El Paraíso Perdido and Milton's Reception in Spain

Abstract

After outlining some of the reasons for the delayed and uninspiring Hispanophone translations of Milton's works, this essay examines the ways in which El Paraíso Perdido, Juan de Escoiquiz's translation of 1812—the first and still most readily-available Spanish verse translation of Paradise Lost (1667)—Catholicizes Milton's Protestant epic. A comparative close reading of key anti-Catholic passages in Milton's original and Escoiquiz's translation demonstrates the translator's avowed practice of excising anything “ridiculous or indecent to the rites and practices of the Catholic Church.” Silent additions, though, are the primary means by which Milton's Anglo-Protestant epic is converted into a Hispano-Catholic translation. A brief discussion of Areopagitica, in terms of its content and its popularity in Spanish translation, ties together the issues of translation, censorship, and reading reception circulating with El Paraíso Perdido.

Notes

Acknowledgements: Special thanks to the Purdue Libraries for its 2005 Library Scholars Grant and the Newberry Library for its 2008 Audrey Lumsden-Kouvel Fellowship, both of which enabled me to complete the research on which this essay is based. I also give thanks to the 2011 Conference on John Milton and to a 2012 colloquium of the English Department at the University of Texas at El Paso, where I presented parts of this essay. Finally, many thanks go to Stella Revard for her interest in my research, to my colleague Carina Verzi de Zavattieri for her proofing of my Spanish to English translations, and to Warren Chernaik for his careful comments on this essay.

1. Barbara Lewalski, The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000), 107. See also Gordon Campbell and Thomas N. Corns, John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 103–26.

2. One indication of continuing interest in the work is the recent translation of Areopagitica by Mario Murgia (John Milton, Areopagitica, Preface and Translation by Mario Murgia [Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México], 2009).

3. Useful brief discussions include Rosa Flotats, “Translations of Milton's Paradise Lost Constrained by Two Factors: Politics and Religion,” in Milton, Rights and Liberties, ed. Christophe Tournu and Neil Forsyth (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007), 461–73, and John K. Hale's important study, “The Significance of the Early Translations of Paradise Lost,” Philological Quarterly 63 (1984): 31–53, which gives a critical account of versions in Latin, German, French, and Italian. Popularity, especially within large cultural domains and across centuries, is always difficult to ascertain. See Shakespeare en España: Crítica, traducciones y representaciones, ed. José Manuel González Fernándex de Sevilla (Zaragoza: Libros Pórtico, 1993), for a useful discussion of the relatively low influence of Shakespeare in Spain.

4. E. Allison Peers, “Milton in Spain,” Studies in Philology 23 (1926): 180.

5. Gregorio Prieto, Vicente Aleixandre, and John Milton, Dibujos de Gregorio Prieto para “El Paraíso Perdido” de Milton (Madrid: Arte y Bibliofilia, 1972).

6. John Milton, El Paraíso Perdido, trans. Juan Escoiquiz (Barcelona: Nueva San Francisco, 1883), xiii; hereafter PP-Escoiquiz. All subsequent quotations from the Escoiquiz translation are from this edition and translations into English are mine. All endnoted originals retain orthographical errors, such as missing accents. Spanish: “Debo, por último, advertir, que nada he cercenado del original en mi traduccion, sino algunas alusiones, que el célebre Delille ha omitido tambien en su traduccion francesa, como ridículas é indecentes contra los ritos y usos de la Iglesia católica, propias de la secta en que había nacido Milton, y que léjos de acrecentar el mérito del poema, lo desfiguaran.”

7. Samuel Johnson, “Life of Milton,” in Lives of the English Poets, ed. G. B. Hill, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1905), 3.252. The Contesa de Santa Colona, daughter of translator Hermida, inveighed against Escoiquiz's prolixity (Hermida [i]). See also Flotats, “Translations of Milton's Paradise Lost,” 464.

8. The “Biografía” was first introduced to the Escoiquiz translation in 1862. For other infelicitous elements of the Escoiquiz translation, see Juan Mateos on the “corrected and augmented” “Hail, holy light” passage (PL 3.1–8), John Milton, El Paraíso Perdido, trans. Juan Mateos (Mexico: Editorial Época, 1995; originally published in Barcelona: Ibérica, 1914), 16–18, hereafter PP-Mateos; and Anibal Galindo on other pasages, John Milton, El Paraíso Perdido, trans. Anibal Galindo (Gante: Vanderhaegen, 1868), xxv–xvii, hereafter PP-Galindo.

9. John Shawcross, “John Milton and His Spanish and Portuguese Presence,” Milton Quarterly 32.2 (1998): 41–52. See also the “Translation, Poetic” entry in William B. Hunter, Jr., A Milton Encyclopedia (East Brunswick, NJ; Associated University Presses, 1980), 8.78–86.

10. Email to author, 16 October 2011.

11. Stephen B. Dobranski, Milton, Authorship, and the Book Trade (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 25.

12. Unless otherwise noted, English quotations of Milton's poetry are from John Milton: The Complete Poems, ed. John Leonard (New York: Penguin, 1998). Editorial notes to this edition are hereafter PL-Leonard.

13. Angelica Duran, “John Milton, Englishman: ‘Of the Devil's Party’ per the Spanish Inquisition,” Reception: Tests, Readers, Audiences, History 2 (Summer 2010): 22–47.

14. Neil Forsyth, “Sublime Conversations,” Times Literary Supplement, December 2008, 14–18.

15. This same work was censored more immediately in its homeland: “On June 16th, 1660, the House of Commons ordered that these books should be burnt by the Common Hangman; and a proclamation was issued for calling in and suppressing them” (W. H. Hart, Index Expurgatorius Anglicanus [New York: Burt Franklin, 1969], 165). See also J. Milton French, ed., The Life Records of John Milton, 4 vols. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1956), 4.322–38.

16. Consejo de Inquisición (Spain) and Diego Sarmiento, et al., Index Expvrgatorivs Hispanvs ad Exmo. Dno. D. Didaco Sarmiento, et Valladares Inceptvs et ab Illmo. Dno. D. Vitale Marin perfectvs. Anno MDCCVII. De Consilio Svpremi Senatvs Inqvisitionis Generalis (Madrid: n.p., 1707), 696; Conseulo de Inquisición (Spain), Indice General de los Libros Prohibidos (Madrid: José Felix Palacios, 1844), 230.

17. Ernest Sirluck writes on the Spanish Catholic Inquisition: “the Office was suppressed by Napoleon, but revived in 1814. In Spain it was finally suppressed by the Revolution of 1868. In Rome its coercive powers ended with the entry of the Italian army in 1870, but the Office still exists and functions” (John Milton, Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don Wolfe, 8. vols. [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953–80], 2.494 n. 26, hereafter CPW. See also Alfredo Vílchez Díaz, Autores y Anonimos Españoles en los Indices Inquisitoriales (Madrid: Universidad Complutense, 1986). For a particularly accessible account of the Spanish Catholic Inquisition, see Helen Rawlings, The Spanish Inquisition (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006).

18. Antoine Berman, Towards a Translation Criticism: John Donne, trans. Francoise Massardier-Kenney (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2009).

19. John F. Milton [sic], El Paraíso Perdido, trans. Manuel Alvarez de Toledo Morenés (Cadiz, Spain: Universidad de Cadiz, 1988). On the other hand, the common practice of including multiple surnames accounts for Mateos's correct if initially confusing reference to Milton's mother as “Sara Castón” (7). As Campbell and Corns note, “Edward Phillips reported that Sara Milton was ‘of the family of the Castons’ (Darbishire 32)” (Campbell and Corns, John Milton, 387 11n).

20. Spanish: “Canto.”

21. John Milton, El Paraíso Perdido, trans. Joaquin Antonio Peñalosa (1941; Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, 1971), 3.

22. John Milton, Paradise Perdu, Traduit par Jacques Delille, 3 vols. (Paris: Giguet et Michaud, 1805), 2.206–9. It is worth noting that Escoiquiz overstates his reliance on Delille. For example, Delille translates the juicy line “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n” (PL 1.263)—which Escoiquiz omits—as: “j’aime mieux / Un trône dans l’enfer que des fers dans les cieux” (1.157–58).

23. Spanish: “Apenas habrá idioma moderno de país culto, en que el inmortal poema de Milton no tenga varias traducciones en prosa o verso. Tampoco escasean en español, mas por desgracia la calidad no corre pareja con el número.”

24. Merritt Hughes glosses “conclave” as referring to “secret governing councils” (John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose [Indianapolis, IN: Odyssey, 1957], 1.795n, hereafter PL-Hughes). Alastair Fowler's note refers to “the specifically ecclesiastical meaning on which M's satire here depends” (Milton: Paradise Lost [London: Longman, 1971], 1.795n, hereafter PL-Fowler).

25. PL-Fowler, 3.474–75n. Gordon Teskey identifies them as “Accoutrements of Roman Catholic devotion and papal arrogance” (Paradise Lost [New York: Norton, 2005], 3.490–92n, hereafter PL-Teskey). See also Milton's Paradise Lost: Books III and I, ed. A. W. Verity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1892–1910), 3.490–93n, and Paradise Lost: Books III–IV, ed. Lois Potter and John Broadbent (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 492.

26. Spanish: “No léjos moran, los que en su fecundo / Cérebro, cada dia un nuevo mundo / En idea construyen, más perfecto.”

27. Spanish: “ruina en ruina”; “Otro, llevado de esperanza avara … Hallar creyendo aquel desconocido / Secreto de volver el plomo en oro”; “otros locos, que allí ostentan / Un ambicioso lujo.”

28. Frank J. Huntley, “A Justification of Milton's ‘Paradise of Fools’ (P.L. III, 431–99),” English Literary History 21 (1954): 107; PL-Verity, 3.442–97n.

29. Huntley, “A Justification of Milton's ‘Paradise of Fools’,” 112.

30. Fowler has an extensive note on “transubstantiate” as an “abstract theological term,” suggesting “that Adam and Eve were already enjoying Communion with the gods” (PP-Fowler, 5.434–38n). Other editors find that Milton's “use of a theological term may imply a slur on Catholic dogma which holds that Eucharistic bread and wine are changed into different substances rather than different degrees of the same substance” (John Milton, Paradise Lost: Books V–VI, ed. Robert Hodge and Isabel G. Maccaffrey [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975]), 78; others comment that transubstantiation was a “loaded term in Milton's day” (PL-Teskey, 118). See also Denise Gigante, “Milton's Aesthetics of Eating,” Diacritics 30.2 (2000): 88–112.

31. Spanish: “Agradeced en tanto, estos hermosos / Frutos conmigo, como la figura / De aquella dicha deliciosa y pura / Que con nosotros gozareis gloriosos.”

32. Spanish: “Acabó, y comenzaron su comida / Gustosa y limpia.”

33. Spanish: “Es cierto, como dices, / Que una esencia incorpórea no tiene / Necesidad de vuestros materiales / Alimentos.”

34. See Anne Barbeau Gardiner, “Division in Communion: Symbols of Transubstantiation in Donne, Milton, and Dryden,” in Religion in the Age of Reason: A Transatlantic Study of the Long Eighteenth Century, ed. Kathryn Duncan (New York: AMS Press, 2009), 1–17; and Marshall Grossman, “Milton's ‘Transubstantiate’: Interpreting the Sacrament in Paradise Lost,” Milton Quarterly 16.2 (May 1982): 42–47.

35. John N. King, “Milton's Transubstantiation,” Milton Studies 36 (1998): 44.

36. Spanish: “mesa”; “las suntuosas mesas.”

37. Spanish: “festin.”

38. John Milton, Milton's Paradise Lost, by Richard Bentley, D.D. (London: Jacob Tonson, 1732), 3.

39. Spanish: “á Satanás y á los demás Angeles malos … para no harcerlo tan odioso á los lectores, que la repugnancia con que lo mirasen, disminuyese el interés del poema.”

40. Spanish: “Esta blasfemia, como todas las demás de la misma especie, que se encontrarán en los discursos de Sátanas, y los de sus secuaces, en la extension del poem, no son mas que un efecto de su desesperacion; pues como se verá por otras expresiones, puestas igualmente en su boca, todos ellos estaban bien ciertos de su debilidad, y de su absoluta dependencia de Díos, y así todas las injurias y horrores que vomitan contra él, no son mas que falsedades, reconocidas por los mismos que las profieren, y nacidas de su soberbia obstinada y de su ódio injusto.”

41. Joseph Addison, Criticisms on Paradise Lost, ed. Albert Cook (Boston, MA: Ginn, 1892), 3. Addison reiterates that humankind's “enemies are the fallen angels, the Messiah their friend, and the Almighty their protector” (5). Editions of El Paraíso Perdido by Escoiquiz, as well as by Dioniso Sanjuán and D. Demetrio San Martin, include Spanish translations of Addison's notes.

42. “Enemy” is repeatedly used in the Argument to Book 5 and the Argument to Book 9 but is used only once, and powerfully, in the poem itself.

43. Spanish: “Aunque los ángeles segun la doctrina de la Iglesia católica, son puros espiritus, Milton, como lo hemos advertido en el prólogo, los supone tambien corpóreos, porque sin esta ficcion era imposible hacerlos figurar en una obra de imaginacion, cual es un Poema Epico.”

44. Samuel Johnson, The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes, ed. Arthur Murphy (London: Pickering, 1825), 7.136.

45. Stephen Fallon, “Chapter 5: Milton's True Poem and the Substance of Epic Angels,” in Milton among the Philosophers: Poetry and Materialism in Seventeenth-century England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 137–67, Fallon demonstrates that the complexity of Milton's challenge to “scholastic dualism” in terms of angels is an integral part of the epic's philosophical foundations.

46. John Milton, The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, ed. William Kerigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon (New York: Random House, 2007), 4.741–43n.

47. See also Karen Edward's close reading of this and related passages in “Gender, Sex, and Marriage in Paradise,” in A Concise Companion to Milton, ed. Angelica Duran (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), 144–60.

48. Spanish: “Al plácido descanso se entregaron.”

49. Spanish: “en su lecho dormian.”

50. Spanish: “¿Crees, que de Eva estoy enamorado, / Solo por el placer que su belleza / Material me ocasiona? Tal beajeza / Al nivel de los brutos me pondría.”

51. Spanish: “ama[ndo], / O major decir, idolatra[ndo].”

52. Spanish: “La virtud huye, y el pudor se esconde: / Hija del crímen, con su velo espeso / La vergüenza servil los sustituye, / Y aun ésta no resiste al cruel exceso / Del vicio, que á ella misma la destruye. / Así arrastrados de un delirio insano,/ Pasan los padres del linaje humano / Las horas presurosas, divertidos / En sus conversaciones / Locas, y exageradas expresiones.”

53. Spanish: “llamas.”

54. The Virgin Mary and the Abrahamic covenant are also referred to in PL 12.374–80 and 12.623.

55. Spanish: “¡Salve! le dice el Angel: (venturosa / Palabra, que ha de ser en lo futuro / A otra Eva, á la purísima María, / Repetida, y con suerte más dichosa; / Pues que esta divina Eva la cabeza / Quebrantará de la infernal serpiente, / Y la esposa de Adán, por su flaqueza, / Será engañada lastimosamente.) / ¡Salve, la dice, pues,¡oh tú fecunda / Madre de los humanos, destinada / A poblar esta esfera dilatada! / La multitude de perlas, con que inunda / Sus campiñas la aurora, y las estrellas / Innumerables, cuyas luces bellas / El Cielo alumbran, á tu descendencia / En número darán la preeminencia.”

56. Spanish: “Que de una Vírgen las entrañas puras, / Sin dejar de ser Vírgen han parido, / Y en establo pobre está llorando, / De quien Dios es el Padre, / Y una hija suya inmaculada madre.”

57. For example, he represents the Roman Catholic “[Pope] Leo the 10, and his successors … untill the Councell of “Trent,” which combining with “the Spanish Inquisition engendering together brought forth, or perfeted those Catalogues” (Areopagitica, in CPW, 2.502, emphasis added).

58. Index 1707, 22; Spanish: “Por ser este Indice tan en beneficio publico de los Católicos, y a fin de quitarles las ocasiones que el demonio, y sus Ministros les ofrecen con libros, tratados, y escritos, que son Maestros que á todas horas enseñan, y persuaden sus errores.”

59. Leon Carbonera y Sol, Indice de los libros prohibidos por el Santo oficio de la inquisicion española (Madrid: A. Perez Durbull, 1873), 8; original Spanish: “facilita el conocimento de lo que el católico puede leer, salva conciencia, sin incurrir en las censuras de la Iglesia, y […] pone en manos de todos un saludable aviso que contribuye eficazmente en mayor escala á que los files incautos no lleven á sus inteligencias, con la lectura de los malos libros, el cancer del error.”

60. Carbonera y Sol, Indice de los libros prohibidos, 32.

61. These arguments project their authors’ scholarly ardor for reading and publishing. This image of books teaching “at all hours” corresponds with Milton's description of himself: “for the study of literature … I had so keen an appetite that from my twelfth year scarcely ever did I leave my studies for my bed before the hour of midnight” (Second Defence, CPW, 4.612).

62. Roy Flannagan, “‘The World All Before [Us]’: More than Three Hundred Yeas of Criticism,” in A Concise Companion to Milton, ed. Angelica Duran (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), 43.

63. Milton, Eikonoklastes, CPW, 3.339–40.

64. Juan de Escoiquiz, México Conquistada. Poema Heroyco (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1798), v; original Spanish: “público”; “habrá sido por falta de talento poético, no por mala eleccion de asunto, pues este es el mas grande, el mas maravilloso, el mas noble.”

65. Juan de Escoiquiz, “Memorias de Juan de Escoiquiz: 1807–08,” in Memorias de Tiempos de Fernando VII, ed. Miguel Artola (Madrid: Real Academia Española, 1957), 8; original Spanish: “aun entre los mismos que me honren leyendo estas Memorias habrá pocos que al llegar aquí no se paren y duden de mi sinceridad.”

66. He writes, in his memoir: “If my aforementioned dear readers do not believe me, what I have said does not cease to be true, and I will not be to blame for their error” (8); original Spanish: “Si no me creen dichos señores lectores, no por ello dejará de ser cierto lo dicho, y no tender la culpa de su error.”

67. Spanish: “A mi humilde retiro / Trae los pocos amigos, que aun el giro / De los años voraz, y los diversos / Hazares de mi vida, me han dejado, / Y que siempre con gusto oyen mis versos.”