| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Chaos

Page history last edited by PBworks 15 years, 11 months ago

Chaos: "a dark/ Illimitable Ocean without bound,/ Without dimension (II.891-893)"

 

 

Introduction

“Nobody reads Paradise Lost without feeling the power and terror of the chaos whom Satan encounters out there in intergalactic space” (Adams, 629).

 

     Chaos is defined as “a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order” (Dictionary.com, Unabridged).  It can also be defined as “any confused, disorderly mass: a chaos of meaningless phrases” and “the infinity of space or formless matter supposed to have preceded the existence of the ordered universe” (Dictionary.com, Unabridged).  It is from these definitions that we can compare the version of Chaos that Milton has created in “Paradise Lost” to reveal the uniqueness never seen before in literature.

 

 

Textual Occurrences

 

     According to Milton critic Walter Clyde Curry, Chaos is unique because of its characteristics of noise, darkness, dimension and direction.  Textual evidence of noise, darkness as a lack of God’s sacred light, and the presence of motion will be discussed in this section.

 

     The definition of chaos does not include any reference to noise, so why did Milton include sound in his Chaos?  Some critics suppose that after he went blind, his other senses, such as sensitivity to sound, were heightened and that this heightened sensitivity carried over into “Paradise Lost.”  In Book II, we are introduced to Chaos through the eyes and ears of Satan, newly fallen and determined to reach the newly created Earth.  The noise of Chaos is often described in terms of war and battle (Knott):

 

     ...amidst the noise

     Of endless Warrs (II.896-897).

 

     ...warring Winds (II.905).

 

                       ...Nor was his eare less peal'd

     With noises loud and ruinous (to compare

     Great things with small) then when Bellona storms,

     With all her battering Engines bent to rase

     Som Capital City; or less then if this frame

     Of Heav'n were falling, and these Elements

     In mutinie had from her Axle torn

     The stedfast Earth (II.920-927).

 

Bellona is an ancient Roman goddess of war, who accompanied Ares into battles.  Milton compares the noise of Chaos to the noise of Bellona destroying an enemy city in order to intensify the strength of his description.  In doing so, he is also clearly creating a hierarchy of greatness - his Chaos is much greater than any Roman version. 

 

     Satan, in traveling through Chaos, is attacked by an anthropomorphized noise, in what seems a physical manner:

 

     At length a universal hubbub wilde

     Of stunning sounds and voices all confus'd

     Borne through the hollow dark assaults his eare

     With loudest vehemence (II.951-954).

 

The noise described above, the reader soon discovers, is coming from the court of Chaos.  The loudest of the noise comes from the “dark Pavilion” (II.960) where Chaos and his cronies are enthroned.  Logically, it makes sense that the most noise would congregate around Chaos’s inhabitants.  Milton further enhances the theme of noise in Chaos by having the characters of Rumor, Tumult and Discord present because all three require sound to instigate and spread chaos.  

 

     More evidence of noise occurs not in terms of battle, but in terms of storms.  In Book III, Satan has discovered the Earth, enclosed within a shell that protects it from “...ever-threatning storms/ Of Chaos blustring round, inclement skie” (III.425-426).  This image is later contrasted to the “glimmering air less vext with tempest loud” (III.429) that exists near the boundary between Heaven and Chaos.  Milton highlights the differences in temperament between Chaos and Heaven again in Book VII, when the reader is told of the creation of the Universe: “[u]p from the bottom turn'd by furious windes/ And surging waves” (VII.213-214).  The “surging waves” only calm when God commands them to, soothed by God’s warmth and light.

 

 

     Not only is Chaos noisy, it is also dark. However, as within other sections of “Paradise Lost”, darkness refers not only to darkness itself, it can also infer a lack of God’s sacred light and therefore a lack of God himself. The reader’s first introduction to Chaos begins “...a dark/ Illimitable Ocean” (II.891-892). We are told that the elements that make up Chaos are “dark materials” (II.916). Satan must make his away through “the surging smoak” (II.928), which brings to mind dark, billowing clouds of smoke, a type of air pollution that also limits one’s visibility.

 

     Chaos is full of contradictions, which parallels the very definition of chaos as a state of utter confusion.  Milton uses the phrase “the hollow dark” (II.953) to describe the depths of Chaos that Satan is journeying through. Usually darkness is described as heavy or smothering, but Milton chooses to distinguish himself with the term “hollow.”  As stated earlier, Milton likes to compare Chaos to Heaven to illuminate the differences between them:

 

                                      ...of whom to ask

     Which way the neerest coast of darkness lyes

     Bordering on light (II.957-959).

 

Chaos’s boundaries are determined by its darkness, whereas Heaven is light, and it is this light that keeps Chaos at bay on its shared border. Even Satan is aware that until he can locate the sacred light of Heaven, he will remain ensnared in Chaos’s grasp:

 

                                    ...but by constraint

    Wandring this darksome Desart, as my way

     Lies through your spacious Empire up to light,

     Alone, and without guide, half lost, I seek

     What readiest path leads where your gloomie bounds

     Confine with Heav'n (II.9972-977).

 

Chaos is “gloomie,” but Heaven is bathed by the “sacred influence of light” (II.1034-1035). It is up to the reader to determine for themselves whether or not Milton is implying that Chaos is evil because its constant state of darkness reflects its lack of God’s light, and therefore, lacks God himself. 

 

     The only hint that Milton gives that Chaos might be older than God himself is in Book III, when he refers to Chaos as “Darkness old” (III.421).  Even if Chaos is older than God though, only God has the power to shape Chaos into the Universe, noted by the word "vital":

 

                             ...Darkness profound

     Cove'rd th' Abyss: but on the watrie calme

     His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspred,

     And vital vertue infus'd, and vital warmth

     Throughout the fluid Mass (VII.233-237).

 

Though Chaos and his court are present at the conception of The Universe, it does not mean that the materials of Chaos are willing to cooperate:

 

                           ...but downward purg'd

     The black tartareous cold Infernal dregs

      Adverse to life (VII.237-239).

 

The key phrase in the above quote is “adverse to life.” Chaos’s natural state is anarchy, not structure and rigidity.  Some critics, like Robert Adams, believe that Milton believes that “at the end of recorded history it [earth] will revert to Chaos, when heaven and hell are closed up, the world consumed with fire, and nature comes to an end” (Adams, 618-6196). The reader can decided for themselves whether or not this implies that Chaos is more powerful than God himself.   

 

 

     Chaos is a fluid, ever changing place with a wide variety of geographical phenomenon such as clouds, seas and bogs and contains elements of fire, air, water and earth. These elements do not necessarily get along with each other, echoing the “confused, disorderly mass” that defines chaos:

 

    For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four Champions fierce

     Strive here for Maistrie, and to Battel bring

     Thir embryon Atoms; they around the flag

     Of each his faction, in thir several Clanns,

     Light-arm'd or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift or slow,

     Swarm populous (II.898-903).

 

Milton returns to his imagery of battle to describe the motion occurring within Chaos, building layers of imagery that then attack both Satan’s and the reader’s senses. The vision of confusion in motion is continued:

 

    Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,

     But all these in thir pregnant causes mixt

     Confus'dly (II.912-914).

 

Chaos is neither controlled by Chaos the King, nor by itself, and this is reflected in the geography. There are seas of water, fire and clouds co-existing with solid and boggy lands, a logical impossibility that can only exist in Chaos. Satan, who has been floundering through Chaos, is rescued by the elements:

 

                           ...had not by ill chance

     The strong rebuff of som tumultuous cloud

     Instinct with Fire and Nitre hurried him

     As many miles aloft (II.935-938).

 

Once thrown upward, Satan must still make this way through “[o]re bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,/ With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,/ And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flyes” (II.947-950).  Even the motions that Satan must make to claw his way out of Chaos are varied, matching the motions of the environment around him. 

 

     When Sin and Death build the bridge over Chaos in Book X, the Chaos they encounter is described as “[s]olid or slimie, as in raging Sea/ Tost up and down” (X.286-287). The imagery has reverted to sea imagery, with Chaos as “the foaming deep” (X.301) and “unvoyageable Gulf” (X.366). However, it is not a calm sea that Sin and Death encounter, implying that the battle imagery is merging with and supporting the theme of 'sailors' fighting a stormy sea in battle.

 


 

Historical Context

 

     One of the earliest accounts “of how the cosmos, the gods and the mortals came into being” is Hesiod’s “The Theogony” (Littleton, 136). Milton would have certainly read Hesiod during his school days. In “The Theogony”, Chaos was “an abstract principle, the ultimate source of creation, and was not personified in any way as a primal god” (Littleton, 136). Chaos gives birth to the five original elements, which included Tartarus:

 

     Verily at the first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth,

     the ever-sure foundations of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus,

     and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth (Hesiod, 11.116-?).

 

Hesiod does not explain how Chaos came to be, mostly because his aim was to describe the creation and genealogy of the gods. Chaos is mentioned first only because it gives birth to the five original elements, of which Earth then gives birth to the first gods. However, Milton’s approach to Chaos is quite different than Hesiod’s, in that Chaos provides the materials for the creation of Earth and Hell:

 

     Milton did not believe that the universe was created from nothing. It was made from

     whatever was contained in what the Bible called ‘the deep,’ a synonym for abyss

     (a Greek word meaning ‘bottomless,’ therefore infinite). Chaos also meant a ‘yawning gulf,’

     and carried the connotations of emptiness and formlessness. But Milton conceived of it

     as containing something out of which matter could be formed, and he thought of the

     process of ordering, a word whose roots means ‘to begin’ (Elledge, 461).

 

Another difference that exists between Hesiod’s creation myth and Milton’s is that God is the only being capable of molding and transforming the materials of Chaos into the Universe. Even Chaos himself cannot do so primarily because it would contradict his nature: “[h]avock and spoil and ruin are my gain” (II.1009). Havoc does not come from structure it comes from anarchy and confusion.

 

     In Milton’s Chaos, there is darkness, noise, dimension and direction (Curry) that help shape and define its geography. In “The Theogony”, the only mention of noise comes via an external sources – Zeus’s thunderbolts are thrown at the Titans with such power that the earth shakes, there are earthquakes in Tartarus and “[a]stounding heat seized Chaos: and to see with eyes and to hear the sound with ears it seemed even as if Earth and wide Heaven above came together” (11.687-712?). Hesiod also incorporates temperature as an element that affects Chaos, as the heat comes from Zeus’s thunderbolts. Milton internalizes this ability to create within Chaos, giving his Chaos more power and independence than the Chaos of Hesiod.

 

     Milton is taking material from various sources, including the burgeoning scientific revolution, into consideration when creating the world of “Paradise Lost”. While God is still the ultimate creator of the universe, Milton never specifies whether or not God also created Chaos, the unlimited source of building materials. The Gospel According to St. John, Chapter 1.1-4 states:

 

     In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 

     The same was in the beginning with God. 

     All things were made by him; and without him  was not any thing made that was made. 

     In him was life, and the life was the light of men (St. John, 1.1-4).

 

The word “chaos” never appears in the above mentioned passage, and running a search of the word “chaos” yielded zero results (see picture below). If Chaos did exist before God, it existed only in a constant state of anarchy, helpless to create a structured, coherent universe. As Curry points out, “[f]or him it is a purely passive principle or substance, having no inherent force or power but capable of ‘receiving passively the exertion of divine efficacy’ (DC., XV, 19)” (Curry, 75). Only God can yield the power required to structure Chaos, and this idea does not conflict with the Biblical tradition. 

 

 


 

Scholary Context

 

     A modern reader of “Paradise Lost” might find himself attempting to apply scientific rules and logic to aspects of Chaos, specifically toward the building of the bridge that connects Hell to Earth through Chaos. In this manner, we find ourselves mimicking writers of the 17th century, who were struggling against the ideas of the burgeoning scientific revolution they felt were threatening the tenets of Christianity. Curry explains: 

 

     Milton is the epic poet who sometimes sacrifices logical consistency in favor of psychological effect.

     He evidently depends upon the knowledge of an informed reader that bars, rock, and adamant do exist

     potentially in chaos, else God could not have actualized them in the created World (Curry, 82).

 

Though modern literature categorizes “Paradise Lost” as fiction and the Bible as Christian mythology, to Milton, the Bible was a living non-fiction text. Perhaps he hoped readers would look upon his epic poem as non-fiction as well, a sort of supplement to the Bible.

     When Sin and Death go forth into Chaos to build their bridge, Milton refers to them as “divers”, returning again to the sea imagery associated with Chaos:

     Then Both from out Hell Gates into the waste 

     Wide Anarchie of Chaos damp and dark

     Flew divers, and with Power (thir Power was great)

     Hovering upon the Waters; what they met

     Solid or slimie, as in raging Sea

     Tost up and down, together crowded drove

     From each side shoaling towards the mouth of Hell (X.282-288).

 

Chaos, however, does not welcome their intrusion as noted by the “raging Sea.” The gathering of materials for the bridge comes through violence: “[o]ne gets the impression that Sin and Death – they are very powerful (X, 284) – have opened up a wide passage through chaos by cleaving, forcing asunder, or causing to fly apart its conflicting elements” (Curry, 154). Whereas God creates with warmth and light, Sin and Death create through intimidation, violence and force. 

                            ...The aggregated Soyle

     Death with his Mace petrific, cold and dry,

     As with a Trident smote, and fix't as firm

     As Delos floating once; the rest his look

     Bound with Gorgonian rigor not to move (X.293-297)

 

The act of creating this bridge could be analyzed in terms of war, the final battle to be staged within the geography of Chaos against Sin and Death. With the bridge’s completion, Chaos slips into Earth behind Sin and Death via their handiwork. Though not explicitly named by Milton in the last two books, Chaos has become transformed:

 

     It is not an empire, to be fought by ranked battalions; it is discord, passivity, weakness- Chaos,

     in other words, seen not from the outside as a stuttering, moping old man with a facial tic, but from

     the inside, as a constant ingredient of the Christian life, an intimate, and ultimately invincible enemy (Adams, 629).

 

Though Chaos still physically exists within the Universe, the shift of focus turns inward for Milton. Man must fight the sin and chaos within himself, though Michael’s vision to Adam in these books shows that mankind will often lose these battles (i.e., the Tower of Babel and the Flood). It is not until Jesus is born that mankind will be able to win the war against sin, death and chaos and crush the serpent.

 


 

Popular Context

 

     In the 21st century, chaos is no longer thought of in terms of Greek mythology, except by literature studies. To scientists, chaos is a theory that can be mapped out and represented in pictures known as fractals. Since this page was created by an English Literature major, not a Math major, the Chaos Theory explanation has been outsourced to "The Chaos at University of Maryland." Below you will find a comparison between Chaos in the 19th century (painting date estimated 1800) and Chaos in the 21st century.

 

 

Comparison of Images of Chaos

"Satan Leaving the Court of Chaos", unknown artist

Tinkerbell Attractor Fractal, Chaos @ University of Maryland

 

 

     If we expand upon Milton’s imagery of Chaos as war, then wars can be seen as Chaos on Earth. If we thought like Milton, every time mankind gives into war, we lose the battle against sin and chaos within ourselves. The History Channel has a section dedicated to “Military & War” that is very informative.

 

     Some might argue that Chaos is present in the 21st century through acts of anarchy. However, the authors of “Anarchy Watch” in defining what anarchy is quote Alexander Berkman:

 

     I must tell you, first of all, what anarchism is not. It is not bombs, disorder, or chaos.

     It is not robbery or murder. It is not a war of each against all. It is not a return to barbarianism or

     to the wild state of man. Anarchism is the very opposite of all that (Anarchy Watch, Defining Anarchism).

 

Ultimately, it is up to you, the readers, to decide what Chaos means in the 21st century.

 

 

 

 

Number of visitors:

 

Hell & Chaos Editor: Jay Jay Stroup 

 

 

Site Map for Paradise Lost Wikis
Introduction ¦ Heaven ¦ Hell¦ Chaos ¦ Eden ¦ Earth After The Fall ¦ The Universe ¦ Images of Paradise Lost ¦ Further Readings & Works Cited ¦ Reading Questions
Adam ¦ Angels ¦ Eve ¦ God the Father ¦ God the Son ¦ Lesser Devils ¦ Narrator ¦ Places ¦ Satan ¦ Sin, Chaos & Death

 

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.