Milton: Paradise Lost (Longman Annotated English Poets) by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2014-07-22T06:00:00+00:00

THE END OF THE SIXTH BOOK

vi Argument.1 under night: under cover of darkness (Flannagan).

Arg.2 devilish engines: The artillery invented at vi 470ff.

1. dreadless angel: Abdiel.

2–4. For the motif, cp. Ovid, Metam. ii 112–14, tr. Sandys: ‘The wakeful morning from the east displays / Her purple doors, and odoriferous bed, / With plenty of dew-dropping roses spread.’ hours: The spatial sidereal hours or sectors of the firmament, which appear to revolve about earth; in charge of heaven’s gates in Homer, Il. v 749. For their wakefulness, cp. Spenser, FQ VII vii 45 (‘the Howres, faire daughters of high Jove / … who did them Porters make / Of heavens gate (whence all the gods issued) / Which they did dayly watch, and nightly wake / By even turnes, ne ever did their charge forsake’); Hieatt (1960) 111–13.

4–11. The hours were often described as moving by turns (alternately) and forming light–dark pairs. Hesiod’s alternate home of Night and Day in the abyss (Theogony 744–57) is relocated fast by God’s throne. Time is thus allowed near to God (v 579–82n), whose mount however contains it, much as Spenser’s form-giving Venus imprisons the boar of darkness and chaos in a cave beneath the paradise mount (FQ III vi 48). M.’s audacious image draws on Rev. 7:15f; 22:5, transcending ordinary light and darkness. There is no real change in heaven, only ‘interchange’ (ix 115) (Madsen (1968) 101). Cp. Horapollo, Hieroglyphics (1950) 57 (‘When they wish to symbolize eternity, they draw the sun and the moon’); S. K. Heninger, in Wittreich (1975a) 73 (‘Day and night in their endless repetition signify eternity’ – an ancient idea to be found in hieroglyphics and alchemy); Lieb (1981) 323 on the expression of rest through motion, and its absence at ii 618 and xi 174. The Cave of Eternity was a contemporary subject in visual art: e.g. Luca Giordano’s fresco at the Pal. Medici-Riccardi. dislodge: move quarters (military; cp. v 669). vicissitude: change. On the variety epitomized, see Summers (1962) 71– 86. Obsequious: dutiful.

11–12. For the absence of night in heaven, see v 645n. On the knowledge of creatures as ‘a kind of twilight’, see Leonard (1990) 109f citing Augustine, City of God XI vii. morn: Day 2 of the action; see Introduction: Time-scheme.

14. Empyreal: purest; of the region nearest God. ‘Not as with us in a saffron coloured robe, ’tis here celestial golden tissue’ (Richardson).

16–17. embattled: set in battle array. steeds: Not necessarily horses. Embracing other traditions of demonic cavalry (centaurs, griffins, etc.): Frye (1978) 47.

19. in procinct: prepared. An uncommon Latinism (in procinctu = ready for battle); cp. Homer, Il., tr. Chapman xii 88f (‘gave up each chariot and steed / … to be kept in all procinct of war’); Burton, Anat. of Melan., ‘Democritus to the Reader’ (1989–) i 97 (‘a prepared navy, soldiers in procinctu’); T. N. Corns, RBPH, 69 (1991) 559; Murrin (1994) 136 (citing Taine: ‘What a heaven! It is enough to disgust one with paradise; one would rather enter Charles I’s troop of lackeys, or Cromwell’s Ironsides.

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