MiIlon's Ood and lIe Mallev oJ CIaos

AulIov|s) JoIn BunvicI

Souvce FMLA, VoI. 110, No. 5 |Ocl., 1995), pp. 1035-1046
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John
Rumrich
Milton's God and the Matter
of Chaos
JOHN RUMRICH, associate
professor of English
at the Uni-
versity of Texas, Austin, teaches
Shakespeare
and Milton and
serves as associate editor
of
Texas Studies in Literature and
Language.
A version
of
this
essay forms part of
a book-
length study,
Milton Unbound,
forthcoming from Cambridge
University
Press.
There were to be
five great proofs of
the existence
of chaos, of
which the
first
was
the absence
of
God. The other
four
could
surely
be located. The work
of defini-
tion and
explication
could, if
done
nicely enough, occupy
the
angels forever,
as
the
contrary
work has
occupied
human
theologians.
But there is not much en-
thusiasm
for
chaos
among
the
angels.
Donald Barthelme
R
EMARKABLY LITTLE has been written on Chaos in Par-
adise
Lost, though
the
epic,
as Robert Adams
observes,
"does
make it
necessary
for us to look at
Chaos,
or think of
Chaos, again
and
again" (75).
The few who address the
subject
tend to
argue
that as an al-
legorical
character Chaos
represents
a condition that is neutral and
pas-
sive
or,
more
extremely,
ominous and evil.1 A. B.
Chambers,
for
example,
insists in a classic
essay
that "Chaos and
Night
are the enemies of
God,"
"opposed
to him
only
less than hell itself"
(65, 69)-a charge
that seems
indisputable
since in book 2 Chaos
expresses
interest in the destruction
of created order. And
yet, accepting
the alliance of Chaos and Satan at
face value raises
problems.
Milton's
metaphysics
were monistic and
materialist,
and in Paradise Lost chaos
represents
"the Womb of Nature"
that contains "dark materials to create more Worlds"
(2.911, 2.916).
If
the
poet
conceived of this matrix as
intrinsically
hostile to God and cre-
ation, any attempt
at
theodicy
would seem
pointless.
N. J. Girardot observes that
historically myth
and
religious thought
make a "dualistic distinction" between "the
absolutely
sacred and cre-
ative
being
of a transcendent 'kindlier'
God,
on the one
hand,
and the
utterly profane nothingness
and
nonbeing
of a
passively
neutral or ac-
tively belligerent
chaos"
(214).2 Similarly,
in
assessing
the break of
post-
modem chaos
theory
with
previous
attitudes toward
chaos,
N. Katherine
Hayles
writes that "creation
myths
in the
West,
from the
Babylonian epic
Enuma elish to Milton's Paradise
Lost,
depict
chaos as a
negative state,
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Milton's God and the Matter
of
Chaos
a disordered void which must be
conquered
for
creation to occur"
(Introduction 2).
Yet even in re-
ceived traditions of the dualistic
West,
there are al-
ternatives to these
depictions:
"The
apparently
fundamental contrast between chaos and cosmos
may
reveal more of a dialectical
relationship...
In the broadest
sense,
chaos stands for the root 'oth-
erness' and
'strangeness'
of existence and the ironic
indeterminacy
of all human constructs"
(Girardot
214). Contemporary philosophy
and science are
particularly
aware of such ironic
indeterminacy.
Whether the
subject
of
investigation
is
language,
light, matter,
or human
subjectivity, postmodern
theorists
usually
find that
phenomena, except
when
considered from an
artificially
narrow
perspective,
are not
equal
to
themselves,
that
they
are consti-
tuted in various
ways by alterity.3
Postmoderisms
thus react
against
the
tendency
to reduce "the dif-
ferent and the
changing"
to "the identical and the
permanent" (Prigogine
and
Stengers 293).
This
essay argues
that an awareness of ironic in-
determinacy
is
implicit throughout
Paradise Lost;
Milton
recognized
that
identity
and otherness are
always
mixed. Scholars who note that indetermi-
nacy springing
from chaos is
pervasive
in Paradise
Lost-"built into the
very
structure of the cosmos"-
characterize chaos as
insidiously evil,
as
"discord,
passivity,
weakness ... an
intimate,
and
ultimately
invincible
enemy" (Adams 85). My
discussion
draws on
twentieth-century
chaos
theory
to
suggest
instead that a
profound appreciation
of chaotic in-
determinacy distinguishes
Milton's
idiosyncratic
theology, political theory,
and aesthetics. I
compare
Milton's
representation
of creation with the one in
the Enuma elish because the ancient
epic
has be-
come a
telling point
of reference for Milton schol-
ars,
as
Hayles's generalization confirms,
as well as
for feminist critics of
patriarchy (Daly; Keller).
Those who describe Milton's chaos and its influ-
ence in creation as
passively
ominous or
actively
evil not
only acquiesce
in a narrative
impression
left
early
in the
epic; they
also
unjustifiably
assume
Milton's endorsement of traditional Western
philo-
sophical
and
religious
attitudes toward matter.
The occidental bias
against
matter reflects the
theology
and
political
environment of
early
Chris-
tianity.
The church fathers dammed
up
some of
Christianity's deepest
Hellenistic tributaries
by
concluding
that matter was not
intrinsically
evil. To
have followed
Neoplatonic philosophies by desig-
nating
matter
innately
evil would have meant es-
tablishing
a dualistic
religion.
Dualist doctrine
places
matter outside God's
dominion, precluding
belief in a
single omnipotent deity
and undermin-
ing
faith in
any order,
cosmic or
civil,
for those
who live in a material world.
Hence, according
to
the
Augustinian ontology
that dominated Christian
ethics from the fourth
century through
Milton's
time,
evil is not substantial but
volitional,
a willful
estrangement
from the divine source of all
being.
Decay
into
nothingness
looms as the ultimate out-
come of that
estrangement.
The
early
church thus
deemed matter
acceptable,
as
passive
stuff created
by
God from
nothing
and then ordered into
shape.
Instead of inherent
malignancy,
it was
proximity
to
nothingness
that
explained
matter's sinful tenden-
cies. As Dennis Danielson
demonstrates,
seven-
teenth-century religious writing
on the creation
fairly
crackles with the ominous moral
charge
of
"nothing" (33-43).
The
preoccupation
with
nothing
went
beyond
theology
to
pervade
Renaissance culture.
Spenser's
description
of
humanity's original clay
as
"base,
vile,
and next to
nought"
assumes there are ethical
dangers
in the
vicinity
of nonexistence
(Hymne of
Heavenly
Love
[Minor
Poems
106]). Indeed,
in
Renaissance
English naught
and
naughty
have a
remarkably pejorative force,
and texts of the
pe-
riod
engage obsessively
in sexual
wordplay
on
nothing.
The word accumulates
apocalyptic signif-
icance in
King Lear,
where the threat of
nothing
finds its most
profound expression.
While Christian
orthodoxy may
have acknowl-
edged
this
Neoplatonic thing
of darkness as its
own,
therefore,
it also reckoned
ontologically precarious
matter and the virtues associated with it to be mar-
ginal
and inferior-Sancho Panzas or
Spenserian
dwarves
among possible goods4 Furthermore,
mat-
ter in the form of human flesh was
thought
to
require discipline
and direction before it could
achieve even these
lowly
virtues. For Plato "the
mother and
receptacle,"
or "mother
substance,"
must be
forcefully persuaded
to
accept form,
inso-
far as it can
(Timaeus 51a-b).
His
widely
influential
apology
for material creations also
portrays
stub-
born
original
matter as
ugly
and
malignant:
"God
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John
Rumrich
made them as far as
possible
the fairest and
best,
out of
things
which were not fair and
good" (53b).
Eschewing
dualism in
theory, Augustinian
Chris-
tianity sponsored
in
practice
an ethical dualism
suited to the
imperial government
of church and
state
(Pagels 98-126).
The
ruling principle
of
spirit
or mind was associated with the
masculine,
and
matter
was,
as in
Plato,
identified as a feminine
and maternal
principle
that
required formal,
hierar-
chical control.
Analogously,
the boisterous masses
were believed
naturally
to need correction and di-
rection before
they
could
aspire
to the
appropriate
minor virtues. Such doctrine and
discipline
re-
mained a
commonplace
of
political theory through-
out the
English
Renaissance.5
A
corresponding
bias
against
the first matter runs
through
mainstream
seventeenth-century
commen-
taries on biblical creation.
Typically, they deploy
classical
terminology
and,
like
Milton, designate
the realm of the first matter
by
the
pagan
term
chaos
(Danielson 28-49).
Chaos so often
appears
in these commentaries to mean the same
thing
as
the
first
matter that the two terms cannot
clearly
be
differentiated. Chaos means
primarily
the limitless
place-a
vast
gulf
or
abyss-filled
with the first
matter
and, by extension,
also the
utterly
confused
condition of that matter.
Indeterminacy
of extent
or constitution is central to both
meanings.
Disdain for the
unsightly
and obstinate matter of
chaos is evident both in
seventeenth-century
reli-
gious writing
and
among
Milton's
literary precur-
sors. Joshua
Sylvester's
influential 1605 translation
of du Bartas's La semaine
depicts
"Chaos most di-
forme" as "an
ugly medly"
and
"profound Abisse,
/
Full of Disorder and fell mutinies"
(9-11). Writing
in
1621,
the
prelate-poet
John Andrewes describes
the chaotic first matter as "an
empty, rude,
un-
shapen,
and
indigested lump" (43).
Cromwell's
chaplain,
Peter
Sterry,
observes that man is consti-
tuted
by
form and
matter,
which
correspond
to "the
light
of
God,
and his own
proper darkness,"
"the
darkness or
nothingness,
which is the Creatures
own,
is the
proper ground
of sin"
(Danielson 38).
In The Faerie
Queene,
Spenser,
Milton's most ac-
knowledged poetic influence, portrays
chaos as
"the wide wombe of the world" that lies "in hateful
darknesse and in
deepe
horrore"
(3.6.36).6 Spen-
ser's
Hymne
in Honour
of
Love states that the world
"out of
great
Chaos
ugly prison crept" (Minor
Poems
58). Joseph
Beaumont,
an
exponent
of the
Spenserian poetic line, imagines
the
original
mat-
ter-"one
single step
/ From
simple nothing"-as
wallowing
"in the
gulf
of its own monstrous Dark-
ness"
(Kirkconnell 116).
The dark
deformity
of chaos was also a standard
tenet of natural
philosophy
from the thirteenth to
the
eighteenth century,
as the
encyclopedic
tradition
surveyed by
Kester Svendsen confirms
(52-53).
Divine love set the
warring
elements of nature at
peace
in an order
defining beauty: "Ayre
hated
earth,
and water hated
fyre,"
writes
Spenser,
"Till
Love relented their rebellious
yre" (Hymne
in Hon-
our
of
Love
[Minor
Poems
83-84]).
A
unifying
principle
of
English
Renaissance culture was that
the violence of chaos returns when love is absent.
Thus Romeo invokes a
scientific-theological para-
dox to
express
the dissonance of his
experience
of
love in the midst of civil strife:
Why then, O brawling
love!
O loving
hate!
O
any thing,
of
nothing
first
[create]!
O
heavy lightness,
serious
vanity,
Misshapen
chaos of well
[-seeming]
forms ...
(1.1.176-79;
brackets in
orig.)
Similarly,
in a
private
observation that foretells the
domestic and societal discord to
follow,
Othello
attributes
cosmogonic
force to his bond with Des-
demona: "when I love thee
not,
/ Chaos is come
again" (3.3.91-92).
In
striking
contrast to the often harsh
disapproval
of chaos in Renaissance
theology, science,
and lit-
erary culture,
Milton in Christian Doctrine de-
scribes the
confused,
disordered first matter as
good
in itself and the
necessary
basis of a
good
creation:
It
is,
I
say,
a demonstration of God's
supreme power
and
goodness
that he should not shut
up
this hetero-
geneous
and substantial virtue within
himself,
but
should
disperse, propagate
and extend it as far
as,
and
in whatever
way,
he wills. For this
original
matter was
not an evil
thing,
nor to be
thought
of as worthless: it
was
good,
and it contained the seeds of all
subsequent
good.
It was a
substance,
and could
only
have been
derived from the source of all substance. It was in a
confused and disordered state at
first,
but afterwards
God made it ordered and beautiful.
(308)
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Milton's God and the Matter
of
Chaos
In Milton's heretical
theology
a benevolent God
takes the
place
of ominous
nothingness
as matter's
source. Paradise Lost is not
always
consistent
within
itself,
much less with Christian
Doctrine,
and its
perspectives
on chaos
vary.
Yet as the realm
of the
good
first
matter,
chaos should not
appear
to
be God's
enemy,
not if Milton's
theology
of matter
has
any bearing
on Paradise Lost.
The dualistic case
against
chaos in Paradise
Lost is nonetheless
strong.
Indeterminate
by
defi-
nition,
chaos has no
boundaries,
no
circumscribing
form,
and in Milton's
narrative,
creation occurs at
the moment when the creator institutes determi-
nate boundaries:
Thus farr
extend,
thus farr
thy bounds,
This be
thy just Circumference, O
World.
Thus God the Heav'n
created,
thus the Earth....
(7.230-32)
It seems inevitable that chaos should
appear sym-
bolically,
if not
theologically,
as anticreation as
well as antecreation.
One
way
to
negotiate
this
apparent impasse
be-
tween Milton's
poetry
and his
religious
doctrine is to
discount the
pertinence
of his
theology
to "the realm
of
symbols" (Schwartz 33). Locating
in ancient
Mesopotamian
traditions
symbolic precedent
for
scriptural prohibitions against transgressing
created
order,
Regina
Schwartz
argues
that these values in-
form Paradise Lost at a more basic and
symboli-
cally meaningful
level than Milton's
theological
principles
do
(24, 26).
It is
possible, however,
to
take account of the
allegorical
character Chaos and
narrative facts
concerning
chaos without
resorting
to the claim that Milton in his
poetry
contradicts
fundamental
principles
of his monistic
theology.
In Schwartz's
reading,
failure to observe the
boundaries established at creation affronts the cre-
ator and
partakes
of the
indeterminacy
of
chaos,
"a
greater
threat in Milton's moral universe than the
Satanic one of a definite willed disobedience"
(18).
But
scrupulous
observance of limits and bound-
aries,
as
scripture enjoins through
the ceremonial
and
dietary law,
is in Paradise Lost linked not to
the
sanctity
of unfallen creation but to
loss,
fallen-
ness,
and makeshift
safeguards against
further en-
croachment
by
sin. The
categories
of sacred and
profane
affect discussion of the forbidden fruit
only
when the
nearly
fallen Adam advances a
pharisaic
justification
for his
projected
sin:
[P]erhaps
the Fact
Is not so hainous
now,
foretasted
Fruit,
Profan'd first
by
the
Serpent, by
him first
Made common and unhallowd ere our taste....
(9.928-31)
The holiness of the
garden,
destined "haunt of
Seales and
Orcs,"
has little
bearing
on the decision
to evict Adam and Eve. As Michael
insists,
"God
attributes to
place
/ No
sanctitie,"
at least not to
place
in and of itself
(11.835-37). Similarly,
Milton
traces the
dichotomy
of clean and unclean
deriving
from shame and the
recognition
of nakedness to a
postlapsarian point
of
origin,
not to the
original
order
(9.1091-98).
In the unfallen world remembrance of creation
and
praise
of the creator do not evoke what Michael
calls the "servil fear" of
trespass
fostered
by
"strict
Laws"
(12.304-05). Synesthetic
confusion abounds
in Milton's
heaven,
where
ordinary
limits are meant
to be overcome with ease.
Spirits
can "either Sex as-
sume,
or both"
(1.424);
"all Heart
they
live,
all
Head,
all
Eye,
all
Eare,
/ All
Intellect,
all
Sense,"
with no
anatomical restriction of function
(6.350-51).
An-
gels literally
smell
good
news
coming (3.135-37).
Observance of boundaries even coincides with
transgression
where "full measure
onely
bounds /
excess,"
and celebrations are most
regular
"when
most
irregular they
seem"
(5.639-40, 5.624).
The
angels
who venture
past
the
gates
of heaven to in-
vestigate
creation and to
glorify
God thus
indulge
in "no excess / That reaches
blame,
but rather mer-
its
praise
/ The more it seems excess"
(3.696-98).
Small wonder that Gabriel
glows
with
anger
when
Satan calls him a "limitarie Cherube"
(4.971).
Boundaries do
play
a crucial role in Miltonic cre-
ation. As in
present-day
chaos
theory, however,
they
allow for
productive
and
dynamic
disorder within
the framework of an
evolving, larger
order
(Pri-
gogine
and
Stengers 287-306).
Boundaries estab-
lish a
space
"between order and disorder ... where
previously
there was
only
bifurcation"
(Hayles,
Chaos Bound
27).
The
inspired
authorial voice of
Paradise Lost
expresses
the desire to cross bound-
aries, which, though recognized
as
risky,
consis-
tently appears
noble and
godlike.
In the realm of
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John
Rumrich
love,
also
risky,
a
comparison
of human and an-
gelic
sex
suggests
that the more refined the crea-
ture,
the more
obviously
the
impulse
to
join
recalls
the boundless elemental mix.
Angelic partners
ex-
perience
their amorous
pleasure
in
completely
crossing
the
boundary
between them.
Apocalyptic
love-when "God shall be All in All"
(3.341)-un-
mistakably
reflects the wild
energy
of
chaos,
as the
consciousness of what was once formal "restraint"
inspires
an
endlessly
"luxurious"
profusion
of
plea-
sure and
joy (9.209).
This sense of the
apocalypse
is not
unique
to Paradise Lost. The reward envi-
sioned for Milton's beloved
Diodati,
for
example,
is furious with bacchanalian
pleasure:
"Cantus
ubi,
choreisque furit lyra
mista
beatis,
I Festa Sionaeo
bacchantur &
Orgia Thyrso"
'where there is
singing,
where the
lyre
revels
madly, mingled
with choirs
beatific,
and festal
orgies
run
riot,
in bacchante
fashion,
with the
thyrsus
of Zion'
(Epitaphium
Da-
monis
218-19).
The
chronology
of the end time ex-
plicitly
draws on
descriptions
of chaos:
"beyond
is
all
abyss,
/
Eternitie,
whose end no
eye
can reach"
(PL 12.555-56).
Far from
being invariably
hostile to
creation,
the
energy
of chaos seems
vitally
involved with crea-
tures'
aspirations
and erotic desires. To be
sure,
from
Satan's
perspective
in book
2,
the state of chaos
appears
warlike. This
early description
does not in-
validate the erotic associations of
chaos,
however.
Like
battle,
sex
requires
its
participants
to mix it
up,
so to
speak,
a chiastic intersection that a Ho-
meric
Raphael acknowledges
when in a
single
line
he uses a
single
verb-"meet"-for both
loving
and
fighting (6.93).7
Yet Milton
scholarship
has charac-
teristically
defined relations between the disorder
of chaos and the order of God
exclusively
as ad-
versarial: "the war in heaven is
only
the
beginning,
not the
end,
of the battle
against
Chaos. It is
fought
again
at
creation,
at the
fall,
with Cain and
Abel,
at
Babel and the
flood;
all of human
history
is
played
out on this battlefield"
(Schwartz 38).
This
synopsis
is
selective, however,
even as a
description
of the
fallen order. Satan's embrace of Sin
precedes
the
war in
heaven;
Adam and Eve's lust
produces Cain;
Cain's
daughters
seduce the sons of
God;
the union
of these
couples brings
forth the warlike
giants-
and so on and so on: "lust hard
by hate,"
as Milton's
bawdy
diction has it
(1.417).
The construction of chaotic disorder as
belliger-
ence destructive to civilization indicates that the
concept
of chaos has
political
ramifications in ad-
dition to its
religious
and ethical ones.8
Mythologi-
cally,
narratives that feature the violent defeat and
"permanent
suppression"
of a hostile chaos often
function to celebrate "the heroic
finality
of some
authoritarian order"
(Girardot 216).
The Enuma
elish is such a
myth.
A
Babylonian
creation
epic
that influenced the Genesis
account,
it has been
cited as the ultimate
mythological
source of Mil-
ton's martial
representation
of chaos
(Schwartz
26-
31).
Milton's account of creation differs from the
Enuma
elish, however, by presenting
nonviolence
where the
Babylonian story proposes
violence.
During
the creation narrative in Paradise
Lost,
chaos is described as
"outrageous"
and "wild," with
"furious winds / And
surging
waves" that move the
divine Word to describe it as "troubl'd"
(7.212-16).
The
peace
he bids it is such
peace
as
might quiet
stormy waters, however,
not foes at war. And the
arms that the creator wields
against
his chaotic sea
of troubles are not the thunder and terror that he
uses to blast the
enemy angels
but his
ministering
word and
"golden Compasses,"
which are meant to
circumscribe,
not
defeat,
the materials for a new
world
(7.225).
By contrast, Marduk,
the heroic creator in the
Enuma
elish,
butchers the maternal chaos
deity,
Tiamat,
and builds creation out of the
pieces.
Scholarly
examination of the textual record has re-
vealed
that,
like Perseus
among
the
Greeks,
Marduk
emerges
in his heroic role
during
the
period
when
a
patriarchal
order of
kingship
established itself
throughout
the Near East
(Ricoeur 176).9
The
Enuma elish thus
betrays
an
impulse
to
ground
the
patriarchal
order of
kingship
in cosmic
hierarchy,
affording
monarchical
prerogative
divine
right.
Admittedly,
the
peace-wishing
creator in Paradise
Lost also
suppresses chaos,
but his
suppression
is
temporary,
and once creation has
occurred,
chaos
is left as boundless and wild as the creator found
it,
always
available to substantiate alternatives to the
established order
(2.915-16).
For
Milton, politicized
constructions of chaos
would have been evident not
only
in ancient
my-
thologies
but also in
seventeenth-century
absolut-
ist
ideologies
that he combated. Richard
III,
who
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Milton's God and the Matter
of
Chaos
was viewed
by
Tudor
propagandists
as a
living
symbol
of the evil strife
quieted by
their
divinely
appointed
monarchs,
has a
body shaped "[l]ike
to
a chaos" in
Shakespeare's depiction (Henry VI,
Part 3
3.2.161).
In Troilus and Cressida
Ulysses
fa-
mously
insists that violation of social
hierarchy
in-
evitably produces
the "mere
oppugnancy"
of chaos
in
every
realm of
order,
from the
personal
to the
cosmic
(1.3.111).
In Leviathan Hobbes also invokes
chaos to
deplore
the
consequences
of rebellion:
When Christian men,
take not their Christian Sover-
aign,
for God's
prophet
...
they
must suffer them-
selves to bee lead ...
by
some fellow
subjects,
that
can bewitch them
by
slander of the
government,
into
rebellion . . . and
by
this means
destroying
all
laws,
both divine and
humane,
reduce all
Order,
Govern-
ment,
and
Society,
to the first Chaos of
Violence,
and
Civill Warre.
(299)
For Hobbes rebellion
against
the
sovereign
returns
society
to a state of chaotic violence. In a moment
worthy
of Marduk he maintains that the "natural
punishment"
for such rebellion is
"slaughter" (254).
In Milton's
epic
the
person
who most desires to
establish "some authoritarian order" and
definitively
to
suppress
chaos is Satan.
Ironically,
Satan's rebel-
lion
against
God's
authority
is
sparked by
the an-
nouncement of a
change
that he takes as detrimental
to his hierarchical
position (5.659-65).
Once
fallen,
the rebel
angels
are inclined to
rigidity
and
parodic
orderliness-the correlatives of their fixed
opposi-
tion to God-and their
increasingly
obdurate bod-
ies, though susceptible
to wounds and
pain,
are
apparently
no
longer supple enough
for them to
make love
(4.509-11). Instead, they occupy
them-
selves with
place
and
status, boundary
and
limit,
and observe the externals of distinction with
punc-
tilious
grandiosity
or
servility.
Not
surprisingly, then,
Satan's successful mission
on earth
impairs
chaos. Satan's child Death uses a
"Mace
petrific"
to fix the once indeterminate mat-
ter,
now "bound with
Gorgonian rigor
not to move,"
and secures the structure "with Pinns of Adamant /
And
Chains," making
"all
fast,
too fast"
(10.294,
10.297, 10.318-19).
The
comparison
of Death strik-
ing
chaos to the
tyrannical
Xerxes
whipping
"th'
indignant
waves" of the
Hellespont
underscores the
absolutist
aspect
of this massive edifice
(10.306-10).
Double-crossed Chaos
responds
with ire to the
mortised
rigor
of Death's "Pontiface"
(10.348):
[O]n
either side
Disparted
Chaos over built
exclaim'd,
And with
rebounding surge
the barrs
assaild,
That scornd his
indignation.... (10.415-18)
Chaos cannot undo the division to his realm now
"disparted."
The fall has
imposed
new order on his
realm: the
tyrannically oppressive
structure of evil.10
The Satanic
suppression
of chaos-in which
Death
appears
as the ultimate
silencing
of ironic
indeterminacy-echoes
in Milton's
epic
version of
biblical
history
when Nimrod erects a
great
tower.
"Though
of Rebellion others he
accuse," setting
the
example
followed
by tyrants
of future
ages,
Nimrod
is himself the rebel-"Above his Brethren to him-
self
assuming
/ Autoritie
usurpt"
and
warring
on
"such as refuse /
Subjection
to his
Empire tyran-
nous"
(12.37, 12.65-66, 12.31-32).
God
responds
derisively
to Nimrod
by reaffirming
the
power
of
chaos
against
the architectural
symbol
of the
ty-
rant's
presumption:
[G]reat laughter
was in Heav'n
And
looking down,
to see the hubbub
strange
And hear the
din;
thus was the
building
left
Ridiculous,
and the work Confusion nam'd.
(12.59-62)
The connection with chaos sounds
distinctly
in
"the
din,"
"the hubbub
strange,"
and the "confu-
sion" enforced
by
God on those who would
ignore
what Girardot calls the "ironic
indeterminacy
of all
human constructs"
(cf.
PL
2.951, 2.1040,
2.897).
Raphael imagines
a similar if milder
response by
God to the theoretical
impositions
of Ptolemaic as-
tronomers who contrive "to save
appearances"
and
to
protect
the
political ideologies
that,
as Galileo
learned, rely
on
appearances (8.81).
In
attempting
to
deny
or
suppress indeterminacy, tyrants
become
vulnerable to God's derision-as well as to the in-
evitable
vengeance
of chaos.
The most memorable edifices in Milton's works
-the
bridge
across
chaos, Pandemonium,
and
Nimrod's tower-are monolithic and
tyrannical
in
aspect
and at least
implicitly targets
of heaven's
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John
Rumrich
scorn. A
contrary
architectural
effort,
envisioned
in
Areopagitica,
is that of the
temple
of truth:
[W]hen every
stone is laid
artfully together,
it cannot
be united into a
continuity,
it can but be
contiguous
in
this
world;
neither can
every piece
of the
building
be
of one
form; nay
rather the
perfection
consists in
this,
that out of
many
moderate varieties and
brotherly
dis-
similitudes that are not
vastly disproportional,
arises
the
goodly
and
graceful symmetry
that commends the
whole
pile
and structure.
(555)
The
temple
cannot be built without the discord of
sects or without tolerance of
them, though
a
tyrant
might attempt
to
impose uniformity.
Furthermore,
the structure includes disorder and
disproportion,
since the order of truth
grows
out of
"brotherly
dis-
similitudes." For Milton the created order of mate-
rial
being
in time cannot advance without disorder.
Politically
as well as
symbolically, then,
Milton's
epic depiction
of the
pervasive
influence of chaos
seems consistent with his
theology
of matter. But
strong
narrative evidence of the
malignancy
of
chaos remains. The anarch
supports
Satan's mis-
sion and
menacingly proclaims,
"Havoc and
spoil
and ruin are
my gain" (2.1008).
For this reason Wil-
liam
Empson says
that Denis Saurat's identification
of
preexistent
matter with God in Paradise Lost
"makes nonsense of most of
[the]
narrative"
(144).
Moreover,
Milton chose to
represent
chaos
through
allegory
in an
increasingly
nominalist and antischo-
lastic
seventeenth-century
intellectual
climate,
in
which
allegorical
narrative had become "an ideal
vehicle for
presenting
deficient
ontology,"
as Ste-
phen
Fallon writes
(182).
Milton thus seems to bol-
ster
formally
the notion that chaos is an
enemy
of
divine creation.
And
yet,
for the materialist
Milton,
deficient on-
tology
does not
necessarily imply
a loss of
being
that results from evil. The
ontological deficiency
of chaos indicates instead a material
potency
that
is the
precondition
of creation. Whereas
Augustine
had no
equivalent
of chaos in his
philosophy
be-
cause he believed in creation ex
nihilo, Milton,
an
exponent
of creation ex
deo,
believes that the realm
of
potential
creation
possesses
a
shadowy
existence
of its own. In a realm
prior
to
creation, any
onto-
logical
lack
conveyed by
Milton's
allegory
means
only
that the matter has not
yet undergone
crea-
tion. The realm or state of
being
that Chaos
speaks
for would
profit
from the uncreation-not the
per-
version-of the
world,
since his
anarchy
would be
augmented. Empson's
narrative-based
objection
to
chaos
ignores
the
principle
that
"allegorical agents
reveal
by
their actions not internal
psychologies
but the abstractions ... that lie behind them"
(Fal-
lon
173).
The
other-speaking polysemy
of
allegory,
"leaning away
at various
oblique angles
from sol-
dierly directness,"
as Gordon
Teskey writes,
makes
it an ideal mode for
expressing
the ironic indeter-
minacy
of chaos
(398).
In Milton's
allegory
chaos thus
represents
an
indeterminate material
principle
whose
complex
disorder
persists dynamically
in
any
order. One
consequence
of a creation that
originates
in and in-
cludes
indeterminacy
is that certain
knowledge
is
impossible,
even
among
the
angels." They
can be
and
regularly
are
tricked, mistaken,
or befuddled
so that at critical moments
they
stand
passive,
not
knowing
what to do
despite
God's announcements.
At one of the most crucial
points
in the
poem,
a
touchy
and less than efficacious Gabriel misreads
or
only partially
understands the
significance
of a
sign displayed
in the heavens
by God,
who is com-
pared
to a "careful Plowman doubting" what action
to take
(4.983).
The
consequence
of this most un-
fathomable moment is that Satan
goes free,
his
ap-
prehension by
the
angelic guard
neutralized.
The excessive
appearance
of
Eve,
whose "loveli-
ness" makes her seem
superior
to
Adam,
even "ab-
solute," though
she is
supposed
to be his
inferior,
richly conveys
this sense that
things
are constitu-
tionally unpredictable (see 8.534-59).
Eve is eroti-
cally perplexing
to
Adam,
more
puzzling
than the
vast heavens in their
apparent
excessiveness. His
confusion over Eve's elaborate "Ornament" dis-
tinctly
echoes his confusion over the
"incompre-
hensible ...
disproportions"
of celestial motions:
why
should a
good
creation
appear
excessive at the
cosmic or the human level
(8.20-27)? Raphael
never seems less
adept
than when he recommends
that Adam
flay
Eve's "outside" and see how it alters
her
person
for the worse
(8.568).2
This tactlessness
is also
doctrinally suspect,
since Adam has
just
in-
formed the
angel
that Eve is born from the womb
of Adam's flesh and is
shaped
in the
image
of his
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Milton's God and the Matter
of
Chaos
heart's desire. As in Milton's
theological descrip-
tion of the first
matter,
she contains the seed "of all
subsequent good."
The
capacity
of her "fruitful
Womb" to
bring
forth "multitudes" and
eventually
the
savior,
her "Seed," makes Eve the human coun-
terpart
of
chaos,
vital to the defeat of Satan's
tyr-
anny (5.388, 4.474, 10.1031).
Even if Milton had not called chaos a womb,13 its
generative capacity
would be
apparent
in the
pattern
that Satan follows
during
his violent encounter with
chaos,
an
intensely
recursive
pattern
that
pervades
his
activity
in Paradise Lost. When he
persuades
his
daughter
to
open gates
that should remain
closed,
the
"impetuous
recoile and
jarring
sound," the noise
of "Harsh
Thunder,"
and the
"redounding
smoak
and
ruddy
flame" that
spew
into the
abyss
recall the
firing
of Satan's
artillery during
the war in heaven
(2.880, 2.882, 2.889).
The fabrication and use of
that
artillery,
which are
paradigms
of Satan's modus
operandi, anticipate
the
imperial
construction of
Pandemonium. Satan mines the
"originals
of Nature
in thir crude /
Conception," intruding
on the womb
of heaven and then
perverting
"with suttle Art" the
natural
process by
which these
originals
would have
been transformed into
gems
and
gold (6.511-13).
The
discharge
of Satan's
"deep-throated Engins"
into the
air,
which "all her entrails
tore,"
recalls the
birth of
Death,
who
"breaking
violent
way
/ Tore
through [Sin's]
entrails"
(6.586, 6.588, 2.782-83).
Sin's
entry
into
being
follows the same
pattern;
she
explodes
with flame from the
original
womb of
evil-Satan's
imagination.
With the
cooperation
of his
children, then,
Satan
fires himself out of the "hollow
Abyss"
of hell and
into
chaos,
the first locale he is said to
"tempt"
(2.518, 2.404).
He intrudes on "the secrets of the
hoarie
deep,"
until
yet
another
fiery
blast
propels
him,
and he arrives in the
vicinity
of the
allegorical
anarch. As in his
temptation
of
Eve,
Satan lies to
achieve his
ends,
promising
rewards of chaotic
disorder when in fact he will
impose
the
tyranny
of
evil
through
his son.
Continuing
the
pattern
of uter-
ine intrusion and
abortive, explosive birth,
Satan
departs
from chaos "like a
Pyramid
of fire" and
proceeds
to violate a series of enclosed
spaces,
in-
cluding
the womb of Eve's
imagination,
where he
is
compared
to
gunpowder
that
ignites
before be-
ing
stored in its "Tun"
(2.1013, 4.816).
At last he
reaches the "sweet recess of Eve" and
accomplishes
his mission
(9.456).
Though
no more inclined to wickedness than
Chaos
is,
Eve makes a
likely target
for Satan be-
cause of the lethal
potential
of her womb as a
weapon against
God. The
tempter
is lured to her
just
as he was
originally
drawn to the womb
lying
beneath the surface of heaven for its destructive
potency.
Satan's
explosive
invention
betrays
his
tyrannical
and envious desire to
usurp
creative
po-
tency
and direct it to destructive ends.
Although
the
produce
of Eve's womb is
typically compared
to
fruit,
not
explosive charges,
Satan
eventually
accomplishes
the fatal
metamorphosis
of her chil-
dren into "food for
powder,"
in Falstaff's ruthless
phrasing (Henry IV,
Part 1
4.2.65).
Satan's evil
eminence manifests itself
precisely
in this
tendency
to foul
things
at their
generative
seat,
according
to
the narrator:
[F]or whence,
But from the Author of all ill could
Spring
So
deep
a
malice,
to confound the race
Of mankind in one
root,
and Earth with hell
To
mingle
and involve....
(2.380-84)
Maternal Eve is Milton's human
symbol
of the
chaotic
potency
of the first matter. As W. B. C. Wat-
kins
suggests, "[M]atter
is to all intents and
pur-
poses
the feminine
aspect
of God"
(63). Although
in Paradise Lost the state of chaos is
spoken
for
by
a masculine
anarch,
his rule is no
rule;
he
expresses
an absence of control. Chaos is the realm of "Eldest
Night" (2.894),
even
though
like Eve in the
pres-
ence of
Raphael, Night
never utters a word
during
the anarch's conference with Satan. It is the
"Scep-
ter of old
Night"
that divine creation has
weakened,
and it is her standard that Satan
promises
to erect
in
reducing
the world "to her
original
darkness"
(2.1002, 2.984).
Her
relatively
voluble masculine
companion represents only
the anarchic lack of a
principle
of determinative force and
government.
The consort to this absence of
control,
"Eternal
Night"
is not
merely
"old,"
she is
"unessential,"
"uncreated,"
"unoriginal"-that is,
without
begin-
ning (3.18, 2.1002, 2.439, 2.150, 10.477).
The
ety-
mology
of
anarch,
a term Milton seems to have
coined from the Greek
an-arkhe,
indicates that the
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John
Rumrich
eternal
night
of chaos is without
beginning
as well
as without rule. Milton's God calls the
abyss
infi-
nite and boundless: "Boundless the
Deep,
because
I am who fill / Infinitude"
(7.168-69). By using
the
scripturally
authoritative "I
am,"
as he also does
when he introduces himself to Adam-"Whom
thou
soughtst
I am"
(8.316)-God
indicates that
he describes himself as well as chaos. If the
deep
is
infinite, eternal,
and
boundless,
how can it also be
Night's
realm and be feminine?
I
suggest
that chaos is God's
womb,
essential to
his
deity.
God is the confused and dark matter of
chaos even as he is the creative virtue of
light.'4
Schwartz stresses Chaos's "unstable
visage"
to
convey
the lack of definition of his
anarchy (18)
but fails to note that the face is not
represented
as
disfigured
or
discomposed-as
Satan's is on "Ni-
phates top" (3.742)
or as Adam's and Eve's are
after the Fall.
Instead,
Chaos's
visage
is "incom-
pos'd,"
as God's essence is "increate"
(2.989, 3.6;
my italics).
The anarch
represents
the infinite ma-
terial dimension of
God,
which has not
yet
been
ordained for creation. Without such material
po-
tency
in
God,
there could not be creation ex
deo.'s
Alone
among
Milton scholars Walter
Clyde Curry
seriously
entertains the idea that chaos
might
be an
essential dimension of God.
Curry acknowledges
that the antitrinitarian Milton terms chaos
infinite,
limitless, boundless,
and eternal and that Milton
assigns
these traits in
poetry
and doctrine
solely
to
God. Yet
Curry
does not
accept
the inference: "could
...
matter,
the substrate of all created
things, [be]
a
'part'
or a diversification of God's essence? If
so,
Milton cannot
escape
the
charge
of
being
a rank
materialist and a
pantheist" (34-35).
The
argument
begs
the
question:
chaos cannot be infinite and thus
essential to God because
"only
God is infinite"
(145).
The
adjective "rank," moreover, neatly
sums
up
the
contempt
that materialism has
historically
elicited within orthodox
Christianity
and
suggests
why
chaos in Paradise Lost has been devalued.
The
allegorical
character of Chaos
speaks
for
the
part
of the
deity, arguably feminine,
over which
the eternal father does not exercise
control,
from
which,
in other
words,
the father is absent as an ac-
tive,
governing agent.
God's maternal dimension is
highlighted
in his self-revelation before creation in
Milton's
epic:
Boundless the
Deep,
because I am who fill
Infinitude,
nor vacuous the
space
Though
I uncircumscrib'd
my
self
retire,
And
put
not forth
my goodness,
which is free
To act or
not,
Necessitie and Chance
Approach
not
mee,
and what I will is Fate.
(7.168-73)
Chaos is boundless and infinite because God fills
it. Chaos is "not vacuous"-that
is,
it continues to
be
filled-although
God refrains from
being
there
as a
governing agent.
How can God both fill the
space
and not be there?
Perhaps
the terms
"my
self" and
"my goodness"
do not refer to all of
God,
just
as "I am who fill infinitude" or "Whom thou
sought'st
I am" do not.
Although
God's self-his
actualized,
volitional
persona-is
absent from
chaos,
"the
heterogeneous
and substantial virtue"
of his material
potency
remains, filling
the infinite
(Christian
Doctrine
308).
Milton's materialist
understanding
of the
deity
is
implicitly paradoxical.
God cannot take control
of his material
potency
without
sacrificing
his free-
dom of will and
sovereignty,
as Milton insists in
Christian Doctrine: "God cannot
rightly
be called
Actus
Purus,
or
pure actuality
... for thus he could
do
nothing except
what he does
do,
and he would
do that of
necessity, although
in fact he is
omnipo-
tent and
utterly
free in his actions"
(145-46).
If
God's
potential
rests latent in unformed
matter,
chaos should be
recognized
as the realm that sub-
stantiates his
sovereignty.16 Furthermore,
where
there is
potential
for
good,
there is also
potential
for evil. "Evil into the mind of God or Man /
May
come and
go,"
Adam
insists,
and the narrator con-
firms that chaos
supplies
the material for the cre-
ation of
hell, "by
curse / Created evil"
(5.117-18,
2.622-23).
Without the
indeterminacy,
the
potential
for
otherness,
that chaos
constitutes,
Satan could
not
tempt
humankind or even conceive of success.
Indeed,
the
psychological
correlative of the
poten-
tial for otherness that underlies created order is
freedom of
will,
the foundation of Milton's ethical
beliefs at least since the
composition
of
Areopagit-
ica
(Danielson 49).
Milton's
allegorical personification
of chaos
sig-
nifies an absence of God that is
always already
present-the vital,
feminine core of his
omnip-
otence. If he cannot live with
her, except
in the
1043
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Milton's God and the Matter
of
Chaos
shadowy allegorical guise
of the
stuttering
anarch
with a
crumbling face,
he also cannot live without
her. In certain
respects,
then,
Chaos is to God as
Eve is to Adam. If God has no
separate
female
other external to
him,
he nevertheless
acquiesces
in his own feminine otherness-a kind of
gender-
specific negative identity-and
can
only
exercise
sovereignty
and creative
power by
virtue of her.17
For the
poesis
of divine creation to
occur,
the cre-
ator must
fundamentally
be,
as Keats
writes,
"the
most
unpoetical
of
anything
in
existence,
because
he has no
identity:
he is
continually
in
for,
and fill-
ing,
some other
body" (Milnes 134).
How else could
Milton's
materialist,
monist
deity
make distinct
creatures, volitionally independent
of
him,
who are
nevertheless
continually
and
utterly dependent
on
him for the substance and sustenance of their be-
ing?
For Milton
nothing
can exist without indeter-
minacy, certainly
not a
sovereign deity
who creates
beings
with free will. Milton's
epic,
if
anything,
goes
farther than his
theology
in
requiring
a
good
first matter for the constitution of the cosmos and
indeed in
presupposing
a
hermaphroditic deity.18
Notes
II write "Chaos" when
referring
to the character and "chaos"
when
referring
to the
place
or condition.
2Milton
scholarship
conforms to this dualistic
theological
tendency.
In
Mephistopheles
and the
Androgyne
Eliade dis-
cusses the ironic cultural functions of chaos
(78-122).
3On
postmodernism
and chaos see
Hayles,
Chaos Bound,
and
the
essays
collected in
Hayles,
Chaos and Order. For an illustra-
tive
range
of
postmodern
theoretical
approaches
to
culture,
see
Foster. The ramifications of chaos science have achieved such
wide cultural
currency
that scientists no
longer
find chaos a use-
ful term: it is "marked
by
scientific denotations as well as his-
torical and
mythical interpretations;
it serves as a
crossroads,
a
juncture
where various strata and trends within the culture come
together" (Hayles,
Introduction
2).
The
concept
of chaos has it-
self become a chaotic
postmodern phenomenon,
eschewed
by
the
scientifically rigorous
for the otherness that it
comprises.
Hayles
describes the
mutually sustaining dynamics
between the
branches of chaos science and
divergent
other
postmodern
cul-
tural sites, including deconstruction,
new
historicism, feminism,
and information
theory (Chaos Bound; Introduction).
Lacan's
definition of the unconscious as "the Other that even
my
lie in-
vokes as a
guarantor
of the truth in which it subsists" reflects the
ironic
indeterminacy
attendant on the self-other
complex
within
ego psychology. Existentially,
the other is "the locus from which
the
question
of
[the subject's own]
existence
may
be
presented
to
him"
(Lacan 172, 194).
On
postmodern
feminism as a discourse
of otherness,
see
Irigaray;
Owens. On ethics and ironic indeter-
minacy
in
narrative,
see Handwerk. The
essays
collected in Con-
way
and
Seery
address the
compatibility
of
postmodern irony
and
political commitment,
a
question Rorty
also deals with.
4Though
concerned to
distinguish Augustine
from the Pla-
tonic influences on
him,
Clark admits that
"Augustine's concep-
tion of human nature was haunted
by
Platonic dualism"
(56).
See also
Armstrong,
who considers the
spectrum
of dualisms
within the Platonic
tradition, tracing
them from
pre-Platonic
Pythagoreanism,
in which "the
light, male, limiting, ordering
principle
is
qualified
as
'good'
and the
dark, female,
indefinite
principle
as 'evil'"
(34).
5Brown
surveys early
Christian attitudes toward the
body,
its
meanings,
and its
place
in
society.
Anticarnal bias notwith-
standing, Augustinian
doctrine in its time was a moderation of
the dualistic tenets of the
thriving
ascetic cults. The
writings
of
early
Christian ascetics are often concerned with men's behav-
ior toward women and with
government
of the
appetites
women arouse. On the
evolving cosmological justifications
in
Renaissance
political philosophy
for the
disciplinary power
of
the
sovereign
over his
subjects,
see Collins. One constant in
these
justifications
is the
premise
that chaos
inevitably
returns
when,
as Richard Hooker writes, "a multitude of
equals
dealeth"
(Collins 95);
hence the
necessity
for a
sovereign
head to
keep
the
body politic
in hierarchical order, just
as God maintains
order
among
the four elements, of which matter is the basest.
6Blind Milton, visited
nightly by
his muse and
inspired
in
darkness, departed significantly
from
Spenser's frequently
ex-
pressed antipathy
to darkness and
night.
7Homer's verb for battle and
lovemaking
is
mignumi
(Iliad
9.275, 15.510).
8Modern
literary
theorists have used chaos
theory
to
expose
the
ideological
basis of traditional ideas of order
(Hayles,
Chaos
Bound
22-23).
9As Ricoeur notes, the evolution of a
kingship order, with its
supporting
castes of
priests
and elite warriors,
influenced the
depiction
of evil in
Mesopotamian mythology.
Feminist critics
further
argue
that the
rough,
revisionist treatment of maternal
deities, such as
Tiamat,
in this
mythology
reflects the victors' at-
titudes in
"phallocratic
wars" that established
patriarchy
in the
ancient Near East and overthrew the cult of the
goddess (Keller
69-78; Daly 355).
Evidence
suggests
that at least
part
of the Per-
seus
myth (the
rescue of Andromeda from a sea
monster)
de-
rives from the
story
of Marduk's battle with Tiamat
(Keller 71).
Schwartz's
comparison
of Marduk to Milton's Son overlooks
Ricoeur's observation that "the creative act which
distinguishes,
separates, measures,
and
puts
in order is
inseparable
from the
criminal act that
puts
an end to the life of the oldest
gods" (180).
Schwartz also
ignores
Tiamat's
divinity
and
gender, describing
the
deity
instead as the "chaos monster" and the "fierce mon-
ster"
(28, 31),
even
though
Tiamat is "mother of them all" in the
Enuma
elish-including
the
younger gods
who rise
up against
her
(62-64).
The Hebrew word for tiamat is the
grammatically
1044
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John
Rumrich
feminine tehom,
which
English
translations of Genesis render
as "the
deep."
l?In contrast to other Milton scholars who have written on
chaos,
Adams comments on the relevance of this
passage (74),
as does Fallon
(191).
lA
premise
of
contemporary
chaos science is that without
exact
knowledge
of initial conditions
(impossible
to achieve,
given
the
uncertainty principle),
outcomes cannot be
predicted
(Hayles,
Introduction
11).
While not
refuting
determinism,
this
argument
means that no one will ever be able to confirm that
the universe is deterministic
(Dupr6 186).
12Adam's dilemma over the
reliability
of
appearance
is simi-
lar to the
problem posed by
Swift's mad narrator in A Tale
of
a Tub: either remain a fool deluded
by
the
deceptive beauty
and
intoxicating
touch of nature's
charming superficies
or
rip
through
the
misleading
show with reason
(145).
'3According
to
Girardot,
the association of chaos with "an
embryonic
condition or womblike form" allows for an advanta-
geous conception
of the
primal
condition
(214).
The
generative
cast of Milton's
descriptions
of creation has
long
been
recog-
nized. As Drabble writes, Milton "sees the world as a
living
being, conceived, gestated, born, passing through
unadorned
childhood to the
springing
tender
grass
of
puberty" (129).
14If the
gender
of chaos seems
problematic,
so too is the
gen-
der of
light,
which is identified with God as the
"bright
efflu-
ence of
bright
essence increate"
(3.6).
"God is
Light," yet
the
light
emitted
by
the sun, despite having masculine-sounding
abilities to
"pierce"
and
"plant,"
is
represented
as female in
Raphael's report
of its
presolar
existence: "shee in a cloudie
Tabernacle /
Sojourd
the while"
(3.3, 7.248-49; my italics).
In
Christian Doctrine Milton insists that
though
"we cannot
imag-
ine
light
without some source of
light,
. . . we do not therefore
think that a source of
light
is the same
thing
as
light,
or
equal
in
excellence"
(312).
The radiant
light informing
the masculine
sun
may
thus not be
essentially
a masculine force.
Although
lodged
in a masculine
orb, light's
creative
energy may
be con-
sidered feminine and more excellent than the
body
from which
it shines. The evidence
concerning
the relation of
light
to the
paternal deity
in Milton's
epic
does not
yield conclusions,
but it
is clear at least that Milton's God is
essentially
affiliated with
feminine as well as masculine creative
power.
15Although
Saurat
recognizes
that
preexistent
matter is
"part
of the substance of God" in Milton's
poetry
and
theology,
he
does not link this matter and chaos: "Since in [Milton's]
philos-
ophy everything
comes from God
by
his
'retraction,'
which
produced
first that divine matter from which the universe is
evolved
naturally,
it is difficult to
explain
the anterior existence
of chaos"
(235-36).
Chaos cannot be the first matter in Saurat's
view because matter is
part
of God before creation. The
unspo-
ken
assumption
is that chaos cannot be identified with God.
Saurat thus
ignores repeated descriptions
of chaos as a womb
and concentrates instead on the
singular
and tentative character-
ization of it as a
"grave" (2.911),
which he
glosses
with an ac-
count from the Zohar: "God, before
creating
this world, had
created several others and, not
being pleased
with them, had de-
stroyed
them.... It seems evident
that,
in Milton's mind, un-
less the Earth fulfil the aims for which God created it,
it will be
destroyed
also and become
part
of this chaos of lost worlds"
(236).
The Zohar
may partly "explain"
Milton's chaos as a
grave
for botched worlds that
preceded
the
present one,
but
Saurat fails to see chaos as a
primordial
womb.
Empson
follows Saurat's
analysis
to its
proper
conclusion
and
recognizes
in chaos the first matter of Milton's
theology.
In
turn, however, Empson rejects
the identification of God and the
first matter in Paradise Lost so as to
preserve
the
logic
of Mil-
ton's narrative.
16In
Reesing's theological analysis
Milton's heretical
position
that God
possesses
the attribute of
potentiality
is inconsistent
with Milton's insistence on God's
immutability
and hence with
the
poet's
fundamental assent to the Aristotelian definition of
God as actus
purus (Reesing 171-72).
This
inconsistency
can
seem less troublesome, however,
if what God creates out of his
infinite material
potency
becomes
essentially
distinct from him.
Since God
always
contains infinite material
potency,
he
may
be
said to remain immutable even when
part
of his
potency
be-
comes actualized and distinct from him.
Drawing
on Aristotle's
Metaphysics,
I elsewhere assess the relation of material
potency
to God's essence and discuss in more detail Milton scholars' ar-
guments
on the
subject (53-69).
That God's material
potency
can be actualized in the form of "black tartareous cold infernal
dregs
/ Adverse to life" does not mean that evil is latent in
chaos,
any
more than evil is latent in the
deity
who establishes hell as
A Universe of death ...
by
curse
Created evil,
for evil
onely good,
Where all life dies, death lives,
and Nature breeds,
Perverse,
all
monstrous,
all
prodigious things....
(2.622-25)
Like
Dante,
Milton describes hell as a work of divine
justice;
and if
justice
is
good,
God's material
potency
must include the
possibility
of matter with which to create such a
place
as hell.
'7Early
biblical commentaries observe that before the birth of
Eve,
Adam was both male and female and that
humanity
is thus
originally
established in the
image
of a
hermaphroditic
God
(Eliade
and
O'Flaherty).
The
hermaphrodite
is an
important
image
of the divine in various
religious
traditions
(Campbell
103-08).
In the seventeenth
century
Jakob Boehme is notable
for
stressing
the creator's
hermaphroditic totality
of
being
and
Adam's
original
reflection of and fall from it
(Erb 276).
18In 1991 Brian
Opie,
of Victoria
University, Wellington,
New
Zealand,
discussed the ideas behind this
essay
with me
and
brought
Barthelme's
story
"On
Angels"
to
my
attention. I
am much
obliged
to him and to
Stephen Dobranski, of the Uni-
versity
of
Texas, Austin,
who read
early
drafts of this
essay
and
offered useful advice for its revision.
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