Lately each read of Milton’s Lycidas has me gripped by the same feeling. I’ve taken to calling it… golden anxiety.
The feeling isn’t entirely new. More than once, I’ve seen a squirrel cross a lawn on a beautiful day, its earnest foraging calmly monitored by a hawk perched high above. Often a small sympathy wells up when I realize the poor rodent hasn’t yet felt the gaze of its doom. Or perhaps it has. Its rapid shallow chewing resembles the chatter of cold, or of fear.
Then almost without realizing, I find myself adopting the other frame of mind, that of the predator pondering their afternoon snack. And when I do this the fearful sympathy between mammals stops. A calculating humor takes root instead— how big, really, was this ball of fur? Would it be filling, was it worth the stoop?
Sometimes this feels like cheating. Sometimes it strikes me how odd it is, as an evolved creature, to be able to take the perspective of Death. It doesn’t seem natural, this swiveling sympathy of ours, which can even hover over a void.
But why feel guilt over this, why feel attached to that rodent fear? On the heels of this question an epiphany followed: the guilt was in response to a violated duty. It then seemed to me that we were somehow obligated to give some homage to our shrewish ancestors—that we ought, to some extent, give a voice to the animal frailty we ourselves share, that strange mix of safety and terror which our distance from wild fields has done little to purify.
So we try instead to purify this mixture of emotion through art.
Many works are probably more or less aware of this directive (itself merely one of many, I might add). One among the more aware, I think, is Brueghel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. Another, drawn in verse, is Milton’s Lycidas.
It seemed fitting to call this sense golden, then, because both Brueghel’s painting and Milton’s poem are conditioned by the sun, whose light promises safety by rendering all things (and threats) visible; anxious, since in neither work does the sun prove to be Death’s deterrent— blind Atropos is apt to end life in the bright hours as easily, and as implacably, as during the night.
*
The tale of Icarus is probably a familiar one to my readers. It is, of course, an ur-cautionary tale, the sort of warning most often heard (if not heeded) by a preteen contemplating a backflip off the monkey-bars: “hey, wouldn’t it be epic if I… wait, Dad told me not to… but what does he know, he’s just an ingenious craftsman…” The story has lasted so long because it’s true and true of us.1
Consider one popular theory on the function of stories, that they serve as a kind of “mental rehearsal” for bad circumstances. This idea takes stories to be most helpful when they outline a series of causally-linked events by which characters find themselves “in trouble”. The clearer the sequence, the better the reader or listener learns which specific action or disposition led to those bad circumstances, and thereby what to avoid in their own lives.2 Naturally these are the first kinds of stories we tell kids—they’re great opportunities to exercise credit assignment.
But though the tale of Icarus is neatly captured by the mental rehearsal theory, Milton’s Lycidas is far less cut-and-dry. There the lesson is less clear; there, unlike with Icarus, the lifted finger of blame has trouble coming to rest, least of all on the deceased.
What makes Lycidas different (more adult, maybe) is that it grapples with what might be called “gratuitous tragedy”— the kind of narrative suffering which resists attempts to assign particular credit for a particular loss. The tragedy in Lycidas seems to have no cause, no purpose, and so, perhaps, no lesson.
The poem was written as Milton’s addition to a collection of poems marking the death of a schoolmate, one Eduard King, who is given the name Lycidas in the poem. Realizing his own ambitions may well be cut short by an early death he never sees coming, Milton takes this poem as a chance to direct all of his (considerable) anxious intellect into a kind of literary combat with Death itself.
And among Milton’s achievements in this most learned of battles is his ability to define (and thereby isolate) the things which Death can take away from those it cannot—the latter, of course, being the Poet’s chief means of survival. Though the Poet can and certainly must die, Milton suggests, I think, that he can’t be killed in a way that matters.
Just what this way entails will be the subject of what follows.
It may not surprise you to learn that decades before writing his masterwork, Milton had quite the high impression of himself.3 Many artists do, after all, and to some extent it makes sense why they should.
But by the age of 29, Milton still lived with his parents, quietly studying, writing, and translating poetry, his reputation yet to “break out” as a prominent poet. So far he’d gotten a few poems published, and written Comus, a play of some acclaim performed at the house of some nobility, but by no means had he entered the ranks of classical poets to which he estimated himself to belong.
Lycidas can more or less be seen as Milton’s first substantial entry on the stage of world poetry.4 And what an entry it was. Many of his time loved it; and more recently, the late Harold Bloom is on record for having considered Lycidas the best mid-length poem in English. (Of course opinions on poetry are rarely unanimous. Other critics like Samuel Johnson famously—and not unreasonably—thought it overly dry and allusive.)
Despite the poem’s dripping ambition, however, Milton begins Lycidas wearing his trepidation on his sleeve. He doesn’t really feel ready yet, and makes clear that his pen is pushed more by tragic circumstance than by the natural development of his art. That is, though Milton with his poem still reaches for laurels (the classical symbol of great ability), he does so with “forced fingers rude”, compelled by “bitter constraint and sad occasion dear”.5
The elegy gets underway with the main voice of Lycidas, a certain “Uncouth Swain”, crying for the loss of a fellow shepherd “dead ere his prime.” The two country boys had “…nurs'd upon the self-same hill/ Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill…”; we later read that both lamenter and lamented studied together in the paper pastures of Cambridge University, preparing to be ministers (with spiritual flocks) while holding, at the same time, aspirations of poetic greatness.
These poetic aspirations of King and Milton come through in repeating references to Orpheus, that mythical bard who could charm Nature with his song. So impactful was Orpheus’ presence in life that upon his (err… brutal) passing all of Nature feels his absence, and to this Milton likens the loss of Lycidas:6
But O the heavy change now thou art gone, Now thou art gone, and never must return! Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves, With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, And all their echoes mourn…
Since I’m not sure the meaning of the Orpheus story fully gets across the way it’s traditionally told, I hope this justifies a short digression.
The myth, you may recall, depicts Orpheus’ song literally moving the earth, calming savage beasts, and placating various gods. But arguably what it’s really about is the stunning power of the human mind over Nature, a power mediated by language. Orpheus as mythical arch-poet is a stand-in for all language speakers— the same way poets, among people, are marked by an overflow of words, so stands humanity next to language-less creatures.
Human language affords us a natural prominence because of the stories we can tell about the world, the fact that by naming things and relationships—and naming them well, in a way that reflects both beauty and truth—we come to better organize, predict, and control Nature’s doings.
But there’s more going on than just human command and natural subordination. Every body that moves when Orpheus sings is doing so from pleasure, not blind obedience. The bard’s words and rhythm seem to instill a harmony in the listener (even those with no ears), and this mutual synchrony aligns their actions to the Poet’s will. Orpheus forms something like a pair bond with his listeners, for which separation brings about a kind of distress—as Nature comes to feel partial toward her admirer, the singer’s loss is that much more affecting, and “all their echoes mourn”.
Still, even this special relationship fails to protect Orpheus from death. Neither does the Swain’s friend Lycidas benefit from his own poetic ability. And it’s rather a mystery why this should be, why all these potential favors from rocks, trees, and gods can’t be cashed to extend one’s life.
So after the halting depression which prevailed early in the poem, the mood turns accusatory. In between his moments of anguish the Swain upbraids the spirits who Lycidas influenced for failing to save him (Eduard King drowned at sea):
Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep Clos'd o'er the head of your lov'd Lycidas? ... Ay me! I fondly dream Had ye bin there'—for what could that have done? What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore, The Muse herself, for her enchanting son, Whom universal nature did lament…
Even Orpheus’ mother, the Muse Calliope, a goddess in her own right, couldn’t save her son!
So what’s the point of poetry, the Swain asks, if we’re going to die unprotected by those we affected, those who loved us?
Alas! what boots it with incessant care To tend the homely, slighted shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless Muse? Were it not better done, as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?
Rather than be a poet with no returns (the “slighted shepherd’s trade"), wouldn’t it instead be better to remove ourselves from our art and go off in pursuit of something lighter than laurels, something more easily attained, like resting under shade with beautiful company? Why be strict and temperate, why meditate a “thankless Muse”?
But the desire for fame is what keeps us from doing this:
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble minds) To scorn delights and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life...
The desire for fame motivates the Poet to live with self-restraint, to work hard… but even so, after all that effort and just when you think you’re going to find your reward (the “fair guerdon”), an inopportune death comes to steal it from you, just as it did for Lycidas.
The “blind Fury” mentioned here is a character I teased at the start of this essay. Of the three sisters who weave human life on their cosmic loom, Atropos is the scissor-bearer, the one who marks the end of “a project”. The ancients noted that since her only participation in the spinning of a life is to end it, the core of her character must be brute and unreasoning. (Indeed, one of Atropos’ fearsome epithets is ‘the Inflexible’.)
And here we return to the notion of narrative credit assignment. If Lycidas had died from human malice—or immaturity, like Icarus—one could say he hadn’t been a kind or cautious person, or that he had some growing up to do. But it seems like such reasons aren’t available to the Uncouth Swain.
We know this because among Lycidas’ mourners is Neptune, lord of the sea, who when put to questioning then questions his own subordinates, the winds and the waves:
He ask'd the waves, and ask'd the felon winds,
"What hard mishap hath doom'd this gentle swain?"
...
And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd;
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in th'eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.
So it was all luck! Bad luck! The air was calm, the water smooth, but the ship on which Lycidas sailed was simply cursed during construction; it was “built in th’ eclipse”.
And who is protected from bad luck?
What’s missing in periods of gratuitous tragedy isn’t causality per se. Atoms still collide and react, DNA unrolls, neurons fire, causes effect causes effect causes, and so on. What life really lacks in these moments is the sense that had a more conscious or virtuous or different course been taken, the calamity might have been averted.
Gratuitous tragedy upends our intuitions on whether bad circumstances are associated with psychological or moral deficiency. In fact, this genre’s overall effect is to disconnect entirely the state of the world from mental conditions. Tragic events can happen to anyone regardless of the sufferer’s character, regardless of—if one is a poet—how rich one’s inner world may have been.
There’s a tempting first reading of Lycidas that takes Milton’s favored response to this kind of tragedy to be, that if one can’t “learn” anything from unexpected misfortune in life, one should just buckle down and pine for the here-after. This seems especially the case when towards the end of the poem, Milton offers a vision of classic Christian hope:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high Through the dear might of him that walk'd the waves; ... In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love. There entertain him all the Saints above, In solemn troops, and sweet societies, That sing, and singing in their glory move, And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Here, after so many classical references, it’s almost like Milton’s Puritanism finally snaps back into place. After tarrying with nymphs and fame and a mournful parade of various pagan gods, now we seem to get “Actually, don’t worry about Lycidas, he’s in heaven now, all our grief was kind of pointless and stupid.” It’s a rather deflating end (and perhaps more so to modern, less religious readers).
But I read the poem (or as Bloom might say, mis-read him) as making a much more open point, and I think this idea may explain the poem’s aesthetic adulteration—or why Milton so often mixes pagan with Christian assurances.
I take him to be saying that the world really does care for this distinction between mere flesh and our souls. Our inner worlds do matter. If Nature can feel the loss of a great soul, Milton asserts, then perhaps there’s a kind of Mind which remembers that soul’s contribution.
And in mixing his cultural influences, Milton shows remarkable freedom of thought as to the kind of Mind it is which is so affected by our own—whether this Mind is transcendent to Nature, as in Christianity, or immanent within it, as in the classical view.
For instance, we could return to that section comparing Lycidas with Orpheus, and consider the influences of the implications of either view for the weight of “the heavy change” when Lycidas—or the artist— is “gone, and never must return.” In the transcendent view, the change may refer to the physical loss of a body weighing down the light, immortal soul—in which case death is an unburdening, and by all rights a joyous event! But according to an immanent reading, the same line could also refer to the paradoxical mental “heaviness” of loss and grief felt by survivors (the Swain, in this case). While it may of course mean both, which reading we take does affect the emphasis.
And an immanence reading fits other lines just as well, if not more—we could go to another line we read above, “Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves” and read the Uncouth Swain to be straightforwardly identifying these natural objects with his lost friend. These places are no mere reminder of Lycidas; to some extent they are him. The associations made between the two friendly shepherds in life, all the times they explored the woods and took shelter in caves, are all that now remain of Lycidas. 7
So the shepherd has dissolved into nature, in matter and in thought. Yet somehow the thought of Lycidas can be revived independently from his matter; his death doesn’t mean we’re able to stop thinking of him. And in one of the major climaxes of the poem, Milton is sure to address this.
After fame is first brought up as a reason to maintain one’s artistic striving in the face of mortal frailty, and the threat of Atropos is pointed out, Phoebus Apollo (the god of poetry) chimes in with a hope-giving correction:8
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the praise,"
Phoebus replied, and touch'd my trembling ears;
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to th'world, nor in broad rumour lies,
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed.
Atropos may “slit the thin-spun life”, but she does not slit the praise. The god tells us what fame is and is not—it is not like a plant, requiring material roots (a physical body); it’s not like a “glistering foil”, a reflective sheet which complements a jewel by returning the light shining through it; neither is fame simply “broad rumor”, the things people say about you.
Apollo here is almost suggesting that there’s a separate kind of loom the Fates don’t touch, weaved upon by mortals whose acts are witnessed by Jove. The god implies there is a kind of memory of us found outside the bounds of our skin, a lasting trace found in the things we ourselves write and produce.
And I think it’s telling that the single mention of the Christian Godhead (besides “him that walk'd the waves”) is expressed in the poem through syncretic means. That is, the name Jove straddles both classical and Christian worlds—it derives from the Latin Jupiter, king of the Roman pantheon, whose name is repurposed in English to also refer to the Christian God (or perhaps more specifically, God-the-father).
In other words, the use of ‘Jove’ here is consistent with the posthumous Christian communion of the faithful with God—an idea which Milton as a Christian in a Christian society must ultimately affirm. But it’s also consistent with Jupiter, father of Apollo, who reads (perhaps with lowered glasses) the inspired output of his poetic son.9
And it’s actually possible to link this discussion of Jove with the discussion about Mind’s relationship with Nature. One influential model which inspired later pantheists identified the king of the Olympians—the ruler of the cosmos—with the logos, the fundamental rule of the cosmos.10 And if we consider Jove-as-logos, Apollo can be read as suggesting a kind of optimism that even work done in the quiet, oblivious dark, if it digs deep enough into the marrow of reality, will eventually have its place in the sun, that it will be held aloft by “the pure eyes and perfect witness of all-judging Jove”.
Now, after a moment’s thought, it may seem that an immanent deity is more forgetful than a transcendentalist one. In the immanent sense, the preservation of information-bearing artifacts in the world— pots and pans on one end, poetry or proofs on the other (and people in the middle)— is often held to constitute a kind of memory within Nature, inside “the mind of God”. And of course, information dissipates and matter inevitably breaks down.
To hold that what we are is immaterial and indestructible, as Milton seems to, successfully sidesteps all these doubts about the frailty and impermanence. Everything is eventually saved—not in this world, but in another. But perhaps such a transcendent take on life is too easy an intellectual move to make, not to mention that some of us have a more earthly (or immanent) bent.
And here on earth, it appears the substrate for God’s memory has improved over time, tinkered over by thinkers from all ages. What will ease physicalist anxieties is that humans have come up with techniques to resist the relentless tide of entropy—over the years we’ve managed to preserve our thoughts in the rather impartial media of tablets, papyrus, parchment, and silicon.
In the immanence view, human agents act as both a means of memory storage and retrieval—people can re-discover things misplaced and forgotten. And we perhaps more than any society have played the role of re-discoverers; the digging up of ancient cities and recurring revivals of ancient authors are cases in point. Given sufficient progress in scanning technology, many a forgotten masterpiece will almost certainly be one day recovered. There are, in truth, minds “on the other side” of the unconscious page, and they are human ones.
Of course, just because something lasts through the dusty eons doesn’t mean it’s worthwhile; even the dullest rocks have the virtue of persistence. But it is a hallmark of the good stuff, the gold, that once it’s picked up, it’s nigh impossible to put down.
And maybe this is another way of meeting “all-judging Jove”, when long after we’re gone, our fate is to glitter on some battered pan (or paper, or data drive), to be selected, held aloft by the “pure eyes” of an earnest seeker—to be the acorn for the squirrel who, even with Death looming over him, decides to brave an open field. Maybe this is where ambition meets faith. And maybe the artist can’t afford do without either.
***
The Didactic Postscript Nobody Asked For
Lycidas may be no simple story, but perhaps some lessons, cues, or heuristics may still be squeezed from it. As I see them they are as follows:
One should try to channel mortal anxiety into something that is first of use for oneself; with enough time and practice and honesty it might turn out to be of use for other people.
Take every opportunity to showcase one’s efforts, even if—or especially if—it’s a book of poems commemorating a schoolmate’s death.
Conceive of one’s work not just through the lens of one’s own life (with the attendant thoughts of fame from which Apollo has dissuaded us) but through the lens of timelessness. Intend on producing work for all time, not just this one.
If this sounds pompous or lofty, it’s not. It’s equivalent to “do the best you can” while reconfiguring one’s imagined audience. It comes from a recognition that human favor is fickle and depending on it will make you go crazy. Recall why J.S. Bach wrote S.D.G. at the end of his compositions.The way to escape Atropos’ shears is by moonlighting on that other loom, the one she doesn’t know about. This second thread faces no ill-timed cut, but neither does it grow simply in the course of living. It grows by daily labor. And maybe that’s the deepest lesson, to live in those days of work as completely as we can.11 Then, to quote Kazantzakis, we will have exhausted ourselves so thoroughly in life as “to leave nothing for Death to take —nothing but a few bones.”
This last part is paraphrased from East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
The opposite is also true, for good actions and good circumstances.
In point of fact, Milton was likely the man who invented the phrase “self-esteem”, which is thought to first appear in English in Paradise Lost.
Not to say he hadn’t written great things before! “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” is stupendous, and he wrote it as a 21 year old, though it was published much later.
Forc’d fingers rude describes Milton’s perhaps too-early grasping for poetic acclaim; the word may also refer to the early death of Lycidas.
Here it’s worth contrasting Lycidas once again to Brueghel’s painting, which practically hides Icarus’ fall amidst the open and busy scenery—neither nature or society takes notice of Icarus’ death, or if they do, they don’t care. Compare the passage on how Nature feels the loss of Lycidas with Auden’s haunting ekphrasis of Landscape with the Fall of Icarus:
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
“All their echoes mourn” seems recalled by the later Shelley line “music when soft voices die/ vibrates in the memory”
In fact Apollo’s reply reminds me of another text on unmerited misfortune — the book of Job — in which much naysaying and negative feeling is silenced by divine interference which relays some fundamental truth.
As a professional classicist Milton would likely have been familiar with this. Neither was this model particularly unique; a survey of many ancient views (not limited to Stoicism) indicates a widespread philosophical preference for immanence models over more transcendental ones.
It’s a strange house, the present. It gets bigger the more you live in it, the more you work to expand its wings. Maybe, given enough time and habitation, it grows to envelop the world. But as to whether this is yet another kind of escape, I don’t know.