John Leonard puts his finger on the essential passage for heavenly maze and
heavenly muse, which is quite a nexus in itself. Not only does it mention
Jonson's "learned sock" as worn by actors in comedy but elaborates on "pomp,
and feast, and revelry, with mask, and antique Pageantry, / Such sights as
youthfull Poets dream / On summer eeves by haunted stream." This must be
the Shakespeare especially of A Midsummer Night's Dream: "Shall we their
fond pageant see?" (3.2.114--the "tragical mirth," "Merry and tragical," of
Pyramus and Thisbe); "The king doth keep his revels here tonight" (2.2.18);
"A fortnight hold we this solemnity, / In nightly revels and new jollity
(5.1.376); "We'll hold a feast in great solemnity" (4.1.190), "What masques,
what dances shall we have?" (5.1.32), "What masque? what music?" (5.1.40)
(with these compare "Revels, dances, masks and merry hours" in Love's
Labours Lost [4.3.379]). Indeed, Theseus in MND, commissioning
Shakespeare's play from within it, also seems to pre-commission "L'Allegro"
itself: "Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments; / Awake the pert and
nimble spirit of mirth: / Turn melancholy forth to funerals; / The pale
companion is not for our pomp ... I will wed thee in another key, / With
pomp, with triumph and with revelling." (1.1.12ff.) (Comus is such a pert
and nimble spirit, and his masque, at the invitation to "Joy and feast ...
and revelry, / Tipsie dance, and jollity," has the lines about nocturnal
revels when "on the tawny sands and shelves / Trip the pert faeries and the
dapper elves" [118].) But what comes next in "L'Allegro" is Shakespeare
himself, "fancies child, / With his native Wood-notes wild," with this:
And ever against eating Cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian Aires,
Married to immortal verse
Such as the meeting soul may pierce
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running;
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony.
In the background is the Platonic theory that the quasi-Pythagorean music
(and dance) is psychotherapeutic. But the untwisted chains that "tie" the
music or harmony together being first twisted, or unresolved, remind us
again, if only every so slightly, of the earlier poet's Theseus on Quince's
Prologue to Pyramus and Thisbe: "His speech was like a tangled chain;
nothing impaired, but all disordered." This doesn't itself sound like a
discussion of music or music theory, but it is directly preceded by
Hippolyta's analogous similitude, "Indeed he hath played on his prologue
like a child on a recorder; a sound, but not in government." (MND
5.1.122-26.) Milton resolves upon the word harmony, which is etymologically
(Gr.) "fastening/s" (hook/s, clamp/s, ligature/s), i.e., the "chains" or
harmonic relations "that tie" the notes of the composition together.
(Harmonia kept company with the Graces and Muses and Hebe.) The mazes are
the intricacies of the harmony, as created by its changes, parts,
counterpoint, bel canto, etc. Getting through the maze means following the
music, as a singer follows the melody that is threads through it. {A
trained voice, properly "connected up," melds, ideally, the different
registers (high and low, on the scale) that it must negotiate or transfer
between (re "the melting voice").} Milton's father, being a musician, would
have given Milton an appreciation for these technical niceties ("cunning").
Furthermore, "L'Allegro" seems to imagine the music in question as so
effective --
That Orpheus self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed
Of heapt Elysian flowrs, and hear
Such streins as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half-regained Eurydice.
This sounds like a regained paradise to me, regained by the Muse's son, and
its "heapt Elysian flowrs" accord with the solemnities of the angels in
Paradise Lost V, when "from dance to sweet repast they turn" (630): "On
flowrs repos'd, and with fresh flowrets crownd, / They ... Quaff
immortalitie and joy" (635-37). -- Of course those who object, with Satan,
that the worship of the Son is idolatrous, will recollect that the
Israelites sat down to eat and rose up to play upon the occasion of the
worship of the golden calf.
On Mon, 28 May 2007 15:48:16 -0400
John Leonard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Kevin Farnham writes:
>
>
>> Thinking a bit more about the question of whether Milton thinks heaven has
>> mazes... consider a score of a Mozart symphony. It looks "mazelike" to the
>> ignorant, to those who do not know what the symbols mean. But if one
>> listens to the symphony, listens again and again, learns it, internalizes
>> it... is that symphony a maze? or is it in reality a vision of oneness?
>>
>
>
> Perhaps the answer is that heavenly mazes are both mazy and harmonious.
>Kevin consistently equates mazes with disharmony and error. My own view is
>that Milton sometimes makes this association, but not always. I like
>Kevin's musical analogy. Milton actually makes the same analogy, but does
>so in a way that includes mazes (not rejects them):
>
> The melting voice through mazes running;
> Untwisting all the chains that tie
> The hidden soul of harmony.
> (L'Allegro 140-42)
>
> The difference between Kevin and me is that I think Milton occasionally
>put in a good word for mazes (as well he might, for mazes--especially
>multicursal ones--are fun).
>
> John Leonard
>
>
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James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
