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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2020
The virtues of L'Allegro are incorporated into II Penseroso, and both mirth and melancholy serve the progress of the soul. The activities of II Penseroso complement those of L'Allegro, but at each point they are nearer to the contemplation of God. The progress of the poems culminates in the final section of II Penseroso, which has no parallel in L'Allegro. This vertical structure encompasses image patterns that range from humor psychology to music, and from hermeticism to topology. These patterns are further organized into parallel thematic units. Chief among these are the education of a superior mind, the subordination of flesh to mind and of mind to spirit, the syncretic nature of Christian vision, and the progress of the mind and soul through the complementary disorders of black melancholy and vain deluding joy. The delights of L'Allegro are real and valued, but they cannot stand against the ecstasy of Christian contemplation.
Note 1 in page 38 Summaries of the principal critical positions with regard to the relationships and sources of the two poems are: J. B. Leishman, “ ‘L'Allegro’ and ?1 Penseroso' in Their Relation to Seventeenth-Century Poetry,” Essays and Studies, 4 (1951), 1–36; and Eleanor Tate, “Milton's ‘L'Allegro’ and ?1 Penseroso'—Balance, Progression, or Dichotomy,” MLN, 76 (1961), 585–90.
Note 2 in page 38 D. C. Allen, The Harmonious Vision (Baltimore, Md., 1954), notes the Platonic elements of // Penseroso, sees the poems as moving from “dissatisfaction to an ultimate gratification” (p. 9), and finds the “structure of the poems rests on the rising stairs of the tower” (p. 18). Kester Svendsen, “Milton's ‘L'Allegro’ and ?1 Penseroso,' ” Ex-plicator, 8 (1950), No. 49. Nan C. Carpenter, “The Place of Music in 'L'Allegro' and ?1 Penseroso,' ” UTQ, 22 (1953), 354–67. Cleanth Brooks, “The Light Symbolism in ‘L'Allegro’ and ‘II Penseroso,’ ” in The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (New York, 1947), pp. 47–61.
Note 3 in page 38 William Madsen, From Shadowy Types to Truth (New Haven, Conn., 1968), suggests that Milton not only supersedes the sensuous, but rejects it. See pp. 124–44.
Note 4 in page 38 Stanley E. Fish, Surprised by Sin (London, 1967). The dangers inherent in Fish's approach are clear; anything may be proven if the critic is granted to have an insight into the poet's intention and into the “reader's” response, and if it is further assumed that the poet is manipulating affective responses, a sophisticated impressionistic criticism may result. Fish seems to me to be generally right about Paradise Lost; Wimsatt's cautions in The Verbal Icon (Lexington, Ky., 1954), however, are in order. I do not here insist on an intentional-affective stance, but rather wish to suggest a possibility.
Note 5 in page 38 Lawrence Babb, “The Background of ?1 Penseroso,‘ ” SP, 37 (1940), 257–73. Babb finds that “The Melancholy of the Aristotelian tradition was never more completely described or more beautifully celebrated than it is in ?1 Penseroso.‘ ” He does not, however, note what I consider to be the progression from Black to Golden Melancholy through a state of Mirth. An argument for Milton's awareness of Golden Melancholy is given by Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl in Saturn and Melancholy (New York, 1964), Pt. m, Ch. iii.
Note 6 in page 38 “ ‘L'Allegro’ and ?1 Penseroso' in their Relation to Seventeenth-Century Poetry.” Klibansky supports Leishman: “the fusion of the characters ‘Melancholy’ and ‘Tristesse’ in the fifteenth century brought about not only a modification of the notion of melancholy . . . but also, vice versa, of the notion of grief, giving it the connotations of brooding thoughtfulness and quasi-pathological refinement.” “This new melancholy could . . . rise to sublime renunciation of the world, or be dissipated in mere sentimentality” (Saturn and Melancholy, pp. 231–32).
Note 7 in page 38 Geoffrey Bullough, Mirror of Minds (Toronto, 1962), sets forth the commonplaces of Renaissance humor psychology that seem to underlie Milton's suggestion of hierarchy, and William J. Grace (see n. 8, below) sets forth many details from Burton that Milton seems to echo.
Note 8 in page 38 Grace, “Notes on Robert Burton and John Milton,” SP, 52 (1955), 579–83, finds the same distinction between two kinds of Melancholy as does Babb. He contends, however, that the Mirth of VAllegro is as different from the “joys” of // Penseroso as are their respective melancholies.
Note 9 in page 38 Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621 ed., Pt. ii, Sec. 2, Memb. 4, pp. 341–51, quoted by Leishman and in part by Grace.
Note 10 in page 38 For an argument in favor of Milton's choice of word over sight see Madsen, From Shadowy Types to Truth, pp. 166–80.
Note 11 in page 38 Carpenter (“The Place of Music in ‘L'Allegro’ and ?1 Penseroso' ”) disagrees with Hughes's quote (p. 71; seen.12) that seems to deny the pejorative implications of “Lydian.” She writes “. . . the Lydian being soft, effeminate, beguiling, even lascivious, unlike the manly Dorian . . .” (p. 355). Hughes's source for the rescue of Lydian is Cassiodorus, through James Hutton, “Some English Poems in Praise of Music,” English Miscellany, 2 (1951), 1–63. Neither Cassiodorus nor Hutton seems to recommend the Lydian as anything except a kind of tranquillizer. Since the implications of Lydian are important to my argument, I quote at length from Hutton:
The commentators inform us that Milton dissents from Plato's condemnation of the Lydian mode; but that is beside the point. Milton is merely reproducing Cassiodorus, who in reviewing the effects of the modes decides that “the Dorian bestows chastity … the Ionian sharpens the intellect and turns the desires heavenward . . . the Lydian restores us with relaxation and delight, being invented against excessive cares and worries (contra nimias curas animaeque taedia repertus).” Joined with immortal verse, these Lydian airs will perform their effect by penetration, the soul of the singer being met by the soul of the hearer …“ (p. 46).
The ranking implied by Cassiodorus and the discrete function he attributes to Lydian is exactly that which I suggest as functioning in L'Allegro.
Note 12 in page 38 All citations of Milton are from John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (New York, 1957), p. 72,11.151–52; my italics.
Note 13 in page 38 A. Bartlett Giamatti, The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic (Princeton, N. J., 1966), illustrates the commonplace link between the Age of Saturn and the Garden of Eden. See pp. 11–86.
Note 14 in page 38 The connection between melancholy and ecstasy is noted by Burton: “Ecstasis is a taste of future happiness, by which we are united unto God, a divine melancholy, a spiritual wing” (p. 394). Klibansky finds “her leaden downward cast” to be “nothing but the reverse side of a condition of ecstatic, visionary trance” (p. 230). Rosemond Tuve, “Images and Themes,” in Five Poems by John Milton (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), denies this connection for Melancholy: “the ecstasies of apprehending relations and harmonies are not those of the mystical union with the divine.” Since she writes that “contemplation leads to … . the mystical union” (p. 30), the difference seems to be based on interpretations of “skies.”
Note 15 in page 39 Klibansky finds a similar ordering and incorporation : “Milton renounced the profound and ingenious plan of concealing the tragic face beneath a comic mask … he combined all the aspects of the melancholic: the ecstatic and the contemplative, the silent and Saturnine no less than the musical and Apollinian, the gloomy prophet and the idyllic lover of nature, and welded their manifoldness into a unified picture, mild on the whole rather than menacing” (p. 236).
Note 16 in page 39 Carpenter finds a parallel difference between the two uses of Orpheus: “ ‘L'Allegro Orpheus’ is chiefly a musician—the Orpheus of ?1 Penseroso' adds words and vision” (p. 357).
Note 17 in page 39 Klibansky, p. 232.
Note 18 in page 39 Svendsen (“Milton's ‘L'Allegro’ and ?1 Penseroso' ”) approaches this idea when he observes of the music that transports II Penseroso: “This religious experience contrasts with the pagan myth at the conclusion of ‘L'Allegro’ but is in the same continuum, as it were.” Carpenter explicates the details of the music that closes “II Penseroso”: “High” service is the “Great Service” using polyphonic, rather than homophonic, music. The “anthem” that takes the place of the old Latin motet is a complex form for many voices (p. 559).
Note 19 in page 39 Although she finds L'Allegro to be cyclical, Carpenter seems also to see a progression: “In ‘L'Allegro’ the sophisticated pleasures of the active life culminate in secular dramatic song which can tear out one's heart and cause one's soul to meet the soul of music itself. But in ?1 Penseroso' the superior pleasures of the intellectual life as found in a university atmosphere reach a peak with sacred music, symbolized by the organ and the full voiced choir; and it is by means of this music that one can become immersed in contemplation of the Divine and through that contemplation attain finally divine wisdom, even prophecy —the ultimate raison d'être for a poet” (p. 366).
