"Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
O raise us up, return to us again,
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power."
William Wordsworth-London, 1802[1]
Let us never forget Milton, the first defender of
regicide.[2]
-Frederick Engels, The Northern Star December 18,
1847.
"Innocence, Once Lost, Can Never Be Regained.
Darkness, Once Gazed Upon, Can Never Be Lost."
John Milton
"We develop new principles for the world out of the
world's own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they
are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the
world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it
has to acquire, even if it does not want to".
Karl Marx, Letter from the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher to Ruge (1843)
It would be perhaps an understatement to say that the poet John
Milton (1608–1674) has a unique position in England's literary and intellectual
history. It could also be argued that Paradise Lost and other great works could
place Milton in the realm of one of the world's greatest narrative poets.
Nicholas McDowell's new book provides the reader with a competent
introduction to the life of John Milton. While I do not normally pay too much
attention to the title of a book, it is worth mentioning on this occasion.
While Mcdowell concedes that Milton was a "poet of Revolution", he
does not say that Milton was the poet of the English bourgeois revolution. McDowell
deliberately downplays Milton's radicalism and his theoretical connection to
groups like the Levellers, Diggers and other radical groups that appeared
during the English bourgeois revolution.
A second significant omission from Mcdowell's book is his
failure to show Milton's significant contemporary importance. The Poet
Christopher Kempf recently issued a collection of Poems entitled What Though
The Field Be Lost.[3] Kempf is a huge fan of
Milton. According to Erik Schreiber, "The book takes its title from a line
in Poet John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), which describes Satan's rebellion
against God, his defeat and his temptation of Adam and Eve. Critics have
likened the angels' uprising to a civil war, and Milton's initial attempt to
write the epic was indeed interrupted by the English Civil War. It is
legitimate that Kempf turned to Milton after being inspired to focus on the
American Civil War".[4]
Kempf, to his eternal credit, quotes for an ordinary soldier
who, even during the most bloody conflict in American history, had the outstanding
ability to compare his struggle with that of Milton's, writing, "An eagle
in the very midst of the thunderstorm might have experienced such confusion.
Milton's account of the great battle between the forces of good and evil, which
originated in this same question of secession, gives some faint idea of this
artillery duel."[5]-
The biggest weakness of McDowell's book is its deliberate failure
to draw any connection Milton had to radical groups such as the Levellers and
Diggers. His oversight is perhaps driven more by ideological considerations than
an unintended omission on McDowell's part. One such omission is Mcdowell's non-use
of David William's, Milton's Leveller God.
According to John Rees, Williams has "done a
considerable service in bringing out this interpretation of Paradise Lost as an
account of self-determining democratic revolution. It is a powerful and closely
argued reading that will repay careful consideration by all those who wish to
understand Milton's purpose. But there are more difficulties in seeing this as
a direct reflection of specifically Leveller politics. First, there are some
circumstantial difficulties. Things said in the revolutionary 1640s do not have
the same meaning when said in the late 1660s. And they are not the same said in
poetry rather than pamphlet prose. A revolutionary program advanced in the heat
of debate and a poetic reflection two decades later may be related, but not in
simple or straightforward ways. Second, and more importantly, in concentrating
on the Leveller strand of thought informing Milton's politics, Williams
excludes other threads in a more varied tapestry. There are, to be sure,
continuities between Milton and the Levellers, but there are also important
differences. Williams has certainly done us all a service in highlighting the
former, but the latter need some consideration as well.[6]
Milton was a genius for all to see, but his Dissent and
radicalism did not fall from the sky. He was part of the intellectual flowering
of Dissent, a complex religious and intellectual development shared by other radical
elements of the English Civil War, such as the Levellers, who wanted greater
equality although not for everyone in society.
Milton and the other radical groups were also part of the merchant
and manufacturing classes in their struggle against the aristocracy. Milton put
this struggle by the merchant and manufacturing classes into a literary form
and was joined by other major figures like John Bunyan's and his world-famous Pilgrim's
Progress (1678). According to Paul Mitchell, Bunyan's use of imagery" reflected
deep objective changes in society that also expressed the subjective strivings
for a better future".
Milton's defence of the English Revolution and his agreement
with the execution of Charles I meant his work would go on to influence a whole
number of French and American revolutionaries. Milton's work was also followed
by major figures in the 1917 Russian Revolution. The people's commissar for the
Enlightenment, Anatole Lunarcharsky, compared the Russian Revolution to Milton's.
Milton is also an attractive figure for revolutionaries of today. His
revolutionary fervour, unfailing attachment to the 'good old cause', commitment
to human freedom, and hatred of all forms of tyranny are good examples for all
revolutionaries to follow. But you would not get that from McDowell's book.
McDowell's book is not without merit. It is a groundbreaking
work in many ways and contains recent archival discoveries that, on a limited
basis, further our understanding of the connection between Milton and the
revolution he fought for. Mcdowell, unfortunately, is not a radical. His
biography is very conservative and challenges biographers such as the Marxist
Christopher Hill[7] , who, unlike Mcdowell, believed
Milton was radical at a very early age and became more radical during the
English revolution. Also, unlike McDowell, Hill believed that Milton's prose
was heavily influenced by the English bourgeois revolution and groups such as
the Levellers and Diggers. McDowell mentions the Levellers only twice in the book.
McDowell believes that Milton was a great history man but does
not subscribe to any materialist or Marxist view of such men. Although the
great Russian Marxist G.V Plekhanov was writing about a different period of history
and different historical characters, his perceptive understanding of the role
great figures play in history could be applied quite easily to Milton.
Plekhanov writes, "In the history of the development of
human intellect, the success of some individual hinders the success of another
individual very much more rarely. But even here, we are not free from the
above-mentioned optical illusion. When a given state of society sets certain
problems before its intellectual representatives, the attention of prominent
minds is concentrated upon them until these problems are solved. As soon as
they have succeeded in solving them, their attention is transferred to another
object. By solving a problem, a given talent-A diverts the attention of talent
B from the problem already solved to another problem. And when we are asked:
What would have happened if A had died before he had solved problem X? – we
imagine that the thread of development of the human intellect would have been
broken. We forget that had A died, B, or C, or D might have tackled the problem,
and the thread of intellectual development would have remained intact in spite
of A's premature demise.
In order that a man who possesses a particular kind of
talent may, by means of it, greatly influence the course of events, two
conditions are needed. First, this talent must make him more conformable to the
social needs of the given epoch than anyone else: if Napoleon had possessed the
musical gifts of Beethoven instead of his own military genius, he would not, of
course, have become an emperor. Second, the existing social order must not bar
the road to the person possessing the talent which is needed and useful
precisely at the given time. This very Napoleon would have died as the barely
known General, or Colonel, Bonaparte, had the old order in France existed
another seventy-five years. [8]
Christopher Hill
As was said earlier, Mcdowell does not subscribe to a
materialist view of historical development. The last person to place Milton
within the context of the great English bourgeois revolution was the Marxist Christopher
Hill. Even with a cursory look at his biography of Milton,[9]
it is easy to see that it contains more insight and gives the reader a far more
multifaceted view of the poet than any other biography of Milton, including
McDowell's. It could be argued that this was Hill's greatest book.
Hill correctly places Milton alongside other "Bourgois
radicals" of the English Revolution. While Milton was influenced by
ancient writers such as Plato, Aquinas, and Homer, Hill, believed Milton's connection
with radical groups such as the Levellers and Diggers and others had a far more
profound impact on his thinking and actions than has been given credit.
As this quote shows, Hill did not think Milton was a
Leveller but said, "Lest I be misunderstood, I repeat that I do not think
Milton was a Leveller, a Ranter, a Muggletonian or a Behemist. Rather I suggest
that we should see him living in a state of permanent dialogue with radical
views which he could not wholly accept, yet some of which greatly attracted
him. (Milton and the English Revolution [1977], 113-14)
As Andrew Milner perceptively writes, "By the standards
of previous Milton criticism, Hill's Milton is boldly adventurous. It restores
the poet to that social context from which he has been wrenched by the
ahistorical idealism of mainstream literary criticism. Its emphasis on the
radicalism both of that context and of the poet himself serves as a valuable corrective
to those who have sought to subsume Milton under the mantle of conservative
orthodoxy. Milton the dour Puritan is superseded by Milton, the libertarian
revolutionary, and much that has previously appeared obscure becomes clarified".[10]
Conclusion
McDowell's Poet of Revolution is not a bad book and contains
much that is worthwhile. However, it does not give the reader any great new insight
into the English bourgeois revolution or Milton' place within that revolution. Milton
was a major player in that revolution. Marxists like Hill saw the English Revolution of 1640-1660 as a bourgeois
revolution. Hill also believed that paved the way for the future development of
capitalism.
Figures like Milton and Oliver Cromwell were bourgeois
revolutionaries who were convinced that they had divine support for their
revolution. But they were not alone. Other radicals formed the left wing of
this revolution. It was these groups that had an important impact on Milton's
thinking as a poet and revolutionary. The next biography of Milton needs to
explore this connection in greater depth.
[1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45528/london-1802
[2] https://wikirouge.net/texts/en/Louis_Blanc%27s_Speech_at_the_Dijon_Banquet
[3] What Though the Field Be
Lost-Poems-by Christopher Kempf- LSU Press
[4] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/07/29/kemp-j29.html
[5] Pvt. John C. West, 4th
Texas, July 27, 1863-http://atlengthmag.com/poetry/the-union-forever/
[6] Williams, David. Milton's
Leveller God. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens UP, 2017. xviii + 494pp.
ISBN 13: 9780773550339. $120.00 (cloth). Review by John Rees.
https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/doi/full/10.1111/milt.12280
[7] Milton and the English
Revolution Paperback – 18 Aug. 1997
by Christopher Hill
[8] G.V. Plekhanov-On the Role
of the Individual in History(1898)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1898/xx/individual.htmlhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1898/xx/individual.html
[9] Milton and the English
Revolution-Christopher Hill-https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/610425/milton-and-the-english-revolution-by-christopher-hill/
[10] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-349-04853-3_6
