Milton's "Eco-Eden": Place and notions of the "Green" in Pradise Lost

Pici, Nick

poets are ... there to help us understand the place, to come to know the earth. Jonathan Bate the nonhuman environment is a dominant character in the worlds both inside and outside the text; ... authors themselves subscribe to this belief, . . . and an important interaction occurs between nonhuman environment and author, Place and text, which can result in ... [an] insistence on the primacy of a physical world. Don Scheese

"wilderness" is nearly as much of a cultural expression of desire as "Eden." SueEllen Campbell

Like Adam and Eve in Paradise, story and place seem to walk together hand in hand. Place has power to inspire stories and influence readers" responses to them; stories, meanwhile, have the power to make readers contemplate their external world and realize the significance, even sacredness, of place. Through their concrete formal representations, stories can clarify, enlarge, even construct nature and place in ways that cannot be accomplished by simply being within and contemplating an actual physical environment. Through stories, place can become more tangible and less elusive, clearer and brighter. An absence of stories, of course, would not necessarily prevent humans from gaining knowledge of the external realms or preclude us from cultivating a deep personal understanding of and appreciation for nature and place. (In other words, identification with nature and place is not contingent upon the existence of story.) Certainly, though, stories can help a person "internalize" nature and gain a clearer sense of the relationships between self and place. Milton's epic telling of Adam and Eve and their fall from Eden is such a story.

Paradise Lost is usually understood as a work primarily concerned with exploring the human inner self and humankind's relationship to a Christian God; and Milton certainly consumes himself in his epic with these types of explorations, with showing God's ways to humankind. It might seem inappropriate then to redirect critical attention away from such matters in order to focus on the poem's portrayals of the external, physical world of Eden and Adam and Eve's place within this world. An "eco-reading" of Paradise Lost, however, should in the end prove a viable critical enterprise. For skeptics who may still be dubious of this kind of reading, SueEllen Campbell offers up this rather clever and insightful "ornithological" apologia for a humanities-- based ecologism:

Magpies, I think, make good role-models for critics, teachers and students in the ways they embody the advantages of being inquisitive, of foraging, or building something new out of apparently unrelated scraps. They may make particularly good models for ecological writers and critics. Seeking to inhabit similarly marginal spaces between human and wild, in our explorations of new critical territory we too might thrive on an eclectic and improvisatory appetite. (Campbell 1998, 13)

Campbell's analogy provides and inviting gateway for an eco-reading of Milton's epic.

Paradise Lost, specifically those sections that describe Eden and Adam and Eve's relationships with nature both before and after the Fall, is more than just pastoral tour-de-force. These sections of the poem do more than dramatize an unattainable, escapist world where nature is intended to delight and please the senses of both fictional character and actual reader. While pastoral elements play an important role in establishing and reinforcing certain "green"2 themes of Paradise Lost (namely human appreciation of nature's inherent beauty and power to soothe the mind, body, and soul), there are other, less conspicuous green subtexts of Milton's paradise myth that should also pique modern-day sensibilities. Subtle undercurrents of green philosophy and ways of living, even certain inchoate ideas that presage an ecological science, are evident within the paradise Milton has constructed. Hidden beneath the author's striking sensuous imagery and luxurious pastoral descriptions of place are ideas of moderation and stewardship, the practicing of vegetarianism and gardening, pointed connections between God and nature, and an overarching picture of mutual, harmonious human living within nature. These are ideas and practices and visions that, in spite of (or perhaps because of) our living in what conventional Christian theology sees as a hostile and indifferent postlapsarian nature, apply to and are being realized or potentially could be realized in the world today. In fact, it is probably more crucial for our current world, one that is facing pronounced and increasingly dire environmental crises, to consider and attempt to enact such ideas, practices, and visions than it was for a world at any other time even in the paradisal "dream time" world of Adam and Eve.

Despite the fact that Paradise Lost is informed in many ways by traditional Western notions and interpretations of scripture that establish and sanction a hierarchical worldview in which humans are positioned above and preside over nature-a hierarchy that is explained and licensed through these very myths of Christian creation and nature's fall from grace-despite the fact that Milton himself may have embraced the Biblical idea that humans have "dominion" over nature, and despite the fact that such myths have had their part in perpetuating the ecologically unfriendly worldviews of today, there are aspects and passages of Paradise Lost that want to subvert or contradict the very ideas the poem seems to be espousing and thereby turn this human/nature hierarchy on its head. And while it might at first seem imprudent or presumptuous to label Milton in modern terms as an "unwitting environmentalist" or to call Paradise Lost a prototypical green work, there are certain attributes of Milton's epic (not to mention attributes of some of his minor poems) that would make a compelling case for these appellations.

First and most easily recognizable of the green qualities of Paradise Lost are its pastoral poetics. A form with deep literary historical roots, pastoral poetry, as the ancient Greeks conceived of it, would typically be concerned with celebrating the bucolic life of shepherds in an Arcadian world of nymphs, mountains, pastures, and striking natural beauty; the pastoral form was later adopted by Renaissance writers and soon thereafter became a favorite conceit of the Romantic poets (Scheese 1996, 4).The theater of pastoral is a nature that, in John Knott's words, "delights" and "charms" the senses (1971, 7), a nature that soothes the mind, body, and soul of its human populace. Leo Marx more recently defined the pastoral as "the desire, in the face of growing complexity and power of organized society, to disengage from the dominant culture and to seek the basis for a simpler, more harmonious way of life 'closer' (as we say) to `nature... (1988, xii-xiii). A literary form with a distinctly green complexion, pastoral works do intensify our perceptions of nature and place; it is, indeed "a tradition," as Don Scheese sees it, "integral to the development of nature writing" (1996, 4).

The sections of Paradise Lost which delineate Eden and locate Adam and Eve within their environment offer a grand illustration of one author's particular pastoral vision and of the pastoral tradition in general.Vivid descriptions of prelapsarian landscapes, despite their depicting a utopian, fantasy-- world nature, dramatize the sensuous ecstasies and emotional possibilities that nature can inspire in human consciousness. Passages suffused with rich, intoxicating imagery, resplendent detail, and lyrical language are used to paint pictures of an iridescent Eden replete with beauty and enticing natural treasures. Especially ripe with such passages are Books IV-VI, which foreground the natural world and make it in any number of instances the focal point of the poem's story.

As a pastoral poet must be, Milton is adept, masterly even, at creating startling sense images in his poetry. Multiple senses are activated, often simultaneously, in Paradise Lost, making for a dynamic and sensuously enveloping read.3 For instance, Milton begins his descriptions of Eden (here seen from Satan's vantage point) by engaging the taste senses, labeling the utopian world Adam and Eve come to know and appreciate so well as "delicious Paradise" (4.132). In this case, a striking, evocative appellation erupts from Milton's application of the synaesthesia trope. The reader, from this point on, gets lured further and further into the author's imaginative world, as lines drip with scintillating, almost exothermic imagery and provocative turns of phrase.

A catalogue of flowers and shrubs orders Milton's description of Adam and Eve's bower, the Garden erupting in a dazzling array of color and redolent perfumes:

... the [bower] roofe Of thickest covert was inwoven shade Laurel and Mirtle, and what higher grew Of firm and fragrant leaf on either side Acanthus, and each odorous bushie shrub Fenc'd up the verdant wall; each beauteous flour, Iris all hues, Roses and Gessamin Rear'd high thir flourisht heads between, wrought Mosaic; underfoot the Violet, Crocus, and Hyacinth with rich inlay Broidered the ground.... (Milton 1998c, 4.694-703)

Smells play a particularly strong role throughout Milton's program of imagery. "The fragrance of the Garden more than any other traditional feature communicates a sense of intense and inescapable sensuous delight," contends Knott, who feels that "Milton goes far beyond the customary brief reference to rich odors. Fragrance ... is for [Milton] synonymous with delight" (1971, 38). Meanwhile, foregrounding the sense of touch are descriptions like those of Adam and Eve's "mossie seats" and table "Rais'd of grassie terf" (5.391) within their bower; and this is while images of sight and sound still probably dominate the poem's overall sensory matrix.

Pastoral descriptions-rich, lavish, and often dream-like-inundate Milton's poem.While it would be ponderous (and unnecessary) to catalogue all of the poem's pastoral images and references to the natural world, outlining a few more of the most striking pastoral "events" of the poem will help to show the prominence and evocative powers of these images. For instance, lively taste images are elicited by descriptions of nectar-filled fruits and sweet liquid drink, all those bounties yielded to Adam and Eve by "Earth all-- Bearing Mother" (5.338)-a turn of phrase not too unlike the language of Native American mythic imagination, which conceives of a maternal and giving nature. Rivers of milk and honey cut through the landscape of Eden. Halcyon breezes blow from "Aurora's fan" and birds sing sweetly as Adam awakes with the "rosie steps" of dawn at the beginning of Book V A few passages later, Adam and Eve celebrate in their morning prayer the "Mists and Exhalations" that arise from "Hill or streaming Lake" to either "deck with Clouds the uncolourd skie/Or wet the thirstie Earth with falling showers" (5.185-190). The following extended description and overview of Eden's physical landscape perhaps best encapsulates Milton's pastoral vision:

Thus was this place,

A happy rural seat of various view;

Groves whose rich Trees wept odorous Gumms and Balme,

Others whose fruit burnisht with Golden Rinde...

Betwixt them Lawns, or level Down, and Flocks

Grassing the tender herb, were interposed,

Or palmie hilloc, or the flourie lap

Of some irriguous Valley spred her store,

Flours of all hue, and without Thorn the Rose:

Another side, umbrageous Grots and Caves

Of coole recess, ore which the mantling vine

Lays forth her purple Grape, and gently creeps

Luxuriant; mean while murmuring waters fall

Down the slope hills, disperst, or in a Lake....

The Birds thir quire apply; aires, vernal aires

Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune

The trembling leaves, while Universal Pan

Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance

Led on th'Eternal Spring. (Milton 1998c, 4.246-67)

Thus, enveloping Adam and Eve is a sumptuous, lazy beauty that emanates from the "florid Earth" (7.90) in which they dwell, an Earth offering pastoral bliss to its human tenants.

Other descriptions of the physical demeanor of Eden contribute to the poem's pastoral character and will in certain ways help to locate Milton's Eden in its ecological contexts. Geographically, according to Milton's vision of the Christian mythic world, Eden lies at the Earth's equator. The Garden sits eastward in Eden atop "a Rock/Of alablaster, pil'd up to the Clouds/ .... The rest was craggie cliff, that overhung / Still as it rose, impossible to climb" (4.443-- 449). The "steep" sides of the mountain of Paradise sustain a "wilderness, whose hairie sides / With thicket overgrown, grottesque and wild / Access deni'd" (4.135-137) to all but Adam and Eve and their fellow creatures. Thus, in terms of J.B. Jackson's landscape paradigm, which distinguishes between the significations of "wilderness" and "landscape," Milton's Eden spans two categories of earthly terrain: the Garden plateau qualifies as "middle landscape" or "soft pastoral"; while the sides of the Edenic mountain qualify as true "wilderness" or "hard pastoral." The climate of Eden, where the seasons run concurrently and are bounded together, supports an "ecosystem" of endless harvests where all creatures can live harmoniously together in a non-- predatory environment. "The climate is so nearly perfect," Roy Flannagan writes, "that all vegetation or all animal life can exist happily in the same place" (1998, 449). As a result of this ideally and flawlessly designed universe and nature, Adam and Eve, though they still must care for the Garden in other ways, are essentially freed from cultivating the Earth for sustenance or doing any real hard labor (another common characteristic of the Arcadian world).

By virtue of intent, there are going to be fantastic attributes ascribed to any pastoral Arcadia: the thornless roses of Milton's Eden, the perfectly synchronous climate, the absence of predation among animal life, freedom from human labor, and seamless social harmony between humans and other forms of life and non-life. But fantastic attributes notwithstanding, Milton's Edenic Earth, in its essential qualities and inherent values, can be seen as not too unlike Earth proper. For instance, Eden is a world of fertility and abundance, a world where nature is "perpetually sexual and fecund" (Flannagan 1998, 484)-conditions that are not unlike those of any real, unspoiled, life-sustaining ecosystem on Earth. Comparing Paradise Lost and Greek pastoral epic, Stella Revard notes that "Milton's Eden, like Vergil's Italy of Georgics 2, is a place of beauty, variety, and abundance" (1986, 264)-again, qualities of any relatively healthy, uncorrupted natural environment. Viewed from an ecological perspective, "variety" must be considered an inherent condition and necessity of nature: in a healthy ecosytem, a variety of species usually inhabits an area that possesses a variety of geological features and that is in some way connected to the variety of other ecosystems of the planet.

The words "beauty" and "abundance" could be perceived by some as more antagonistic: the first designates nature as an object of beauty, that which is to be consumed by humans; the second also assigns nature an objective quality of sorts by celebrating nature's potential to provide for the human species. In a more positive light, however, these words and the ideas they signify need not suggest a hostile or objectified relationship between humans and nature. On the contrary, "beauty" and "abundance"-words that seem to be losing currency when ascribed to today's heavily industrialized world, a world that is being sapped of many of its natural resources-could inspire naturalist rallying cries to "Recapture the beauty and abundance of Eden!" Although such ideas tend to ignore any deeper inherent values of the natural world and do little in the way of establishing any profound, primal connections between humans and nature, they do provide some important foundational elements on which a deeper ecology, one that attempts to subvert conventional views of humans standing apart from nature, can be built. Celebrating the beauty of nature and recognizing the variety and "finite abundance" (a paradoxical phrase stemming from population/resource relativity) of the earth's resources are often important first steps toward such a deeper ecology. Moreover, there should be no reason why today's Earth, if treated with the care and respect it commands, cannot survive its humaninduced environmental crises and become a place-not wholly unlike Eden-of a more purified natural beauty, variety, and abundance.

The fact that there is a "steep," "hairie" wilderness surrounding Milton's Eden also seems significant. Despite its being called "grottesque" by Milton's epic narrator and marginalized altogether by Adam and Eve, there is wild, raw nature present in Paradise. One could even hypothesize that this wilderness is an integral part of Eden's "ecosystem." The basic habitat arrangement in Milton's Eden-Adam and Eve living within their country-like, garden sanctuary set amongst a wilderness territory that dwarfs the "tamed" garden safehaven-even seems like a sensible, appropriate, and workable model for living harmoniously within today's increasingly unstable environs. History and personal experience tell us that human beings almost invariably seek out and form civilizations; cities and communities seem to spring from a very fundamental need for self-preservation, from an instinctual desire to build human-centered safehavens. Civilizations will in turn desire and generally need to carve out a niche among the raw wilderness of nature in order to survive and allow their members to lead rich, meaningful, salubrious lives. The trick, especially for humans today, has been in making any division that has to occur between "civilization" and "wilderness" as seamless as possible. For, as a general rule, the more seamless these divisions, the better off both human and nature tend to be.

In a sense, the pastoral vision of bucolic paradise echoes today's environmentalist visions and calls for a return to more simple, self-contained ways of living.Just the fact that Eden is country-like in setting is significant. As Knott suggests, the pastoral setting is meant as an antipode to the city, as a place of sanctuary that welcomes the "busie companies of men" who wish to "flee" from the constraints of city life (1971, 6). In a particularly telling passage of Book IX, Satan, in serpent guise, steps out from hiding into the Garden for the first time a stepping out that is analogized to moving from decadent cityscape to splendid countryscape, from polluted city air to crisper rural air:

As one who long in populous City pent, Where Houses thick and Sewers annoy the Aire, Forth issuing on a Summers morn to breathe Among the pleasant Villages and Farmes Adjoynd, from each thing met conceives delight, The smell of Grain, or tedded Grass, or Kine, Or Dairie, each rural sight each rural sound (Milton 1998c, 9.445-51)

Here, pastoral movement from city to country begets rebirth and spiritual reinvigoration. Lending itself to modern interpretation, the pastoral could be understood as a metaphor for wanting to escape urban drudgery and social angst in order to reconnect with a purer, more primordial form of nature and self. And with city and suburbia forming the dominant habitation structures of human societies today, the seemingly deep-seated paradox of desiring to live within a tightly knit human community and staying intimately connected with the elements of nature comes into sharp relief Thus, the pastoral sections of Paradise Lost, and by extension any pastoral work, can be read as more than escapist art, as more than literary narcotic for the imagination: they may be read as instructives dramatizing the virtues and possibilities of living within a more natural, country-like environment.

Writing in 1750 on the appeals of pastoral poetry, Samuel Johnson addresses the form's escapist intentions, contending, "There is scarcely any species of poetry that has allured more readers, or excited more writers, than the pastoral." It is a form that, according to Johnson, delivers us from "cares and perturbations" and leads us into "Elysian regions, where we are to meet with nothing but joy, and plenty, and contentment; where every gale whispers pleasure, and every shade promises repose" (qtd. in Blunden 1929, 89). While this all seems true enough, a more important question is raised: that is, why does the human imagination tend to seek escape in these kinds of fictional places, these natural wonderlands? Assuredly there are other mythic constructs and fantasies that can soothe and please the human imagination. So why do we consistently find such immense pleasures in escapes into nature?

Perhaps there is something deep within the human consciousness that desires and needs communion with nature, that compels us to live as part of the Earth and not apart from it. Since human beings are born into and are inextricably part of the larger cycles of nature, there seems to be no reason why we shouldn't come equipped with an innate respect or even reverence for nature and its cycles, or why we shouldn't find satisfaction and self-fulfillment by accepting and embracing our place within the natural world. If so, such instincts seem to have been suppressed and forced to the margins of expression by, among other things, certain Renaissance- and Enlightenment-- era ideas and assumptions that championed a human-centered universe, by modern industrialization, and by continuing public refusals to accept or look more seriously at the interconnected relationships between humans and nature that modern-day ecological sciences have made so clear. Giving voice to such instincts, pastoral poetry is one way of celebrating and perhaps rediscovering these submerged feelings of connectedness to nature.

Returning to our work at hand, another green subtext within Paradise Lost can be seen in the general structure of Adam and Eve's relationship with nature. Stressing the fantastic elements that invariably compose an Arcadian world, Knott points out that Milton's Eden "resembles other versions of pastoral in offering the prospect of a harmonious and easy life" to its human inhabitants (1971, 7). Though real life on Earth will assuredly never be as "easy" and certainly never as painless as Adam and Eve's life in Paradise, harmonious living within nature is not only a very real possibility in the world today, but an increasing obligation of the human species. It could even be argued that this very lack of harmonious living is the umbrella cause of current environmental crises and degradation. Once again, life in Milton's fictional Eden can be seen (with some obvious reservations and exceptions, of course) as a paradigm for living life on Earth, for living harmoniously within a world composed of fragile, interconnected systems of life.

Furthermore, though there is not and will never be a place in reality exactly like Milton's Paradise, the actual landscapes of Earth do seem to provide the inspirational sources, foundations, and analogues for the literary dreamscapes of Milton's Eden. Milton simply compresses, heightens, and adorns reality in order to construct an imaginary place that can, in turn, illuminate, embolden, and create greater respect for that original source reality. At several turns in the poem, one senses that Milton wants the reader to relish the potential sensory experiences offered up by the natural world. Though the sense impressions produced from his poem are achieved by fanciful, heightened descriptions of reality, they still dramatize the possibilities and sheer pleasures that can be won from enjoying real nature: like the pleasures one might experience while strolling a balmy ocean-side or hiking in the cool of a wood, the delight one gathers from watching the sun set upon the plains or tasting freshly cut fruit after a long, summer's day work.

Milton in his own life seems to have appreciated, on some level at least, the gifts and powers of nature.The educational program he outlines in his Of Education treatise even mandates an annual spring outing in which students would break from their studies in order to ride out and enjoy nature.Writes Milton, "It would be an injury and sullennesse against nature not to go out, and see her riches, and partake in her rejoycing with heaven and earth" (1998b, 985). The author, it would seem, felt that nature has the power to assuage the mind and re-energize the spirit; in Milton's eyes, neglecting the invariably rich experiences that can come from communing with nature would be irresponsible living. In addition, several of Milton's minor poems ("On May Morning," "L'Allegro" and "II Penseroso," Arcades, and "Lycidas," to name a few) also contain pastoral elements suggestive of a rather profound appreciation for nature. Such extensive use of this form, so "integral to the development of nature writing," points to a very definite green aesthetic and perhaps even a green ethic in Milton's poetry.

Nevertheless, while use of pastoral elements can be the mark of a certain kind of green aesthetic, other characteristics are needed to lend a work any deeper subtextual "eco-meanings."The first of such characteristics in Paradise Lost comes in the epic's repeated references to the spiritual essence of nature, through the many connections drawn throughout the poem between God and nature and Heaven and nature. As previously noted, Milton himself relished the majestic beauty of the spring season, understanding nature to be "rejoycing with heaven and earth." In Paradise Lost, this idea gets dramatized and amplified. For instance, at the beginning of Book VI, the epic narrator describes nature's "Grateful vicissitude" (6.8) toward God for creating the diurnal and seasonal cycles-phenomena that are modeled after the "Cave / Within the Mount of God" where light and darkness live "in perpetual round" (6.5-6). Nature itself is aware of and thankful for its intimate connections to God and the spirit realms. From these contexts, it seems that Milton wants to emphasize the notion that the ceaseless changes resulting from the fluctuations of the seasons must ultimately be viewed as good (Flannagan 1998, 507)-good for the simple reason that God wanted it this way.

Such links between God and nature are demonstrated throughout Milton's epic. Even after the Fall, God remains closely connected to, even present within, nature. Adam and Eve recognize such links and pay tribute to God and nature through prayer and devotion and by tending to the Garden. Continuing in her comparisons between Paradise Lost and Vergil's Georgics, Reward maintains, "Nature for Vergil's farmers and for Adam and Eve is the gift of the gods; reverence towards it and its creator is a prime responsibility" (1986, 263). She goes on to claim that "For both poets an intimate relationship exists between God, nature, and man, one fostered by the fact that nature and man are God's creations" (265). Noticing a similar relationship, Knott alleges, "Nature in Eden leads the mind and the affections to God" (1971, 8).

In Milton's mythic world, prelapsarian nature (many features of which are actually retained in the postlapsarian world) was even directly modeled by God after the landscapes of Heaven: "Earth hath this variety from Heav'n / Of pleasure situate in Hill and Dale" (5.640-41). Despite the fact that this nature eventually falls and is "perverted" or alienated in certain ways from God, the fact that "here on Earth / God hath dispenst his bounties as in Heav'n" (5.329-30) still lies at the heart of Milton's creation story. From a modern eco-religious standpoint, passages like these could inspire justifications for protecting and keeping our natural world as pure and uncorrupted as possible. If Eden's unspoiled nature approximates that of the heavenly realms, it seems logical to want to recapture as much of that purity and goodness as possible on Earth. Thus, one might gather from Paradise Lost a certain spiritual dream and grounds for embracing a deeper ecology that would, in a sense, "re-sanctify" the Earth.

Moreover, as Michael tells Adam during their counsel after the Fall, God's graces suffuse not just Paradise alone but all of the Earth and its landscapes:

Adam, thou know'st Heav'n his, and all the Earth Not this Rock onely; his Omnipresence fill Land, Sea, and Aire, every kinde that lives, Fomented by his virtual power and warmd. (Milton 1998c, 11. 335-39)

In contexts of literary and theological history, Milton's close coupling of God, nature, and man shows a marked departure from Renaissance literary traditions and theological thought, which, according to Edward Tayler, typically saw and depicted nature as being "opposed to Grace" (1964, 70). With this shift in cosmic vision, this movement away from the idea that nature is opposed to God towards the idea that nature more or less embodies God's graces, the worldviews of writers like Milton begin to resemble and anticipate the Pantheistic theologies and philosophies of groups like the Transcendentalists, who saw the presence of a higher power, or the "Oversoul," everywhere in nature. Certain environmental groups today, subscribers of deep ecology, and other individuals generally concerned with the present state of the natural world commonly adopt similar types of spiritual convictions.

The next important green subtext of Paradise Lost reveals itself through the dietary habits of Adam and Eve. Both vegetarians, Adam and Eve eat only the fruit of the plants and trees of the Garden. Often championed by environmentalists as a conscientious lifestyle choice or even as a moral and ecological mandate for living harmoniously within and treading lightly upon nature, vegetarianism is a hallmark of green consciousness today. As vegetarians, the mythic characters of Adam and Eve before the Fall begin to look more like modern-day practitioners of green citizenship.

Related to Adam and Eve's vegetarian practices are their gardening practices, their careful and ambitious tending to Eden's garden environment. Exhibiting a prototypical Protestant work ethic in their labors (minimal and "pleasant" [4.625] those labors may be), Milton's Adam and Eve wake with dawn each morning in order to tend and care for the tree and plant life of the Garden. Trimming branches, propping flowers, and gathering fruits, Adam and Eve thoroughly enjoy and take great pride in their horticultural work; they seem to find deep satisfaction in working with their hands, close to the earth. And while some current environmental schools of thought might regard their gardening practices as an embodiment of a hostile structuring and controlling of nature, the fact remains that humans generally must work the land in some way in order to survive. And Adam and Eve seem to work their land with the utmost of care, moderation, precision, and tact. In fact, they evince such benevolence and solicitude toward their natural environment, it is hard to find fault, even from a modern-day ecological standpoint, with Adam and Eve's methods of "cultivation" or their general treatment of the land in Eden. Considering the growing pop culture trend of gardens and gardening business among various and sundry societies today (Scheese 1996, 36),Adam and Eve's gardening practices might even gain special currency with modern readers who participate in this "back-to-nature" cult of gardening.

From a cultural historical standpoint as well, Milton, through his rather unconventional depictions of the Garden of Eden, heads toward a less hierarchical understanding of nature. As Tayler points out, Milton breaks from earlier Renaissance traditions that valued uniformity, order, and control in their garden spaces to construct a garden of relative freedom, unrestraint, and biological complexity (1964, 16-17). Milton's inclusion of the "hairie" wilderness surrounding the Garden and lining the mountain of Eden also works in breaking down these barriers and values.

The fact that Adam and Eve never have to break a sweat in caring for their garden, however, is a point that must be considered. It does become difficult to put an environmentally favorable spin on such matters when Milton makes it clear that nature in Eden exists primarily for man's use and pleasure alone: "All things to mans delightful use" (4.693). These conditions notwithstanding, though, the mere presence of the naturally connective activity of gardening proves significant, suggesting to readers that the act of gardening can be a very ennobling craft as well as a physically, psychically, even spiritually rewarding experience.

The last and perhaps most important green subtext of Paradise Lost involves the poem's underlying assumptions regarding the value of moderation. In a broad sense, Adam and Eve structure their lives while in Eden according to rather strict principles of moderation and temperance. Whether in their eating habits or general ways of conducting themselves, Adam and Eve always look to strike that troublesome balance between dissolute self-- indulgence and Spartan self-denial. They take from the Garden only what they need, only the bare necessities of fruit and drink: they are conscientious and careful not to put any undue stresses on the land or to overconsume Eden's bounties. Like the farmers in the Golden Age Arcadia of Vergil's Georgics, "Adam and Eve are told to value a humble life, close to nature and to God" (Reward 1986, 270). At the same time, Adam and Eve do not refrain from cultivating their own happiness; they do not feel guilty in enjoying each other's company; and in many ways they live largely for themselves.

While moderate living is clearly dramatized in prelapsarian Eden, the value of moderation takes on special meaning for human life after the Fall. In his counseling of Adam, the angel Michael informs the newly fallen man that the possibilities for a virtuous, satisfying life and heavenly ascent after death are actually predicated on how moderately one lives on Earth. Here, Michael tells Adam of the one way to avoid the otherwise "painful passages" (11.528) unto death:

if thou well observe

The rule of not too much, by temperance taught

In what thou eatst and drinkst, seeking from thence

Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight ...

So maist thou live, till like ripe Fruit thou drop

Into thy Mother's lap .... (Milton 1998c, 11.530-37)

Michael is essentially prescribing balance and moderation for leading a godly-and, by today's standards, environmentally friendly-life.

Comus, the archfiend of Milton's A Mask Presented at Ludlow-Castle who anticipates Satan's character in Paradise Lost, provides us with an antithesis to such moderate, respectful living in nature. Using a characteristically deceptive rhetoric not unlike that of Satan in Paradise Lost, Comus suggests to his captive, the Lady, that God would be insulted if people refused to use and indulge in nature's bounties: "if all the world / Should in a pet of temperance feed on Pulse, / Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but Frieze, / Th' all-giver would be unthank't, would be unprais'd" (720-724). Natural beauty is for Comus a commodity to be exploited and consumed at all costs: "Beauty is natures coyn, must not be hoorded, / But must be currant" (739-740). Responding to these remarks, the Lady, resembling Adam and Eve in her visions and values, challenges the words of her arch-nemesis, debunking Comus's specious reasoning and castigating his profligacy:

Impostor do not charge most innocent nature,

As if she would her children should be riotous

With her abundance, she good cateress

Means her provision onely to the good

That live according to her sober laws,

And holy dictate of spare Temperance:

If every just man that now pines with want

Had but a moderate and beseeming share

Of that which lewdly pamper'd Luxury

Now heaps upon som few with vast excess

Natures full blessings would be well dispenc't

In unsuperfluous eeven proportion,

And she no whit encomber'd with her store,

And then the giver would be better thank't (Milton 1998a, 762-75)

The Lady seems to advocate here a fundamentally classless, communal society built on values of moderation, sobriety, and proportionate living; she envisions a society where the wealth and bounties of the land are available to the "just" masses, not the privileged alone. Promoting similar types of socio-- economic constructs, some environmentalists today argue that a common-- wealth brand of living must take root if we wish to avoid ecological catastrophe' and mitigate the planet's environmental problems. The Lady joins Adam and Eve, then, in her essentially green sensibilities and prescriptions for living.

In a sense, Adam and Eve could be viewed as mythic Earth's first environmentalists. Granted, since their behavioral tendencies as well as the environment itself were in part directly "programmed" by God, they may not know of any other way to live before the Fall. Nevertheless, it still seems significant that balance, moderation, and temperance encode the lives of Adam and Eve in Paradise, that these human inhabitants of Paradise are vegetarians, gardeners, and practitioners of modest, conscientious living.

Of course, in reading Milton's work, one surely should not and probably finds it difficult to overlook the overriding myth and implications embedded within the Christian creation story, as it is promulgated by Genesis and reinforced by Paradise Lost: the myth that says nature was created by God as subordinate to man and must, therefore, be cared for and controlled by man. Also integral to this story is the myth that original sin exacerbated the situation, created "enmity between humans and animals," and made "the naturally subordinate into inferiors" (Flannagan 1998, 323). And since such anthropocen-- tric myths have certainly helped to foster and justify the environmentally hostile practices and lifestyles of human beings throughout recent history, Milton should not be placed on the same level of environmental consciousness as, for instance, the Romantic poets, who were,judging from their poetry alone, much greener in sensibility. Using the concept of"naming" to illustrate such a point, Jonathan Bate draws out the differences evident in this regard between Milton and the Romantics: Adam, Bate suggests, assigns names to the various creatures and parts of nature in order to wield power over them; a Romantic poet like Wordsworth, however, assigns names in order to assimilate that nature into his being, to become "one" with nature. Thus, in Wordsworthian poetics, "The subjection is that of the man to place, not the beasts of the earth to the man"; in Miltonian poetics, it is exactly the opposite (Bate 1991, 101-102).

Yet for every potentially "anti-green" notion or attribute underlying Paradise Lost, there is an equally important green one being displayed. Lending support to this observation is Ellen Goodman, who makes a compelling distinction when defining the human-nature relationships of Milton's Eden. Comparing Milton's conception of Eden to those of earlier writers, Goodman asserts the following:

In portraying the unfallen world, then, Milton continuously employs the notion of human mastership, grounded in the vision of nature as an orderly hierarchy of ends.Yet he uses these concepts for distinctive new purposes. The authority Adam and Eve exercise over the natural world stresses their responsibilities as masters and the responsiveness of subjects to beneficial dominion. The ethics of mastership in Milton's Eden thus emphasize the integration and interaction of man and nature. (Goodman 1992, 13)

This human-nature "integration" and "interaction" is what seems to fuel much of Adam and Eve's happiness in Eden. Indeed, while in the midst of learning about all the horrors that will plague the postlapsarian world, Adam after the Fall is relieved and rejuvenated upon hearing from Michael that most of the qualities and creatures of nature will be spared. Knowing this puts Adam's mind to ease:

O thou who future things canst represent

As present, Heav'nly instructer, I revive

At this last sight, assur'd that Man shall live

With all the Creatures, and their seed preserve. (Milton 1998c, 11.871-74)

There is no sense of supremacy revealed in Adam's words here, no sign of an outwardly domineering attitude being taken towards the "lower" forms of nature. On the contrary, Adam expresses a deep, solicitous concern for and attitude towards his fellow creatures-a compassion commonly found in today's most ecologically minded of individuals.

The finishing stroke of Milton's green aesthetic comes in a narrative passage that directly compares the values of nature and art. Here, the angel Raphael, on his way to give his warnings to Adam and Eve, enters Earth's bounds as the epic narrator describes Eden's natural "Wilderness of sweets" (5.294):

Nature here

Wantond as in her prime, and plaid at will

Her Virgin Fancies, pouring forth more sweet,

Wilde above Rule of Art; enormous bliss. (Milton 1998c, 5.294-97)

This rather remarkable statement supplies Milton's (or, at the very least, the epic narrator's) ultimate testimony to nature's ineffable, evocative powers. Resisting definite description, these forces of "Wilde" nature can, according to the passage, never be appropriately harnessed by the reigns of language. As Flannagan notes, "the implication [here] is that man's art will never come close to the sweetness of the art of nature or the bliss" (1998, 484-85). Sensory events produced by immediate experiences within nature are privileged over the more abstract, aesthetic experiences provided by art. Subordinating the value of his own trade and his passions for the poetic arts to the powers of nature, Milton (through his narrator) projects strong affinities and a distinct respect for the natural world.

Thus, it should become clear that nature functions within Paradise Lost not just as background or setting for a more meaningful plot to unfold. Nature is rather an important voice within the poem, a persona that at times takes center stage in the poem's story. To this, one might counter that Milton simply foregrounds the physical attributes of Paradise and the charms of the natural world because ultimately he wants to underscore and remind the reader of all that will eventually be lost by original sin. Such an interpretation shifts critical focus (legitimately) back to the poem's central themes of temptation and the tainted relationship forged between God and man. And Milton most probably did want to use setting in this way. Yet his treatment of nature and place in the poem speaks volumes on its own, is remarkable in its own right, and does not necessarily have to be viewed as part and parcel of the poem's larger thematic constructs. The striking descriptions of place within Paradise Lost and the relationships between humans and nature that are played out in the poem compose an important thematic construct in and of themselves.

If, as SueEllen Campbell asserts, "Eden" and "wilderness" are similar cultural expressions of desire, there is one important difference: while Eden, in all of its fanciful machinations, is not a realistically attainable state (except within one's mind or imagination or, if one chooses to believe, perhaps in an afterlife), wilderness is an attainable reality. Humans do have the ability to regain, nurture, and live harmoniously within a purer state of nature. Though Earth's actual wildernesses have been significantly diminished and/or corrupted, encroached upon by industrialization and human overpopulation, the cultural expressions of the wilderness state are potent and plentiful. The next logical step is to actually make this expression come to life, to help reinstitute and implant the more primal forms of wild nature back firmly in reality.

Extrapolating from all this, it does not seem too unreasonable to assume that the instinct to identify with, find inspiration in, and recognize the innate value of nature is a universal attribute, one that cuts across human culture and time.Whether or not this instinct manifests itself or finds a clear voice within a particular culture, though, will be conditioned by the interplay of various other cultural, historical, economic, and socio-political forces. But whether looking at primordial man, a 17th century English poet, a 20th century environmental activist, or anyone in between, one should be able to detect profound appreciations for nature and place-be they manifest or repressed-inhabiting the human consciousness. Such instincts and appreciations seem to show through clearly in Milton's poetry. One might even speculate that Milton, had he lived today, would have developed a deep and solemn concern for the world's current environmental crises and could probably have done much in the way of writing to help protect the environment and in affirming those increasingly elusive yet deeply felt connections between humans, nature, and the spiritual realms. Of the Rights of Nature-- that certainly has the ring of a potential Miltonian prose tract.

Notes

1 In addition to signifying readers of written stories, the term "reader" here refers to listeners of oral tradition stories, viewers of cinematic or staged stories-- basically any responder to any story.

2 "Green" here and in similar contexts refers broadly to any marked appreciation for nature's beauty and inherent worth, any pronounced sensitivity towards the non-human environment, and/or any profound understanding of ecology and nature's systems.

3 Incidentally, the multiple-sense texturing created in the epic may owe itself in part to Milton's blindness at the time of composition, an affliction that, as Theodore Banks suggests, forced Milton to rely on his non-visual senses to create scenes and evoke image and emotion (Banks 1969, 137).

Works Cited

Banks, Theodore Howard. 1969. Milton's Imagery. NewYork: AMS Press.

Bate, Jonathan. 1991. Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition. London: Routledge.

-. 1998. "Poetry and Biodiversity." In Writing the Environment, ed. Richard Kerridge and Neil Sammells. NewYork: Zed Books.

Blunden, Edmund. 1929. Nature in English Literature. NewYork: Kennikat Press. Campbell, SueEllen. 1998. "Magpie." In Writing the Environment, ed. Richard Kerridge and Neil Sammells. NewYork: Zed Books.

Flannagan, Roy, ed. 1998. The Riverside Milton. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Goodman, Ellen. 1992. "Human Mastership of Nature: Aquinas and Milton's Paradise Lost." Milton Quarterly 26.1 (March): 9-15.

Jackson, John Brinckerhoff. 1984. Discovering the Vernacular Landscape. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Knott, John R. 1971. Milton's Pastoral Vision: An Approach to Paradise Lost. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Marx, Leo. 1988. The Pilot and the Passenger: Essays on Literature, Technology, and Culture in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press.

Milton, John. 1998a. A Mask Presented at Ludlow-Castle (1634). In The Riverside Milton, ed. Roy Flannagan. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

-.1998b. Of Education (1644). In The Riverside Milton, ed. Roy Flannagan. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

-.1998c. Paradise Lost (1674). In The Riverside Milton, ed. Roy Flannagan. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Reward, Stella. 1986. "Vergil's Georgics and Paradise Lost: Nature and Human Nature in a Landscape." In Vergil at 2000: Commemorative Essays on the Poet and His Influence. NewYork: AMS Press.

Scheese, Don.1996. Nature Writing: The Pastoral Impulse in America. NewYork:Twayne. Tayler, Edward William. 1964. Nature and Art in Renaissance Literature. New York: Columbia University Press.

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