WEBVTT 00:01.510 --> 00:04.790 Professor John Rogers: It's fitting that the first 00:04.789 --> 00:08.179 poem of Milton's that we study in this class is "On the Morning 00:08.178 --> 00:09.598 of Christ's Nativity." 00:09.600 --> 00:14.910 In a number of ways, it's both a first poem and it's 00:14.909 --> 00:17.199 a poem about firsts. 00:17.200 --> 00:21.390 It isn't exactly, though, the first poem that 00:21.391 --> 00:24.051 Milton wrote. As you can see from your -- 00:24.050 --> 00:26.330 from actually any -- edition, any modern edition, 00:26.330 --> 00:29.380 of Milton which arranges the poems more or less 00:29.376 --> 00:33.076 chronologically -- you can tell that the young Milton had 00:33.084 --> 00:36.934 actually written quite a few things before he wrote what we 00:36.925 --> 00:39.635 call colloquially the Nativity Ode, 00:39.640 --> 00:44.870 but most of these early pieces are written in the Latin 00:44.873 --> 00:49.603 that Milton had perfected at school and these earliest of 00:49.601 --> 00:52.641 Milton's Latin poems are lyrics. 00:52.640 --> 00:57.470 They're of an incredibly impressive technical proficiency 00:57.469 --> 01:02.299 and they are absolutely soaked with the references to the 01:02.299 --> 01:07.129 classical writers that Milton had been ingesting from his 01:07.128 --> 01:10.698 earliest youth. Milton had also written a 01:10.704 --> 01:13.954 couple of very short poems in English. 01:13.950 --> 01:18.500 But there's an important and, I think, a very real sense in 01:18.495 --> 01:23.195 which Milton wanted to make it seem as if the Nativity Ode 01:23.198 --> 01:26.958 were the first poem that he had written. 01:26.959 --> 01:30.549 There's also an important and, I think, a very real sense in 01:30.550 --> 01:34.260 which Milton wanted to make it seem -- and obviously this is a 01:34.263 --> 01:37.853 much more difficult feat -- wanted to make it seem as if the 01:37.853 --> 01:41.323 Nativity Ode were the first poem that anyone 01:41.322 --> 01:44.262 had written. Now Milton was born in 1608 and 01:44.259 --> 01:47.139 he wrote the Nativity Ode along with the Sixth 01:47.144 --> 01:50.044 Elegy, the Elegia Sexta, 01:50.036 --> 01:54.306 that we read for today in December of 1629, 01:54.305 --> 01:59.775 a couple of weeks presumably after he turned twenty-one. 01:59.780 --> 02:03.350 It wasn't until 1645 at the age of thirty-six or thirty-seven 02:03.348 --> 02:06.558 that Milton would publish his first volume of poems, 02:06.560 --> 02:09.220 which he titled simply Poems. 02:09.219 --> 02:11.909 And it wouldn't be another twenty-two years after 02:11.909 --> 02:14.939 that until Milton actually published Paradise 02:14.935 --> 02:17.495 Lost. Now I am mentioning these 02:17.500 --> 02:21.980 dates here because the dates on which Milton wrote and published 02:21.976 --> 02:25.526 his poems, the temporal sequence of these 02:25.533 --> 02:29.313 publications, have a peculiar and particular 02:29.309 --> 02:31.679 importance for the poet. 02:31.680 --> 02:35.940 As early as 1629 (that's the date we're in now) Milton is 02:35.942 --> 02:39.522 thinking of himself as a poet who has not yet 02:39.519 --> 02:40.889 published. 02:40.889 --> 02:45.429 He delays for an unusually long time his poetic entrance into 02:45.433 --> 02:49.983 print, and he's musing almost continually on what it means to 02:49.976 --> 02:54.516 be a poet who has delayed his publication: to be a poet who's 02:54.519 --> 02:58.109 waiting for something, to be a poet who's always 02:58.111 --> 03:01.761 looking to the future to the poem that he hasn't yet written, 03:01.759 --> 03:05.169 to the future and to the readers he hasn't yet attained, 03:05.166 --> 03:08.866 and maybe most gloriously, a poet who's looking to the 03:08.866 --> 03:13.306 future to the fame that he has not yet successfully secured or 03:13.308 --> 03:17.168 secured at all because no one at this point knows John 03:17.168 --> 03:21.388 Milton.When in 1645 Milton finally publishes that first 03:21.392 --> 03:24.802 volume of poetry, the first poem that he places 03:24.800 --> 03:28.180 in this volume is the Nativity Ode, our poem today. 03:28.180 --> 03:32.020 And under this title, "On the Morning of Christ's 03:32.020 --> 03:36.900 Nativity," appears -- as you can see from your text -- appears 03:36.900 --> 03:39.620 the subtitle, "composed 1629." 03:39.620 --> 03:44.000 Milton's taking pains here, and he does this with very few 03:43.998 --> 03:48.378 other poems, to let us know precisely when it is that he's 03:48.377 --> 03:51.427 written it. "Composed 1629" -- whether or 03:51.426 --> 03:54.886 not that's actually true, and there's some controversy 03:54.892 --> 03:59.042 about that -- but nonetheless, the subtitle announces to all 03:59.042 --> 04:03.232 who know John Milton that the poet was twenty-one years old at 04:03.234 --> 04:07.294 the moment of its composition and that he had therefore just 04:07.288 --> 04:11.618 reached his majority.Now the subject matter that he's chosen 04:11.617 --> 04:14.567 for this poem, for this so-called first 04:14.565 --> 04:16.745 poem, couldn't possibly be more appropriate. 04:16.750 --> 04:22.240 With this first poem treating the subject of the nativity of 04:22.242 --> 04:27.272 Christ, Milton is able implicitly to announce something 04:27.268 --> 04:30.618 like his own nativity as a poet. 04:30.620 --> 04:34.410 It goes without saying that there is something outlandish, 04:34.409 --> 04:36.469 to say the least, about this. 04:36.470 --> 04:41.730 We're struck by the arrogance implicit in Milton's active 04:41.725 --> 04:43.785 identification here. 04:43.790 --> 04:46.100 What could possibly be more presumptuous than the 04:46.102 --> 04:48.562 association of the beginning of one's own career, 04:48.560 --> 04:52.910 one's own literary career, with the birth of the Christian 04:52.907 --> 04:55.797 messiah? Milton's implicit connection 04:55.804 --> 05:00.534 between his own birth as a poet and the birth of the Son of God 05:00.531 --> 05:05.031 is an act of hubris that I think a lot of his contemporaries 05:05.030 --> 05:08.310 would feel more comfortable actually calling 05:08.308 --> 05:13.038 blasphemy.John Milton will remain unique in English letters 05:13.035 --> 05:17.375 for the degree of thought that he gave to the shape of his 05:17.381 --> 05:21.781 literary career, or actually to the notion of a 05:21.779 --> 05:26.019 career at all. No English poet before Milton 05:26.021 --> 05:32.481 ever suggested that he had been chosen by God at birth to be a 05:32.482 --> 05:35.562 poet. None of England's pre-Miltonic 05:35.563 --> 05:38.763 poets -- Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare --had 05:38.764 --> 05:43.384 dared to suggest -- and it would never have occurred to them to 05:43.380 --> 05:47.030 suggest --that theirs was actually a divine 05:47.028 --> 05:50.208 vocation. I think it takes your breath 05:50.205 --> 05:54.665 away to think of the unspeakably high hopes that John Milton had 05:54.671 --> 05:57.721 for his career.If you have a chance, 05:57.720 --> 06:00.960 you might want to take a look -- I think this is in the Cross 06:00.958 --> 06:03.818 Campus Library -- at the facsimile version of the very 06:03.819 --> 06:05.869 first edition of Paradise Lost. 06:05.870 --> 06:08.420 It's in ten books rather than twelve. 06:08.420 --> 06:12.340 It's a modest thing, the 1667 volume, 06:12.343 --> 06:18.773 and the text looks perfectly ordinary until you realize that 06:18.773 --> 06:24.883 in the margin alongside the lines of the poem are printed 06:24.876 --> 06:28.796 the line numbers for the poem. 06:28.800 --> 06:31.760 just like the line numbers in any modern edition of Milton 06:31.757 --> 06:33.887 that's been produced for the likes of you, 06:33.885 --> 06:36.475 for the consumption of college English majors. 06:36.480 --> 06:39.660 As far as I know -- I know of no exception, 06:39.663 --> 06:43.683 although someone may well be able to produce one -- no 06:43.680 --> 06:48.000 original poem in English had ever been published with line 06:48.001 --> 06:52.171 numbers in the margin in its very first printing. 06:52.170 --> 06:56.600 And it may well be that no poem has ever been since Paradise 06:56.602 --> 07:00.392 Lost published with line numbers in its very first 07:00.392 --> 07:03.002 edition. Any right-thinking printer or 07:03.001 --> 07:06.501 any right-thinking publisher would scoff at the presumption 07:06.504 --> 07:08.864 of a poet who demanded such a thing. 07:08.860 --> 07:12.200 The only precedent Milton would have had even for the 07:12.204 --> 07:15.554 idea of line numbers would have been the great 07:15.549 --> 07:18.949 ancient classics, the magnificent Renaissance 07:18.951 --> 07:21.231 editions of Homer and Virgil. 07:21.230 --> 07:24.640 They would have appeared in the seventeenth century with line 07:24.639 --> 07:27.589 numbers because line numbers obviously facilitate the 07:27.594 --> 07:30.554 production of scholarly commentary and facilitate the 07:30.549 --> 07:33.049 study of those texts in the classroom. 07:33.050 --> 07:36.850 And I can only assume that that is precisely the point, 07:36.850 --> 07:40.720 that Milton would -- later in 1667 when Paradise Lost 07:40.721 --> 07:43.611 is published, he would make his poem 07:43.608 --> 07:47.708 canonical just like The Iliad and just like The Odyssey 07:47.705 --> 07:51.155 and The Aeneid before anyone had actually 07:51.161 --> 07:54.461 read it. Milton would insert into the 07:54.456 --> 07:59.496 printed text of his poem his own anticipation that his epic would 07:59.499 --> 08:03.599 receive the same universal approbation as Homer's and 08:03.596 --> 08:07.906 Virgil's. It's a daring way to jump-start 08:07.910 --> 08:12.260 one's own literary celebrity.Milton was 08:12.260 --> 08:16.610 continually in a state of anticipation. 08:16.610 --> 08:19.360 And it's this rhetoric of anticipation, 08:19.363 --> 08:23.353 this language of looking forward, that structures all of 08:23.347 --> 08:27.547 Milton's own narratives about his own literary career. 08:27.550 --> 08:32.760 And this is exquisitely visible to us in the Nativity Ode. 08:32.759 --> 08:36.319 At a very early age, Milton brooded on his poetic 08:36.315 --> 08:39.865 vocation as if it were an actual calling from God. 08:39.870 --> 08:44.530 But the problem of one's being called to be a great poet is 08:44.526 --> 08:49.096 that one may have an inkling or some sense of a promise of 08:49.103 --> 08:53.843 future greatness but nothing really to show for it yet. 08:53.840 --> 08:54.880 And he knew this. 08:54.879 --> 08:59.759 He had obviously been a successful student at St. 08:59.761 --> 09:04.951 Paul's School in London and then later in college at 09:04.947 --> 09:07.487 Cambridge University. 09:07.490 --> 09:11.400 He had written a large handful of college exercises and 09:11.403 --> 09:14.263 assignments in Latin, and he had obviously made a 09:14.260 --> 09:16.510 favorable impression on his teachers, one of whom, 09:16.509 --> 09:19.619 at least, he stayed in touch with for years. 09:19.620 --> 09:22.620 Even when he was a young boy Milton's Latin seems to have 09:22.624 --> 09:25.154 been impeccable, and he was quickly establishing 09:25.145 --> 09:28.145 himself as one of the best Latinists in the country. 09:28.149 --> 09:31.849 But Milton's calling -- this is what John Milton knew -- 09:31.848 --> 09:35.008 his calling was to be a famous English poet, 09:35.009 --> 09:38.249 a famous English poet writing in English: a calling that he 09:38.247 --> 09:41.647 holds despite the fact that he appears to have written next to 09:41.651 --> 09:43.271 nothing in English verse. 09:43.269 --> 09:46.999 All Milton has at the beginning of his poetic career is the 09:47.000 --> 09:50.590 promise of greatness, the anticipation of a luminous 09:50.587 --> 09:53.957 body of English poetry.Now in the first original poem that 09:53.958 --> 09:56.808 Milton wrote in English, titled "At a Vacation 09:56.805 --> 10:00.545 Exercise," Milton -- and you will come to recognize this as 10:00.547 --> 10:04.287 so unbelievably Miltonic -- Milton doesn't write about love 10:04.290 --> 10:07.970 or about death or about any of the subjects that typically 10:07.968 --> 10:11.258 engage the youngest practitioners of poetry. 10:11.259 --> 10:15.689 Milton's subject in his first English poem is -- we can guess 10:15.692 --> 10:18.502 it: it's his future literary career. 10:18.500 --> 10:22.660 You can look at page thirty-one in the Hughes edition. 10:22.659 --> 10:26.299 So Milton begins by addressing not a fair mistress or a 10:26.295 --> 10:30.465 blooming rose or -- he doesn't even begin by addressing God. 10:30.470 --> 10:33.490 He addresses instead the English language: 10:33.486 --> 10:36.426 "Hail native Language," Milton begins, 10:36.429 --> 10:41.279 and then he proceeds to set out in his heroic couplets of iambic 10:41.282 --> 10:46.062 pentameter a map for his future career as a famous poet.Now 10:46.057 --> 10:50.017 when Milton publishes this poem, he makes it clear that it was 10:50.022 --> 10:51.052 written at age nineteen. 10:51.050 --> 10:52.460 That's important to him. 10:52.460 --> 10:56.710 Milton claims that he will one day use the English language to 10:56.712 --> 10:59.922 express what he calls "some graver subject," 10:59.919 --> 11:03.519 some more important subject matter, and he proceeds to 11:03.517 --> 11:07.247 characterize what that graver subject will look like. 11:07.250 --> 11:10.450 I'm looking at line thirty-three here. 11:10.450 --> 11:13.620 Such where the deep transported mind may soar 11:13.620 --> 11:16.570 Above the wheeling poles, and at Heav'n's door 11:16.570 --> 11:21.050 Look in, and see each blissful Deity 11:21.049 --> 11:25.639 How he before the thunderous throne doth lie… 11:25.639 --> 11:28.589 Now the graver subject that Milton is intending at some 11:28.591 --> 11:31.161 point to expound upon is clearly an epic one. 11:31.159 --> 11:34.619 Like Homer and like Virgil, Milton intends to soar above 11:34.616 --> 11:38.066 the wheeling poles of the visible world and describe the 11:38.073 --> 11:41.533 otherwise invisible comings and goings of the gods. 11:41.529 --> 11:43.509 And, of course, this is what he would go on to 11:43.509 --> 11:44.609 do in Paradise Lost. 11:44.610 --> 11:48.580 The nineteen-year-old Milton hasn't yet imagined that 11:48.580 --> 11:53.190 his own epic would take for its subject a story from the Bible, 11:53.190 --> 11:57.080 but the poetic ambition is clearly identifiable to us as 11:57.083 --> 12:01.333 epic in scope.We will hear again of Milton's intention to 12:01.331 --> 12:05.301 write an epic in a versified letter that he writes to his 12:05.295 --> 12:08.525 best friend, Charles Diodati. 12:08.529 --> 12:12.459 This is the letter to Diodati which Milton publishes as the 12:12.463 --> 12:16.673 Sixth Elegy. That's the Latin poem that was assigned for 12:16.669 --> 12:19.599 today's class. So take a look at page 12:19.601 --> 12:21.781 fifty-two in the Hughes. 12:21.779 --> 12:27.049 Milton naturally wrote his friend letters in impeccable 12:27.045 --> 12:32.215 Latin verse, and this one he seems to have composed almost 12:32.220 --> 12:35.580 immediately after having written, 12:35.580 --> 12:38.210 having completed, the Nativity Ode. The 12:38.212 --> 12:41.022 letter to Diodati gives us another glimpse of the 12:41.020 --> 12:44.180 anticipatory narrative that Milton is sketching for his 12:44.179 --> 12:47.329 career. Milton claims that epic poetry 12:47.325 --> 12:51.775 is the highest ambition for a poet and then he goes on to 12:51.779 --> 12:56.789 explain how it is that the epic poet should comport himself. 12:56.790 --> 13:03.060 I love this. So this is Milton to his best 13:03.059 --> 13:10.669 friend:But he whose theme is wars and heaven under Jupiter in 13:10.673 --> 13:15.303 his prime, and pious heroes and chieftains 13:15.295 --> 13:19.935 half-divine… let him live sparingly like the 13:19.938 --> 13:23.298 Samian teacher; and let herbs furnish his 13:23.299 --> 13:26.749 innocent diet… and let him drink sober 13:26.749 --> 13:29.039 draughts from the pure spring. 13:29.039 --> 13:32.819 Beyond this, his youth must be innocent of 13:32.822 --> 13:37.162 crime and chaste, his conduct irreproachable and 13:37.159 --> 13:42.419 his hands stainless.So Milton is explaining to Charles 13:42.418 --> 13:47.768 Diodati that if you're going to become an epic poet, 13:47.769 --> 13:49.759 you have to start acting like one. 13:49.759 --> 13:53.219 You have to remain celibate and, as we will see in the 13:53.221 --> 13:56.031 coming week, this is important to Milton. 13:56.029 --> 14:00.379 You have to remain sober, and you must eat vegetarian 14:00.383 --> 14:03.903 ("let herbs furnish his innocent diet"). 14:03.899 --> 14:07.569 And then Milton goes on to explain that this is exactly 14:07.565 --> 14:10.705 what Homer did. This is how Homer prepared 14:10.712 --> 14:15.312 himself to be the greatest and the first of all epic poets. 14:15.309 --> 14:19.749 It's not uninteresting, I think, to note that there 14:19.746 --> 14:24.976 appears to be absolutely no evidence whatsoever available to 14:24.981 --> 14:30.041 John Milton that Homer was either vegetarian or a lifelong 14:30.039 --> 14:32.499 celibate. By all accounts, 14:32.503 --> 14:36.403 Milton has just made this up in his letter to Diodati. 14:36.399 --> 14:39.719 Clearly, this is something that he wants to believe or that he 14:39.724 --> 14:42.604 needs to believe, but there does seem to be 14:42.602 --> 14:46.882 evidence that at least at this early point in Milton's life 14:46.876 --> 14:50.926 he's intending to remain sexually abstinent forever. 14:50.929 --> 14:54.619 He would remain a virgin in order to prepare for and to 14:54.618 --> 14:58.578 maintain this incredibly important role as an epic poet. 14:58.580 --> 15:03.170 And, as I mentioned a moment ago, we will return to this 15:03.174 --> 15:07.774 question of what has been interestingly called the young 15:07.768 --> 15:11.948 Milton's "chastity fetish."So Milton implies to 15:11.945 --> 15:16.535 Diodati that he isn't yet up to the task of epic, 15:16.539 --> 15:20.259 but as he describes the Nativity Ode that he's just 15:20.260 --> 15:24.800 written, it's almost as if he considers it something of 15:24.798 --> 15:26.508 a mini-epic. 15:26.509 --> 15:33.319 This is page 198 in the Hughes: "I am singing the starry sky 15:33.316 --> 15:37.696 and the hosts that sang high in air, 15:37.700 --> 15:42.690 and the gods that were suddenly destroyed in their own 15:42.689 --> 15:48.239 shrines."Now we have the trappings here of epic grandeur 15:48.244 --> 15:50.884 and epic subject matter. 15:50.879 --> 15:54.409 The poem on the morning of Christ's nativity serves as 15:54.406 --> 15:58.196 Milton's preparation for something greater than itself. 15:58.200 --> 16:02.930 It's a poem on which this very young poet is cutting his teeth. 16:02.929 --> 16:06.549 The nativity of Christ, as you can imagine, 16:06.547 --> 16:11.967 was a popular subject for early seventeenth-century poets -- for 16:11.972 --> 16:15.592 pious early seventeenth-century poets. 16:15.590 --> 16:19.840 Nearly all of the poets that we come now to recognize as the 16:19.838 --> 16:24.518 major religious literary figures of the period like John Donne, 16:24.519 --> 16:27.959 whom you may have read in English 125, or Robert Herrick 16:27.960 --> 16:31.710 or Richard Crashaw -- all of these poets had tried their hand 16:31.714 --> 16:35.034 at the poetic celebration of the birth of Christ. 16:35.030 --> 16:36.500 And actually it's instructive. 16:36.500 --> 16:42.320 You can learn a lot by comparing Milton's poem to those 16:42.318 --> 16:46.088 of so many of his contemporaries. 16:46.090 --> 16:49.280 His contemporaries are doing a kind of thing with their 16:49.275 --> 16:52.455 representation of the birth of Christ that Milton seems 16:52.460 --> 16:54.230 carefully to have avoided. 16:54.230 --> 16:57.080 And you can actually imagine without even having read them 16:57.080 --> 16:58.930 what a lot of these poems are like. 16:58.929 --> 17:02.639 Most poets who write nativity poems are interested in the 17:02.635 --> 17:07.115 miracle of the virgin birth, emphasizing the Virgin Mary and 17:07.122 --> 17:11.162 the tender mother-son relationship between Mary and 17:11.159 --> 17:15.519 Jesus.Milton shows unusually little interest in the 17:15.519 --> 17:20.439 miraculousness of the conception or anything like the domestic 17:20.444 --> 17:23.274 details of the manger scene. 17:23.269 --> 17:27.199 The focus of the Nativity Ode isn't even really on 17:27.201 --> 17:30.851 the Incarnation -- that's the theological doctrine of 17:30.852 --> 17:33.452 divinity's descent into humanity, 17:33.450 --> 17:37.100 how God becomes a mortal. 17:37.099 --> 17:40.289 What Milton is primarily interested in in his Nativity 17:40.285 --> 17:42.565 Ode is the redemption, 17:42.569 --> 17:47.079 the promise of what Christ's Nativity will do at some 17:47.084 --> 17:49.154 future point for mankind. 17:49.150 --> 17:51.790 The birth of Jesus doesn't immediately effect the 17:51.788 --> 17:54.978 redemption of fallen man but it's the moment -- and this is 17:54.977 --> 17:58.437 why it's so important to Milton -- it's the moment at which that 17:58.440 --> 18:02.410 promise is made. The Nativity for Milton is 18:02.407 --> 18:05.587 purely an anticipatory event. 18:05.589 --> 18:10.719 It's less meaningful in itself than it is for what it promises 18:10.720 --> 18:13.560 for the future, because it's not going to be 18:13.555 --> 18:16.215 until after the Nativity that we have the event of the 18:16.216 --> 18:18.846 Crucifixion, and after that the event of the 18:18.846 --> 18:21.506 Resurrection, and finally the terrible moment 18:21.509 --> 18:25.319 of the Last Judgment which will bring the narrative of Christian 18:25.321 --> 18:27.441 history to its ultimate close. 18:27.440 --> 18:30.820 So the satisfactions of the moment are for Milton deferred 18:30.824 --> 18:33.034 here; and it's something like a 18:33.027 --> 18:37.457 recognizable process of deferral and postponement that you will 18:37.459 --> 18:41.889 see beginning to form themselves at the very center of Milton's 18:41.891 --> 18:44.251 poetic imagination.Okay. 18:44.250 --> 18:49.770 Let's look at the poem on page forty-three in the Hughes. 18:49.769 --> 18:53.249 As soon as Milton describes for us the events in heaven that 18:53.245 --> 18:56.605 lead up to the Nativity, he begins the -- this is the 18:56.611 --> 18:59.651 prelude of the poem, it's broken up in to two 18:59.647 --> 19:03.787 chunks: the prelude and then what Milton calls the hymn -- he 19:03.786 --> 19:07.986 begins the third stanza of the prelude to his poem with a plea 19:07.994 --> 19:11.034 to the Heavenly Muse for inspiration. 19:11.029 --> 19:14.239 This is line fifteen, page forty-three in the 19:14.239 --> 19:17.889 Hughes. The poet is asking for help with the 19:17.887 --> 19:19.927 composition of the poem. 19:19.930 --> 19:23.450 Say Heav'nly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein 19:23.450 --> 19:26.390 Afford a present to the Infant God? 19:26.390 --> 19:30.190 Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain, 19:30.190 --> 19:34.610 To welcome Him to this, his new abode…? 19:34.609 --> 19:37.809 We're struck, I think -- or at least I'm 19:37.807 --> 19:42.067 struck -- by what I find to be the oddly negative, 19:42.069 --> 19:44.989 almost scolding tone that Milton is adopting, 19:44.985 --> 19:49.175 really quite inappropriately, I think, in this address to the 19:49.184 --> 19:51.094 muse. He seems less interested in 19:51.086 --> 19:53.886 actually praying for divine assistance than he is in 19:53.893 --> 19:56.813 chiding the muse for not having come to his aid 19:56.811 --> 20:00.391 sooner.We might be able to understand some of the weird, 20:00.390 --> 20:04.120 anxious energy behind this stanza if we think of the phrase 20:04.124 --> 20:07.284 that Milton uses here: the phrase "Infant God." 20:07.279 --> 20:11.239 As someone who would quickly establish himself as the most 20:11.235 --> 20:14.285 talented Latinist probably in all of England, 20:14.288 --> 20:17.548 Milton is naturally -- how could he not be? 20:17.549 --> 20:21.189 -- highly attuned to the etymological prehistory of the 20:21.193 --> 20:23.153 English word infant. 20:23.150 --> 20:27.570 Our word infancy comes from the Latin word 20:27.568 --> 20:31.248 infans, which literally means "not 20:31.251 --> 20:34.611 speaking." Christ, whose Nativity Milton 20:34.610 --> 20:37.110 is honoring, is still just a baby. 20:37.109 --> 20:39.939 He isn't speaking at this moment yet. 20:39.940 --> 20:43.340 He isn't yet producing language. 20:43.339 --> 20:46.899 And in his role here as a mute, as an infant, 20:46.901 --> 20:50.791 Christ is serving, I think, an important function 20:50.785 --> 20:54.835 for Milton. He serves as something like a 20:54.840 --> 20:59.250 complicated double for the young, unpublished, 20:59.248 --> 21:03.458 and as of yet unproductive poet himself. 21:03.460 --> 21:06.080 Consider that even this early on in his career, 21:06.079 --> 21:09.039 Milton is harboring epic ambitions, as we've seen. 21:09.039 --> 21:13.209 He is very much an infant in 1629. 21:13.210 --> 21:18.680 He isn't yet able or he hasn't yet produced epic speech. 21:18.680 --> 21:22.010 And I think it's possible to see that one of the purposes of 21:22.005 --> 21:24.875 this poem is precisely to correct that situation. 21:24.880 --> 21:28.360 It's one of the purposes of this poem to allow Milton to 21:28.356 --> 21:32.666 grow out of his infancy, to incarnate or to put actually 21:32.669 --> 21:36.799 into words the talent that he believes himself to 21:36.803 --> 21:42.143 possess.Now it's not until the fourth stanza of the prelude 21:42.142 --> 21:46.972 that we can fully understand the magnitude of the strange 21:46.965 --> 21:50.405 anxieties here. We can't know exactly -- and 21:50.406 --> 21:53.606 this is one of the wonderfully unsettling things about this 21:53.611 --> 21:56.871 stanza -- we can't know exactly to whom Milton is addressing 21:56.870 --> 21:59.900 this stanza. It would appear that Milton has 21:59.902 --> 22:03.012 stopped addressing the muse, the Heavenly Muse, 22:03.007 --> 22:06.447 and that he has begun addressing himself -- although 22:06.450 --> 22:09.210 that's unclear. But it may be the case that 22:09.207 --> 22:12.437 it's something like a situation in which over the course of the 22:12.439 --> 22:15.399 previous stanza, Milton has actually usurped the 22:15.399 --> 22:19.339 role of the muse and has begun providing something like his own 22:19.337 --> 22:22.267 inspiration. So in the fourth stanza we as 22:22.270 --> 22:26.440 readers have no idea where we are or when it is the speaker of 22:26.435 --> 22:29.435 the poem imagines himself to be speaking, 22:29.440 --> 22:34.860 and it's at this point that something quite strange happens. 22:34.859 --> 22:38.009 Milton tells the muse -- or is he telling himself? 22:38.009 --> 22:42.769 we don't know -- Milton tells someone to hurry up -- 22:42.765 --> 22:47.925 think of this -- to hurry up with the inspiration of the ode, 22:47.930 --> 22:51.290 to hurry up with the inspiration of the ode because 22:51.285 --> 22:55.305 Milton can see the Three Wise Men bearing their gifts as they 22:55.311 --> 22:59.341 dutifully follow the Star of Bethlehem to the manger.This 22:59.337 --> 23:02.957 may seem to be a perfectly reasonable vision for a poet 23:02.960 --> 23:06.920 considering himself to be an inspired poet to have, 23:06.920 --> 23:09.680 but there's something peculiar here. 23:09.680 --> 23:14.790 Milton wants to beat the Three Wise Men to the scene. 23:14.789 --> 23:18.449 Milton wants to arrive in Bethlehem to hand Christ his 23:18.452 --> 23:22.812 poem before the wise men are able to bring their gold and 23:22.805 --> 23:25.495 their frankincense and their myrrh. 23:25.500 --> 23:27.330 Look at line twenty-two. 23:27.329 --> 23:29.809 See how from far upon the Eastern road 23:29.809 --> 23:33.389 The Star-led wizards haste with odors sweet: 23:33.390 --> 23:36.260 O run, prevent them with thy humble ode, 23:36.259 --> 23:40.089 And lay it lowly at His blessed feet. 23:40.089 --> 23:42.809 Think of what this poem is now asking of us. 23:42.809 --> 23:45.989 We're being asked to accept the fiction that Milton is having 23:45.990 --> 23:48.750 this very poem laid at the blessed feet of the infant 23:48.746 --> 23:51.306 Christ. Milton, who is writing at the 23:51.306 --> 23:55.326 present moment of December of 1629, is claiming the capacity 23:55.326 --> 23:59.686 to arrive at a moment in history that he has already described as 23:59.688 --> 24:01.458 a long-completed one. 24:01.460 --> 24:05.360 Milton tells himself to run, and naturally he would have to 24:05.360 --> 24:09.260 run fast indeed in order to arrive at a moment in time that 24:09.261 --> 24:12.491 had already occurred before he even set out! 24:12.490 --> 24:17.780 This weird temporal disjunction is an important part of the 24:17.781 --> 24:22.801 poem, and it not only gives the poem its peculiar air of 24:22.798 --> 24:26.628 something like a conceptual time-warp, 24:26.630 --> 24:30.930 but it's an important part of Milton's profoundly anticipatory 24:30.933 --> 24:35.173 imagination.So Milton is struggling here to catch up with 24:35.166 --> 24:39.106 the star-led wizards, who -- as you can note -- are 24:39.112 --> 24:41.222 already themselves hasting. 24:41.220 --> 24:47.620 And he tries to "prevent" them with his humble ode. 24:47.619 --> 24:51.169 We'll talk about humble in a minute, but I'm interested 24:51.169 --> 24:54.889 now in the word prevent, which for me is really the 24:54.886 --> 24:57.646 central word of this remarkable stanza. 24:57.650 --> 25:01.070 Now, I don't know if Merritt Hughes weighs in on this or not. 25:01.069 --> 25:04.479 Most editors of Milton tell us that the word prevent in 25:04.484 --> 25:07.904 this line retains its original Latin meaning as you can see on 25:07.898 --> 25:11.288 your handout. It means "to come before." 25:11.290 --> 25:15.970 The Latin is praevenire; it means "to anticipate." 25:15.970 --> 25:19.890 Milton wants his ode to make it to Bethlehem before the 25:19.886 --> 25:21.166 Three Wise Men do. 25:21.170 --> 25:24.460 Now, this is a form of competitiveness with which we 25:24.463 --> 25:25.693 are all familiar. 25:25.690 --> 25:29.720 This is the straightforward, perfectly understandable 25:29.716 --> 25:33.896 competition to be first.Now, it's Milton's annotators who 25:33.899 --> 25:36.669 tell us that the word prevent means "to come 25:36.666 --> 25:38.816 before, to anticipate," and on some 25:38.818 --> 25:42.488 level it obviously means that and that goes without question. 25:42.490 --> 25:45.170 But I think this definition is also limiting, 25:45.171 --> 25:48.521 and this is a phenomenon that I hope you will come to be 25:48.523 --> 25:51.823 familiar with. The good scholars of Milton 25:51.818 --> 25:56.378 reveal their typical resistance to anything even remotely 25:56.378 --> 25:59.308 interesting or alive in the text. 25:59.309 --> 26:03.719 Surely this word prevent also has a little bit of its 26:03.719 --> 26:07.319 modern meaning. I think it might actually be 26:07.323 --> 26:11.663 the more obvious meaning, which is "to hinder" or "to 26:11.656 --> 26:13.906 preclude." When Milton tells himself to 26:13.909 --> 26:15.579 "prevent" the "Star-led wizards… 26:15.579 --> 26:18.229 with thy humble ode," he's also saying that the wise men should 26:18.230 --> 26:20.410 be prevented from making it to the manger at all, 26:20.410 --> 26:25.830 that somehow the wise men need to be headed off at the pass and 26:25.832 --> 26:31.172 precluded from presenting any gifts to the Infant God that may 26:31.167 --> 26:35.627 compete with the so-called humble ode of John 26:35.627 --> 26:41.047 Milton.Now this is a darker form of competitiveness, 26:41.049 --> 26:45.649 a competitiveness spawned -- think of our own environment 26:45.651 --> 26:50.581 here in the academy -- spawned by courses that grade strictly 26:50.580 --> 26:54.770 on a curve: a type of environment where one succeeds 26:54.770 --> 27:00.440 not merely by doing well but by doing better than other people, 27:00.440 --> 27:05.240 and especially in addition by preventing other people 27:05.244 --> 27:08.934 from doing well. It's an extraordinarily dark 27:08.934 --> 27:13.144 way to characterize the composition and the process of 27:13.144 --> 27:18.074 the poem.We have a strained image of the composition of the 27:18.069 --> 27:22.999 poem at its very outset and we have an image of someone writing 27:22.995 --> 27:26.565 as if he were participating in a race. 27:26.569 --> 27:32.369 And we're reminded of the etymological root of our modern 27:32.374 --> 27:35.384 English word career. 27:35.380 --> 27:39.530 Milton will only use the word career once in his poetic 27:39.528 --> 27:42.718 oeuvre and it comes -- it will come pretty soon, 27:42.723 --> 27:45.243 actually, in Sonnet Number Seven. 27:45.240 --> 27:48.060 The word career comes from the French 27:51.609 --> 27:53.579 etymologically "a career." 27:53.579 --> 27:57.349 What we think of as a career isn't simply the benign product 27:57.353 --> 28:00.683 of the gradual development of a certain potential. 28:00.680 --> 28:02.930 That's how we generally think of a career. 28:02.930 --> 28:07.800 It's the outcome of a race -- one's running faster than all of 28:07.802 --> 28:12.072 the other guys – and it's as if to have a career 28:12.073 --> 28:16.783 at all one has no choice but to come in first.The desire to 28:16.780 --> 28:21.180 be first is really central to this poem and it continues in 28:21.183 --> 28:25.163 this stanza: Have thou the honor first 28:25.156 --> 28:28.786 thy Lord to greet And join thy voice unto the 28:28.789 --> 28:32.309 Angel Choir, From out his secret Altar 28:32.305 --> 28:37.235 toucht with hallow'd fire. As you may have guessed, 28:37.240 --> 28:41.410 because you have this on your handout, Milton is alluding here 28:41.408 --> 28:45.438 to the famous words of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. 28:45.440 --> 28:49.090 Isaiah in this passage is describing a crucial moment in 28:49.091 --> 28:53.011 his career, his career as a prophet: the moment in which his 28:53.009 --> 28:56.659 lips are cleansed and he is empowered -- divinely 28:56.661 --> 28:59.451 empowered -- to speak prophetically. 28:59.450 --> 29:03.470 These are the Old Testament lines: 29:03.470 --> 29:07.810 Then flew one of the seraphims unto me [Isaiah tells 29:07.805 --> 29:10.615 us], having a live coal in his hand 29:10.619 --> 29:13.979 which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: 29:16.736 --> 29:20.646 mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; 29:20.650 --> 29:23.610 and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin 29:23.607 --> 29:26.587 purged. Also I heard the voice of 29:26.593 --> 29:28.673 the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, 29:28.674 --> 29:30.224 and who will go for us? 29:30.220 --> 29:36.900 Then said I, Here am I; send me. 29:36.900 --> 29:40.750 So what are we to do with this allusion? 29:40.750 --> 29:45.320 What are we to make of Milton's use of this striking and painful 29:45.324 --> 29:47.724 image of prophetic preparation? 29:47.720 --> 29:50.940 Milton can join his voice to the angel choir and have the 29:50.935 --> 29:53.745 honor of being first to greet the "Infant God." 29:53.750 --> 29:59.190 But before he can actually be made present at the actual event 29:59.185 --> 30:02.715 of the Nativity, he has to endure something 30:02.721 --> 30:07.031 painful and obviously momentous: "from out his secret Altar 30:07.031 --> 30:09.261 toucht with hallow'd fire." 30:09.259 --> 30:13.449 The iniquity of his lips must be burned off by a live angelic 30:13.452 --> 30:17.852 coal, that the sinfulness of his lips -- we could think of it as 30:17.854 --> 30:22.694 the sinfulness of his voice, his poetic voice -- will 30:22.693 --> 30:24.293 have to be purged. 30:24.289 --> 30:27.649 What exactly that purgation will entail and why Milton's 30:27.648 --> 30:31.368 voice needs to be purged at all -- I think these questions are 30:31.372 --> 30:34.672 really the subject of the entire rest of the poem. 30:34.670 --> 30:39.360 The hymn, what Milton calls the "humble ode," that follows this 30:39.362 --> 30:43.832 introduction is the poem that Milton wants to present to the 30:43.828 --> 30:46.238 Lord. But the hymn at the same time 30:46.237 --> 30:48.377 is something like the process, 30:48.382 --> 30:52.022 the process by which Milton is attempting to purge and cleanse 30:52.016 --> 30:55.406 his poetic voice and make it a voice that will actually be 30:55.411 --> 30:58.391 equal to the extraordinary ambition that he has for 30:58.390 --> 31:01.420 it.The hymn, the large part of the poem, 31:01.423 --> 31:03.943 can be divided roughly into three sections. 31:03.940 --> 31:06.820 First, in the first eight stanzas you have Milton 31:06.819 --> 31:10.359 describing the scene of the Nativity and the effect that the 31:10.359 --> 31:13.599 birth of this new infant has on the natural world. 31:13.599 --> 31:17.929 I don't have time here to discuss this section right now, 31:17.928 --> 31:22.258 but you've already had some encounter with the incredibly 31:22.257 --> 31:26.277 impressive level of ingenuity and grotesquery in this 31:26.277 --> 31:28.207 remarkable passage. 31:28.210 --> 31:32.760 Nature, who is an effeminized, personified being, 31:32.759 --> 31:38.349 is shamed and humiliated when she finds herself naked in the 31:38.351 --> 31:43.281 presence of this new God, Jesus.The second section 31:43.275 --> 31:48.015 runs from stanzas nine through seventeen, and it characterizes 31:48.015 --> 31:52.515 the song that the heavenly choir sings at the moment of the 31:52.522 --> 31:55.592 Nativity. But when Milton describes the 31:55.590 --> 31:59.620 song of the angelic choir he can't -- it's amazing – 31:59.619 --> 32:03.949 he can't seem to focus on the event at hand. 32:03.950 --> 32:07.390 What we should, I think, be witnessing here is 32:07.385 --> 32:11.015 the nativity of Christ and all of the events immediately 32:11.020 --> 32:14.390 surrounding the actual birth of the Infant God; 32:14.390 --> 32:18.430 but no sooner has Milton mentioned the singing of the 32:18.427 --> 32:23.007 angelic choir at the Nativity than he reminds himself of all 32:23.009 --> 32:25.959 the other times that they've sung. 32:25.960 --> 32:30.860 It's something like liner notes or a performance history of the 32:30.858 --> 32:35.518 cosmos' greatest singing group ever.Look at line 120. 32:35.519 --> 32:39.759 Milton writes that this choir had been singing at the moment 32:39.763 --> 32:41.803 of creation. Not bad. 32:41.800 --> 32:45.400 While the Creator Great His constellations set, 32:45.400 --> 32:50.320 And the well-balanc't world on hinges hung… 32:50.319 --> 32:53.199 It's almost too much for this poet. 32:53.200 --> 32:55.360 He's already been playing around with the temporality of 32:55.358 --> 32:56.978 the poem. as we've seen, 32:56.979 --> 33:01.739 establishing a fiction that works to place himself at the 33:01.735 --> 33:06.405 scene of a nativity that obviously occurs 1600 years and 33:06.407 --> 33:09.207 change before his own birth. 33:09.210 --> 33:12.790 But it's almost as if Milton were tempted now to make himself 33:12.789 --> 33:15.959 go even further back, to write a humble ode that he 33:15.956 --> 33:18.656 could place at the feet of the Creator, the Creator at the 33:18.661 --> 33:21.321 moment of the actual creation of the entire universe. 33:21.319 --> 33:25.699 The stakes of coming first seem are getting higher and 33:25.702 --> 33:30.002 higher.Before long the speaker realizes that this 33:30.001 --> 33:34.711 fantasy (and it is a fantasy that he's been engaged in) is 33:34.714 --> 33:38.934 starting to sound a little extreme or maybe a little 33:38.931 --> 33:41.511 dangerous. In line 134, 33:41.508 --> 33:46.948 Milton indicates that this holy song has enwrapped his fancy, 33:46.948 --> 33:52.568 that it has in some perilous way absorbed his imagination: 33:52.570 --> 33:56.630 For if such holy Song Enwrap our fancy long, 33:56.630 --> 33:59.900 Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold, 33:59.900 --> 34:03.750 And speckl'd vanity Will sicken soon and die, 34:03.750 --> 34:07.190 And leprous sin will melt from earthly mold, 34:07.190 --> 34:12.110 And hell itself will pass away, And leave her dolorous mansions 34:12.112 --> 34:16.152 to the peering day. The holy song Milton has been 34:16.152 --> 34:19.602 describing is beginning to look almost too tempting even to 34:19.598 --> 34:22.368 contemplate. There's almost a danger here in 34:22.370 --> 34:25.950 listening to it too long or describing it in too much detail 34:25.950 --> 34:29.590 and the danger seems -- or what Milton thinks of as the peril 34:29.591 --> 34:32.141 seems to involve the problem of time. 34:32.139 --> 34:35.859 "For if such holy Song / enwrap our fancy long," then we'll 34:35.860 --> 34:39.520 mistakenly convince ourselves that time could actually run 34:39.516 --> 34:43.426 backwards and that we've been returned to the Golden Age, 34:43.429 --> 34:47.229 the very first age of human history according to classical 34:47.230 --> 34:49.030 legend.We, of course, 34:49.030 --> 34:53.370 know as we read the prelude to this poem that this is a work 34:53.371 --> 34:57.051 consumed with questions of temporal disjunction, 34:57.050 --> 35:00.860 with that problem of temporal discontinuity. 35:00.860 --> 35:04.370 Milton clearly wants us to know that this Nativity Ode 35:04.373 --> 35:07.263 was written by a young Londoner in 1629, 35:07.260 --> 35:11.370 but it's a poem that is at the same time deliverable to the 35:11.374 --> 35:14.784 infant Christ by some extraordinary violation, 35:14.780 --> 35:17.370 of course, of all of the established laws of temporal 35:17.371 --> 35:20.321 sequence. And when you reread this poem 35:20.316 --> 35:24.196 and you look at it in your discussion section, 35:24.199 --> 35:28.609 you may want to think about the tenses -- it sounds tedious but 35:28.611 --> 35:32.601 I am convinced that it's not tedious -- the tenses of the 35:32.595 --> 35:34.725 verbs that Milton's using. 35:34.730 --> 35:38.480 Milton is switching here from present to past to future 35:38.482 --> 35:42.302 incredibly rapidly and really with a bewildering kind of 35:42.304 --> 35:45.644 facility And it is at some point impossible, 35:45.639 --> 35:48.469 I think, for the reader to tell whether the poet is discussing 35:48.472 --> 35:50.332 something that's happening now, 35:50.329 --> 35:53.319 something that's happened a long time ago, 35:53.323 --> 35:56.943 or something that will happen at the end of time. 35:56.940 --> 36:00.600 The thematic problems that Milton is attempting to tackle 36:00.595 --> 36:04.115 are written into the very grammar and the syntax of the 36:04.120 --> 36:07.140 poem.Now, Milton understands the problems 36:07.136 --> 36:10.456 besetting what we could think of as the poem's confused 36:10.457 --> 36:12.617 temporality; he understands this a lot 36:12.618 --> 36:13.558 better than we do. 36:13.559 --> 36:17.099 And there's a self-consciousness about the 36:17.101 --> 36:20.901 temporal strangeness of this poem that leads, 36:20.902 --> 36:23.842 I think, to its crisis moment. 36:23.840 --> 36:27.830 Look at stanza sixteen. 36:27.829 --> 36:30.899 This is the stanza that begins with line 150. 36:30.900 --> 36:34.060 Milton has just been entertaining the glorious moment 36:34.059 --> 36:37.579 of the apocalypse at the end of time -- because he's always 36:37.582 --> 36:40.622 looking further and further and further ahead. 36:40.619 --> 36:44.309 He's been doing that when we get this. 36:44.310 --> 36:48.420 Line 150: But wisest Fate says no, 36:48.420 --> 36:53.410 This must not yet be so, The babe lies yet in smiling 36:53.407 --> 36:56.117 Infancy, That on the bitter cross 36:56.120 --> 37:00.000 Must redeem our loss; So both himself and us to 36:59.998 --> 37:03.648 glorify… "But wisest Fate says no, 37:03.650 --> 37:05.880 / this must not yet be so." 37:05.880 --> 37:08.580 It's here that we have something like a crystallizing 37:08.583 --> 37:10.043 moment of reality-testing. 37:10.040 --> 37:12.020 Milton, he checks himself. 37:12.019 --> 37:15.049 Reality intrudes and the poet has no choice but to say, 37:15.052 --> 37:16.612 "No. You've gone too far. 37:16.610 --> 37:21.060 You've gone too far in your anticipation of the future event 37:21.057 --> 37:22.637 at the end of time. 37:22.639 --> 37:26.019 Fate will permit no apocalypse before its time, 37:26.020 --> 37:30.060 before the necessary and painful steps that have to lead 37:30.062 --> 37:32.122 up to the Last Judgment. 37:32.119 --> 37:34.729 Before the ecstatic fulfillment of all of Christian history, 37:34.734 --> 37:36.954 the great Christian narrative -- Jesus actually, 37:36.949 --> 37:41.329 of course, has to grow up and lead his life and then sacrifice 37:41.327 --> 37:45.057 that life on the bitter cross."In alluding to the 37:45.059 --> 37:49.869 prophet Isaiah in the prelude, Milton suggested that the 37:49.871 --> 37:55.281 iniquity of his lips had to be purged off -- burned off, 37:55.280 --> 38:01.680 with the live coal supplied by one of the seraphim. 38:01.679 --> 38:05.729 One of those sins, I think, that needs to be 38:05.726 --> 38:11.556 purged is clearly the sin of eagerness or over-anticipation, 38:11.559 --> 38:14.029 the drive to move ahead of oneself and the drive to get 38:14.032 --> 38:16.502 ahead of others (as we saw Milton trying to do with the 38:16.504 --> 38:19.044 Three Wise Men). These are drives that the poem 38:19.037 --> 38:22.107 seems to be struggling to keep in check, or that Milton is 38:22.110 --> 38:25.130 representing the poem as struggling to keep in check, 38:25.130 --> 38:29.310 or to purge in some way.But there's something else that 38:29.314 --> 38:32.664 needs to be purged, and the poem recognizes that 38:32.655 --> 38:34.085 even more profoundly. 38:34.090 --> 38:37.910 The Nativity Ode is continually presenting the 38:37.914 --> 38:41.744 speaker with temptations, with incitements to sin that 38:41.735 --> 38:45.075 need to be purged from the speaker's poetic voice. 38:45.079 --> 38:49.049 The final section of the poem presents us with the most 38:49.048 --> 38:52.868 powerful temptation that John Milton can confront, 38:52.869 --> 38:56.879 and we will find that this is a problem that continues for the 38:56.883 --> 38:58.663 rest of his writing life. 38:58.659 --> 39:02.879 He will have to do battle with this temptation forever: 39:02.880 --> 39:06.710 the temptation offered by classical literature. 39:06.710 --> 39:09.590 You remember that Milton had vowed to his friend Charles 39:09.587 --> 39:12.777 Diodati in the Sixth Elegy that he would become an epic 39:12.778 --> 39:15.698 poet some day, and that he was taking all of 39:15.704 --> 39:19.814 the necessary steps to transform himself into an epic poet. 39:19.809 --> 39:24.119 But it's strictly a Christian epic poem that Milton 39:24.124 --> 39:27.164 seems to imagine himself as writing. 39:27.159 --> 39:31.049 Now, he hasn't yet settled on the topic of the Fall, 39:31.053 --> 39:35.333 the fall of Adam and Eve from their place of bliss in the 39:35.329 --> 39:37.779 Garden of Eden. But Milton knows that the 39:37.777 --> 39:39.927 general feeling of the thing is, of course, going to be 39:39.931 --> 39:42.411 Christian, and he's probably taking as his 39:42.413 --> 39:46.213 model at this point the Italian poet Torquato Tasso who wrote 39:46.213 --> 39:49.663 Jerusalem Delivered, a slightly earlier 39:49.656 --> 39:52.756 Christian epic poem, romance-epic poem, 39:52.758 --> 39:55.288 that Milton greatly admired. 39:55.289 --> 39:59.119 But Milton's also sensitive to the fact that the very phrase 39:59.119 --> 40:02.949 "Christian epic" is in some way a contradiction in terms. 40:02.949 --> 40:06.279 The epic form is a classical, pagan form. 40:06.280 --> 40:10.600 It's a poem structured around the interaction between human 40:10.600 --> 40:14.250 beings and an entire pantheon of pagan deities. 40:14.250 --> 40:18.970 To write any kind of epic at all might very well seem to be 40:18.965 --> 40:23.755 embracing an inappropriately sensual paganism at the expense 40:23.761 --> 40:26.771 of the higher discipline of good, 40:26.769 --> 40:30.129 old-fashioned monotheistic Christianity. 40:30.130 --> 40:32.890 And the ode, too -- the form in which this 40:32.886 --> 40:36.916 poem is written -- is a pagan form invented by the Greek poet 40:36.921 --> 40:40.351 Pindar to express the sublimities of emotion arising 40:40.350 --> 40:44.520 from a contemplation of the actions of the gods.Now, 40:44.519 --> 40:49.129 in writing in these genres, Milton is, of course, 40:49.130 --> 40:51.820 confronted with a dilemma. 40:51.820 --> 40:53.630 He's a humanist scholar. 40:53.630 --> 40:56.450 He is more steeped in the sensuous beauty of classical 40:56.451 --> 40:59.431 literature, the classical tradition, than probably anyone 40:59.432 --> 41:00.872 else of his generation. 41:00.869 --> 41:06.019 Since he was an unusually small lad, he had been mainlining 41:06.020 --> 41:08.240 Greek and Roman poetry. 41:08.239 --> 41:12.949 The language of Homer and of Virgil and of Pindar and of Ovid 41:12.948 --> 41:17.808 had become an inextricable part of his literary imagination and 41:17.814 --> 41:20.644 of his consciousness in general. 41:20.639 --> 41:23.959 But Milton was also beginning to develop in this period a much 41:23.960 --> 41:26.410 more strict, a much more disciplined religious 41:26.409 --> 41:29.309 temperament. He was beginning to join ranks 41:29.314 --> 41:32.234 with those early seventeenth-century English 41:32.231 --> 41:36.161 Protestants who imposed upon themselves rigorous and strict 41:36.164 --> 41:38.814 codes of behavior and self-denial, 41:38.809 --> 41:42.799 and who were increasingly being called by their enemies 41:42.797 --> 41:46.227 Puritans. And it's possible that the very 41:46.231 --> 41:51.471 idea of a Puritan poet presented Milton with what may have felt 41:51.473 --> 41:54.013 like an insoluble conflict. 41:54.010 --> 41:58.620 It's possible that Milton would continue -- well, 41:58.618 --> 42:04.858 if Milton were to continue this cultivation of a poetic career, 42:04.860 --> 42:08.460 he would clearly have to purge (this is the Miltonic logic at 42:08.463 --> 42:11.893 this stage) he would have to purge his poetic voice of the 42:11.887 --> 42:14.287 sin and the taint of pagan iniquity. 42:14.289 --> 42:17.729 If he was going to become a specifically Christian poet, 42:17.729 --> 42:21.359 he would have to expel from his system the sensual world of 42:21.357 --> 42:24.987 classical learning that for him was at the very core of his 42:24.985 --> 42:28.235 being.And it's precisely a silencing of classical 42:28.237 --> 42:31.987 literature that Milton is attempting to effect here. 42:31.989 --> 42:35.599 With the scene of the flight of the pagan gods at the nativity 42:35.601 --> 42:38.741 of Christ Milton is also depicting a scenario that, 42:38.739 --> 42:42.869 I think, on some level he's hoping will occur within 42:42.870 --> 42:45.500 himself. We have the silencing not just 42:45.499 --> 42:48.409 of any literature here but of pagan literature. 42:48.409 --> 42:56.219 It's now the pagan deities who have turned into "infant" gods. 42:56.219 --> 42:59.309 Milton is narrating or representing the process by 42:59.310 --> 43:00.950 which they are silenced. 43:00.949 --> 43:05.969 They're rendered speechless or dumb, and the poem effects this 43:05.971 --> 43:11.241 process in order to give someone else an opportunity to speak. 43:11.239 --> 43:14.809 Milton calls upon a whole range of violent, exciting, 43:14.806 --> 43:18.236 militaristic images, and set-pieces to describe the 43:18.236 --> 43:21.936 triumph of Christ over the petty gods of paganism, 43:21.940 --> 43:26.850 but this routing of the gods brings with it a certain cost. 43:26.850 --> 43:29.910 Something is lost here as well. 43:29.910 --> 43:33.770 Look at line 181. 43:33.769 --> 43:39.489 Hands down, these are, for me, the best lines in the 43:39.492 --> 43:42.432 poem: The lonely mountains o'er, 43:42.430 --> 43:46.940 And the resounding shore, A voice of weeping heard, 43:46.941 --> 43:50.101 and loud lament; From haunted spring and dale 43:50.100 --> 43:54.890 Edg'd with poplar pale, The parting genius is with 43:54.890 --> 44:00.020 sighing sent; With flow'r-inwov'n tresses torn 44:00.019 --> 44:06.229 The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn. 44:06.230 --> 44:09.870 It's here in this stanza, filled with the resounding 44:09.874 --> 44:13.564 voices of weeping and lament, that we realize that something 44:13.555 --> 44:16.385 more is going on than merely a routing of the pagan gods, 44:16.389 --> 44:19.869 something more even than Milton's pious triumph over his 44:19.871 --> 44:21.961 classical literary imagination. 44:21.960 --> 44:26.220 Suddenly, the literary genre that Milton is writing in is no 44:26.216 --> 44:29.026 longer this triumphant classical ode. 44:29.030 --> 44:33.610 You have an elegy here, a beautiful and plangent lament 44:33.613 --> 44:36.333 for something or someone lost. 44:36.329 --> 44:40.509 And we have to ask ourselves, "Could this be a paradise 44:40.510 --> 44:42.980 lost?" We hear a clear mourning for 44:42.983 --> 44:46.763 those pagan beings who are forced to depart because of the 44:46.755 --> 44:48.935 violent onset of Christianity. 44:48.940 --> 44:52.460 When Milton writes that "the parting Genius is with sighing 44:52.455 --> 44:56.085 sent," he means the genius loci or the local spirit of 44:56.091 --> 44:58.931 the place, the natural spirit of a place: 44:58.928 --> 45:02.708 those beneficent beings that pagans had believed inhabited 45:02.707 --> 45:04.627 certain woods and streams. 45:04.630 --> 45:08.970 But the parting genius is also a part of Milton's own genius, 45:08.969 --> 45:13.029 his literary genius, that aspect of his literary 45:13.030 --> 45:17.240 career and his literary expertise that has been 45:17.238 --> 45:20.558 nourished and fed, lovingly fed, 45:20.562 --> 45:23.262 by classical literature. 45:23.260 --> 45:27.340 The conflictedness that Milton is encapsulating here is 45:27.343 --> 45:31.293 probably most intense in the last lines of this wonderful 45:31.287 --> 45:35.227 stanza: "With flow'r-inwov'n tresses torn / the Nymphs in 45:35.230 --> 45:38.610 twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn." 45:38.610 --> 45:43.500 This densely tangled thicket of clustered consonants in this 45:43.497 --> 45:47.387 amazing couplet is a signal to us of the weight, 45:47.390 --> 45:50.870 of the import, of this terrible event. 45:50.869 --> 45:53.399 These are difficult lines physically to read, 45:53.396 --> 45:56.896 and they may very well be the most painful lines in the entire 45:56.900 --> 45:59.140 poem from an emotional perspective. 45:59.139 --> 46:05.199 It's one thing for the evil pagan deities like Moloch and 46:05.195 --> 46:11.245 Peor to be forced in to hell by the newly born Christ. 46:11.250 --> 46:12.270 Who are they to us? 46:12.269 --> 46:16.099 We find it difficult to bewail their absence. 46:16.099 --> 46:19.889 But the nymphs in all of their sensuous beauty, 46:19.890 --> 46:25.000 with "flow'r-inwov'n tresses," they have to experience the same 46:24.998 --> 46:27.858 fate. I think it's impossible not to 46:27.864 --> 46:31.764 wince when we imagine the painful tearing of the nymphs' 46:31.760 --> 46:34.560 tresses. Their hair gets caught on the 46:34.556 --> 46:38.726 tangled thickets of the forest as they abandon -- as they are 46:38.728 --> 46:42.898 forced to abandon -- the classical corners of Milton's 46:42.899 --> 46:46.649 literary imagination.The elegiac tone of this final 46:46.654 --> 46:50.764 section of the poem should give us some clues to the type of 46:50.756 --> 46:54.366 victory over paganism that Christ's birth is actually 46:54.372 --> 46:58.452 heralding here. How new will this new world 46:58.451 --> 47:00.051 order actually be? 47:00.050 --> 47:03.390 We may imagine that henceforth, now that he has written his 47:03.385 --> 47:09.215 Nativity Ode, Milton has fully expunged 47:09.219 --> 47:19.309 from his literary system that youthful attachment to the pagan 47:19.314 --> 47:23.424 classics. But the expulsion of paganism 47:23.420 --> 47:28.030 described in the Nativity Ode is a scene that Milton will return 47:28.027 --> 47:30.657 to and return to again and again, 47:30.659 --> 47:34.599 and in many ways it will be Christianity's triumph over 47:34.596 --> 47:38.896 paganism and all of the pain that that triumph produces that 47:38.897 --> 47:43.127 will become the hidden subtext of many of Milton's greatest 47:43.125 --> 47:43.995 works.