Milton, Poetry and Christian Ambition

I've recently been reading Anna Beer's new biography of John Milton, Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot. Beer paints of a compelling portrait of Milton as a young man, wrestling between his religious faith and his own ambitions for fame through poetry. In the metaphors of Milton's day fame was imbued with all the vibrant pagan imagery of Ovid and Virgil, while the newly Protestant England was busy stripping its altars of any imagery or ritual that smacked of Catholicism. What imaginative and voracious yet devout reader wouldn't be torn between the two?

In fact, this tension really never ends for Milton. Many have noted that in Paradise Lost Satan, who is selfish ambition unincarnate, often makes a more compelling case than many of the angels. Every reader asks at least once, "Is Satan the hero of PL?" It's difficult to sort out, especially because Milton was trained extensively in rhetoric and in presenting arguments for both sides. It is hard to tell in almost all of Milton's poetry what he really thinks (if that's your particular interpretive interest!) because he often makes such a strong case for every position.

As a poet myself, I am often worried about the tension between my Christian faith (and its virtues of humility and servanthood) and seeking out creative success in the world. What I've learned is that this tension cannot be simply a theoretically question but it must be lived. Beer takes pains to portray Milton not as some austere, aloof prophet but a man who has his hands dirty with the ink of printing presses, his nostrils filled with the odors of constant urban disease and plague, his ears filled with the noisy chatter of London streets.

I believe instead of removing ourselves from the world to devote ourselves to God, we are called to set our faces to Jerusalem--the loud, dirty, complicated marketplace of the world. Unlike his Protestant brothers Milton does not strip his poetry of all paganism. He brings his Christian faith into that world and transforms it. Truly that is where all the friction (and therefore energy) is in Milton's work. Lycidas is a pastoral elegy in which resurrection explodes onto the scene. In Paradise Lost the poet's muse is transformed into the Holy Spirit. For Milton all things are drawn up and into the divine order. Perhaps it's not a solution to the tension but a way of bringing that tension into the Kingdom of God.