Milton’s Hell and the Phlegraean Fields

MILTON'S HELL AND THE PHLEGRAEAN FIELDS MARJORIE NICOLSON T HE classical and medieval elements in Milto.n's ' descriptiDn of Hell have been so fully established that it has not seemed necessary to ask whether the pDet drew his inspiration from other than literary sources. Yet there is arealism in Milton's details which accounts in' large part for their vividness, and which gives' to the first book of Paradise Lost a verisimilitude not unnaturally lacking in the scenes in Paradis~, and nDt equalled even by the scenes in the terrestrial Paradise of the Garden of Eden. Is it po.ssible that in the' first book Milton was drawing upon. memory no less than upDn imagination, and combining actual senSe impressions with literary reminiscence? If so, what was the district which so. fired his imagination that even in later blindness he remembered it in clDse detail? . Certainly Milton's Hell-if it ever . existed upo.n . earth-must be sought in a volcanic region. It is a p-Iace of fire, smoke, and arid waste. It is "o'erwhelmed With flo.o.ds and whirlwinds Df tempestuous fire.'" Geo.logically , the district is clearly sulphurous, "fed With everburning sulphur unconsumed." Milton is careful to draw attention to. the peculiar colo.ur and the formatio.ns characteristic of volcanic regio.ns: in hue as when the force Of subter~anean wind transports a hill Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side Of thundering Aetna, whose combustible And fuelled entrails, thence conceiving fire, Sublimed with mineral fury, and the winds, 'My quotations (rom Paradiu Losl (with one exception) are all (rom Book 1. soo MILTON'S HELL AND THE PHLEGRAEAN FIELDS And leave a singed bottom all involved With stench and smoke. The topographical details are as clearly indicated as if Milton were drawing a map of the district. He describes first a "fiery gulf," a lake burning continually with "liquid fire." "The beach Of that inflamed sea" marks the beginning of a dreary plain, forlorn and wild, The seat of desolation, void of light, Save what the glimmering of these livid /lames Casts pale and dreadful. There is' at first sight only slight difference between lake and lahd, if it were land that ever burned With solid, as the lake with liquid fire. The land is "firm brimstone," to be sure, but the heat of land is as intense as that of the 'boiling pool to ,the "sole of unblest feet," as Satan delicately walks with "uneasy steps Over the burning marie." Heat is everywhere: the torrid clime Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire. Surrounding both lake and plain is a wall of fire: on each hand the /lames, Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and, rolled In billows, leave i' the midst a horrid vale. Such is the immediate foreground. In the background -whether within or without the circling wall of fire, we can only surmise2-is a volcanic moun tain: There stood a hill not far, whose grisly top Belched tire and rolling smoke; the rest entire 'It is clear, (rom the later description of the adventurers and explorers in Book II, that Hell continues iDdefinitely in regions of i.ce as well as of fire; the first scene is obviously much more limited in scope. 501 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY Shone with a glossy scurf-undoubted sign That in his womb was hid metallic ore, The work of sulphur. The eternally burning flames cast no true light of nrej their Ijght is livid and lurid, emphasizing rather than relieving the darkness: A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, As one great (urnace fl.::am esi yet from those flames No light, but rather darkneu visible Served only to discover sights of woe. When we turn from the desc.ription of the geography of He:lI to that of the building of Pandemonium, "city and proud seat of Lucifer," erected, we may surmise, some littJe distance from the fiery lake and the "inl1arneci beach," we arc less aware of the dreary plain and the burning marie than of the rnagnificen t Struc ture rising by supernatural means. I t is as if we had passed...