[Milton-L] Milton and Gardens: queries on JM's aesthetics

Sat Jun 27 15:23:22 EDT 2009

There is a charming 19th c. illustration of this scene by Jane Giraud, "Eve
among her flowers," repr. in Milton and Gender, ed. Catherine G. Martin, p.
244, in an interesting article by Wendy Furman-Adams and Virginia Tufte.

On 6/27/09 2:30 PM, "Carl Bellinger" <bcarlb at comcast.net> wrote:

> Michael,
> I agree the 'Evie-in-the-glade-with-flowers' passages are gorgeous, "simply
> gorgeous" as the idiom puts it.  But also, where we differ,  they are, like
> the paintings of G. Klimpt,  "simply" read "merely" gorgeous.  Patches of
> colors all hues, Eve in a glowing mist, Iris banked with Gessimin... it's
> all just a pavé in gold, Milton hath "wrought/Mosaic." It may be only five
> and a half lines in one place, and ten & a half in another, but for the
> duration, it's simply Milton being Klimpt. These occasional, raw, fine,
> natural descriptions are glowing for their own sake, which is to say for our
> sake, his readers, and his, our  "Poet at Will," who in these discreet
> moments is playing the Garden-Genre Poet-at-Will. Between Satan and Eve and
> Us&Milton, only us & M are involved in pointedly seeing beauty. Satan  is
> seeing all delight, but without delight. Eve here is not seeing beauty; she
> is being beauty, mindless, with the flowers, of what God hath wrought.  Only
> by reading back from passages with other concerns, dramatic & psychological,
> I think, can you find here what you find. Crabby me, and not polite. -Carl
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Michael Gillum" <mgillum at unca.edu>
> To: "milton-l" <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 3:39 PM
> Subject: Re: [Milton-L] Milton and Gardens: queries on JM's aesthetics
> 
> 
>> Carl, referring to the description of Eve in the rose patch (9.425+) and
>> your polite dissent from my claims about it:
>> 
>> I am a gardener, and perhaps that predisposes me to see Eve's work as
>> "creative and fulfilling." But I think the text suggests that, too.
>> Remember
>> this scene is externally observed, a description of what Satan sees. We
>> are
>> not told what Eve looks at or thinks at this moment, only what she does.
>> But
>> upstaying the drooping buds is a physical enactment of the maternal
>> tenderness for the flowers that Eve verbally expresses in her lament at
>> 11.273-79:
>> 
>>        O flow'rs,
>> That never will in other climate grow,
>> My early visitation, and my last
>> At ev'n which I bred up with tender hand
>>> From the first op'ning bud, and gave ye names. . . .
>> 
>> She loves the flowers as though they were children.
>> 
>> The myrtle bands (knotted flexible twigs) are indeed a "new horticultural
>> practice," her invention (as you "crabbily" observe :) and one that would
>> become a traditional practice familiar to Milton. As I pointed out, Satan
>> passes through blooming flower borders that are Eve's handiwork  (9.438).
>> She is not just fighting back intrusive growth, but rather actively
>> building
>> something to please herself. These are indications that the work is
>> creative. Then, the flowers she is handling are described in the most
>> gorgeous language: "Carnation, purple, azure, or specked with gold" (429);
>> she is veiled with the scent of roses and their glowing color. How could
>> this not be, for Eve, a "pointedly pleasant" experience?
>> 
>> The passage is a most poignant evocation of the joys of Paradise, now
>> under
>> mortal threat; and it is a snapshot of a woman at work.
>> 
>> Michael Gillum
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 6/23/09 8:58 PM, "Carl Bellinger" <bcarlb at comcast.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> I don't see that this passage represents Eve's work experience either as
>>> pointedly pleasant or creative.
>>> 
>>> The "cloud of fragrance" is no doubt pleasant, and the glowing of the
>>> flower
>>> colors, but  Eve is "mindless the while/Herself." Of course this phrase
>>> refers, in the first case, not to her attentiveness to her work, but to
>>> her
>>> unawareness of danger and her own frailty. That withstanding, I find
>>> nothing
>>> in the narrative itself here that seems at odds with "mindless the
>>> while..."
>>> And as "delicious" as this garden may be we are not presented with an Eve
>>> standing there drinking it all in. Eve has not got, in this scene, what
>>> Flannery O'Connor phrases "a pleasure-taking eye." That keenness belongs,
>>> here, to Satan.
>>> 
>>> [[  Mindless the while Herself.   Wonderful how the two strong
>>> sense-stresses of this idiomatic construction, on "mindless" & "Herself,"
>>> are floating/suspended across the faintly-stressed "the while," across
>>> the
>>> line-end, in a kind of cadential atmospheric mindlessness. So it seems to
>>> me. No English poet comes anywhere near Milton in the myriad perfections
>>> of
>>> expression he is able to pencil across that glimmering, mysterious
>>> trajectory "from one verse into another!"  Please pardon the digression.
>>> Though come to think of it, it's not entirely off point. ]]
>>> 
>>> And how creative and fulfilling can it be, really, to be supporting
>>> drooping
>>> flowers with Myrtle bands? Sorry to be so crabby, but if Eve here were
>>> taking real pleasure inventing new horticultural procedures, Milton would
>>> be
>>> saying so I think.
>>> 
>>> In another passage --where A&E first breathe the morning air, then pray,
>>> then turn to their appointed tasks-- I recall getting the sense that,
>>> compared to breathing and singing, the work thing is a lesser thing, a
>>> merely and frankly workmanlike pastime. It's sooo nice when lunch comes
>>> around!
>>> 
>>> -Carl
>> 
>> 
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