In England of the
seventeenth century, an England which lived under the perennial shadow of
mortality, Death is probably the single-most important event that dominated
human life. Death of a person was, at once, a cognitive, personal experience
and a community experience. Milton, having being exposed to death from very
close quarters, was fascinated with the void that Death left behind, and
obsessively wrote about it in an attempt to come to terms with its levelling
effect. As yet indeterminate in his religious stance, the young Milton often
used Death as the primary motif of his early poetry. Milton variously treats
Death as a pestilence, a judgement upon humanity, a cruel, cold hand that
sounds an infant's death rattle, and even as an old friend. In all his poetic
expressions related to Death, however, one thing stands out- his formalization
of the act of Death, whether private or public. Milton's ability to adapt a
formal structure to express any emotion, no matter how poignant and personal,
is one of the pillars on which his fame rests. Milton's poetry of Death, too,
is characterized by the embedding of intensely personal meditations in the
trappings of particular rigid formal structures.
Milton’s first published poem was 'An Epitaph on the
Admirable Dramatic Poet, W. Shakespeare', a sonnet that was printed anonymously
in the second folio of Shakespeare’s works. Although a poem which is more about
poetic reputation than death, it does talk about ceremonialisation of death.
Through the poem, Milton pays homage to the deceased poet by talking about how
Shakespeare has built his own monument through his works, which are read and
treasured, many years after his death, thus negating the need for a physical monument
to commemorate the death of the revered poet. The ritualisation of death can be
noted through the use of certain words like ‘sepulchre’ and ‘tomb’, which
eventually tie up with the greater idea of creating a monument with words, for
someone who was known for his words.
In the spring of 1626, Milton wrote ‘On the Death of a Fair
Infant’, commemorating and mourning the loss of his niece, the daughter of his
older sister. It contains themes that can be found throughout the Miltonian
corpus. The stanzaic groupings of the funeral ode, usage of classical allusions
and theological references-again, a formalized structure-serve to emphasize the
fact that death leaves an indelible mark that one cannot do away with. This
poem was also written during a time when the mortality rate was extremely high
amongst the residents of London. People were dying of the plague, and nobody
had the time to mourn the death of an infant. Milton talks about the then dead
child, who came into the world to grace everyone with her presence, but moved
on to the higher realm since this world was incompatible with her existence. On
the other hand, an infant also stood for ideas of hope, and the death of one
meant the destruction of hope. Writing about these deaths thus became a kind of
reminder of death, of the transience of life, and at the same time, a reminder
of the life that once existed. Like the previously discussed poem, this
personal memento mori also has a highly formalized structure. According to
Lewalski, the poem “finds its chief models in Spenserian poets like the
Fletchers, in neo-Latin funeral epigrams on the death of children for the use
of the flower motif, and in Pindaric odes for the myths and mythic
transformations. The seven-line stanzas meld Chaucerian rime royal with the
Spenserian stanza, retaining the Spenserian final alexandrine as well as
Spenserian archaisms and schemes of alliteration and assonance.”
“An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester” is perhaps a
better example of Milton’s engagement with form while describing death. In this
poem, he talks about the death of Jane Paulet, the twenty-three year old
Marchioness of Winchester, who died while giving birth to her son, who also
passed away. Written shortly after Paulet’s death, the poem is an ode in iambic
tetrameter. He deliberately chooses a form that would allow him to praise his
subject and her virtues, as is done on a tombstone, by conforming to tradition,
introducing the subject and consequently announcing her age and her stature in
the society. He talks about the latter,
mentioning that she was not only the wife of John Paulet, the 5th Marquess of
Winchester, but also “A viscount’s daughter” and an “Earl’s heir”, both of
which is cited as reason for her virtue. He selects this method of praising his
subject quite wittily, reiterating Aristotle’s statement that genealogy is “the
fundamental ground of reputation or discredit for human beings.” The movement
of the poem is from past to present, from dark to light, and a kind of
hopefulness springs from this. This hopefulness is a constant feature of
Milton's musings on Death. The Marchioness, initially, is referred to in third
person, and the emphasis is upon the tragedy of her early death. However, post
the forty sixth line, she is addressed directly, and as a result of this, the
tone changes as the poem moves from past to present, talking about her present
happy state. In this there is the ever-present hope of the redemptive capacity
of even Death. The Marchioness lives on,
happy in the ever-living beauty of the poet's world, which is a Deathless world
of light and shadow both. Throughout the poem, apart from adorning it with
classical allusions, Milton uses octo- and heptasyllabic couplets, which have
traditionally been used in English literature to create light effects, but, as
shown by Jonson, can also be used while addressing serious issues. Thus, by
employing a structured approach towards an intensely personal experience,
Milton, yet again, creates a stateliness that only reinforces the strength of the
emotions he attempts to convey.
Form and emotion intertwine in Milton's early poetry as it
does later. The short poems evoke powerful reactions in both contemporaries and
later readers. Yet the formal structures he employs follow the rules, more or
less, of the convention it belongs to. This conventional expression results, as
it does with any truly great poet, not in creating something rigid and static,
but a dynamic creation, that appeals differently to different readers,
something timeless in its universal crystallization of Death into poetry. The
shadow of the Day of Judgement always looms on those that Death claims, but
there is always a hope of redemption, always a respite from the blow of Death.
Death, in effect, is never final. We feel, like Milton does, that “Hobson has supped, and's newly gone to bed", and feel comforted as if he were soon to wake
again.
-Disha Raychaudhuri
PG-I
Roll No. 33
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