Trump’s ascendance challenges us to examine the ground of our actions

By Herbert Rothschild

Why John Milton went completely blind by February 1652 at the age of 44 no modern diagnosis has gained unanimous agreement. Milton himself, however, was in no doubt. He lost his sight “in liberty’s defense,” as he wrote in 1655 in a sonnet to his friend Cyriak Skinner.

That same year, Milton explained that when he was asked by the newly established Puritan Commonwealth in late 1649 to respond to a widely circulated attack on its overthrow of King Charles I, his physicians cautioned him that the task would cost him the remainder of his failing sight. “[T]heir premonitions caused no hesitation and inspired no dismay . . . the alternative was either the loss of my sight or the desertion of my duty.”

If you think of Milton at all, it’s as a poet. But before “Paradise Lost” was published in 1667, Milton was known as a political writer. Indeed, he was known throughout Western Europe because, as Latin secretary for the Commonwealth and later for Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate, he had been their chief apologist to the world.

When the English monarchy was restored on May 8, 1660, the cause for which Milton had worked so hard and sacrificed so much seemed lost. On June 16, Parliament ordered his arrest and he went into hiding. Fortunately, he was included in the general amnesty proclaimed 10 weeks later.

Not all of us would agree that Milton’s cause was a laudable struggle for liberty, although I could make a strong case that the Puritan Revolution gave an impetus to representative democracy and freedom of conscience that put England well in advance of the rest of the world. Rather, what I want to do now is hold Milton up as a guide to living with defeat.

For the 14 years after the monarchy was restored until his death in 1674, Milton had to live with his blindness and the loss of his hopes. They both informed and energized the poems that immortalized him. Some lines are explicitly self-referential, others almost as obviously so.  

In the broken hero’s internal monologue at the start of “Samson Agonistes” there are these bitter and self-mocking thoughts: “Promise was that I / Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver; / Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him / Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves.”

And in the magnificent invocation of “holy Light” at the opening of Book 3 of “Paradise Lost,” the poet says self-pityingly, “Thus with the Year / Seasons return, but not to me returns / Day, or the sweet approach of Ev’n or Morn / . . . But cloud instead, and ever-during (enduring) dark / Surrounds me.”

In both cases, though, the speaker immediately corrects his self-focus. In the first instance he distinguishes between his personal failing and the validity of God’s promise to liberate Israel. In the second, he distinguishes between outer and inner light.

What Milton believes — and dramatizes in several ways in his three great long poems — is that the outcomes of historical events don’t depend on us as individuals. Each does what she can, but such actions are single strands in a web the weaving of which we don’t control. Not only that. Our knowledge is so limited that we can neither predict nor judge correctly the consequences of our actions.

For Calvinists (and Milton was one), to act in our own time and place is an imperative. Not because we’re trying to win some Daddy-deity’s approval and favors, but to advance God’s will for the world. Yet, we act knowing that the outcome may not be — perhaps shouldn’t be — what we foresee or desire. We do what we do simply because we believe it’s what we’re called to do.

Milton’s understanding of history was informed by his faith in a providential God. But I urge you not to let a specific belief system, which may be alien or even distasteful to you, prompt you to dismiss out of hand what he has to teach us about the terms on which we live and act.

For many of us, as for Milton, the reign of liberty and justice in our land seems to have ended. Some of us were deeply engaged in their protection and advancement, and President Donald Trump’s largely successful attacks on them have been disheartening. As each of us considers how to respond, it becomes an occasion to examine the assumptions on which we predicate all our actions.

The fact is that we all live on faith. If we didn’t believe that our actions have meaning and efficacy, we couldn’t act at all. But what imparts meaning to them, and why do we expect their consequences to correspond to our intentions?

Rarely are we pressed to ask those questions, because the vast majority of our actions are narrow of scope and we get almost immediate feedback — a paycheck for our work, a thank-you for a kindness. The ground shifts, though, if we choose to take responsibility for a nation or for humankind, to help build what Calvinists would call the realm of God on Earth.

It’s then that we struggle with our limits. It’s then that the purblindness of our understandings and the paltriness of our powers are brought home to us. It’s then that Macbeth’s despairing words reveal their universal challenge: “Life’s but a walking shadow (actor), a poor (inadequate) player, / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, / And then is heard no more.”

Trump is, in perspective, merely a modest threat to the future of humankind. I willingly participate in Indivisible rallies, but I know that if the Democrats regain power, they will do little to end the existential threats of nuclear annihilation and global warming, and their foreign and military policies are likely to continue spreading death across the globe.

What is more meaningful to me than those rallies is standing every Wednesday on the corner of East Main Street and Central Avenue in Medford with a handful of people, silently testifying against U.S. support of the genocide in Gaza. I have no reason to believe that our action will stop the slaughter. But standing is what I can do, standing literally and standing for what I believe is right.

Again I am informed by Milton. His sonnet that begins, “When I consider how my light is spent,” ends with, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Herbert Rothschild’s columns appear Fridays. Opinions expressed in them represent the author’s views. Email Rothschild at [email protected]. Email letters to the editor and Viewpoint submissions to [email protected].