Milton’s Lost Paradise

Maggie went to visit her relatives yesterday and will return tomorrow.  Since absence makes hearts grow fonder, I was left afflicted by pangs of solitude.  Though I had started rereading The Karamazov Brothers, the feeling of loneliness became oppressive at a moment and I found myself picking up her Bible from where she keeps it after her daily evening prayers.  I opened a page randomly and there it was:

⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. [Genesis 3: 6-7]

Paradise Lost: Painting by Russian artist Pavel Popov

The Bible is rather terse when it comes to things that really matter.  Why or how did the fruit open their eyes?  And when it did, why was their nakedness the first thing that struck them?  The questions immediately reminded me of Milton’s epic Paradise Lost.

Adam and Eve were intoxicated as if they had drunk new wine when they ate the forbidden fruit, sang Milton.  They swam in mirth and felt divinity taking wings within them.  Carnal desire enflamed both of them.  Milton says that they burnt in lust. 

Milton’s Adam tells Eve, “We have lost so much pleasure while we abstained from this delightful fruit…. If such pleasure lies in forbidden things, we might wish for ten such trees in place of one…. You look more beautiful now than ever.  Enflame my senses so that I enjoy you with greater ardour than ever, thanks to the bounty of this virtuous tree.”

Milton’s Adam and Eve then lie down on “a shady bank” with a “verdant roof” over them with the pansies, violets, asphodels and hyacinths making the “earth’s freshest softest lap” for them.  They make love until “dewy sleep oppressed them, wearied with their amorous play.”

Milton says that the first couple woke up with a deep sense of guilt.  The intoxication given by the forbidden fruit had dissipated.  Their innocence that “like a veil had shadowed them from knowing ill” was gone.  Their nakedness now becomes a shameful thing.  Sex became sin because of the intoxication of lust.

That is Milton’s interpretation of the Bible.  Literature definitely makes a lot more sense than scriptures.  Excess of anything can become evil.  Lust is evil for its excess.  But the excess of guilt feeling that Milton pumps into Adam’s soul after that realisation is more religion than literature.  Milton’s Adam, true to the macho Bible, puts the whole blame on Eve.  He thinks of saving himself by denouncing her and living in paradisiacal solitude so that his lost “honour, innocence, faith and purity” can be regained and he can face his God again.

This is where my problem arises.  Suppose the maker of the Adam-Eve myth was not so much a guilt-obsessed sexist in addition to being an escapist who passes the buck, suppose he was an honest and balanced man who could accept his sexuality candidly, how different would the Semitic religions have been? 

I know the answer is wishful thinking.  The harm has been done and irreparably too.  I can only make the reparation in my life.  I made it long ago.  My paradise is not lost.