The first book of William Blake’s Milton is in part a re-imagining of the central event of John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost. Blake has his own distinctive conception of the figure of Satan and presents an entirely different narrative of his fall than the traditional Biblical portrayal. But in spite of these differences, Blake’s account does share common thematic elements with its inspirations.
The Birth of Satan
The earliest printings of Milton go directly from the opening plate’s account of Milton’s century of wandering in Eternity to Satan’s fall, but the final two printings insert three more plates in between. The first recapitulates the story Blake previously told from differing perspectives in The First Book of Urizen and The Book of Los, where the “Eternal Prophet” Los, representative of creativity, binds Urizen, the sterile deity of reason and law. It also presents the emergence of Los’ female emanation, Enitharmon, and the birth of their children.
The new element in this retelling is that Blake identifies Satan as the last of Enitharmon’s children. Before his fall, he is “Prince of the Starry Wheels,” identifying Blake’s conception of Satan with Milton’s portrayal of him in Paradise Lost as a fallen angel. While Blake’s Satan is at first lacking in the pride that causes Milton’s Satan to fall, he “refuses form,” attempting to remain part of the infinite rather than be drawn into the material world.
Satan Before the Fall
But this refusal is in vain, as the world into which Satan is born is already the biological world of generation, and form and structure have already been imposed upon it by Los, himself fallen from his divine state as Urthona. (Blake does not recapitulate Los’ fall, which he described in The Book of Los, but it is referenced later in Milton.) It is a systematic world where every being has a specific place and role, and Satan’s role is to operate the mills “built beneath the Earth & Waters of the Mundane Shell.”
Though these passages depict Satan before his fall, Los already associates him with the fallen nature of materialist division: “Art thou not Newtons Pantocrator weaving the Woof of Locke” – these two figures are consistently represented as forces of rational materialism in opposition to the infinite nature of the divine. Los states that the mills “seem every thing” to human beings, and so Satan is associated with the false belief that there is nothing beyond the material world and what can be experienced through the senses.
Los refuses to allow Satan to reply, and denies him eternal life because his “Work is Eternal Death.” This separation of Satan from the infinite recalls the way Urizen became isolated from eternity in The First Book of Urizen, and Blake draws a closer association between the two figures later in Milton.
Blake's Version of Satan's Fall
The account of Satan’s fall has no Adam or Eve, no Garden of Eden, no tree or fruit of forbidden knowledge. Instead, he oversteps his bounds by desiring to perform the work of Los’ son Palamabron, because “Palamabron returnd with labour wearied every evening” and Satan felt pity for him. But in Blake’s cosmology, pity is a divisive emotion that inevitably gives birth to jealousy and conflict.
That is what happens in the story of Satan and Palamabron. Los relents and allows Satan to take Palamabron’s harrow for one day, with the result that Palamabron’s horses “were maddend with tormenting fury, & the servants of the Harrow,/The Gnomes, accus’d Satan, with indignation fury and fire.” Palamabron had misgivings about Satan performing his duties but refrained from stating them “lest Satan accuse him of/Ingratitude, & Los believe the accusation thro Satans extreme/Mildness.”
Pity Brings About Satan's Fall
Again Blake links his portrayal of Satan to Milton’s, though the events do not correlate specifically: there is a deceptive quality to Satan, though prior to his fall he is not even aware of his own deceptions. Palamabron perceives the “pretence of pity and love” in Satan, but Satan himself believes his feelings sincere and believes the false version of events he presents to Los, blaming Palamabron for the mishap. He becomes further convinced of his rightness when he finds his mills in disorder thanks to Palamabron supplying his servants with wine.
Los accepts the blame for forgetting “that pity divides the soul,” the mills and the harrow alike go into mourning, and Satan kills another of Enitharmon‘s children, Thulloh, in a rage inspired by Rintrah, a figure of vengeance and anger established as far back as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Palamabron calls an assembly to determine the truth of events, and its judgment falls upon Rintrah, now merged with the figure of Satan.
Satan as Urizen, God of Reason
This is where Satan’s hubris emerges, and Blake presents his view that organized religion has misinterpreted the words of the devil as the voice of God. Here it is Satan who creates “Moral laws and cruel punishments” and the seven deadly sins, and his goal is “to pervert the Divine voice in its entrance to the earth”. He does this by emphasizing moral law instead of freedom of action, a philosophy that leads to division and war. Satan also proclaims himself God, and in this he becomes united with the figure of Urizen, a connection specifically recognized by Los and Enitharmon.
But Satan is also much like Adam in the Bible, as his fall is brought about in Blake’s account by a feminine presence: Leutha, who admits to the assembly that it was her jealousy of Palamabron’s lover Elynittria that prompted her to enter Satan’s mind and give birth to his “soft/Delusory love to Palamabron.” Blake’s notion that the division of the sexes is false comes into play here, as Leutha “stupefied the masculine perceptions/And kept only the feminine awake,” thus interfering with the proper unity of masculine and feminine and unbalancing Satan.
Blake's Tribute to Milton
So while Blake’s portrayal of Satan’s fall is unconventional, it also bears many of the elements of more traditional accounts. It is a tribute to Milton’s own work within the context of Blake’s own mythology, and also an attempt to unite Milton’s concerns with Blake’s own, reflecting the way Blake combines himself with the figure of Milton throughout the poem. Milton is a redemptive figure in Blake's epic, agreeing to sacrifice himself to eternal death to undo the damage wrought by Satan, and the figures of Blake and Milton merge within the poem, united in a common effort to liberate mankind from the "Satanic Mills" and reveal the true nature of the infinite.
Paul Brown - Paul Ferrell Brown graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1994 with a B.A. in English literature, and completed his M.A. in ...
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