Memory and Will: Selective Amnesia in Paradise Lost

PATRICIA M. HOWISON Memory and Will: Selective Amnesia in Paradise Lost For still they knew, and ought to have still remember'd The high Injunction not to taste that Fruit.' According to the narrative voice at the beginning of book xof ParadiseLost, Adam and Eve knew the commandment ofGod, butat the crucial moment did not remember it. In book IV, Adam had instructed Eve concerning 'this one, this easy charge,' reminding her that 'well thou know'st / God hath pronounc'tit death to taste thatTree' (IV, 421; 426-7). Clearly, Adam and Eve know what the tree is - 'the only sign of our obedience' - and they know precisely where itis and how to identifyit, 'planted by the Tree of Life'; they know the source of the prohibition, God himself, and they know the consequence of disobedience. Yet somehow, with the tree standing before their eyes and the words of God's commandment and Raphael's reiterations of it echoing in their ears, Adam and Eve still contrive to forget. As the narrator's retrospective commentary implies, it seems that Adam and Eve fell not because of inadequate warning or because of a failure of knowledge, but because of a lapse in memory. When we speak of such convenient forgetting as this, of course, we normally imply that we are euphemistically admitting to a failure of the will, not to a genuine failure of memory - and certainly in Paradise Lost it is questions of will and freedom of will that are most obviously central. But will and memory are interdependent and can be mutually reinforcing, will relying upon the direction and context that memory provides, and memory finding its content reali2ed in action produced by the will. Such co-operation in turn strengthens the understanding, both of things present and tangible and of things past and remembered. In his treatment of Adam and Eve's transgression ofGod's command, and particularly in his poetic use of the sign of that command, the tree of knowledge, Milton illustrates how the proper co-operation of memory and will makes it possible to know and understand truths which cannot be apprehended merely through the evident facts. When Milton has his narrator observe that Adam and Eve knew but did not remember God's injunction, he identifies the central issue in their disobedience as being their wilful disjunction of knowledge from memory . In order to know truly and faithfully (as Adam and Eve ought to have UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 56, NUMBER 4, SUMMER 1987 524 PATRICIA M. HOWISON known), memory is necessary; how one chooses to respond to the sensible evidence of creation is a reflection of how one chooses both to remember the connection between that evidence and God's overall design, and to recall the obligation to respond to the visible world in light of that connection. The tree of knowledge provides a paradigm of this, for while it is an object in the physical, sensible world, it also demands a specific response based on the very specific but intangible meaning which has been assigned to it by God. In Paradise Lost, Milton's pervasive use of the language of remembering and forgetting, particularly in relation to the tree of knowledge, draws attention to the fact that while human understanding should reflect the co-operation of memory and will, it does not always do so. It is clear from Adam's example that one may know something to be true and, further, encounter some physical sign of that truth - and yet (even on pain of death) still forget. Adam himself acknowledges that memory is a necessary complement to knowledge when he responds to Raphael's teaching concerning the meaning of free will, remarking first that Raphael had brought him new learning - 'knew I not I To be both will and deed created free' - and then adding the important corollary: Yet that we never shall forget to love Our maker, and obey him whose command Single, is yet so just, my constant thoughts Assur'd me and still assure. (v, 550-3) The force of the introductory 'yet' here is important because it underscores both the distinction between knowing and remembering God...