Paradise Lost and classical ideals of pleasurable restraint

Comparative Literature, Summer 1996 by Scodel, Joshua

UNFALLEN ADAM AND EVE in Milton's Paradise Lost discover in self-restraint both a moral discipline and the source of truest pleasure. Pleasurable restraint defines their mutual conversation-their shared garden labors, rests and repasts, prayers, lovemaking, separations and reunions. While discussions of Paradise Lost's relation to the classical tradition have generally confined their attention to the poem's poetic models,1 Milton's depiction of the Edenic couple draws on and transforms ancient philosophical as well as poetic themes. Adam and Eve's pleasurable restraint is indebted not only to the tradition of Ovidian erotic poetry but also to late classical symposiastic theory and to the hedonistic ethics first espoused by Xenophon and diversely appropriated by Stoics and Epicureans.2 Milton further grounds the pleasurable restraint of Adam and Eve in their virtuous self-esteem, a principle Milton articulates from a highly original synthesis of Peripatetic, Stoic, and Neoplatonic philosophic views. While recent scholarship has explored Milton's Edenic couple in relation to scriptural and Protestant views of marriage,3 Milton's classicizing focus on self-esteem, which crucially shapes his treatment of Adam and Eve, has been neglected. Adam and Eve corrupt their relationship by deviating in opposite ways from self-esteem conceived of as a virtuous Aristotelian mean between an excessive diffidence that idolizes the other and a self-regard that renders the other superfluous.4 Milton's transformation of longstanding classical themes also has profoundly topical political implications. Writing during the Restoration he detested, Milton portrays unfallen Adam and Eve as bitter reminders to his countrymen that proper self-governance depends upon conceptions of pleasurable virtue that Restoration Englishmen have abandoned.

Adam and Eve's daily alternations between labor and rest exemplify the general pattern of Edenic pleasure:

They sat them down, and after no more toil Of their sweet gardening labor than sufficed To recommend cool zephyr, and made ease More easy, wholesome thirst and appetite More grateful, to their supper fruits they fell (4.327-31) .5

Critics have emphasized the centrality of human labor in Milton's Paradise.6 Adam and Eve's God-given "daily work of body or mind" is a sign of their human "dignity" (4.618-19). Like Augustine, who associated Adam and Eve's gardening with both innocent joy and self-discipline (De genesi ad litteram 8.9-10), the "sweet gardening labor" that the unfallen couple share simultaneously underscores the pleasure of their conjugal bond and the necessity of virtuous discipline. By such emblematic acts as marrying the vine with the elm (5.215-19) and pruning "wanton growth" (4.629), Adam and Eve reaffirm their union and commit themselves to moderating their own desires. Their daily labors thus underscore the fact that their innocent happiness is not a fixed state but a continuous process of achievement.

Working only as much as suffices to make rest pleasant exemplifies Adam and Eve's virtuous and pleasing moderation. Michel Foucault has emphasized the close association in Greco-Roman thought between virtuous moderation and the art of timing, of knowing when to begin and cease any activity (2:57-59). Aristotle notes that the virtuous mean of any action or emotion requires doing or feeling "at the right time" (Nicomachean Ethics 2.6.11); explicating the Greek maxims "measuredness is best" (ariston metron) and "do nothing overmuch" (meden agan), the Latin poet Ausonius notes that all things require "the measure of timely cessation" ("optimae pausae modum," Ludus Septem Sapientum 7, translation mine) . Edenic labor is similarly a matter of proper timing, for Adam and Eve must know when to begin as well as end their sufficient labors: in the morning Adam awakens Eve lest they "lose the prime" (5.21).

Moderate labor results in supreme pleasure: "ease" is made "more easy" and thirst and appetite "more grateful," that is, more pleasing, because of preceding labor. Adam later describes to Raphael fruits "pleasantest to thirst / And hunger both, from labour, at the hour / Of sweet repast" (8.212-14). Carey and Fowler's edition glosses "from labour" as either "when I come from" or "caused by" labor (826); the two meanings blend, implying that the intensification of appetite and postponement of gratification inherent in labor make ultimate fulfillment all the more gratifying.

Anthony Low (304-06; 316-17) has noted that throughout his writings Milton stresses the pleasure of alternating between labor and leisure, which, as Milton's university speech, Prolusion 6, puts it, "banish [es] the weariness of satiety" and ensures that "things neglected for a while will be taken up again more eagerly" (Complete Prose Works 12:205). In Paradise Lost, Milton links the alternations whereby Adam and Eve avoid "the weariness of satiety" to a neglected but influential ancient ethical paradigm. The Greek moralist Xenophon expounded the view that temperate self-restraint provides the truest and strongest pleasure by making final fulfillment all the more enjoyable. In the Memorabilia, Xenophon claims that Socrates "was so ready for his food that he found appetite the best sauce; and any kind of drink he found pleasant, because he drank only when he was thirsty." Noting that all good things come to man through toil, Xenophon's Socrates argues that because of their preceding virtuous toil the virtuous obtain a "sweeter sleep" (hupnos . . . hedion) than the idle and that self-control (enkrateia) allows people to endure a period of hunger, thirst, desire, or sleeplessness after which eating, drinking, sex, or sleep will give the greatest possible satisfaction (Memorabilia 1.3.5; 2.1.20; 2.1.33; 4.5.9). In Xenophon's Cyropaedia, the virtuous Persian king Cyrus similarly notes that both hunger and "labors" (ponoi) act as "sauce[s]" (ops[oil) because self-controlled, hardworking men "when hungry. . . will enjoy the most pleasant food . . . when thirsty. . . will enjoy the most pleasant drinks, and when in need of rest . . . will find rest most pleasant" (1.5.12, 7.5.80-81, translation mine). Milton's prose writings of the 1640s express profound admiration for Xenophon's ethical treatises (Complete Prose Works 1:719, 751, 891, 2:396); his epic adapts Xenophon's derivation of pleasure from prior labor and the resultant increase of appetite. By claiming that Edenic labor made "wholesome thirst and appetite"-rather than eating and drinking-more "grateful" and by having Adam describe fruits as "pleasantest to thirst and hunger" rather than "pleasantest" for eating and drinking, Milton blurs by metonymic substitution the very distinction between appetites and their pleasurable fulfillment. He thus underscores how much true satisfaction depends upon the intensification of appetite through restraint.