Thickness and Silence--On Book I of Paradise Lost

I am reading Susan Allport's fascinating historical study on the development of our understanding of polyunsaturated fats, entitled The Queen of Fats (2006). One of the studies to which she pays a lot of attention relates to the diet of Inuit residents of Greenland, who seemed to violate the growing consensus of researchers in the 1960s (researchers wanted to discourage consumption of saturated fats and cholesterol-laden food) by virtue of consuming a high fat diet and having little heart disease. In any case, when the two researchers went to Greenland to do the work, one of them recalled the impressive silence of Greenland:

"There was absolutely no sound when you moved away from the towns. No sound and then you have the sky which goes up, up and never ends and the sea which goes down, down and never ends. You feel like a little dot in the universe," p. 19.

This deafening silence and the researcher's felt insignificance in the universe stands in marked contrast to the "tone" and "sound" I pick up as I read of the plight of Satan and his minions in hell in Book I of Paradise Lost. In fact, the two impressions I receive from Milton as I meditate on/memorize that Book is of the "thickness" of the demonic company and the resultant rustling noise that accompanies their movement. In addition, Milton has the ability to make his language so precise that he creates powerful visual associations that, if you think about them, can stay with you for quite some time. I explore some of these images in this essay.

The "Noise" in Hell

At first there is silence in hell. For the first fifty or so lines after the preface we are introduced to the insalubrious location that is "unlike the place from whence they fell" (I.75). There are, to be sure, "Floods and Whirlwinds of tempestous fire," but no voices are heard. Finally, Satan sees his second-in-command, Beelzebul, lying "weltering" by him, and "breaks the horrid silence" (I.83). From that time on there really is no more silence. Painful cries, shrieks of anguish, and even the rustling of the demonic wings create a continuous noise in the cavernous reaches of hell. When Satan speaks to the assembled multitude,

"He call'd so loud, that all the hollow Deep
of Hell resounded" (I.314-15).

One manuscript version has the word "Deeps" at the end of line 314, suggesting a reverberation of sound from one level to another. Buzzing and loud voices fill the deep niches of hell.

Hell's Thickness

One of the reasons for all the noise is the thick aggregation of demonic forces in hell. I suppose that Milton had to populate hell with enough cherubs and seraphs in order to show the nature of divine strength and victory, but if he has too many in hell the alert reader might query why so many heavenly forces rebelled against God, if God was such a good and just force in the universe. In any case, the dominant impression we get of the forces in hell is their compaction. When Satan stood on the shore of "that inflamed Sea" (I.300), he called his Legions, who lay "entranced" (i.e., to "throw in a trance") nearby. Here is their description:

"Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades
High overarch't imbow'r" (I.302-04).

Milton is effectively using the memory of his "grand tour" to Italy, where he may have met Galileo and where he, no doubt, took in so many things that later shaped his artistic vision. What a beatiful picture--of trees arching over a brook, dropping their autumnal leaves into the overladened stream. He no doubt could have drawn on his knowledge of the English countryside here, but the Italian reference adds so much class to the picture.

Well, he can't leave the thickness alone. He now turns to the forces of Pharoah overthrown in the Red Sea, which the thick demonic multitude reminds him of. The Israelites on the safe shores of the sea scanned the floating carcasses and broken chariot wheels before them:

"so thick bestrown
Abject and lost lay these, covering the Flood," (I.311-12).

Later in Book I Milton will employ an interesting device to try to sort through the thick multitude: he has demons shrink in size:

"So thick the aery crowd
Swarm'd and were strait'n'd; till the Signal giv'n
Behold a wonder! they but now who seem'd
In bigness to surpass Earth's Giant Sons
Now less than smallest Dwarfs, in narrow room
Throng numberless," (I.775-780).

Yet the "higher ups" in hell retained their shape, and they congregated well inside of the assembly hall "frequent and full" (i.e., in crowded condition--I.797).

Finishing on Vivid Word/Image or Two

But I can't finish with Milton for today without pointing to two vigorous pictures which have filled my mind in the past few days. When Satan came upon the rest of the demons, they were lying "astonished" (stupefied and motionless), but when Satan called to them, they were "abashed" and quickly rose and straightened up:

"as when men wont to watch
On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread," (I.332-333).

In other words, they spring to life with the kind of fear felt by those who shouldn't be sleeping and are discovered precisely by the people whom they fear. Up the demons jump, ready to go!

Then, in describing the horde once more, Milton again draws on biblical imagery from the Exodus and says that they arose:

"As when the potent Rod
of Amram's Son in Egypt's evil day
Wav'd round the Coast, up call'd a pitchy cloud
Of Locusts, warping on the Eastern Wind," (I.338-341).

The image I like most from these lines is the last one--"warping" on the Eastern Wind." They were thick in hell, and they rose up not simply in an orderly fashion but like the thick cloud of biblical locusts. Yet Milton takes it one step further. This cloud of locusts rose up in a sort of "warped" formation. The OED informs us that the verb warp means, among other things, "To bend, curve or twist (an object) out of shape...; also to distort, contort (the body or limb, the features)." Thus, we get, rather than a "funnel-shaped cloud" of a tornado, or a "mushroom-shaped cloud" of an atomic bomb, a "warped" or twisted or boomerang-shaped cloud of demons, like the locusts which Moses called up a few thousand years previously.

Some day I may have to write an essay bringing out all the visual words/images from Milton's PL. We could be kept for hours or days just imagining them. And our hearts, and imaginations, would never be the same.

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