). Thus, I agree with Robert Adams ("A Little Look into Chaos," Illustrious Evidence: Approaches to English Literature of the Early Seventeenth Century, edited by Earl Miner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 76) and Michael Lieb (The Dialectics of Creation: Patterns of Birth and Regeneration in Paradise Lost (Amherst, 1970), 16-17) that chaos is -- at minimun -- neutral. Milton even calls it "good" in Christian Doctrine (Christian Doctrine, in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, Volume 6, edited by Don M. Wolfe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973), 308), which I take to mean that chaos fulfills God's purposes unless misused. I therefore concur with John Rumrich's rejection of the view, tentatively suggested by Woodhouse and Chambers and asserted by Schwartz, that chaos is evil (John Peter Rumrich, "Uninventing Milton," Modern Philology, Vol. 87, No. 3 (February, 1990), 256).

This excursus deserves an entire article itself, which I might get around to doing next time.