Most critics note the low hanging fruit of dunking o Dr. Samuel Johnson

"But being impelled by an irresistible fascination, I have, unlike Dr. Johnson, returned as often to the poem, discovering with each successive examination new excellences of expression, new grandeurs of concept and organization, glowing symbols perhaps of truth, and inexhaustible sources of myth and legend woven into epic adventure" pp 1

This whole P is a good introduction to Timaeus and Chaos

"Inquisitive scholars and critics, bent upon investigation and interpretation of only these four sections of Paradise Lost, are likely at first to be overwhelmed by the avalanche of Milton’s released knowledge and to be astonished by his apparent haphazard use of it. Here Christian traditions of all sorts are jumbled with classical mythology and philosophy, with rabbinical interpretation of sacred books, with atomistic, orphic, and scholastic speculation, and with Neoplatonic theology in what seems to be a wild disorder. Here Iplatonic theology in what seems to be a wild disorder. Here St. Augustine, St. Basil, and St. Thomas rub shoulders, if only at some distance, with Epicurus, Lucretius, and Democritus; Hesiod furnishes mysterious names of gods, foreign to Ezekiel and John of Patmos; Damascius, Epimenides, and Proclus provide symbolic figures unknown to Plato or Aristotle or Hermes Trismegistus; Greek Tartarus and Christian Inferno are reflected in Hell; pagan gods from many legends are metamorphosed into the demons of Christian tradition. Any industrious source-hunter may well become bewildered by such a hodgepodge of fragments, echoes, reflected jots and tittles from this or that originally unrelated system of philosophy, and by the plethora of allusions to myths and legends never so associated before.* Dr. Johnson’s sense of being overburdened is understandable. I myself have often come to this conclusion: Milton is an eclectic without any great ability to systematize his fascinating materials. " pp 10

quote this in one of those instructive Q's about conflict/contradiction in Milton's verse – where he begs the Q

""As usual, however, the apparent fault in this situation has proved to be not Milton's but mine." pp12

Explicit refutation of abdication teory from DDC

The following paragraph is funny and latinate too

"Milton now proceeds to inquire how or in what sense God the Father can have begotten such a Son. He finds that this point can be “easily explained” by reference to the Scriptures; for when the Only Begotten is called “the first born of every creature, and the beginning of the creation of God,” it is clearly evident that “God of his own will created, or generated, or produced the Son before all things, endued with the divine nature.” He continues:

The generation of the divine nature is described by no one with more sublimity and copiousness than by the apostle in Hebrews, i. 2, 3. “whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person,” &c. It must be understood from this, that God imparted to the Son as much as he pleased of the divine nature, nay of the divine substance itself, care being taken not to confound the substance with the whole essence, which would imply, that the Father had given to the Son what he retained numerically the same himself; which would be a contradiction of terms instead of a mode of generation. This is the whole that is revealed concerning the generation of the Son of God (XIV, 193).

This passage needs to be scanned carefully and in some detail. Milton’s whole theory appears in danger of disintegration. " pp 29

Deviates from neoplatonism in his timeline – that one exists

"Here Milton seems to be employing a Neoplatonic concept of emanation somewhat similar to that of Proclus, as I have tried to show elsewhere.'® But there is this marked difference: for Proclus the emanation of materiality from essentiality of the One is a necessary and eternal process; for Milton the efflux of matter from God occurs at a point of time (XV, 19) and involves the exercise of the divine will. " pp 33

Important timeline in PL w.r.t. DDC: include wherever Satan's creation of being self-begotten is mentioned

"This term afterwards (postea) in the above passage suggests that for Milton the order of generative, emanative, and creative processes is of prime importance, involving as it does different concepts of time. As we have seen, the Son was generated in time and before everything else; the Holy Spirit was created at an uncertain point of time, but later than the Son; passive matter was emanated from God in time, reduced to a “confused” prepared matter, and “afterwards” adorned and digested into an orderly creation. Moreover, the Heaven of Heavens, Paradise, and the angels were created at some remote period before the creation of the visible universe in six days (XV, 29, 31, 33, 35). "

almost seems as though WCC conflates the muse of III with God Himself?

"But that in the poem Milton represents faithfully the dual concept of the divine nature as formulated in the Christian Doctrine cannot be doubted.** For example, as metaphysical Being he is pronounced omnipotent, immutable, immortal, and infinite (III, 372-373);** “God is light,/ And never but in unapproached light / Dwelt from eternity” (III, 3-5); he is therefore the fountain of light (III, 374). " pp 43

Milton is consistent b/w DDC & PL – DDC is a valid supplement to turn to for questions left unanswered by his verse

"Nevertheless, it must be emphasized again that in both the Christian Doctrine and in Paradise Lost the philosopher-poet is consistent in his presentation of the fundamentally same dual concept of Deity: God in the mode of his metaphysical subsistence, and God in the mode of his operational existence.*® " pp 47

Chaos & Night as personifications from Orphic tradition rather than just conduits for generation

"He [professor Osgood] surmises, however, that the conception of Chaos as a ruling god may be traced ultimately to “Hesiod, though his representation is much less definite than Milton’s, and amounts to little more than a personification of a condition in the order of nature’s earliest development.”’* On the other hand, it is generally conceded that “The Miltonic conception of Night is based upon that of the Orphic cosmogony, which makes her the eldest and first of all things.”® Such observations are stimulating and, within certain limitations, likely to be correct. " pp 50

Troubling cosmology of Night being the eldest, coming at a time when primacy is of utmost importance. Eldest of those things which have been created? Implicitly after the father and after the son?

"It is by no means clear, however, why Milton should pronounce the goddess Night to be the “eldest of things.” It may be, as Osgood suggests, that he bases this concept upon the Orphic cosmogony, where Night is indeed addressed as parent Goddess, source’ of all things, “From whom at first both Gods and men arose.”** Or perhaps he is here following the Homeric tradition, reverencing in silence the whole order of intelligibles and beginning his genealogy of divine principles from Night. In either case, however, it is difficult to understand how a sovereign Chaos could be considered, according to any philosophical interpretation, as posterior to “eldest Night” and therefore her product or son. Or it is possible that the poet is here achieving a symbolical association of the goddess Night with the “thrice pronounced darkness” celebrated by the Egyptians as the incomprehensible first principle of all things,® or with the Biblical “darkness on the face of the deep,” or with the Babylonian “darkness” out of which the universe developed,* or with the Hermetic “downward-tending darkness, terrible and grim” appearing first upon the face of illimitable Light where the cosmos is " pp 58

"dyad" c.f. other mentions of the non-trinity

"Now in deriving an incorruptible matter from God, Milton is following an ancient and respectable tradition. Diogenes Laertius, for example, reports the opinion of certain Pythagoreans to the effect that “The principle of all things is the monad or unit; arising from this monad the undefined dyad or two serves as material substratum to the monad, which is cause.”°* This dyad may be interpreted as merely “the reason of alterity, inequality, and unconstant irregularity in things”;®* but for most writers the “infinite duality of all things” is to be identified with passive matter upon which the monad as active cause operates.*® " pp 65

C.f. Lieb's dialectics

"Satan, indeed, maligns both Chaos and Night by falsely representing them as “Protesting fate supreme” (PL., X, 480). But neither manifests alienation from God; the principle of alterity, with its accompanying evil, applies only in the world of partial natures. Even Chaos and Old Night, embodying a maximum of accidental evil, play a necessary role in the emanative process. They too are assimilated in the uncircumscribed spirit of God." pp 72-3

dialectics of Chaos

"MILTON’S CHAOS IN PARADISE LOST IS DISORDERLY, BUT it is palpable and therefore subject to processes of analysis. Upon proper consideration it is discovered to be a subsistent entity whose inherent primary qualities, such as extension, solidity or fluidity, number, and motion, may as usual be grasped by perception. And these perceived primary qualities have the power of producing a variety of sensations, secondary qualities such as heat and cold, color, and sound.’ It is heterogeneous, a mass of agglomerate materials in various stages of becoming. This chaos in all its multiplicity of detail is directly prepared by God to serve as the substrate of all generation and corruption. " pp 74

Noice of the poem, to be detailed later on in VI, but worth mentioning here as we begin our digestion of the poem

"Still another quality which distinguishes Milton’s chaos from most others is its greatly emphasized noise. Here the conflicting particles assail the ear and produce the sensation interpreted as sound. And the noises so sensed are tremendous and unpleasant to the point of being painful. For example, as Satan looks upon chaos, he understands that the confusion there is accompanied by “the noise / Of endless wars (II, 896). " pp 86

Maybe work into the conclusion or intro of Miltonic Simile chapter

"To interpreters these may well seem bewildering or baffling; sometimes, as Bunyan says, “metaphors make us blind.” But the poet’s own imagination is evidently unclouded, his perception sensitive and clear, and his general design carefully delineated. Selecting quite diversified materials from a variety of philosophical and traditional sources, he has syncretized them into a consistent chaos which is completely like no other but which is admirably adapted to his epic design. " pp 90-91

Worth including all of genesis at the outset of this chapter to demonstrate the amplification

"It is true that the account in Genesis is disconcertingly meager and cryptic enough, seeming to demand amplification: God created the heaven and the earth; the earth was without form and void, darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters; God said, ... " pp 92

More names for Raphael

"Affable Raphael is the divine historian extraordinary, the facile raconteur of remarkable events, mentor of Adam, metaphysician, and indifferent physicist with Stoic or atomistic inclinations. " pp 102

Mention in Temieus

"Here the Spirit of God communicates to a prepared matter those creative powers or hidden seeds of things—sometimes called “seminal reasons” or logoi spermatikoi—which are pale reflections of exemplars in God’s mind.** " pp 105

Worth including this diagram in relation to the hell bridge connecting heaven, hell, earth

"He is especially interested here in the meeting at this point of three symbolical ways: one leading up to Heaven-gate, a stairway, each tread of which is “mysteriously . . . meant” (III, 516), one passing down to Earth, and one giving easy access to Hell. Satan, as he stands facing the battlements of Heaven, is able to observe all three of them at their junction, for ... By means of this glorious work, he says, the Infernal Empire has been unified with the new World into “one realm, one continent / Of easy thoroughfare” (X, 391-394). " pp 155-57

one of the best summaries of his nuanced not-quite-neoplatonic tradition fused with Christian Agusutinianism

"In conclusion, it must be observed that Milton’s doctrine concerning the scale of nature represents a distinguished syncretism of elements derived from a variety of philosophical traditions. His reason and poetic imagination, working in harmony, fuse the Christian concept of an historical creation dependent upon the will of God with Neoplatonic speculations regarding the human spirit’s power to determine the state of its material body. He embraces something like Augustinian exemplarism and combines it with the theory of a plurality of forms which differentiate one homogeneous matter into a multiplicity of appropriate matters. " pp 182

Wherever I called TSE A fuckwit. Respond with this instead

"But in attempting to reduce Milton’s philosophical observations to some sort of system, one need not suppose that the poet is a mere eclectic juggling attractive fragments. Any cosmogony must necessarily be extremely recondite. Its vocabulary is, therefore, usually abstruse, mystic, and symbolic. Milton, being tremendously interested in the ultimate origins and processes of creation, is apparently unwilling to employ a private and personal symbology in the presentation of his concepts; he rather attaches himself to established traditions which furnish a terminology now become reputable by virtue of long use. " pp 190

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