I've spent a portion of the day reading page proofs for Tracing Paradise, otherwise known as the Milton Book, a task that is more or less similar to the job I get paid an hourly wage to do for other people, except that now, of course, every misplaced comma is not only noteworthy but excruciating. Oh, the agonies of punctuation.

Anyway, because I've currently got Milton on the brain, I will also inflict a bit more on you, in lieu of any more available gossip about Ho Chi Minh's pastry skills.

from Chapter 6: Angels, Obedience, and ATVs

            

                I might relate of thousands, and thir names

Eternize here on Earth; but those elect

Angels contented with thir fame in Heav’n

Seek not the praise of men.

Angels, as “eternize[d] here on Earth,” tend to be a rather feminized and delicate lot, inclined, when adults, to wear limp ecru nightgowns and stare off dreamily into the distance; when children, to display much chubby thigh and damask cheek. This is not the case with the angels of Paradise Lost, though they are unquestionably handsome in classic Hermes-and-Apollo style. Take Raphael, for instance, with his gorgeous and sultry wings:

A Seraph wing’d; six wings he wore, to shade

His lineaments Divine; the pair that clad

Each shoulder broad, came mantling o’er his breast

With regal Ornament; the middle pair

Girt like a Starry Zone his waist, and round

Skirted his loins and thighs with downy Gold

And colors dipt in Heav’n; the third his feet

Shadow’d from either heel with with feather’d mail

Sky-tinctur’d grain. Like Maia’s son he stood,

And shook his Plumes, that Heav’nly fragrance fill’d

The circuit wide.

But Milton’s angels are more than gloriously attractive and good-smelling. Like the Greek gods and heroes, they’re also tough. Heaven bristles with “thick embattl’d Squadrons bright,/Chariots and flaming Arms, and fiery Steeds/Reflecting blaze on blaze.” Being “wont to meet/So oft in Festivals of joy and love,” these angels aren’t single-minded warriors like Ares or Achilles. They’d just as soon spend their time “Hymning th’ Eternal Father.” But when God talks, they listen:

Go Michael of Celestial Armies Prince,

And thou in Military prowess next,

Gabriel, lead forth my armed Saints

By Thousands and by Millions rang’d for fight;

Equal in number to that Godless crew

Rebellious, them with Fire and hostile Arms

Fearless assault, and to the brow of Heav’n

Pursuing drive them out from God and bliss.

            In Rome, an enormous bronze statue of the archangel Michael stands on top of the Castel Sant’Angelo, originally Hadrian’s tomb, later a papal fortress and prison, with a wide stone ramp spiraling down the center, convenient for pouring forth soldiers, steeds, catapults, etcetera. When my friend Jilline and I first stepped into the building, she opened her arms and announced, “This would be a fabulous place to drive an ATV!” As soon as she spoke, our ears filled with the imagined echo of four-wheelers roaring up and down the dim passages of the Castel Sant’Angelo. We spent the rest of our visit expecting to be run over at any moment.

After my trip to Rome, every time I thought of the archangel Michael, I conflated my memory of the bronze’s bright wings spreading into a cloudless sky with rampant ATV riding in a dark hallway. Though not yet Miltonic, my portrait of angels had already developed certain engine-revving, road-destroying characteristics at odds with the more prevalent Hallmarkian visions current in stores and churches. But ATVs are blocky and loud, mostly decorated with camouflage or rust, and distinctly earthbound; so I’ve spent some time trying to figure out why I keep picturing the archangel Michael driving one. It’s not manliness; I do know that. Manliness has nothing to do with Milton’s angels, who are far too pretty and intellectual. (Among angels, reason, by way of “Fancy and understanding,” nourishes the soul—not a modern manly construct.) And at least in Harmony, manliness doesn’t have much to do with ATVs. By the age of nine or so, most local boys have torn up numbers of fields and snowmobile trails on their four-wheelers. Parents tend to think of ATVs as starter cars for their kids, a good opportunity to practice sharp turns at high speed on rough terrain. This isn’t to say that four-wheelers are strictly juvenile transportation. Hunters use them to haul heavy game out of the woods. A local farm wife drives hers out to the field twice a day when she fetches the cows for milking. A few seasons ago a teacher’s aide took to commuting to school on his. Last year, during the Harmony Fair, an unidentified driver backed one into the rear passenger door of my car—at least that was the forensic conclusion of several very interested bystanders, who enjoyed examining the puncture marks and woefully shaking their heads. But despite their all-around usefulness in field and forest, ATVs retain an aura of youth, possibly because they have limitations (small size, no roof or truck bed, plus they’re not street legal) that cut significantly into a driver’s independence.

In other words, while engines and guns are telltale signs of manliness in Harmony, even more they’re signs of adult self-sufficiency: with a rifle and a Ford, you have the requisite tools for freedom. You can drive to the mall. You can put dinner on the table. Perhaps it’s this issue of freedom, or lack of it, that allows me to envision Michael, Gabriel, and pals careening across a gravel streambed on their four wheelers. They don’t drive to the mall without asking their pa, and they never put dinner on the table. Like good boys, they show up promptly at mealtimes, where “Tables are set, and on a sudden pil’d/With Angels’ Food” by “th’ all bounteous King, who show’r’d/With copious hand, rejoicing in thir joy.” Now, on nights when I’m roasting a chicken and my sons rush into the kitchen shouting, “What’s for dinner? I’m starving! It smells great!” I feel just like God.