The Catabatic Structure of Satan's Quest

WILLARD MCCARTY The Catabatic Structure of Satan's Quest Like the epic heroes of classical antiquity,' the Satan of Milton's Paradise Lost descends into a lower world where he discovers his identity and fate, then returns, though imperfectly and with great hardship, to an upper world. The pattern of this descent and return is what the Greeks called a kaMbasis,2 one ofthe characteristicaccomplishments of a hero. Catabasisis a complex, protean motif. In classical myth it is found whe~e expected, in stories of descent into a literal underworld, but as a narrative structure or kind of story it has a much wider domain, both in the classics and in later literature. In the first half of this paper I will attempt to define the protean identity of the classical catabasis by examininga few myths for the ways in which they modulate the heroic pattern of descent and return, particularly by juxtaposition with its opposite, the infernal anabasis or rapacious ascent from a lower world and return there with the spoils of the upper regions. We will see that these opposed patterns and the mythical figures who live them mirror each other in their opposition and, under certain circumstances, become identified. Then, in the second half, I will show how knowledge ofthe catabaticgenre illuminates someof the obviousand hidden patterns in the quest of Satan. In more general terms, my primary aim will be to establish catabasis as a literary context for Paradise Lost, and then to suggest by example how our understanding of the poem as a whole is enlarged by it.3 I According to Raymond J. Clark, a classical catabasis is 'a Journey of the Dead made by a living person in the flesh who returns to our world to tell the tale' (p 32). Clark distinguishes two strains: a secular 'wisdom tradition: in which a mortal journeys to an Afterworld for information; and a sacred 'fertility tradition: in which a divine being goes to an Otherworld, a place ofretreat, exile, or hostile forces, where a principle of life temporarily resides (p 21). The former is attested, for example, in the descents of Odysseus and Aeneas, each a perilous quest for information intimately bound up with the hero's fate and identity.4 The latter is rarer; Clark does not identify any classical myths as pure examples, but, he notes, the myth of Persephone obviously partakes ofit (p 22).5We will see that Satan is indebted to both traditions. UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 56, NUMBER 2, WINTER 11)86/7 284 WILLARD MCCARTY Classical literature, in fact, contains several myths of a mixed type in which something like fertility is clearly at stake. In the descents of Orpheus for Eurydice and of Dionysus for Semele, for example, an erotic figure trapped in the world of death is to be released; in some versions both return successfully.6 For such myths the story of Persephone seems to provide a clearer, more developed statement. Her confinement in Hades as Queen of the Dead and her release as Kore, the eternal Maiden of the fruitful earth, typify the tragedy of loss and the comedy of restoration in these stories (cf Clark, pp 92f). Furthermore, her partial release points to an essential element of descent stories, their moral and spiritual negativity. Tricked into eating one or more pomegranate seeds while in Hades, she is bound to descend periodically into death, the world with her into infertility. Thus'things will never be the same as they were before the rape,' Walter Burkert comments (p 161); death and life are henceforth inseparable. This negativity is most often manifested in the catabatic heroes themselves, who inhabit a fallen world and are subject to nemesis; each . has, as Burkert remarks about the gods, 'his dark and dangerous side' (p 188; cf pp 205 -7). Thus even Heracles, the greatest of them, is an ambiguous figure whose acts of salvation are matched by his crimes.7 On the one hand he is the classical Harrower of Hell and conqueror of death; on the other, 'guilty of monstrous actions .. . [a] hard man, without shame for the watchful gods' (Od 21.26- 8),8 he suffers from...