Both classical and Christian cultures shared a belief in an original state of human perfection, in which man lived effortlessly and in complete harmony with nature, free from time, change and death. In classical culture this period was known as the golden age. The idea goes back to a very early Greek poem, Hesiod’s Works and Days, which describes five races of men succeeding one another chronologically: golden (ideal), silver (impious), brazen (warlike and cruel), the race of heroes (demigods who approached the perfection of the golden race), and iron (the present race, who lead a miserable and laborious life). In some later versions there are only two races, the golden and the iron. Cronos (later identified with the Roman Saturn) ruled during the golden age; when his son Zeus (the Roman Jupiter) deposed him the golden age ended and man’s troubles began (1, 5). The goddess of justice, Astraea, has a significant part in the story; in one version she flees to the mountains during the silver age, and finally abandons mankind during the age of bronze.
This myth of the ages of mankind locates the ideal in the distant past and implies the progressive degeneration of the species. But classical myth also describes two other kinds of ideal existence, one present, but distant in space, one future, to be attained after death. In Hesiod’s story the race of heroes did not entirely die out; a few live on in the Isles of the Blest, somewhere in the Atlantic. Similarly in Homer some of the heroes are promised an immortal and happy life on earth; Menelaus is told that he will join others favoured by the gods in the Elysian plain, also situated in the west (Odyssey IV) (2). The garden of the Hesperides (whose trees bore golden fruit which were stolen by Hercules as one of his labours) was sometimes linked in the Renaissance with these islands. In classical literature after Homer Elysium becomes the reward for the souls of the just after death. The best-known classical account is in Aeneid VI; Aeneas, led through the underworld by the Sibyl, comes to the Elysian fields where he observes the Blest, dancing and singing, still taking pride in their chariots and horses, and meets his dead father Anchises. These states of existence, whether conceived of as past, present or future, are both physically and morally perfect.
In Christian myth there are similar temporal distinctions. The ideal existence in the past is that of Adam in paradise, the garden made by God in Eden (6, 9). The word ‘paradise’ goes back to Old Persian via Greek, and means an enclosed park or garden; Eden means pleasure in Hebrew. Christian commentators (with a few exceptions) were certain that Eden had a real historical existence; in The City of God XIV xi Augustine argues that its pleasures were as much physical as spiritual. Eden was traditionally located in Mesopotamia; in his History of the World (1614) Ralegh provides a map of the Middle East with the exact spot marked.
In Jewish and, later, Christian tradition there is a recurrent contrast between garden and wilderness. The history of Israel is seen as a journey through the wilderness and back to the garden, the promised land of Canaan (7). The earthly paradise is thus set in the present as well as the past; it can be recovered. In the seventeenth century America comes to have the connotations of the promised land for Puritans fleeing religious persecution in the Old World (indicated by the names of New England towns: Salem, New Canaan). In Christian thought, though both kinds of earthly paradise, past and present, Eden and the promised land, are good in themselves, they are ultimately foreshadowings of the future heavenly paradise, which in spite of its name is usually envisaged as a city rather than a garden. (For the idea of the two cities see Chapter 5.)
The classical and Christian earthly paradises have certain important characteristics in common. There are no seasons; the time is perpetual spring. Man does not work to survive; the earth gives up its produce spontaneously. The land flows with wine, milk and honey. Agriculture, trade and travel are unknown. There is abundance of vegetation and water. There is no conflict between man and man or man and nature; there is no decay (3,5,9).
Christian writers found various ways of explaining these common characteristics and of assimilating the idea of the golden age to Eden. One version was that the golden age was the period when the pagans had worshipped the true God; subsequently (as indicated by the usurpation by Zeus/Jupiter of the throne of Cronos/ Saturn) they had lost this knowledge. Another, much repeated, was that the pagans had obtained a rough account of Moses’ description of Eden, so that their fables were faint shadows of the truth. Thus when Dante and Virgil reach the earthly paradise in Purgatorio xxviii, Virgil recognises that this is the original of the golden age of which he once wrote. In his commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1632) George Sandys makes a neat parallel between the classical and Christian accounts: ‘Saturn was the first that invented tillage, the first that ever reigned; and so was Adam: Saturn was thrown out of heaven, and Adam out of paradise’, and so on. Sandys assumes that Ovid must have read the Books of Moses or at least heard of them;
Ralegh makes the same point spitefully when he says (History of the World I iii 3) that the pagans ‘did greatly enrich their inventions, by venting the stolen treasures of divine letters, altered by profane additions, and disguised by poetical conversions, as if they had been conceived out of their own speculations and contemplations’.
Although there are important similarities between the traditions, and although Christian authors deliberately drew the two together, one must not make the mistake of assuming that literary use of the theme of paradise is uniform. Renaissance poetry abounds with references to the golden age and Eden, to earthly and heavenly paradises, past, present and future. It is important to define the way in which the theme is being used. Some of the chief kinds of literary allusion are indicated below.
The attempt to recover paradise is sometimes used as a metaphor for the struggle for individual moral perfection (21). In Dante’s Purgatorio the attainment of the earthly paradise, situated at the top of a mountain up which the pilgrims must climb, appears to represent this struggle. Virgil, Dante’s guide, can take him as far as the earthly paradise but no further; he cannot give him knowledge of the true heavenly paradise, which Beatrice and St Bernard will reveal. In Spenser’s Faerie Queene I xi the quest of the Red Cross Knight takes the form of a journey back to Eden, with the defeat of the Satanic dragon, the freeing of the besieged inhabitants of the country, and a temporary recovery of original innocence. The betrothal of Red Cross to Una has political and theological as well as moral connotations (Eden is protestant England), but Red Cross’s victory over the dragon is achieved largely because he has conquered himself. On one level of meaning, therefore, paradise is the good Christian life. This meaning is explicit in Milton. The paradise that is lost in Milton’s epic is both a physical place (10) and a state of mind; the paradise that is regained is only the latter. The mount of paradise is washed away in the Flood, never to be found again; the new earthly paradise, as Michael explains to Adam, is to be an inner one (11, 12). Christ creates a metaphorical Eden in the wilderness by overcoming Satan’s temptations (13). Paradise as a physical place, the heavenly paradise, will not be recovered till the end of the world.
The return of the golden age is often used as a political image. A new regime or dynasty may be celebrated as the new reign of Saturn and the return of Astraea to earth. Virgil is the ultimate source for this idea. In Aeneid VIII Aeneas learns that Latium, the Italian kingdom where Rome is to be founded, was governed by Saturn after Jupiter had deposed him. Rome under Augustus achieves the new golden age (4); history comes full circle. (See Chapter 5.) Virgil’s extraordinarily influential Eclogue IV, which Christians interpreted as a Messianic prophecy, treats the birth of a child as the occasion for celebrating the return of Astraea and a new social order (3). This political theme is much imitated in the Renaissance; Elizabeth I is frequently praised as Astraea. In The Faerie Queene V Artegall, the Knight of Justice, is Astraea’s adopted son; but because he moves through a fallen world he administers justice with the help not of Astraea herself but of her iron henchman Talus. In Jonson’s masque The Golden Age Restored Astraea praises James I as the agent of her return. In literature after the Civil War the political use of paradise is nostalgic rather than celebratory; thus Marvell sees the England of the 1630s as a lost Eden (18).
There is also a social use of paradise which emphasises its enclosed, exclusive nature. Many Renaissance poems celebrating country houses or the pleasures of retirement to the country or the pastoral world draw on golden age and paradise motifs. In these works there is usually a contrast between paradise and the world outside, between the contemplative and active life, but the emphasis may vary considerably. In Sidney’s Arcadia I and The Faerie Queene VI the escapism inherent in the idea of Arcadia, the shepherds’ paradise, is tested critically; the life celebrated in Jonson’s country house poems, which draw on the Horatian tradition of the Sabine farm, is morally superior to and rejects the temptations of the world outside.
In Renaissance epics the nature of paradise is often defined through comparison with a false paradise, the original source of which is the story of Circe and her island in Odyssey X. The pattern is repeated many times: the garden is a false retreat; the hero or knight is seduced by the enchantress away from his moral and social duties; in succumbing he is transformed into an animal. The best examples of false paradises are those of Alcina in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso VI (14), Armida in Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered XV–XVI (15), Actrasia in The Faerie Queene II xii (16). Milton’s enchanter Comus, himself the son of Circe, belongs to this tradition. These paradises are false not because they are earthly but because they limit man’s nature; the true earthly paradise, though its pleasures may be sensual (as in Spenser’s Garden of Adonis, Faerie Queene III vi) (Ch. 2.10), reflects the heavenly paradise and is not an end in itself.
Finally there are uses of golden age and paradise motifs which are consciously amoral or mocking or ironic. In Cavalier poetry paradise is sometimes an image of complete sexual freedom (22). In ‘A Rapture’ Carew envisages Elysium as the place where the world’s frustrated and unrequited lovers are satisfied, and where the restrictive codes of marriage and honour no longer apply. Readers should try to distinguish poems in which paradise itself is the subject from those in which it is essentially a literary device used to illuminate another subject.
1 The gods, who live on Mount Olympus, first
Fashioned a golden race of mortal men;
These lived in the reign of Cronos, king of heaven.
And like the gods they lived with happy hearts
Untouched by work or sorrow. Vile old age
Never appeared, but always lively-limbed,
Far from all ills, they feasted happily.
Death came to them as sleep, and all good things
Were theirs: ungrudgingly, the fertile land
Gave up her fruits unasked. Happy to be
At peace, they lived with every want supplied,
Rich in their flocks, dear to the blessed gods.
Hesiod Works and Days, ll. 109–20
2 Proteus prophesies to Menelaus:
And now, King Menelaus, hear your own destiny. You will not meet your fate and die in Argos where the horses graze. Instead, the immortals will send you to the Elysian plain at the world’s end, to join red-haired Rhadamanthus in the land where living is made easiest for mankind, where no snow falls, no strong winds blow and there is never any rain, but day after day the West Wind’s tuneful breeze comes in from Ocean to refresh its folk.
Homer Odyssey IV ll. 561–8
3 We have reached the last era in Sibylline song. Time has conceived and the great sequence of the ages starts afresh. Justice, the virgin, comes back to dwell with us, and the rule of Saturn is restored. The first-born of the new age is already on his way from high heaven down to earth… Later again, when the strengthening years have made a man of you, even the trader will forsake the sea, and pine-wood ships will cease to carry merchandise for barter, each land producing all it needs. No mattock will molest the soil, no pruning-knife the vine; and then at last the sturdy ploughman will free his oxen from the yoke. Wool will be taught no more to cheat the eye with this tint or that, but the ram himself in his own meadows will change the colour of his fleece, now to the soft glow of a purple dye, now to a saffron yellow. Lambs at their pastures will find themselves in scarlet coats.
Virgil Eclogue IV ll. 4–7, 37–45
4 Anchises prophesies to Aeneas:
And there in very truth is he whom you have often heard prophesied, Augustus Caesar, son of the Deified, and founder of golden centuries once more in Latium, on those same lands where once Saturn reigned.
Virgil Aeneid VI ll. 79l–4
5 In the beginning was the Golden Age, when men of their own accord, without threat of punishment, without laws, maintained good faith and did what was right. There were no penalties to be afraid of, no bronze tablets were erected, carrying threats of legal action, no crowd of wrongdoers, anxious for mercy, trembled before the face of their judge: indeed, there were no judges, men lived securely without them. Never yet had any pine tree, cut down from its home on the mountains, been launched on ocean’s waves, to visit foreign lands: men knew only their own shores. Their cities were not yet surrounded by sheer moats, they had no straight brass trumpets, no coiling brass horns, no helmets and no swords. The peoples of the world, untroubled by any fears, enjoyed a leisurely and peaceful existence, and had no use for soldiers. The earth itself, without compulsion, untouched by the hoe, unfurrowed by any share, produced all things spontaneously, and men were content with foods that grew without cultivation.
Ovid Metamorphoses I ll. 89–103
6 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
Genesis 2:8–10
7 And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;
And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.
Exodus 3:7–8
8 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den.
They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
Isaiah 11:6–9
9 We conclude then that man lived in paradise as long as his wish was at one with God’s command. He lived in the enjoyment of God, and derived his own goodness from God’s goodness. He lived without any want, and had it in his power to live like this for ever. Food was available to prevent hunger, drink to prevent thirst, and the tree of life was there to guard against old age and dissolution. There was no trace of decay in the body, or arising from the body, to bring any distress to any of his senses. There was no risk of disease from within or of injury from without. Man enjoyed perfect health in the body, entire tranquillity in the soul. Just as in paradise there was no extreme of heat or of cold, so in its inhabitant no desire or fear intervened to hamper his good will. There was no sadness at all, nor any frivolous jollity. But true joy flowed perpetually from God… Between man and wife there was a faithful partnership based on love and mutual respect; there was a harmony and a liveliness of mind and body, and an effortless observance of the commandment.
Augustine City of God XIV xxvi
10 Thus was this place,
A happy rural seat of various view;
Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm,
Others whose fruit burnished with golden rind
Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true,
If true, here only, and of delicious taste:
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed,
Or palmy hillock, or the flowery lap
Of some irriguous valley spread her store,
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.
Not that fair field
Of Enna, where Prosperine gathering flowers
Her self a fairer flower by gloomy Dis
Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world; nor that sweet grove
Of Daphne by Orontes, and the inspired
Castalian spring, might with this Paradise
Of Eden strive.
Milton Paradise Lost IV ll. 246–56, 268–75
11 Michael prophesies to Adam:
Then shall this mount
Of Paradise by might of waves be moved
Out of his place, pushed by the hornèd flood,
With all his verdure spoiled, and trees adrift
Down the great river to the opening gulf,
And there take root an island salt and bare,
The haunt of seals and orcs, and sea-mews’ clang.
To teach thee that God attributes to place
No sanctity, if none be thither brought
By men who there frequent, or therein dwell.
Paradise Lost XI ll. 829–38
12 Only add
Deeds to thy knowledge answerable, add faith
Add virtue, patience, temperance, add love
By name to come called Charity, the soul
Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loath
To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess
A paradise within thee, happier far.
Paradise Lost XII ll. 581–7
13 The angels praise Jesus:
For though that seat of earthly bliss be failed.
A fairer Paradise is founded now
For Adam and his chosen sons, whom thou
A Saviour art come down to reinstall.
Paradise Regained IV ll. 612–15
14 The kingdom of Alcina:
These maids with courteous speech and manners nice
Welcome Rogero to this paradise.
If so I may a paradise it name,
Where love and lust have built their habitation,
Where time well spent is counted as a shame,
No wise staid thought, no care of estimation,
Nor nought but courting, dancing, play, and game,
Disguised clothes, each day a sundry fashion:
No virtuous labour doth this people please,
But nice apparel, belly-cheer, and ease.
Ariosto Orlando Furioso VI stanzas 72–3
15 Armida’s nymph tempts Rinaldo’s rescuers:
This is the place wherein you may assuage
Your sorrows past, here is that joy and bliss
That flourished in the antique golden age;
Here needs no law, here none doth aught amiss;
Put off those arms, and fear not Mars his rage,
Your sword, your shield, your helmet needless is;
Then consecrate them here to endless rest,
You shall love’s champions be and soldiers blest.
Tasso Jemsalem Delivered XV stanza 63
16 Guyon reaches Acrasia’s garden:
There the most dainty Paradise on ground
Itself doth offer to his sober eye,
In which all pleasures plenteously abound
And none does other’s happiness envy;
The painted flowers, the trees upshooting high,
The dales for shade, the hills for breathing space,
The trembling groves, the crystal running by,
And, that which all fair works doth most aggrace,
The art which all that wrought appeared in no place.
One would have thought (so cunningly the rude And scorned parts were mingled with the fine)
That nature had for wantonness ensued Art, and that art at nature did repine;
So striving each the other to undermine,
Each did the other’s work more beautify;
So differing both in wills agreed in fine:
So all agreed, through sweet diversity,
This garden to adorn with all variety.
Spenser The Faerie Queene II xii stanzas 58–9
17 Only the island which we sow,
(A world without the world) so far
From present wounds, it cannot show
An ancient scar.
White Peace (the beautifull’st of things)
Seems here her everlasting rest
To fix, and spreads her downy wings
Over the nest:
As when great Jove, usurping reign,
From the plagued world did her exile,
And tied her with a golden chain
To one blest isle:
Which in a sea of plenty swam
And turtles sang on every bough,
A safe retreat to all that came,
As ours is now.
Fanshawe ‘An ode upon occasion of His Majesty’s proclamation’ stanzas 9–12
18 Oh thou, that dear and happy isle
The garden of the world ere while,
Thou paradise of four seas,
Which heaven planted us to please,
But, to exclude the world, did guard
With watery if not flaming sword;
What luckless apple did we taste,
To make us mortal, and thee waste?
Marvell ‘Upon Appleton House’ stanza 41
19 Virginia, Earth’s only paradise.
Where nature hath in store Fowl, venison, and fish,
And the fruitfullest soil,
Without your toil,
Three harvests more,
All greater than you wish.
And the ambitious vine
Crowns with his purple mass,
The cedar reaching high
To kiss the sky,
The cypress, pine
And useful sassafras.
To whose, the golden age
Still nature’s laws doth give,
No other cares that tend,
But them to defend
From winter’s age,
That long there doth not live.
Drayton ‘Ode to the Virginian voyage’ ll. 23–42
20 What should we do but sing his praise
That led us through the watery maze,
Unto an isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own?
Where he the huge sea-monsters wracks,
That lift the deep upon their backs,
He lands us on a grassy stage,
Safe from the storm’s, and prelate’s rage.
He gave us this eternal spring,
Which here enamels everything,
And sends the fowl to us in care,
On daily visits through the air.
He hangs in shades the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night,
And does in the pom’granates close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shows.
He makes the figs our mouths to meet,
And throws the melons at our feet,
But apples plants of such a price,
No tree could ever bear them twice.
Marvell ‘Bermudas’ ll. 5–24
21 If I would wish, for truth, and not for show,
The agèd Saturn’s age, and rites to know;
If I would strive to bring back times, and try
The world’s pure gold, and wise simplicity;
If I would virtue set, as she was young,
And hear her speak with one, and her first tongue;
If holiest friendship, naked to the touch,
I would restore, and keep it ever such;
I need no other arts, but study thee:
Who prov’st, all these were, and again may be.
Jonson ‘To Benjamin Rudyerd’ Epigrams 122
22 Thrice happy was that golden age
When compliment was construed rage,
And fine words in the centre hid;
When cursed No stained no maid’s bliss,
And all discourse was summed in Yes,
And naught forbad, but to forbid.
Love, then unstinted, love did sip,
And cherries plucked fresh from the lip,
On cheeks and roses free he fed;
Lasses like autumn plums did drop,
And lads indifferently did crop
A flower and a maidenhead.
Lovelace ‘Love made in the first age’ ll. 7–18