by James Hutchings.
Originally published in The Poet's Magazine (Leonard Lloyd) vol.2 #15 (Nov 1877).
Some of my readers may think that I have chosen a singular subject, and that I mean to write about matters touching the great tempter of our first parents to evil, as portrayed in pulpits, as an actual entity of the theological system of Christianity; but such is not the case. My object is to consider the Diaboli of Dante, Milton, Byron, and Goethe from a purely poetical, literary, and social standpoint, to show their several and relative conceptions of the physical and intellectual characteristics of the devil. The subject must not be confounded with satanic agency as understood by Christian divines. The idea underlying those terms will have only a passing comment, as may suit my inclination and present purpose, but forming no part of my legitimate theme.
I am fully aware that it is quite possible to concoct an interesting article from our great poets on satanic agency, but that would have to consider the influences of the theological spirit of evil rather than the characteristics of his nature, of which I purpose to write, showing the diaboli of the great poets in propria persone. A little sober reflection will make it apparent that the subjects are by no means identical, but, in fact, separated by a well-defined line that runs into large fields of speculative thought.
Satanic agency is a pulpit phrase, with the mysterious and dark significance of which I have no desire to meddle. Whether the great devil and his host of subordinate fiends, in their angelic and ubiquitous activity, are not enough believed in, as was some time ago lamented by the late Bishop Wilberforce, or whether they are too much believed in, as has been mooted elsewhere, is to me of little concern. I am fully aware that the spirit of investigation has been called into pertenacious activity by the scientific tendencies of our age which seek to subject all matters affecting human interests to the awkward test of demonstrative science. That spirit, I opine, will not be scared at the name of the devil. It will rather, if he be really in existence, and will venture to show himself like Faust in the extraordinary drama of Goethe, endeavour to turn him to some practical purpose. As stated, my aim is not to treat of the actual devil, or to question his agency as forming a part of the mysteries of divine government. It will suffice that the great poets I have mentioned, who attract the attention of every student and lover of literary composition, have chosen to give him in their works a "local habitation and a name."
I shall put what I have to say in the simplest form, and consider consecutively the respective diaboli of these great poets, comparing and analysing them as I proceed, commencing with Dante as the earliest, and as supplying at least two of the others with their leading idea. Dante, a Florentine of the 13th century, was the great poet of the middle ages. He has been not inappropriately styled the father of modern literature. He was a great light shining in the midst of surrounding darkness, occupying the intellectual isthmus connecting the older literature of Paganism with the modern writings of Christianity. In his "Inferno" we find retained all the grotesque phantasma of the Pantheon, Charon and host, the three-headed Cerberus, the Gorgons, the Hydras, the Furies, and the like; but in lieu of Pluto and Proserpine, the Pagan potentates of the infernal regions, we have Lucifer, the primal rebel angel and arch-fiend—once, says Dante, the creature eminent in beauty as he is now supreme in hideousness.
That which first strikes us in Dante's conception of the arch-fiend is the absence of the spiritual and the prevalence of the material. The arm alone, says Dante, of Lucifer as far exceeds in bulk that of the giant's as the giant's exceeds an ordinary man's. Now, by one of the giants he means one of the Titan-brood who warred on Jove; and if we take Typheus, whose duel with the Thunderer, Hesiod gives at some length, we have no insignificant monster. Standing on the earth, his head reached the sky, while his arms, extended, touched the extremities of the east and west, and yet Typheus was but a mere pigmy in comparison with the fiends around. The huge monster, be it observed, is no phantom; he is enclosed round the waist in a sea of ice, and is a real substance, for Dante clambered over a part of him in getting out of the Inferno. Not the fiend only, but the whole of the Inferno of Dante is grossly material. Ugolino, when ceasing from his horrid feeding on the special marrow of the Archbishop Roggieri to tell Dante why he neighboured him so closely, is described as wiping his jaws on the hair of his victim's head.
In the Purgatory the spirits are continually coming in crowds to satisfy their curiosity concerning Dante's body, which, they observe, casts a shadow; but nothing of the kind occurs in the region of the damned. He is in danger of being torn by the fiends, but no surprise is expressed at his possessing an opaque body. Before he is admitted into Paradise he is made to drink of a certain stream, which for the time immaterialises him. Gross materiality is that we find in Dante identified with sin, immateriality with holiness, and hence the propriety of making the father of sin the monster, as seen in the Inferno, and the significance of declaring him as once eminent in beauty. I think it highly probable that Milton seized this idea of Dante, and turned it to account in his creation of Satan. It must, however, be admitted that this doctrine of the identity of material grossness with sinfulness is found in one of Milton's earliest poems, "The Comus":—
"So dear to heaven is saintly chastity
That, when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, &c.
* * * * * But when lust
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish acts of sin,
Let sin defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clothed by contagion,
Embodies and imbrutes, till she quite loses
The divine property of her first being."
Dante and Milton drew probably from one source, and perhaps from the expression of the apostle, "I know that in my flesh dwelleth no good thing."
To return to the immediate consideration of this Dantean monster as the creature once eminent in beauty, and as, in all probability, supplying Milton with the prime characteristic feature of his Satan. This vast monster has three faces of various colours: one black, one vermilion, and the other pale yellow. He is continually weeping, and distils from six eyes tears mingled with bloody foam. In each of his three mouths he champs a sinner, grinding him with his horrid jaws as with a ponderous engine. One of these sinners is Judas Iscariot, and the other two are Brutus and Cassius. Dante says, with his wonted concentration and graphic force, that it is Iscariot who has most punishment—he whose head is within and who plies his feet outward is that Cassius, who is so long of limb; and that Brutus, in the mouth of the black visage, lo! how he doth writhe and speaks not. Brutus, we know, prided himself upon his stoicism. This I felt on my first perusal of Dante to be an erroneous wrong to Brutus. That noble Roman, history had taught me to revere for his patriotism and manly virtue, even as Shakespeare makes his enemy exclaim, "His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him, that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, 'This was a man!'"
What view could Dante possibly take of him that might in any feasible way justify this juxta-position? To ascertain this, if possible, I carefully compared the most prominent events, and especially the closing circumstances of the lives of Judas and Brutus, and [ found a marked resemblance. Do but heed how equally the parallel runs. Judas told the soldiers employed to apprehend Christ—"he whom I kiss, that same is he, seize him and hold him fast"—approached the Saviour and said, "Hail, Master!" and kissed him. "Betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?" said Jesus, with striking abhorrence. When Brutus came with the other conspirators to bury his steel in the royal Cæsar's body, he cried, "Hail, Cæsar!" and stabbed him; and Cæsar, who had resisted the assaults of the others, when he saw Brutus, whom he loved, deal that treacherous blow, dropped his arm—thought no more of resistance, and submitted to his fate, exclaiming, "Et tu Brute." Again we read, when Judas found Christ was condemned, he was filled with remorse, and cried, "I have betrayed the innocent blood." Then came that cold and atrocious reply of the men in authority, "What is that to us? see thou to that." Then Judas departed ind hanged himself. Brutus, it is said, was haunted and unmanned by Ceesar's ghost, and in his last extremity became a recreant to the philosophy in which he had gloried, When about to destroy himself he exclaimed, "O virtue, virtue," &c. Hence we perceive that the parallel does not halt much—both were traitors—beth conscience-stricken—both were suicides, under circumstances not specially in favour of the noble Brutus.
I resume my notice of Dante's terrible fiend. He is enclosed round the waist in a sea of ice, produced by the combined whirr of six enormous wings and three violent winds. Dante calls him the emperor who sways the realm of sorrow, but I am at a loss to comprehend wherein consists his empire, imprisoned as sole occupants of this lowest of the region dolorous. I am fain to attach a meaning to the words having reference to a past existence of the fiend. He was once, says the poet, "the creature eminent in beauty amongst the beautiful, but dared to scowl upon his Maker." He sinned, became a traitor, a rebel, and forfeited his place amongst the blessed. His eminence amongst the beautiful increased his guilt, sin, and personal deformity, till in the course of ages he became this monstrous mass of celestial ruin. All this, I feel satisfied, Milton saw in Dante's portrait of the tremendous fiend.
Milton sought and appropriated the materials of his Satan from various sources, but the leading characteristic, I believe, was taken from the great Florentine. All will not perhaps quite willingly admit this fact; they may ask wherein is the resemblance? The Dantean fiend is grotesque, hideous—a monster from whom one shrinks with horror and disgust; whereas the Miltonic fiend is in no way repulsive, but rather the reverse. His glorious beauty and sublimely heroic attributes shine through and irradiate his overthrow, and place of doom. He attracts, fascinates, and we follow eagerly his movements, listening breathlessly to every syllable he utters. We are almost ready to join his fellow fiends, and worship him as a god. While all this is true, Satan is personally deteriorating; and has grown, and is growing, more and more physically gross he is, and torturing his three victims and fellow traitors, the and personally deformed. It will, perhaps,*be interesting to trace this process.
Let us look at him as he appears in heaven. Great, indeed, was his name, high his degree, in heaven. His countenance, as the morning star that guides the sparkling flock, he allured, and drew after him a "third part of heaven's host." Again, as he appeared at the head of his forces in the pomp of battle, and the dread interview ere the contending angels rush to the unutterable conflict, the pious and fiery zealous Abdial is shocked that so much resemblance of the Highest should exist in one so traitorous. What or who is this, but the fiend of Dante, at that period when he was "the creature eminent in beauty and inferior only to the supreme in glorious attributes?"
Let us now look at him—fallen, fallen, fallen from his high estate. He is still a glorious creature, his high original splendour and pre-eminence in beauty yet lingers with him, but there is an appalling change; he is "the sun shorn of his beams." To the thunder of the Omnipotent and the fall from that precious height we may attribute something—but not all, not a moiety even—of the eclipse that his ethereal beauty has undergone. How comes the gloom on his faded cheek? The great defacer, conscious-defeated crime, has began its work of personal deterioration, and never, never more shall Thought, the torturer, leave him. "Thought of lost happiness and lasting pain," the undying worm has began its ghastly labour.
The next marked stage of personal deterioration in Satan is to be observed in the soliloquy which reveals him to Urial, the angel of the sun, who has marked his demeanour, and seen such a display of self-conflict and contending passion as is impossible in a creature upheld by divine grace and original purity. Urial suspects that the stripling cherub who, so recently, with so much piety and simplicity, inquired the way to the new world, is far other than he seemed, and hastens to apprise Gabriel, the commander of the guardian angels in Eden, of the dark and formidable arrival within that sacred enclosure of one of the spirits from hell. Gabriel accordingly scours the garden. What can be clearer evidence of the gradual and continuous personal deterioration of Satan progressing with each deed of ill, and therefore of his identity with the Lucifer of Dante, than the scene wherein he is detected as a toad at Eve's ear, infusing the moral poison of restless impure desires. Remember at the touch of Ithuriel's spear Satan, compelled, started up in his own proper shape; but it is no longer one which fascinates the beholder. "All his original brightness" has now departed, and he is "the grisly king." Being himself conscious of the change, he is scandalised at not being at once recognised, and scornfully tells the Cherub who asks, "Which of the rebel spirits adjudged to hell, comest thou, escaped thy prison?" that the query proves the inquirer of no worth. "Not to know me argues yourself unknown—the lowest of the throng; or, if ye know, why ask ye?" The angel throws back the scorn, and replies, "Think not, revolted spirit, thy shape is the same as when thou stood'st in heaven upright and pure: thou resemblest now thy sin and place of doom obscure and foul."
The keenness and truth of the taunt touches to the quick—and Satan anew pines his loss, but chiefly to "find obscured his lustre visibly impared." Conformably with this change for the worse in his personal appearance is the alteration in his conduct. On confronting Gabriel he blusters and swaggers and declares himself ready to contend with that angel and all his host.
"Though heaven's King
Ride on thy wings and thou with my compeers
Used to the yoke, draw'st his triumphant wheels
In progress through the road of heaven star paved!
But no sooner does Gabriel point to a sign in the heavens representing the respective forces of the parties than
The fiend looked up, and knew
His mounted seales aloft; no more; but fled
Murmuring and with him fled the shades of night,"
When Satan reappears it is with a mock consciousness of inferiority, not only is he careful to elude the guardian angels but he eschews all contact with Adam—and why? Because, as yet Adam is sinless and therefore invulnerable, whereas, Satan knows well such is no longer the case with himself. Now if we compare this Satan slinking about the garden like a cowardly felon, afraid of every thing which can show an opposition from, I will not say with him who when his armies scared by the thunder of the Omnipotent threw themselves into the gulph that yawned to receive them with an intrepidity, daring and hardihood beseeming so high a rebel who withstood the thunderer to the last and was by the Eternal himself hurled—"Sheer o'er the battlements of heaven" but if you compare this poor skulker with him who summoned his host from their prohibition in Hell, calling aloud till the roof of those dread vaults resounded—"Awake—arise or be forever fallen" you must be struck with the change.
I think it perfectly evident that Milton, all along working out the idea supplied him by the great Florentine, is bringing his fiend down near, and nearer to that final appalling doom. His sublime labours are all subsequently and subservently made to those of Dante. Is Satan the fallen angel? So is Lucifer. Behold the creature eminent for beauty once—the thought of lost happiness and lasting pain torment Satan, and how shall we account for the tears mingled with blood which Dante's fiend ceaselessly distils, but by supposing them wrung from him by the same most miserable thought enforced by the employment assigned him, namely—that of torturing the three sinners, notable traitors, himself the prime traitor. Every thing connected with this terrible being is wonderfully significant of this purport. It is astonishing how much Dante conveys to his readers in a few words. His tears, how characteristic? They are mingled with bloody foam and distilled, from the monster by intensest anger and immortal anguish. It is natural for tender creatures to weep, and we are not shocked at the tears of our children, they shed them easily and find relief, and it is so with many women, but not with strong men who are physically and psychically strong. When they weep, it is with a suffocating sensation and their tears flow not, but are wrung from them in scalding drops that do not relieve. In character with those tears is the motion of the monster's wings. The whirring of them while the great and terrible fiend who owns them is enclosed in the ice, conveys another idea of intensest agony as was the champing of the jaws—all, all—emphasizing the thought of lost happiness, and so vivid is the picture that it fills us with the misery of the fiend, till we are pained extremely and are fain to cry out—"is there no hope left for repentance—none for pardon?"