[Previous: lines 1-21]
Tempus erat per membra quies cùm grata soporem------------
irrigat, ac positis affert oblivia curis.
Et iam noctipotens manus imo emissa barathro,
horribiles visu formae, furialibus omnem [25]
cœtibus obsedere urbem. Pars turribus instant;
pars apicem templi, et fastigia summa coronant.
Caetera perque vias legio, perque alta domorum
tecta volant, tractimque haerent per culmina tignis.
Haud secus Italiam repetunt ubi vere tepenti [30]
coerula aves longo fessae super aequora cursu,
quae prior occurrit tellus, hanc agmine denso
certatim arripiunt, procurvaque littora complent.
Principio spargunt occultum in pectora virus,
vipereamque viris animam, caecumque furorem [35]
inspirant odiumque animis, et crimina linquunt.
Multi etiam in facies hominum vertuntur, et omnem
protinus incendunt variis rumoribus urbem.
Irrepunt tectis alii, somnoque solutis
somnia dira ferunt varia sub imagine rerum, [40]
atque hominum falsis simulacris pectora ludunt.
Iamque huius subeunt, iamque illius alta potentum
limina, et attonitos dictis hortantur in hostem,
terrificantque animos, facta atque infecta canentes:
Christum inferre faces, arisque instare bipenni [45]
armatum aerata, atque adytis extrema minari;
et iam semusto in templo dominarier ignem.
Quin ipsos templi mentiti veste ministros
singula tecta adeunt, patresque ad limina sacra,
conciliumque vocant. Nigri dux agminis ipse [50]
impulit aerisono stridentes cardine portas.
Hinc atque hinc delubra petunt: concurritur ultrò
undique, nec tenebris nox obstat euntibus atra.
Non aliter, captam si rumor nunciet urbem
nocte dolis intempesta, atque latentibus armis [55]
hostem inferre acies, et iam summa arce receptum;
culminibusque immissa voret fax atra penates:
plenis cuncta viis fervent, trepidoque tumultu
huc atque huc itur, nec sat rationis eundi est.
Praecedunt dirae facies, facibusque nefandis [60]
sufficiunt lucem, et summo dant vertice lumen,
terrificas capitum quatientes undique flammas.
Nec miseri tamen agnoscunt: furor omnibus intus
eripuit mentem, lapsumque in viscera virus.
Nec minùs interea bis seni ex agmine missi [65]
bis senos Christi ad socios, evertere siquem
possent, et furiis deceptum incendere iniquis.
Illi autem pleni monitis ducis (antè futura
praescius ista suis praedixerat omnia) servant
invictos animos, inapertaque pectora fraudi; [70]
quanquam hostis species sese transformet in omnes
nequicquam expertus, mentesque indagine captet.
It was the time weary bodies sink gladly------------
to sleep, sloughing off cares in oblivion.
Now in nightpotent emission from the pit,
ghastly to behold, all-furious demons [25]
swarmed through the night city. Some took the towers;
some the temple’s apex and its various heights.
The rest, a multitude, spread through the streets
and houses, gathering in rows on the roofs.
As when, returning to Italy for spring’s warmth [30]
birds, weary after their flight through long blue skies,
sighting land, all alight in a dense body
bickering for the best spots on the shoreline.
They injected secret slime into men’s hearts,
and viper-like venom in their minds, blind rage [35]
instilling hatred, strewing crime in their paths.
Many took human shape, and with incendiary
rumour inflamed the whole of the city.
Other slipped through roofs into sleepers’ bedrooms
bringing myriad sickly dreams to them [40]
and seeding false images in their hearts.
They crossed the thresholds of many famous homes
rousing wealthy citizens against the foe
frightening their souls with both true and fake news:
Christ was bringing torches! menacing altars [45]
with two-bladed bronze axes! breaking in!
threatening to burn the already-smoking temple!
Some even dressed themselves in temple vestments,
ran round the houses summoning the elders,
to sacred council. The leader of this black [50]
crew hauled the shrieking bronze gateway open.
In they swarmed, this way and that, seeking altars:
night’s thickened darkness was no impediment.
As when, rumour spreads that the city has fallen
at night, taken by stealth and concealed arms [55]
the enemy are now burning the high ground;
homes destroyed and the scorched household-gods seized:
the streets are filled, all is tumult and panic
this way and that, no-one sure of anything.
Dire forms led the way, their wicked firebrands [60]
shining, and more light gleaming from the tops
of their heads bright with terrifying flames.
These wretched ones knew no better: fury had
seized their minds; the poison was in their bowels.
Meanwhile twelve demons were dispatched against [65]
Christ’s twelve disciples, to pervert where they could,
deceive them with their furious ravings.
They, though, held to the teachings (this future
was something he’d foreseen) of their leader
so their souls and hearts held firm against fraud; [70]
and though the enemy tried all its wiles to
capture their minds, it was entirely in vain.
‘Virus’ in line 34 means ‘a stinking smell’ and ‘poison, venom, bitterness’; but it also means ‘slimy liquid, slime’, and I liked that for my translation; although later (line 64) I’ve translated the same word as ‘poison’, which might look inconsistent of me. Can’t help that.
So: Vida prepares the ground for the betrayal of Jesus—and transitions from a Jerusalem joyfully greeting Christ as the messiah to a Jerusalem gleefully mocking him as he is crucified—by inserting this extra-Biblical scene of many devils hurrying around the sleeping city, spreading rumours, stirring things up and, in another moment lifted by Milton for Paradise Lost, whispering at the ear of sleeping people to fill their hearts with wicked thoughts.
Other slipped through roofs into sleepers’ bedroomsThis, of course, becomes:
bringing myriad sickly dreams to them
and seeding false images in their hearts. [39-41]
him there they found… where Milton’s ‘venom’ glances at Vida’s virus and ‘Illusions, Phantasms and Dreams’ at Vida’s simulacra, falsa imagines et somni (lines 39-40).
Squat like a Toad, close at the eare of Eve;
Assaying by his Devilish art to reach
The Organs of her Fancie, and with them forge
Illusions as he list, Phantasms and Dreams,
Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint
Th' animal spirits that from pure blood arise [Paradise Lost, 4:799-805 ]
If I were ever to write a critical introduction to Paradise Lost, I’d start with this, it seems to me, most crucial point: Milton was writing about stuff he considered to be, radically, inescapably and literally, true. It’s tempting, nowdays, to take the poem as we might listen to Wagner’s Ring, or read Lord of the Rings, but where those works might be taken as artistically—metaphorically—true, we don’t believe in them literally. Sauron might scare us, but Milton’s Satan scared its original readers in a much more profound way because they believed (as many still do, today) him to be a real, an actual presence in the world, one who might take a malign interest, specifically, in them.
The fundamental fault-line in the elaborate cultures of demonology and diabolic exorcism has to do with free will. As far back as the 3rd century AD, Church Father Origen was stressing that even Satan himself was not wicked by nature, but by choice: one who is bad by nature, he pointed out, can only act wickedly as so cannot be held guilty or accountable for his or her actions (indeed, Origen believed that, at the end of time, even Satan himself might repent and be saved). But if people possessed by devils still have a choice to do good, one wonders why positing demons as agents of possession is a better way of hypothesising human wickedness. A person possessed by a devil has their will doubled, human potential for good or evil overwritten by a second, hellish will interested only in the latter; and this in turn pivots moral choice into a simple matter of strength of will. Of course, not everybody is blessed with a strong will; and it seems hard to condemn them is a stronger diabolical will overwhelms them, literally, from the inside.
Earlier, Vida showed Christ himself exorcising a demon of lust from Mary Magdalene. Here, though, he holds back; these various devils attempt all manner of trickery, but none of the actually possess anyone. And it’s easy enough to see why Milton was drawn to this, rather than the earlier model, in his retelling: Satan in Paradise Lost persuades, rather than actually possessing, Eve. Milton could have written his version the latter way, I suppose; but since the Elizabethan clergyman Samuel Harsnett published his attack Catholic exorcists, arguing that exorcisms were nothing more than ‘egregious Popish impostures’, Protestantism had tended to distance itself from that whole business. Whispering in a sleeping person’s ear, though, is the sort of thing anybody, mortal or diabolic, might undertake; and the reason why it is worse when a demon does it is … because they’re more eloquent and persuasive than mortals? (That doesn’t sound right). Because they’re more motivated? There are plenty of wicked people in the world who might try and persuade you to join them in wickedness. Why do we need to bring demons into this at all?
But, to repeat myself, one answer to that question would be: because Vida, and many of the people of his age, believed demons to be literal presences in the world, and demonic possession to be true. Devils have Biblical sanction, after all. But it may be, as Terry Eagleton argues here, that people in the Renaissance believed that ‘demonic possession’ was just a way of talking about other things:
Epilepsy, hysteria and melancholy (or clinical depression) were also considered primary causes. In fact, hysteria was already being touted as an explanation for being in thrall to Beelzebub as early as the 17th century. Our ancestors were by no means as gullible as we sometimes imagine: there were many devout Christians who were sceptical of the whole phenomenon. Thomas Hobbes was one of several who saw it as a metaphor for mental illness. Spinoza seems to have believed the same. From the early years of the Renaissance, plenty of physicians claimed that demonic possession had natural causes. So did some of their ancient Greek and Hellenic predecessors. Belief in the power of evil spirits to infest the human body was never an article of faith for Catholics, and no one was prosecuted for heresy for denying it.All this is complicated, in the Christiad by the artistic decision Vida has taken to replace the Olympian superstructure of superhuman gods and goddesses found in Homer and Vergil with devils and angels. As I’ve said before on this very blog, in Iliad 1:194f when Achilles, furious with Agamemnon, rushes sword-in-hand to kill him and Athene appears and seizes him by the hair to prevent him, we can either say ‘these are material events that happen in the world of the poem’, or we can say ‘this is how the poet describes Achilles changing his mind, because Homeric epic is entirely lacking in the interiority of the modern novel and so when inward state are described by the poet they must be externalised.
This, it seems to me, cuts both ways. At the beginning of Hamlet, Hamlet’s friends alert him to the fact that they have seen the play’s ghost, and worry aloud that it might try to possess him demoniacaly; by the time of the scene in Gertude’s closet only Hamlet can see the ghost, and the centre of gravity has shifted from supernatural entities to insanity and internal mental disorder. The play, in fact, is about both things, or both worlds, not about one worldview superseding the other. There are respectable, or semi-respectable, contemporary thinkers who would make a similar argument from the other side. Consider Bruno Latour, whose The Modern Cult of the Factish Gods (2011) argues (in the words of Barbara Herrnstein Smith) that:
Scientific facts, like technological artefacts, are constructed by humans, but both are nonetheless real in the sense of being – at least provisionally – stable and consequential. This much repeats the essentials of actor-network theory, but Latour’s important claim here is that the same can be said of religious beings: divinities and demons, icons and fetishes. The French noun le fait, he observes, ‘means both “what somebody has fabricated” (the manufactured thing) and “what nobody has fabricated” (the autonomous fact)’. This is not, he insists, a contradiction, but to understand why requires us to ‘abandon critical thought, forget notions of belief, magic, hypocrisy and autonomy’, and let go of ‘the stunning mastery that has made us Moderns and proud of it.’Best to avoid any crowing about the fundamental superiority of the modern worldview, perhaps.
[Next: lines 73-112]
