Page 36 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

Paradise Lost and the Inferno

Biblical themes permeate the Western canon, and some of them speak either
directly or indirectly to the human role in weather and climate control. In Para-
dise Lost (1667), John Milton alludes to a divinely instituted shift in the Earth’s
axis (and thus its climate) as a consequence of the original ancestors’ lapse from
grace. According to Milton, while Eden was the ultimate temperate clime,
watered with gentle mists, God, in anger and for punishment, rearranged the
Earth and its surroundings to generate excessive heat, cold, and storms: “the Cre-
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ator, calling forth by name His mightie Angels, gave them several charge.” The
Sun was to move and shine so as to affect the Earth “with cold and heat scarce
tolerable” (10.653–654); the planets were to align in sextile, square, opposition,
and trine “thir influence malignant . . . to showre” (10.662); the winds were to
blow from the four corners to “confound Sea, Aire, and Shoar” (10.665–666);
and the thunder was to roll “with terror through the dark Aereal Hall” (10.667).
The biggest change, however, resulted from tipping the axis of the Earth: “Some
say he bid his Angels turne ascanse the Poles of Earth twice ten degrees and
more from the Sun’s Axle; they with labor push’d oblique the Centric Globe . . .
to bring in change of Seasons to each Clime; else had the Spring perpetual
smil’d on Earth with vernant Flours, equal in Days and Nights” (10.668–671,
677–680).
This led to massive changes in weather and climate on sea and land: “sidereal
blast, Vapour, and Mist, and Exhalation hot, Corrupt and Pestilent” (10.693–
695). Northern winds (Boreas, Kaikias, and Skeiron) burst “their brazen Dun-
geon, armd with ice and snow and haile, and stormie gust and flaw” (10.697–
698), and other winds (Notus, Eurus, and the Tempest-Winds) in their season
rent the woods, destroyed crops, churned the seas, and rushed forth noisily with
black thunderous clouds, serving the bidding of the storm god Aeolus. But the
angels had one last task: evicting “our lingring Parents” (12.638) from Eden. In
this, too, Milton evokes climatic change when the blazing sword of God, “fierce
as a Comet; which with torrid heat, and vapour as the Libyan Air adust, began to
parch that temperate Clime” (12.634–636). Looking back at Paradise, “som natu-
ral tears they drop’d, but wip’d them soon; the World was all before them, where
to choose thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide: They, hand in hand, with
wandring steps and slow, through Eden took their solitarie way” (12.645–649).
So you see, the wages of sin are . . . climate change.
When Dante Alighieri visited hell with Virgil in the spring of 1300, he wit-
nessed the consequences of sin. They had left a world with “air serene” and
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entered “into a climate ever vex’d with storms . . . where no light shines.” Before

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