Milton’s
early poems “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso” have always been considered
companion poems in terms of their embodiment of contradicting moods and their
invocations to diametrically opposite muses. The sunny and playful ambience of “L’Allegro”
evokes to some critics an
image of Milton’s closest companion, Charles Diodati, in comparision to whom
the young poet appeared pensive and perhaps a little gloomy.[i]
The poems rehearse a number of stock images that contribute to the two
atmospheres – one filled with mirth and fecundity, the other with isolation and
contemplation; yet, there seems to be a slight difference in Milton’s attitude
towards the different orders of experience described in them.
Milton
begins “L’Allegro” by tracing the origin of his chosen
muse, Euphrosyne, directly from Bacchus, which makes her, interestingly enough,
Comus’ half-sister. The poem celebrates
sunrise, spring-time, the song of the lark and the crowing of the cock. The
seasonal rhythms reverberate through the references to the rural landscape,
full of milkmaids and shepherds, mowing and plowing, furrowed fields and
harvest-time. The setting of “L’Allegro”
appears to be the English countryside rather than the idealized meadows of the pastoral
genre, as it continually draws our attention to the energetic, and indeed quotidian
activities of the inhabitants rather than their abstract discourse on love and
philosophy. Corydon and Thyrsis seem absorbed in their ‘savoury dinner’ while
Phillis and Thestyllis hasten to bind the sheaves of grain. The villagers
rejoice in the warm weather by singing and dancing around the maypole and
exchanging tales of the supernatural creatures that rule their imagination.
Here Milton provides a fascinating account of the spirits that appear to
inhabit England, Faery Mab, the Hobgoblin, the Lubber fiend etc., whose
existence is inextricably bound up with the changes in season. In “L’Allegro”, the tower (containing an imprisoned
lady) does not function as a crucial turning point in the narrative as it does
in medieval romances. Instead it serves as an ornament to the setting, while
slyly pointing to the difference of class between the remote aristocracy and
the hardworking peasantry. From the countryside, the scene shifts to the busy
and exciting life of the ‘towered cities’, which poses a contrast to the
simple, plentiful bucolic life. The landscape of romance is reinforced by
images of liveried knights jousting for the favor of their ladies. Finally, the
all-encompassing eye of the poet moves to the stage, where the comedies of
Shakespeare and Jonson expose the quirks of the time to ridicule, thus
attempting in their way to cure the ills of society.
Milton’s
“L’Allegro” continually returns to themes of birth, fertility and regeneration.
After the violets and eglantines of spring, comes the ripe crops of autumn, and
the poem swiftly moves back to a scene of happiness and sunshine. We are never
aware of the darkness, the famine and the frost that conquer the pastoral
landscape for a few months each year. Far from the day and night paradigm,
which has often been a critical commonplace in analyzing the difference between
the two poems, “L’Allegro” seems to occupy several seasons, but only
selectively. We move from spring to summer to autumn and then from spring to
summer again.[ii]
When the villagers retire for the night, we do not travel to the city in the
dark, but return to the afternoon which is the time for plays and jousts,
pageants and revelry.
The beginning of “Il Penseroso” is very similar to that of “L’Allegro”. Each poem denounces the
temperament that is welcomed in its companion-piece, and Rosemond Tuve argues
that the poems begin “with a banishing of the travesty of what is praised in
the other.”[iii] In
an essay entitled “The Background to “Il Penseroso””, Lawrence Babb puts
forward Ficino’s differentiation of the two kinds of melancholy - black,
ignoble melancholy, which causes madness, hallucinations and ridiculous fears,
and tempered melancholy, golden tinged with purple, that prepares the mind to
receive divine influence and spiritual instruction.[iv]
Thus both the nun and the poet feel the latter kind of melancholy, while
Ferdinand in The Duchess of Malfi is
infected by the former.
Milton’s Melancholy is ‘too bright/ To hit the Sense of
human sight.” The poem is filled with an incandescent glow, unlike the sunny
brightness of ““L’Allegro””. Melancholy appears in the person of a solemn nun,
whose eyes are raised to the heavens in prayer while her body is converted to
marble through the denial of sensual pleasures. She does not participate in
joyful feasts in the spring-time, but her deep and selfless commitment to
religion allows her a seat at the table of the gods. The landscape of the poem
is quiet and solitary, and the poet seems to walk alone in a moonlit world
empty of the noisy bustle of a spring morning. Only the scholar remains active late
at night. Milton’s evocation of the elemental spirits is reminiscent of
Faustus, who is no longer able to retain his eternal soul in his quest for
power and knowledge. Not only does the melancholic shun all human contact, he
also prefers tragedies to comedies. Thus, he is more concerned with eternally
relevant questions about the condition of humanity rather that the purgation
and renewal of society.
Critical analyses of the poems “L’Allegro” and “Il
Penseroso” have always paid attention to the duality and complementarity of the
poems. Where Cleanth Brooks considers the day-night structure of the poems as a
construction of two equally viable, yet essentially incompatible alternatives to human life[v],
recent critics like Gary Stringer have argued that a close study of the poems
allows us to consider the two choices as consecutive – “L’Allegro” depicting a
carefree youth and “Il Penseroso” sketching the life of a mature individual.[vi]
Time has always been central in the debates about the relationship between the
two poems, and in this essay, I would like to look at the temporal relationship
of the poems in a new light.
In my opinion, the two poems seem to celebrate two
parallel concepts of time – Chronos and Kairos. In Greek thought, time is born
out of the ideas of movement and flux – growth and decay, the change of
seasons, the rise and fall of civilizations – as opposed to the eternal sphere
where nothing is ever altered. Time is like a river, continuous and
irreversible, and as Heraclitus observed, one cannot step twice into the same
river. In his book Infinity, Faith, and Time: Christian Humanism
and Renaissance Literature, John
Spencer Hill argues that time and eternity are antipodal realities in the Greek
imagination and there is no possibility of the one participating in the other.
Kairos, on the other hand, is the moment of crisis.[vii]
In classical rhetoric, it may be described at the concept of appropriate action
at the right time, which plays a crucial part in the greatness and fame of
mortal men. Hill finds that Kairos is a relevant concept in understanding the
Hebraic notion of time, linear and teleological, where the eternal will of God
is made manifest in the mortal lives of men. In fact, God is even described in
temporal terms: ““I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and
who was and who is to come, the Almighty.””[viii]
Etymologically, the word refers to a meeting, and this is interpreted as the
conjunction of human agency and divine will.
The seasonal time described
in “L’Allegro” appears to correspond to Chronos, whereas the sudden moment of
awakening in “Il Penseroso” is closer to the idea of Kairos. “L’Allegro” opens
with a reference to a Bacchic celebration, which was a seasonal festival in
ancient Greece. The references to the cheerful pastoral landscape as well as
the busy hum of the city reinforces the notion of the circularity of time and
the essential and irreversible current that governs human life. The actions
described are regular repetitive actions – farming, tending to supernatural
creatures, plays and jousts – actions which continually strengthen the bonds
and ties among men. Time in the poem is time spent from youth to age, spring to
summer, living amidst the steady and hopeful rhythms of human society. In
contrast, “Il Penseroso” evokes the transcendent experiences of man that make
him aware of a higher and more profound spiritual order. The “pensive nun”
awaits that moment of divine influence that give meaning to her endless prayer
and penance. The moon is one of the planets that activate melancholy in the
human body, and the solitary rambler enjoys her rays. Even the bird that sings
is Philomel, turned into a nightingale by her father’s monstrous incestuous
act. The narrator refers to the spirit of Plato, and brings in man the Parable
of the Cave, where in a moment the shadowy illusions of man are destroyed and
he is brought into contact with reality. The moment that is continuously
described is the moment of utter transformation, after which life can never go
return to familiarity It is the moment when Agamemnon steps on the purple
carpet, when Oedipus realizes his terribly folly. It is important to note that
Greek tragedy specifically dramatized the relation between the human and the
divine sphere in all its contradictions and calamities.
Thus, Milton dramatized two
kinds of time in “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso”. His dual understanding of time
and eternity in the poems can be interpreted as a form of negotiation
between two competing identities – that of the Christian and that of the humanist.[ix] It is possible that he was plagued by this uncertainty even more
right at the moment when he was deciding whether or not to join Bishop Laud’s
Arminian regime. Even though Milton’s later works are laced with this deep,
internal conflict, they are clearly visible in these two early poems. In my opinion, Milton depicts the trajectory of "Il Penseroso" as more desirable to the easy pleasure of "L'Allegro", and the abrupt ending of 'L'Allegro" appears to confirm this conclusion. The poems
do not simply present a duality through the simple binaries of day-night,
cheerfulness-melancholy, youth-age but are embodiments of different, yet
fundamentally intertwined traditions, enacting a certain contradiction inherent in the Protestant idea of human agency. While the natural and communal rhythms of life in "L'Allegro" are able to ensure a happy existence, the contentment that is depicted in Il Penseroso is much more passive in its denial of physical pleasures - in the cases of the monk, nun and scholar - and its patient awaiting of a spiritual revelation. It is through patience and suffering that 'true' happiness can come about. The peasants in the field may be joyous, but they are not part of the select few that are illuminated by the light of Christian grace. Yet, this passivity is coloured by the dynamism inherent in Kairos. The sudden moment of conjunction, of awakening may be entirely due to the power and agency of the divine, but it is undeniable that certain actions may keep us free from sin and thus allow us to receive divine influence at the right moment. Milton may have been a part of the larger theological structure of Protestantism that considered the possibility of salvation to be entirely beyond human control, but even an early poem such as "Il Penseroso" tells us that the choices one makes are indeed important in bringing about man's final reunion with God.
[i] Roy Flannagan ed, The Riverside Milton, (Boston: Houghton- Miffin, 1998), 1051
[ii]Kathleen
M. Swaim, Cycle and Circle: Time and Structure in L'Allegro and Il Penseroso,
Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 422-432
[iii] Rosemond
Tuve, “Structural Figures in ‘L’Allegro’ and ‘Il Penseroso’”, Images and Themes
in Five Poems by Milton,(Cambridge, Mass., 1957), pp. 15-36
[iv] Lawrence Babb,” The
Background of Il Penseroso”, Studies in Philology, Vol. 37, No. 2
(Apr., 1940), pp. 257-273
[v] Cleanth Brooks, “ The
Light Symbolism in “L’Allegro- Il Penseroso”, The Well-Wrought Urn, (New York,
1957), pp. 47-61
[vi] Gary Stringer, “The
Unity of “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso””, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 12, No. 2
(Summer 1970), pp. 221-229
[vii] Rev. 1:8 English
Standard Version
Beautiful!
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