The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve

by Stephen Greenblatt

  148 that her body pivots: For this observation, as for much else in my discussion of images, I am indebted to conversations with Joseph Koerner.

  149 modestly, if scantily, dressed: Modesty aside, the covering made sense, since, as we read in Genesis, the first humans sewed fig leaves together in the wake of the fall, in response to their newfound experience of shame, and God, for his part, dressed them in skins before driving them out of paradise. So from a strictly textual point of view, the fig-leaved figures in the fresco were, if anything, underdressed. See James Clifton, “Gender and Shame in Masaccio’s Expulsion from the Garden of Eden,” 637–55.

  154 a great Dürer scholar: Erwin Panofsky, The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer.

  155 “the whole beauty of the meanest living creature”: William Martin Conaway, Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer, p. 244.

  156 nothing like it: Joseph Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art, p. 239 and n. 43.

  156 he had to grasp himself: Though Dürer took it further than anyone, the underlying idea was a commonplace: Cf. the fifteenth-century Italian preacher Girolamo Savonarola: “Every painter paints, as the saying goes, actually himself” (cited in Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture, p. 484, n. 2).

  157 it befitted him: As he tried to articulate what it was that he and anyone comparably endowed with great skill should do, he invoked a situation that was strangely like Adam and Eve in the Garden: “For evil and good lie before men,” Dürer wrote, “wherefore it behoveth a rational man to choose the good” (Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer, p. 245).

  159 the way the hip rises: The stance of the figures is known as contrapposto, described by the art historian Panofsky as follows: “the weight of the body (which is presented in full front view, with the head more or less turned to profile) rests on the ‘standing leg’ while the foot of the ‘free leg,’ touching the ground only with the toes, steps outward; the pelvis is balanced against the thorax in such a way that the hip of the standing leg is slightly raised whereas the corresponding shoulder is slightly lowered” (The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer, p. 86).

  159 that served as the model: This possibility has been observed (along with many other salient details) by Koerner: “the backlit folds of Dürer’s own left flank and haunch as they play against the underside of his arm are akin to this area of Adam’s body” (Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture, p. 239).

  160 the exact proportions: Cf. Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture, p. 195. The proportions are most elaborately worked out in Albrecht Dürer, Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion (1528): mit einem Katalog der Holzschnitte, ed. Berthold Hinz (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2011). See also Christian Schoen, Albrecht Dürer: Adam und Eva. Die Gemälde, ihre Geschichte und Rezeption bei Lucas Cranach d. Ä. und Hans Baldung Grien; Anne-Marie Bonnet, “Akt” bei Dürer.

  Chapter 9: Chastity and Its Discontents

  164 learned Anglican churchman: Milton’s less gifted younger brother Christopher was “designed” by his father, as one of the poet’s early biographers put it, for the law. In The Reason of Church Government, Milton wrote that “by the intentions of my parents and friends, I was destin’d of a child” to the service of the church, “and in mine own resolutions, till comming to some maturity of yeers, and perceaving what tyranny had invaded the church, that he who would take Orders must subscribe slave … I thought it better to preferre a blameless silence before the sacred office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing” (Milton, “The Reason of Church Government,” in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, p. 108).

  164 ogling pretty girls: Or so he claimed in a Latin poem written to his friend Charles Diodati: “Often here you can see groups of young girls pass by: stars breathing forth seductive flames. Ah, how many times I have been amazed at the miracles of a worthy figure which could reverse the old age of Jove!” (“Elegia Prima ad Carolum Diodatum,” in The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, p. 174). All citations of Milton’s poetry are to this edition. On the rustication, see Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography, pp. 21–22. When he returned to Christ’s College, Milton took what was at the time the highly unusual step of finding a different tutor.

  164 “an inordinate and riotous youth”: Quoted by Milton in An Apology for Smectymnuus, 1642, in Milton on Himself: Milton’s Utterances Upon Himself and His Works, p. 73.

  165 drinking and whoring: A few encounters with his rapier tongue seem to have turned the tide. He became celebrated for his satirical orations (all in Latin, of course) and was even chosen by his fellow students to deliver the annual vacation address. The “Lady of Christ’s” took the occasion to remark on “the new-found friendliness” (Milton, “The Reason of Church Government,” in Complete Prose Works of John Milton) of his classmates—a surprising change from the “hostility and dislike” he had come to expect. “Why do I seem to them too little of a man?” he asked, reflecting on the nickname he had been given.

  It is, I suppose, because I have never brought myself to toss off great bumpers like a prize-fighter, or because my hand has never grown horny with driving the plough, or because I was never a farm hand at seven or laid myself down full length in the midday sun; or last perhaps because I never showed my virility in the way these brothellers do. (Ibid., p. 284)

  It is characteristic of Milton that he carefully saved this and other of his undergraduate literary performances. More than forty years later he published them, still taking pleasure, it seems, in his riposte: “I wish they could leave playing the ass as readily as I the woman” (ibid., p. 284).

  165 It was to this intimate friend: “Know that I cannot help loving people like you,” he wrote to Diodati; “For though I do not know what else God may have decreed for me, this certainly is true: he has instilled into me, if into anyone, a vehement love of the beautiful” (The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose, p. 774).

  165 a great poet: “By labour and intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life),” he reflected, “joyn’d with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die” (Milton, The Reason of Church Government, in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, vol. 1, p. 11).

  167 not the author’s private statement: The poet is not directly present, as he is in “Lycidas,” where he worries that he too, like his drowned friend, will be cut off before his prime (The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose, pp. 100–110).

  167 concern with virginity focused on unmarried girls: That is how it functions, for example, in Shakespeare’s late plays, where there is an intense interest in the preservation of the virginity of the young heroines—Innogen, Marina, Perdita, and Miranda—and very little concern about the virginity of the young men who woo (and eventually marry) them.

  167 “both the image and glory of God”: Milton, An Apology for Smectymnuus, 1642, in Milton on Himself: Milton’s Utterances upon Himself and His Works, p. 81; in Edward Le Comte, Milton and Sex, p. 18.

  168 resist the seduction: Even as a young reader, Milton wrote, he taught himself to distinguish firmly between the poetic skill on display in the works he most admired and the values that those works expressed. If there was anything that threatened to compromise chastity, he knew how to respond: “their art I still applauded, but the men I deplored” (Milton on Himself: Milton’s Utterances upon Himself and His Works, p. 78). And the love poets he most admired—Dante and Petrarch—were never guilty of transgression. The problem, of course, is that the women they addressed, Beatrice and Laura, were both dead at the time they wrote their love poems. In poetry as in real life, desire for the living is an altogether different matter.

  168 “a prisoner”: Milton, Areopagitica, in The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose, p. 950. Galileo had been confined since his condemnation in 1633.

  169 “the exact humanity and civility”: See the account in Helen Derbyshire, The Early Lives of
Milton (London: Constable & Co., 1932), pp. 56–57, cited in Lewalski, The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography, p. 91.

  169 in a state of sexual innocence: It is possible, of course, that Milton’s sexual interests lay elsewhere. There was an unmistakable erotic intensity in his expressions of love for Charles Diodati, the young man to whose beauty he declared that he was drawn. In Florence he immediately struck up a friendship with a gifted nineteen-year-old scientist whose name—Carlo Dati—strikingly recalled that of his English friend. And in Italy the same air of arousal and availability certainly extended to homosexual as well as heterosexual liaisons. But Milton’s anxiety about “the lewd and lavish act of sin” as a threat to spiritual and creative life would hardly have been suspended in the company of men.

  169 “was hated by the Italians”: Quoted in Lewalski, The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography, p. 99. “He both disputed freely about religion, and on any occasion whatever prated very bitterly against the Roman Pontiff.” Heinsius, who had two illegitimate children with the daughter of a Lutheran minister, may have had personal reasons for resenting Milton’s moral high-mindedness.

  170 “the lodging place”: Milton, Defensio Secunda, in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, vol. 1, p. 609.

  171 mired in error: Nominally Protestant, these ecclesiastical grandees, ardent supporters of the king, seemed to Milton virtually indistinguishable in theology as well as arrogance from the corrupt Roman Catholic prelates he had seen in Italy.

  172 Puritans: The term, intended as a sneer, had, as Milton understood it, a core of truth, for these people were in fact determined to return England to the purity of scriptural Christianity and to a church worthy of that sacred origin.

  172 matters began to come to a head: Parliament refused to grant the king the funds he demanded to support a war against the Scottish Presbyterians, who had rebelled against the bishops and the Anglican liturgy. Charles attempted to rule without Parliamentary consent, but his principal adviser, the Earl of Strafford, was tried for treason and executed. Loath to compromise, the king pursued his plans all the same, but the disciplined Scots, though greatly outnumbered, routed the poorly trained and underfunded English troops.

  172 “avarice, dotage, and diseases”: Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence, Against Smectymnuus, in Milton, Complete Prose Works of John Milton, vol. 1, p. 655.

  172 “sanctified bitterness”: John Milton, An Apology for Smectymnuus, in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, vol. 1, p. 900.

  173 his purity: “A certain niceness of Nature,” as he put it in a characteristic piece of syntactically complex, sinuous prose, “an honest haughtiness, and self-esteem either of what I was, or what I might be (which let envy call pride), and lastly that Modesty, whereof though not in the Title-page, yet here I may be excus’d to make some beseeming profession; all these uniting the supply of their natural aid together, kept me still above those low descents of mind beneath which he must deject and plunge himself that can agree to saleable and unlawful prostitutions” (Apology for Smectymnuus, in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, vol 1, p. 890).

  173 he brought home with him a wife: How this precipitous marriage came about is unclear. The principal source of information is Edward Phillips, Milton’s nephew and one of those adolescents whom he was educating at home. Phillips was twelve at the time; more than fifty years later he recalled the surprising turn of events:

  About Whitsuntide it was, or a little after, that he took a Journey into the Countrey; no body about him certainly knowing the Reason, or that it was any more than a journey of Recreation. After a Month’s stay, home he returns a married Man, who went out a bachelor. (Edward Phillips, “The Life of Milton,” in John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes, p. 1031)

  Perhaps Milton himself was just as surprised.

  174 “must not be call’d a defilement”: Apology for Smectymnuus, in John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes, p. 695. He had long brooded on the scene in the Book of Revelations when a voice sounded from heaven “as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder,” and the glorious sound was answered by “the voice of harpers harping with their harps: and they sung as it were a new song before the throne” (14:2–3). Milton, who longed to sing this song of the redeemed, read that they alone could sing it “which were not defiled with women, for they are virgins” (14:4). Would a married man then be excluded from this chorus? No, Milton declared, that was absolutely not the conclusion that any right-thinking Christian should draw.

  174 God Himself had instituted it: Marriage, the Anglican marriage ceremony declared, is “an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency” (Brian Cummings, The Book of Common Prayer, p. 434).

  175 “on the same bolster”: John Aubrey, Brief Lives, p. 20.

  176 Mary stayed put at Forest Hill: The Powells, Milton’s nephew wrote, “began to repent them of having matched the eldest daughter of the family to a person so contrary to them in opinion, and thought it would be a blot in their escutcheon whenever that court should come to flourish again” (Edward Phillips, “The Life of Milton,” in John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, p. 1031).

  177 a London Underground station: It is the tube station called Chiswick Park, and not the nearby one called Turnham Green, that is closest to the site of the battle.

  177 in his own way extraordinarily brave: Abandoned by his wife after a few short weeks and snubbed by her family, Milton determined to pick up the pieces. Increasing the number of pupils he had undertaken to educate, he thought up and put in practice a new course of study, one that he hoped would serve as the basis for reforming England’s educational system. His goal, characteristically, was not a modest one, and characteristically too in explaining it Milton reached all the way back to Adam and Eve. The ultimate purpose of an education, he wrote in a pamphlet describing his proposed curriculum, “is to repair the ruins of our first parents” (Of Education, in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, 2: 366).

  177 unbelievable courage or, alternatively, unbelievable self-absorption: “I resolved at length,” he wrote, reflecting on his own rash venture, “to put off into this wild and calumnious world. For God, it seems, intended to prove me, whether I durst alone take up a rightful cause against a world of disesteem, and found I durst” (Milton, Judgment of Martin Bucer, Concerning Divorce, in Milton, The Divorce Tracts of John Milton, p. 203).

  178 an annulment: The grounds were that Catherine’s earlier marriage to his deceased older brother Arthur rendered their union technically invalid according to canon law.

  178 the knot could not be untied: A refusal or inability to consummate a marriage could be grounds for annulment, but as Milton never raised the issue, it was apparently not in question here. It is certainly possible that a husband who is unable to consummate his marriage or whose wife categorically refuses to sleep with him might choose not to broadcast that fact. But Milton’s description in his divorce tracts of the unpleasantness of sexual intercourse in an unhappy marriage—“to grind in the mill of an undelighted and servile copulation” (Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, in The Divorce Tracts of John Milton, p.118)—is more likely to suggest what actually occurred or rather what it felt like to him.

  178 cases of desertion: After an absence of seven years, the abandoned husband or wife could petition to have the missing spouse ruled dead, but there were risks: one such spouse returned and claimed his place, though his wife had remarried.

  178 not just for him alone: Milton had already given some thought to the question of divorce; it was implicit in the general Puritan interest in companionate marriage. But he had not worked out a serious argument in any sustained way.

  179 “the rubbish of canonical ignorance”: Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, in The Divorce Tracts of John Milton, p. 95. Custom, Milton wrote, “puffs up unhealthily a certain big face of pretended learning” that intimidates credulous men and women. No
one in his right mind should meekly submit to the “tyranny of stupid and malicious monks.” The monks set up the whole repressive system, Milton wrote, because “having rashly vowed themselves to a single life, which they could not undergo,” they “invented new fetters to throw on matrimony, that the world thereby waxing more dissolute, they also in a general looseness might sin with more favor” (Judgment of Martin Bucer, Concerning Divorce, in The Divorce Tracts of John Milton, p. 201). That is, unable to bear the yoke of celibacy, discontented clerics knew that they would stand more of a chance of sexual adventures if the general married population was made miserable.

  179 Jesus reminds them: Reasonably enough, the Pharisees then asked Jesus what he made of the Mosaic law (in Deut. 24:1 and elsewhere) that permits divorce. The Savior’s response was apparently unequivocal and uncompromising: “I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery” (Matt. 8–9).

  179 The New Testament was good news: “Our Savior’s doctrine is, that the end, and the fulfilling of every command is charity” (Milton, Tetrachordon, in The Divorce Tracts of John Milton, p. 291).

  180 “Loneliness is the first thing”: Tetrachordon, p. 254.

  180 He found the lesson unbearable: Milton married—as almost everyone marries—in the hope and expectation of finding what he called “an intimate and speaking help, a ready and reviving associate.” That was, he thought, the point of marriage for Adam before the Fall, and it is still more the point for all of us born after the Fall into an infinitely harsher, more painful world where we need all the help and intimacy we can get. To marry the wrong person is a disaster. He “who misses by chancing on a mute and spiritless mate,” Milton wrote, glancing back on what had happened to him, “remains more alone than before” (Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, in The Divorce Tracts of John Milton, pp. 113–14). Cf. Tetrachordon in ibid., pp. 256–57: Marriage, “if it bring a mind perpetually averse and disagreeable, betrays us to a worse condition than the most deserted loneliness.”