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The Miltonic Simile

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

James Whaler
James Whaler*
Affiliation:
Goucher College
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Extract

What would an epic be without simile? Its tone and landscape would be too often austere and bleak but for these fleeting views of an earth we know, these apt reminders of things men have done, endured, or imagined. Homer would diminish by a thousand lines, Paradise Lost by some four hundred; and what lines! Without them how could we picture Satan, his infernal host, his punishment, his revenge, or the actors in Paradise?

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , December 1931 , pp. 1034 - 1074
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1931

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References

1 I have dealt with the third proposition in an article, “Grammatical Nexus of the Miltonic Simile,” in JEGP, July, 1931. For proposition six see my article “Compounding and Distribution of Similes in Paradise Lost” in MP, February, 1931. Proposition five is the theme of an article to appear in a future issue of PMLA.

2 PL iv, 159–165+168–171 is extraordinary in that the poet tries to communicate odor.

3 Cf. Longinus, §xxxii: “[These examples] show how grand in their nature tropical expressions are, and how metaphors produce sublimity, and that impassioned and descriptive passages admit them most readily.”

Quintilian gives the special name example to a comparison drawn from history, myth, or recondite knowledge, when the orator's purpose is to prove a point. In Inst. v, xi, §6 he defines example as “the adducing of some historical fact, or supposed fact, intended to convince the hearer of that which we desire to impress upon him.” It is “the most efficacious of all descriptions of proof.” Cicero (de Inv. i, xxx, 49) also discriminates between simile and example. But in non-argumentative discourse, where comparisons are not introduced primarily to prove points, “examples” are in the same category with similes as to function.

4 Cf. Vida (Art of Poetry, Book iii, 265–266, Pitt's tr., ed. Cook, Boston, 1892, p. 135):

Some things your own invention must explore,

Some virgin images untouched before.

Attainment of novelty in choice of image may endow with some interest epic opuscules otherwise beneath contempt. Thus Sir Richard Blackmore introduces fireworks in civic display (Prince Arthur, 1695, p. 72), icebergs calving in the Arctic continent (ibid., p. 136), fire by night among houses in crowded London (ibid., p. 198), a waterspout in the tropics (King Arthur, 1697, p. 303), an East Indian running amok (ibid., p. 327).

5 J. W. Mackail (“On the Homeric Simile” in Lectures, p. 67 f.) calls it an invention of the first importance. For illustrations in the Iliad cf. v, 499–502; xii, 433–435; xiii, 492–493; xiii, 588–590; xiii, 703–707; xv, 410–412; xvii, 4–5; xxi, 257–262.

6 Poetics, ch. 21.

7 All citations or quotations follow Wright's text, Poetical Works, Cambridge, 1903.

I omit from the list of simple similes the following words: i, 21: dove-like; i, 435: bestial; ii, 69: Tartarean; ii, 306: Atlantean; ii, 539: Typhoean; ii, 611: Gorgonian (also at x, 297); ii, 655: Cerberean; ii, 927: sail-broad; iv, 289: God-like; iv, 301: hyacinthine; iv, 348: Gordian; vi, 100: sun-bright; x, 444: Plutonian; x, 450: star-bright; xii, 434: death-like (?); xii, 629: meteorous; also statements of perfect equivalence (quasisimiles: A=S) like those at I, 347; i, 564–565; ii, 384–387; iii, 345–347; iii, 623; v, 598–599; v, 757–758; viii, 300–302; viii, 462; xi, 852; xii, 467.

8 J. C. Scaliger (Poetics, 2nd ed. 1581, iii, ch. 51) recognizes logical digression under the term epiplonema (p. 325), citing Aeneid i, 498–502 as the typical illustration.

9 The result is the construction of four terms like those used by Aristotle to illustrate metaphor in general (Poetics, ch. 21). Aristotle would symbolize thus: a:A =s:S. Hence if S should have more than one homologous detail, e.g. s′, s″, etc., there must be set down a new equation for every additional s, thus:

a′:A=s′:S,

a″:A = s″:S,

etc.

I employ what I think to be a simpler and more comprehensive scheme of analysis, for it neatly includes r in the prominent position it should occupy in any graphic representation.

10 This seems to be the implied relation between the simile proper and the previous metaphor.

11 This simile falls so beautifully into Aristotle's method of analysis that it may be thus represented:

with the appropriate inclusion of r added diagrammatically to Aristotle's ratio-scheme.

12 Adapted to Aristotle's ratio-scheme:

14 At first glance the “sea-faring men o'er watched” of ii, 285–290 seem to be human beings similarly introduced into the picture. But in the expectant fiends during their debate they find the logical parallel. True, perfect homology cannot be pressed into the most minute detail in this simile; though it is easy to liken perturbed spiritual beings to stormy winds, and the ship of their infernal state to that pinnace which has been tossing about in peril. The simile is on the borderline between patterns 2 and 3. In such vagueness of homologation it is Homeric.

15 But what about the herdsman at ix, 1102–1110? Can we justify him in the same way? To be logically exact, this is no comparison, but an equivalence (A=S); though the effect is that of the most heterogeneous digressive “long-tailed” relief-simile. A vegetable mother-monster, thousand-armed, covering acres, seems to be Nature's own sanctuary from Heaven's glare. Seductively cool, labyrinthine walks inside can turn tropic noon into “a little glooming light, much like a shade.” High-pillared aisles and arches, leaves broad as hips of warrior-women,—the very place for secrets to keep and mutual guilt to be safeguarded. Yet all seems delightfully alive with echoes of birds and men. The sun-beat walls of green are pierced with happy human eyes, for here and there herdsmen have cut loopholes whence they can tend their flocks at pasture. An enigmatic tree: friend to man, friend to fugitives; but what a place for an ambush, where every peltate leaf can conceal a warrior! Place for Knight to meet Dragon—Wood of Error! Depend on it, in this digression Milton does more than cull from Pliny and Purchas to furbish a hint in Genesis. Every branch of this great growth suggests a fecundity as strange as the consequences of their sin are to become to Adam and Eve. Logically speaking, only a quasi-simile; yet in its narrative function blending Homeric relief with Miltonic irony. In the position Milton assigns to it, it is at once pastoral idyl and fool's paradise, standing as it does directly before stormwinds of panic and remorse. One moment a picture of protecting peace for the outward man; the next moment a dark prelude to a “tost and turbulent” “inward state of mind” (1125–1126), to “high passions, anger, hate, mistrust, suspicion, discord,” for which Nature alone has bred no cure.

16 A possible fourth mode of digression, that of obiter dictum, occurring occasionally in the Iliad, is presented in this simile of Milton's. “Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Libyan Jove,” is distinctly obiter dictum (so also is “since mute” in PL ix, 670–676). It is interesting to compare the examples in Homer, which I list here in the order of increasing irrelevancy to Homer's context: Il. xx, 403–405, Il. xvi, 384–392, Il. x, 351–353.

17 J. C. Scaliger (op. cit., p. 329) recognizes the propriety of occasional logical digression, and insists that there be cohaesio, not merely affixio. Epiphonematum quoque cohaesio sit, non quasi affixio: ut ex ipsa comparatione enata videantur. Quia Diana pulchra est, Latona laetatur [Æneid i, 498–502]. ... Non omnia tamen Epiphonemata ad rem comparatam utique referuntur. Namque Latonae pectus tentant gaudia propter Dianam: cuius pectus gaudeat ob Elisam, nullum vides.

18 W. Y. Sellar; The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age—Virgil, 3d ed. (Oxford, 1897), p. 415. Sellar is describing the Vergilian simile.

19 Except Od. xx, 66–82.

20 Such a pattern really underlies Odys. vi, 102–108: Nausicaa > her handmaidens=Artemis > the wood-nymphs. Also cf. Seneca, Med. 95 (so Sappho, 3): Creusa > her maidens=Phoebe > Pleiades=Sun > Starlight; and Lucan, Pharsalia viii, 487–188. Spenser employs it in FQ iv, v, 14; Browne quaintly in Brit. Past. i, iv, 253–258; Fletcher in Faithful Shepherdess i, iii, 118–124; and Chamberlayne ingeniously in Pharonnida i, i, 179–182; i, iv, 126–128; i, v, 159–162; ii, iv, 217–227.

21 Boiardo has this variant in O. Inn. vi, xiii, 4:

Giant > Orlando = Orlando > a small chicken, and Tasso in GL iv, vi, 5–8:

Pluto > a mountain=a mountain > a mole-hill.

Keats imitates Milton with this pattern in Hyperion i, 27–28.

22 The form A 1>S 1=S 1>S 2 lends itself easily to an effective argument from analogy. Satan so uses it in his persuasive appeal to Eve in PL ix, 710–712.

This form is also the a fortiori frame of logic in the Hymn of the Angels in PL iii, 372 ff.

23 And a poet who would deliberately make Homer his model would have to copy him in simile. Matthew Arnold, for instance, endeavored to Homerize his Sohrab and Rustum and Balder Dead. Do we find in the similes of these poems a Homeric preponderance of heterogeneity? Yes. Of the 32 complex similes 24 are Σ, only 8 are σ. And in this respect of generic relationship Vergil has followed Homer even more closely than Arnold, for in the complex similes of the Aeneid there are 88 Σ as compared with only 13 σ.

24 According to Jebb (Intro. to Homer, p. 29) a truly characteristic Homeric simile in the Bible is at Job 6:15–20, where deceitfulness of friends is compared to seasonal caprices of a brook. It would be hard to find terms more isolable or detachable as separate pictures.

25 At Iliad xvii, 389–393 George Chapman has an interesting note, which we are now prepared to criticize. Patroclus' body is likened to a hide that is being tugged at and stretched in all directions by workmen whose object is to cure and tan it. “An inimitable simile,” says Chapman, as indeed the complete absence of any attempt to imitate it in any subsequent epic has proved it to be. But he goes on to claim for it perfect homology, declaring that the sweat of the contending warriors corresponds with the fat of the hide, and he has the courage to incorporate such an interpretation as this in his verse translation. Had this simile been one of Milton's, Chapman's plea for exact homology might be more impressive; but Homer is full of such vague homologation. I suspect that the vehemency of Chapman's note springs from his own secret doubt about the case.

26 So indulgent is Homer to images of radically different genus that he has even this form: A (bodily action) = Σ (mental state or process); e.g. in Iliad xv, 80–82 Hera's eager speed to reach Olympus is thus described:

“Even as when the mind of a man darts speedily, of one that hath travelled over far lands, and considers in his wise heart, ‘Would that I were here or there,‘ and he thinketh him of many things, so swiftly fled she. ...”

(Apollonius expands this remarkable simile and digresses in Argo. ii, 541–546; and cf. Homeric Hymn to Hermes 43–44 and Pindar, Pyth. iv, 118 ff. In Od. vii, 36 the ships of the Phaeacians are said to be as swift as thought.)

It is interesting to see what Milton does when he would describe the instancy of God's Son dispatched to Eden to pronounce judgment on Adam and Eve. He avoids simile, contenting himself with a swift metaphor:

“Down he descended straight; the speed of Gods

Time counts not, though with swiftest minutes wing'd.“

(PL x, 90–91)

Yet Raphael's descent (PL v, 247–277) is described as something of a temporal progress: first, the angelic quires make way for him to pass to the gate of Heaven; next, as he swiftly nears Earth, Paradise appears as a far isle of the Aegean to a pilot; next, he draws as close to Earth as an eagle can tower in its flight, and he assumes the glorious form of the unique Phoenix, “gaz'd by all” the other birds of air; lastly, “on the eastern cliff of Paradise He lights, and to his proper shape returns.”

Another example in Homer of A (bodily action) = Σ (mental state) is at Iliad xxii, 199–200, where Achilles and Hector, pursuer and pursued, are likened to dream-figures: “As in a dream one faileth in chase of a flying man—the one faileth in his flight and the other in his chase—so failed Achilles to overtake, and Hector to escape.” Imitated by Vergil in Æneid xii, 908–912. “A most ingenious simile,” declares Chapman of Homer's. So it truly is because the dream-device admits of exact homologation, for S, even though it includes mental state to illustrate bodily act, is nearer to σ than to Σ.

Milton exhibits no such relationship as A (bodily act) = Σ (mental state), and must yield a point to Homer, Apollonius, and Vergil in range of imagery.

27 Vergil's rather than Apollonius' at Argo. iii, 756–759. For Vergil has improved over Apollonius in two important points of homologation: Vergil's rays are reflected upon walls and ceiling of an enclosed room, which suggests the enclosed room of his hero's mind; and those rays are not all the same—first they are of the sun, then of the moon—a presentation of various times and qualities, suggesting that Aeneas' anguish and perplexity held through from day into night, as is indeed the case. It is a refinement which Apollonius would certainly have included if he had thought of it.

Ariosto acknowledges Vergil's success by imitating him at OF viii, lxxi, 5–8. Camoens (Lusiads viii, lxxxvii), describing the nervous balancing of judgments and policies within the mind of Gama (who is imprisoned by an Indian king), Homerizes the image into a sun-reflecting mirror or prism held in the hands of a mischievous boy. This simile, so highly praised by Mickle, is censured by Burton for what Burton thinks is a lack of perfect appropriateness to the context.

28 The only other illustrations of A (mental state) = Σ (material image) in Paradise Lost are these short but striking similes: iv, 17, where Satan's fiendish design “like a devilish engine back recoils upon himself”; ix, 121–122, where Satan's contemplation of Eden causes an inner torment like “the hateful siege of contraries”; and xii, 193–194, where Pharaoh's stubborn heart, the more confirmed in obduracy after every apparent yielding to successive plagues, is like “ice more harden'd after thaw,” a reference to certain properties of ice uncannily prescient of twentieth-century research.

Jeremy Taylor can take a carefully observed natural phenomenon and use it to illustrate a mental condition. Of those who check a desire to sin before it can result in an act he says (ed. Hughes, vol. iii, p. 216): “For so have I seen a busy flame sitting on a sullen coal, turn its point to all the angles and portions of its neighborhood, and reach at a heap of prepared straw, which, like a bold temptation, called it to a restless motion and activity; but either it was at too big a distance, or a gentle breath from heaven diverted the sphere and the ray of the fire to the other side, and so prevented the violence of the burning; till the flame expired in a weak consumption, and died, turning into smoke and the coolness of death and the harmlessness of a cinder, etc.” Thus in prose may the Homeric simile, by adopting a thoroughly Miltonic term-correspondence, reach the confines of true parable.

29 In a forthcoming article on “Animal Simile in Paradise Lost” I show how Vergil, like Milton, gives more care than Homer to relating animal imagery to context.

30 See Heitland's strictures, for example, on Lucan's similes in his introduction to C. E. Haskins' ed. of the Pharsalia, p. lxxxix.

Vida's Christiad is laden with examples of servility in choice of image, a servility uncompensated by felicity in application. Both John Baptist (iv, 187–188) and Christ (v, 752–757) are compared to the morning star Lucifer (contrast Milton's biblically exact comparison of Satan with Lucifer in PL v, 708–709 and vii, 131–133). Repentent Magdalene is like a fawning dog (i, 358). The woman taken in adultery is like a deer caught in a snare (i, 778–781). Jesus drives out the money-changers as Boreas drives away clouds (i, 521–524). Judas, caught by Satan, is like a hind caught by a lion (ii, 89–92). Jesus, arrested by the Jews, is like a stag or boar caught in the hunters' toils (ii, 803–807). Peter, following forlornly after Jesus, is like a lost little girl wandering in the dark away from her mother (ii, 931–937). The Virgin Mary is, as a bride, as fair as the moon new-risen from the sea (iii, 181–183). The tears of the weeping Virgin Mary are like sap-drops from a wound in a vine which an unskilful husbandman inflicts when his pruning-knife slips (iii, 209–212). The Virgin Mary transfigured is like an image of wood covered over with gold (iii, 268–272). At the birth of Jesus the Virgin's face shone like the starry sky after a shower (iii, 587–589). Old Simeon, when he finds the infant Jesus, is like an old faithful hound when he catches the scent of a hare (iii, 695–701). The slaughtered innocents are like lambs drowned in a flood (iii, 881–884), etc.

31 Cf. Quintilian, Inst. viii, iii, §74: “The more remote the simile is from the subject to which it is applied, the greater will be the impression of novelty and the unexpected which it produces.”

32 The following complex similes from Sohrab and Rustum and Balder Dead are italicized if of Pattern 3; the others are of Pattern 2. (Citations are from the Globe ed.). Sohrab and Rustum, p. 68: Sohrab=Lion; Troops = Cranes; pp. 69–70: Troops=Standing grain; p. 70: Troops=Pedlars from Cabool; pp. 73–74: Rustum=Diver; p. 74: Troops=Standing grain; Rustum=Compassionate rich woman; Sohrab=Cypress tree; p. 75: Rustum = Tower; p.77: Mortal men=Swimmers; Spear=Hawk; War-club=Tree-trunk; p. 79: S. vs. R.=Eagle vs. eagle; Din of shields=D. of woodcutters; p. 80: Cry of horse=C. of wounded lion; p. 82: Rustum=Male eagle whose male and offspring are doomed; pp. 83–84: Rustum's thought=Ocean tide; p. 84: Rustum's youth=Far, bright city; Sohrab=Hyacinth; p. 85: Markings on Sohrab's arm=Painting on porcelain; p. 90: Sohrab's wounded body=Soiled white violets; p. 91: 5. and R.=Prostrate pillars.

Balder Dead, p. 108:

Brushing of Hoder against Hermod——Brushing of honeysuckle spray against

man

ghostliness in dusk

Tired with grief——Tired with travelling

(Anticipation) [Hoder goes off and kills——“thinks a ghost went by”; himself]

p. 114: Damsel-guard of Hela's realm=Cowherd's wagon blocking mountain-pass; p. 116: Ghosts of Hell=Swallows; p. 120: Hermod=Traveller at dawn; p. 121:

Hermod——Farmer who has lost his dog

ignorance of lost one's fate

Balder——Lost dog (malicious irony of Lok);

p. 127: Balder's ship-pyre=Winter hearth-fire; p. 130:

All things in the world——Trees in an early spring thaw

sound of

Weeping——Melting of snow

By the presence of divine power——By the blowing of warm west wind

Gods rejoice——Peasant's heart glad with hope of spring's return

(Ironical Anticipation) Balder eventu——Green grass-plots peep out from under ally to emerge from Hell snow;

p. 131: Life and fare of gods in Heaven=A cow's manger-ful of fresh hay; pp. 131–132.

Rebuff of the gods by Lok=Adverse wind's blasting of sailors' hopes to reach home; pp: 137–138:

Hermod, held among the living——Captive stork

yearning to rejoin kin

Balder and companions bound for realm——Fellow-storks migrating through the autumn sky of Hela

Eventually to attain “far to the south ...——Eventually to attain ”warmer lands, and courts that keep the sun.“ another Heaven.”

R. D. Havens (The Influence of Milton on English Poetry, p. 80) lists twelve marks of style characteristic of Milton. To his exceedingly full array of authors and passages from subsequent English literature which show the influence of that style one might add the similes of Balder Dead as a possibly conscious adoption of Milton's technique of homologation.