The Chaos of Silence: Contrast and Death in the Soundscapes of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso

Syamantakshobhan Basu,
PG I,
Roll No-48.
Course: Milton

The Chaos of Silence: Contrast and Death in the Soundscapes of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso

"There let the pealing organ blow

To the full voiced choir below,

In service high, and anthems clear,

As may with sweetness, through mine ear,

Dissolve me into ecstasies"

Written possibly in 1631-32, which was the last year of his academic study at Cambridge, Milton's paired poems, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso displayed a degree of maturity and formal mastery that became definitive of his poetic endeavours. Here, I would like to show how Milton, himself musically adept and the son of a minor composer of the times, used aural imagery to construct soundscapes, and the contrasting attitudes of these two soundscapes towards sound, silence, and death.

Barbara Lewalski, in her critical biography of John Milton, notes that Charles Diodati and Milton himself exchanged letters in Greek, where each saw both himself and the other as a poet and scholar of contrasting character, much like the respective narrators of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. However, suggestions of homoeroticism and a mutual, warm affection between the two show that these two natures are not necessarily entirely opposed to each other. The positive aspects of each affective nature are drawn to the opposite.

"Each regards himself and his friend as poet and scholar, but Diodati is cast by both as a merry, carefree, pleasure-loving extrovert (like l’Allegro), and Milton as a sober, bookish recluse (like il Penseroso). Their exchanges are filled with warm affection, intimacy of spirit, and eager anticipations of reunions, with some overtones of homoeroticism – most likely unacknowledged as such by either one."

This contrast is employed in the twin poems, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso through a number of poetic metaphors. In particular, the construction of the "tone" of both poems, and the contrast between the two, can be best studied through one particular device. The use of sound imagery to layer the poetic conceit is Milton's stroke of genius. Milton's use of sound imagery is characteristic of his poetry, and foreshadows a greater reliance on sound to convey meaning, in the absence of his own physical vision on the part of Milton in his later works, such as Samson Agonistes. The two soundscapes reflect the affective mood that each poem seems to assume. As a testament to Milton's control over the formal, each poem seems to slip on the garb of the affect that the title purports to represent, and this is indicated right away in the first declaration, where the Muse which controls the opposite affect is banished from the poem's metaphorical landscape. Therefore L'Allegro begins by saying- "Hence loathed Melancholy" while Il Penseroso banishes blind optimism by stating in its very first line- "Hence vain deluding joys". To quote Rosemund Tuve-"Each poem begins with a banishing of the travesty of what is praised in the other."

There are two kinds of each affective emotion expression in the poems. There is a 'good' Melancholy and a 'bad' Melancholy just as there is a 'good' Joy and a 'bad' Joy. And it is the 'bad' kinds that the narrators seek to exorcise in each poem. This sets up an internal contrast as well as an external contrast. Within Joy itself there is a splicing, just as Melancholy too, finds itself divided. And in a way, the 'good' kinds of each affective emotion bear a sympathy towards each other, much as Diodati and Milton do. Excesses of each emotion, as of a dominant humour, would lead to harm. Thus brooding, bilious 'bad' Melancholy resembles Satan in the darkness, jealously spreading his wings to cover in shadow the young man's soul. Thus also, "vain deluding Joys" are derided as "the brood of folly without father bred". Both excesses are marked by a lack of legitimacy as well as of value. Therefore it is not Melancholy contending with Joy, not L'Allegro with Il Penseroso. It is rather Melancholy contending with itself, Joy with meaningless Joy . The two affective moods are thus of two complementary and not entirely contrasting characters. The contast lies in the attitude that each takes towards the world surrounding it. Most importantly, in the attitude of both towards death.

Before studying the relationship of the two poems to death, I intend to establish the poetic and affective value of the soundscape of each poem, with respect to each other. The two poems hinge upon the contrast that is played out between their soundscapes, through these metaphors, and the common thread weaving the two can be found in Milton's use of sound imagery as the substantiation of his poetic vision.

Although Milton's writing dates to the 17^th Century, like most other Early Modern works or works immediately following the Renaissance, it also constitutes a continuity with what is termed the "Middle Ages". Interesting to note then, what Johan H. Huizinga has to say about the contrasting values of sound in the Medieval period, still not entirely irrelevant in Milton's time:

"All things presenting themselves to the mind in violent contrasts and impressive forms, lent a tone of excitement and of passion to everyday life and tended to produce that perpetual oscillation between despair and distracted joy, between cruelty and pious tenderness which characterize life in the Middle Ages.

One sound rose ceaselessly above the noises of busy life and lifted all things unto a sphere of order and serenity: the sound of bells. The bells were in daily life like good spirits, which by their familiar voices, now called upon the citizens to mourn and now to rejoice, now warned them of danger, now exhorted them to piety. They were known by their names: big Jacqueline, or the bell Roland. Every one knew the difference in meaning of .the various ways of ringing. However continuous the ringing of the bells, people would seem not to have become blunted to the effect of their sound.

Throughout the famous judicial duel between two citizens of Valenciennes, in 1455, the big bell, 'which is hideous to hear', says Chastellain, never stopped ringing. What intoxication the pealing of the bells of all the churches, and of all the monasteries of Paris, must have produced, sounding from morning till evening, and even during the night, when a peace was concluded or a pope elected."

In fact, in L'Allegro the "merry bells ring round" in joyous celebration of night "till the livelong daylight fail", while at the end of Il Penseroso the "pealing" organ blows down to a "full voiced choir below", which in "service high, and anthems clear, As may with sweetness" through the narrator's ear dissolve him "into ecstasies". The heavenly organ functions like a pealing bell, drawing the narrator, world-weary and wiser than his L'Allegro counterpart, to the "dim religious light" , and its grave summons eventually grows to such a crescendo that it dissolves him into ecstasies. This religious rapture, this complete surrender to the call of the grave heavenly sound as something deeper than any earthly joy, takes precedence over all other sounds in the two poems. I contend that it represents the highest pitch of rapture,where poetic grace spills over into religious grace, and is only achievable in the mature stages of Il Penseroso. I believe that these lines display the privilege of Il Penseroso over L'Allegro, a point that I will further develop when talking of death in relation to the two.

Milton's own approach to sound as something preternatural, something indicative of deeper strains, foreshadows Samson's blindness and his own. The Bachhic singer in L'Allegro hears more than he sees, as if soon enough he will be forced to hear the sounds of revelry rather than see the acts. Of course, Milton cannot know his later blindness, and this only highlights a natural inclination to aural imagery. In Il Penseroso, right at the close of the cycle the two poems represent, the narratorial voice says-

"Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain."

The cycle, through revelry and celebration of life, tends to final wisdom.

The two poems are experiments in genre, literary style and intertextuality. The complementarity plays out as contrasts which are predominantly formal in nature. With respect to the formal differentiations distinguishing as well as tying the two poems together, it may be instructive to look at how Handel interpreted and substantiated the two texts through musical language. The "sense" of the two poems, in terms of their affective sense, is expressed through the formal distinctions that Handel made in setting the two to music.

"The "sense" of the work emerges predominantly in the contrasts of various sorts that appear between l'Allergo and il Penseroso "movements", the groupings of recitatives, airs and choruses that are taken from one or the other of the companion poems. Handel was clearly concerned to distinguish the two states of mind by establishing differing attitudes towards melody and harmony. Something of what will be his method of portraying the contrast appears in the opening exchange between the two. The work is unique among Handel's large-scale vocal compositions in its lack of the tradtional orchestral overture. The opening pair of recitatives and airs serve in effect as an overture for what is to follow: each state of mind is introduced, and their opposing characters are established."

Michael O'Connell and John Powell go on to claim that "In this overture-like exchange, Handel portrays musically what Rosemund Tuve has judged occurs in the opening lines of Milton's poems". The musical contrast therefore is between "not the opposing state of mind itself, but what it might be mistaken for."

Death, as in much of Milton's work, plays a role in the orientation of the poems' affective states or moods. In Phillipe Aries' Western Attitudes Towards Death, a clear line of descent is traced in attitudes towards death and burial in Western civilization, running concurrently with major social phenomena such as the Christianization of Pagan religious and social customs. Referring to the artes moriendi tradition of iconography in texts and woodcuts, primarily in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, Aries says-"The iconography of the artes moriendi joins in a single scene the security of collective rite and the anxiety of a personal interrogation." Aries describes these two centuries as a turning point in the attitude towards death, where the calm, unresisting, even welcoming belief in the universality of death is increasingly replaced by an anxiety of the loss of loved ones and anxiety of the death of self. Death becomes, as time progresses, something to be feared, and the excessive, ritualistic mourning of earlier times is gradually replaced by a silence, an aversion to even the mention of death. A frantic desire to remove onself from the very thought of encountering death, intensified in the aftermath of the First World War.

Aries further says that the attitude of spiritual writers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries shows a struggle against the prevailing belief that a virtuous life was unnecessary, because a good death redeemed one entirely. However, they continued to hold that the moral conditions and circumstances of death had still a vital importance. Milton, therefore, occupies a time that is situated in a flux between two opposing, contrasting attitudes towards death. One of calm acceptance, and even a welcoming, of the importance of death as superseding that of life, and the other of a raucous resistance, a turning away, an exorcism of death and all of its friends. I believe that the unstated attitudes of each poem towards death, also consitute a basis for the contrast between them. In keeping with my study of sound imagery in both poems, I will illustrate my position through the use of mostly aural metaphors.

In L'Allegro, darkness and sorrow are juxtaposed constantly with bright, joyous sounds in an attempt to banish the melancholy of final and irrevocable death. Therefore "the cock, with lively din,/Scatters the rear of darkness thin". There is thus "dancing in the checkered shade", but only "till the livelong daylight fail". Yet, these are futile attempts. Attempts that keep darkness and death at bay, but with their shadow peeping stealthily over youthful shoulders. So,while "the milkmaid singeth blithe", the "mower whets his scythe". This is, in effect an extremely common memento mori, although the mower here is not ostensibly death himself. This subtle effect of a quietening, a lulling of all sound by sleep and death is repeated often in the poem. At the end of a day's hectic activity, the pastoral inhabitants of L'Allegro are described as such-"Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,/ By whispering winds soon lulled asleep." The strains of "soft Lydian airs, married to immortal verse", could have, according to narrator "won the ear/Of Pluto to have quite set free/His half-regained Eurydice". Yet Orpheus himself had turned back to see the face of death. And the bard of the paradise of L'Allegro, like all other bards, is fated to do the same. The joy of living is fleeting, temporary, always an interlude for death's final trumpet sound. Somewhere, therefore, the joyous hope in L'Allegro, of everlasting Spring and revelry seems to ring hollow, in the face of unremitted, irrevocable death, although the defiance of it till the final hour in itself is a tremendous act of bravery, and produces some of the sweetest music to be heard in Heaven or earth, such as Shakespeare's "native wood-notes wild". The music of L'Allegro is the music of life, to be silenced soon by the grim knell, but for all that, none the less beautiful.

Il Penseroso on the other hand, is predisposed to a quiet, meditative melancholy, that bears no conflict with darkness or death. There is a welcoming of dark spaces, an active seeking out of seclusion, a proclivity towards calming sounds, and ultimately of heavenly silence. The narrator's desire is to "join with thee calm peace, and quiet" and to this end, the Muse of the poem must bring with it "the mute silence hist along,/ Less Philomel will deign a song/In her sweetest, saddest plight,/Smoothing the rugged brow of night". The Nightingale is a "Sweet bird that shunn'st the noise of folly,/ Most musical, most melancholy!/ Thee, chantress, oft the woods among,/I woo to hear thy even song". In the peaceful heart of the Sylvan gardens of Il Penseroso-"the rude ax, with heaved stroke,/ Was never heard the nymphs to daunt/Or fright them from their hallowed haunt". And yet, while Orpheus' song of laughter had failed to win back his Eurydice in L'Allegro, the "Sad Virgin" of Il Penseroso has the power to "raise Musaeus from his bower,/ Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing/ Such notes as, warbled to the string, /Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek/ And made Hell grant what love did seek". It is the strength of melancholy that forces even death into submission. And yet, melancholy, in its innate sympathy with death itself, does in silence the work of death. Thus, "the cricket on the hearth,/ Or the bellman's drowsy charm " reminds us of Shakespeare's fatal bellman, who pretended to guard the gates of Hell. The affective sympathy with death is more direct, and less conflicting than in L'Allegro. The scholar in his lonely tower lives a life of silent, quiet, meditation, and when the "pealing organ" of heaven dissolves him "into ecstasies", it is a welcome dissolution, a dissolution long-awaited and prepared for. Death calls him and he goes, without complaint, because the life of meditation and silence has brought him to "old experience" which attains to "something like prophetic strain".

L'Allegro, if I may make the comparison, rises chaotically like Pandemonium,from the base state of Il Penseroso, which is the first, stunned acceptance of their Fall by the Angels. It is also the state to which the Angels must return, when Hell is shut up by God on the Day of Judgement. All struggle against death is futility embodied, yet human endeavour exists in these spaces of dissent, in this dogged refusal to acknowledge the finality of death. It is for this that man makes furious, joyous, living music. This music, as in L'Allegro is projected as a state of harmonious perfection, yet in its shadow lurks the "barbarous dissonance" that threatens to dislodge the narrator from his pastoral paradise. Furthermore, like all excited states, the energy must give out, to be replaced by the silence of meditation, silence, and finally death.The melancholy is a quiet embodiment of the death-wish that is common to all mankind. The joy of life is the joy in L'Allegro. The peace of the tomb is the peace in Il Penseroso.

Therefore, through an interweaving network of aural imagery, Milton structures L'Allegro and Il Penseroso to stand in a position of complementarity to each other, and yet each bears a sharply contrasting attitude towards chaos and death. Read together with his later works, particularly Comus,where the Bacchic revelers may only be heard,  Paradise Lost, and Samson Agonistes, where the blind Samson must stretch out towards all meaning through sound alone, a pattern emerges. A pattern that shows an increasing engagement with sound imagery, and an increasingly nuanced position towards death.

Bibliography:

The following works were referred to in the composition of this paper:

1. Milton, John. The Annotated Milton. Edited by Burton Raffel. New York: Bantam Classics.

2. Lewalski, Barbara K. The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography. Massachusetts: Blackwell,2003.

3. Aries, Philippe. Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present. Translated by Patricia M. Ranum. London: Marion Boyars, 1976.

4. Huizinga, Johan H. The Waning of the Middle Ages. Translated by F. Hopman. London: Penguin,1987.

5. Tuve, Rosamund. Images and Themes in Five Poems by Milton. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1957.

6. O'Connell, Michael and Powell, John. "Music and Sense in Handel's Setting of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso". Eighteenth-Century Studies 12, no.1(1978).