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Postmodernism

"Auri Sacras Fames": Forbidden Capitalism in Paradise Lost

Shigeo Suzuki . Nagoya University, Japan

During the Revolutionary period when Milton was working on Paradise Lost, the meaning of "sacred hunger for gold" (auri sacra fames in Aeneid 3.57) became purged of its original sense of "cursed" (sacra) and endowed with a new positive sense of "holy" (sacra). The new Puritan ethics consequently approbates an insatiable desire for earning wealth, because Puritans believed that man derives his certitude of salvation from the accumulated amount of his private property. A series of mercantile policies developed by Cromwell’s government straightforwardly aimed to increase the wealth of the nation. These tendencies brought forth a new kind of person, a restless Homo oeconomicus, who diligently struggles to accumulate more and more until the end of his life. Milton’s contemporaries chanted the above motto to endorse the pursuit of commercial profit and economic interests as the essentials to creating a better society. In this presentation I will show that although Milton, as a major representative of the Puritan government, might be expected to be in favor of this trend, in Paradise Lost he preserves a negative attitude toward it.

Satan, who succeeded to "sail" to Paradise and contributed to the colonization of the Universe, is described as a faithful follower of mercantilism, who believes that one cannot acquire wealth without securing sea lanes and trade routes. His diligent activities are, however, imbued and foreshadowed with restlessness. He is continually dissatisfied by his attempts to identify himself with a specifically attainted self-image. No sooner does he foresee and clothe himself with an image of an ideal-self, a psychologically aggrandized self-image, than he finds it unsatisfactory, and fashions an even more inflated image, and makes ceaseless efforts to robe himself in it. Satan shares his restlessness both with self-scrutinizing Puritans, who are in constant turmoil to bridge a distinct gap between the ultimate ideal image of Christ and their present state of themselves, and with the newly risen class of merchants, who are never content with their accumulated wealth and are always watchful for any chances of earning more. The Fiend’s restlessness embedded in his activities debunks the hunger for wealth.

Since Milton’s God, as the antipode of Satan, is omnipresent, he can both move and be still at the same time, and always maintains the complete inner tranquility of "resting." He is not described as a mere creator of the universe, but as the ultimate creditor, who distributes grace gratis to all of his creations. His capacity as the creator-creditor-distributor qualifies him for a "sign-signifier of the despot" (Deleuze and Guattari) to canalize all the desires of his creations into an unified whole. God is assigned to be the authoritative evaluator central to any society in a pre-capitalistic stage. God’s inexhaustible donation of grace is inimical to a principle of equivalent exchange, one of the most fundamental capitalistic ideas. In God’s created world affluent with his grace, all of mankind, both as subjects who behave with their own free will and as subjects who are under the rule of God, are expected to feel the sense of being created by God ("Kreaturgefühl"). It works as an effective propellant for all of God’s subjects to avoid trapping themselves in the cobweb of restlessness to acquire more than is needed.

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