“Darkness Visible”: The Metamorphosis of Light and Darkness in Milton’s Comus

An unnatural light: engraving by John Baptist de Medina, 1688.

"Om Asato Maa Sad-Gamaya |
Tamaso Maa Jyotir-Gamaya |
Mrtyor-Maa Amrtam Gamaya |
Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih ||"

(Lead us from Unreality to the Reality
Lead us from the Darkness to the Light
Lead us from the Fear of Death to the Knowledge of Immortality.
Om Peace, Peace, Peace.)

The Shanti mantra or peace hymn from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (1.3.28) illustrates the Miltonic quest for illumination as essential for a spiritual and constructive metamorphosis – an image that is carried on right from his only masque Comus to his penning of Paradise Lost. Book III of Paradise Lost begins with an invocation to the Muse as “Hail, holy light, offspring of Heaven firstborn”, something that Michael Fixler notes as “that attribute of the divine power actually communicated as illuminative understanding”. This deviation from the traditional use of the Light and Darkness imagery only as that of the ancient and eternal divide between Good and Evil however is not pertinent to Paradise Lost alone, and can be traced right back to Comus where Milton refuses to let Darkness represent just the evil and Light just the good.

Thus when he invokes the Muse in Book I of Paradise Lost (What in me is dark/ Illumine… [22 – 23]), it is evident without a shred of doubt that what the poet claims for is absolute mental clarity from the darkness of ignorance obscuring his soul, and not necessarily a deliverance from evil. Both the evil and the worship or reverence of everything evil and its dichotomy with the good is on an apparent level placed in terms of the light and darkness symbology however. The “tell-tale Sun”, the “nice morn”, the malicious deprecation in the ‘babbling Eastern Scout’, all demote Light, the “first of things” (as Milton calls it in Paradise Lost [7.244]) to the only role Comus sees divinity as playing – that of a censor (“ ‘Tis only daylight that makes sin” [126]).

Rosemond Tuve in his 1962 essay “The Symbol of Light in Comus” points out that “First and simplest, this masque (like a dozen others) uses the ancient enmity between Jove and Night, physical darkness being used as symbolic of radical moral evil and protectress of its exponents.” Right from the dragon womb of Stygian darkness, the dark veiled Cotyotto to the ebony chariot of Hecate – the darkness has been associated with a certain moral, psychic and spiritual abyss.

The Guardians that the Lady calls upon and the Attendant spirit however, have been depicted in overtly illuminated terms and images.

“O welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope,

Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings,

And thou unblemished form of Chastity!” (Comus, 213 -215)

The Lady herself, coupled with the Attending spirit and the Guardians are imaged in words suggesting light, but the third (“And thou unblemished form of Chastity!/ I see ye visibly”) she sees literally with her physical eyes, as she does the Moon which comes into view from behind the “sable cloud”. While one would traditionally expect these free associated images with divine providence and protection, it is proved to be an exercise in futility as the Lady still falls under the spell of Comus and is taken to his palace.

Comus, the titular anti-Divine and pro villainous force of the masque nonetheless, is never associated with the image of night or darkness as one would expect. As a force of evil, his palace however is stately and not the Stygian cave of lore. It is to be noted here conversely, that Milton’s Comus is the son of Bacchus and Circe – essentially a post-classical invention. In Greek mythology, Comus is the god of festivity, revels and nocturnal dalliances, a son and a cup-bearer of the god Bacchus, and represents anarchy and chaos. Unlike the purely carnal Pan or purely intoxicated Dionysius, Comus was a god of excess. Milton describes him as the grandson of the physical embodiment of light itself, having designated Circe as his mother (“Who knows not Circe, / The daughter of the Sun [50-51]) . The image of Night or Darkness is thus never directly used for what is the most evil force of this masque. Instead, the woods are referred to as “dungeon of innumerous boughs”, “drear”, “black shade”, ominous”, and even “dun”. Though the Attendant spirit refers to this source of darkness and everything dim in a pejorative sense, there is never a clear indication of darkness as evil, unlike Light as good. Like the woods however, the darkness is certainly a shelter from the forces of light – a breeding ground of debauchery which according to Comus, is labeled as Sin by the daylight itself. Rosemond Tuve, here notes that even the Lady believes “that even ‘all things ill’are but as unwilling officers that inescapably do the bidding of ‘Him, the Supreme good’. When she sings to wake Echo, the irony of Comus’s appearance in answer plays again on these strings of natural, supernatural, unnatural, and we take in complex notions of the relations between them long before any such are stated.”

But not only is there plentiful imagery of light in the speeches of Comus himself, there is no clear indication that night itself is evil either. Whether there is a clear division here between Darkness and Night as between Chaos and Night of Paradise Lost, it is however unclear. The Lady herself does not seem to consider Night as the embodiment of evil, and there is an indication that greater darkness can darken the “dim” shade of Night. She calls the night “thievish” because an unnatural “single darkness”, “envious”, had unseated the starlit night in which an ally of nature itself would give “due light” to the lost, misled and the lonely:

Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end,

In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars

That Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps

With everlasting oil, to give due light

To the misled and lonely travailler? (Comus, 195-199)

The “sable cloud” that Comus uses in the conjuration of Hecate, becomes the Lady’s aid in turn:

 

Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud

Turn forth her silver lining on the night?

I did not err: there does a sable cloud

Turn forth her silver lining on the night,

And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.

(Comus, 221-225)

The irony in the masque however stands in the invocation and references to Light itself, and not Night or Darkness. While in the generally established hierarchy of theology, Light, because of its associations with God and the good, is a redemptive and protective agency, in Comus, its symbolism is slightly more ambiguous:

                                                  

"He that has light within his own clear breast

May sit i’ the centre, and enjoy bright day:

But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts

Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;

Himself is his own dungeon." (Comus, 385- 389)

The Elder Brother’s speech here, is applicable both for Comus and the Lady herself. While Comus perfectly embodies the “he” with the “dark soul” and “foul thoughts” who “walks under the mid-day sun”, he is in no self created dungeon. The dungeon here is more of the Lady’s who, in spite of the departure of Comus, is unable to break free of the paralytic shackle with the “light” of her own virtue in her “clear breast” alone. If the mind-body dichotomy of Comus and the lady is accepted, it is questionable as to how far the virtuous mind of the Lady is truly free of the limitations of the more physical Comus. Though slated as the power of Virtue itself, the Lady is unable to enjoy the “bright day” and is beguiled and abducted by Comus nonetheless.

Another glaring instance of Light shining with this irony is the usage of the word “glistering” – once in the stage directions associated with Comus, and once by the Lady.  The appearance of Comus on stage with his ‘Monsters’ in a Bacchic and almost Dionysian frenzy is marked by the word “glistering” in reference to their apparel:

“COMUS enters with a charming-rod in one hand, his glass in the other; with him a rout of Monsters, headed like sundry sorts of wild beasts, but otherwise like men and women, their apparel glistering. They come in making a riotous and unruly noise, with torches in their hands”

The very same word is again used by the Lady while calling in for Divine protection from the darkness surrounding her:

That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill

Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,

Would send a glistering guardian, if need were,

To keep my life and honour unassailed”(Comus, 217 – 220)

If her Guardians (Hope, Faith and Chastity) are indeed glistering, so are the Monsters of Comus. If nothing, this deliberate usage of the term for both the traditional elements of the Light and Dark only serves to lessen the dividing line between the two.

Having presented the argument, I am of the opinion that instead of clear cut dividing lines between light and dark, good and evil, Milton aims to show a subtler link between the two – one of Metamorphosis and an essential duality. Like Good and evil, light and darkness are the two sides of the same coin. In keeping with the Greek paradox of the blind seer, Milton’s use of darkness was never negative – but as an agent essential for the functioning of light, and he does refer to Night as the “eldest of things” and light as the “first of things” in Paradise Lost. If the Lady represents the spiritual soul of the being, Comus is the physical existence of it – and one cannot exist without the other. Even with the departure of Comus, the Lady is bound to the chair in a very physical sense. While Milton was not blind at the time he was composing the masque, it is not improbable that he did consider darkness to be just a veil of sorts, that has to be illuminated by the poet-prophet with ‘aletheia’. Like ignorance giving way to wisdom and blindness to insight, the use of darkness is Comus is but a precursor to the Light and is not laden with any direct association to evil in any way. Milton considers light and vision in ways that are not purely physical. Instead, he expresses to his reader the need to understand light and vision as phenomena that are also spiritual and intellectual, rather than merely physical. There is no strict adherence to the Judeo-Christian traditions of darkness as solely “far remov'd from God and light of Heav'n" [Paradise Lost, I.73].Neither have any well defined boundaries, and just as Light is susceptible to darkness, so is the Darkness vulnerable to light. The encompassing metaphors in the terminology of Light and Darkness in Comus is thus in the spirit of pastoral imagery and theatrical devices alone and not associated with any moral or theological elements of the good or the bad only.  

REFERENCES:

Milton, John. Comus, a Masque. Project Gutenberg. Web. September 3, 2014.

Fixler, Michael. “Plato’s Four Furors and the Real Structure of Paradise Lost.”PMLA.92.5 (1977): 952-962.JSTOR.Web. September 3, 2014.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2005.Print.

Tuve, Rosemond. The Symbol of Light in Comus (1962). Milton: Comus and Samson Agonistes Casebook. Macmillan. 1975. Print.

SANCHALI GHOSH
PG II
ROLL - 08