Parsing Paradise Lost XI.48–57

Question

I am having trouble parsing a passage from Paradise Lost Book 11. God is decreeing that Adam be expelled from the Garden of Eden:

But longer in that Paradise to dwell,
The law I gave to nature him forbids:
Those pure immortal elements that know
No gross, no unharmonious mixture foul,
Eject him tainted now, and purge him off
As a distemper, gross to air as gross,
And mortal food, as may dispose him best
For dissolution wrought by sin, that first
Distempered all things, and of incorrupt
Corrupted.

_{Milton, John. Paradise Lost Book XI lines 48–57. 1667, 2nd ed. 1674. Eds. William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon. New York: Modern Library Paperback Edition, 2008. p. 364.}

The first two lines are clear enough: The law God gave Nature prevents Adam from remaining in Paradise. The next few lines are also clear until I reach line 53. The pure and immortal elements of Paradise are themselves ejecting Adam as a "distemper." The notes in the Modern Library edition explain:

distemper: medical term, denoting an imbalance of the four humors. The expulsion of Adam and Eve is here presented as an automatic purgation in which immortal elements rid themselves of tainted elements.

_ibid.

So far, so good. But what does gross to air as gross / And mortal food mean? Perhaps the first gross in the phrase refers back to him in the previous line? "Paradisiacal elements purge him, gross as he is, to air [that is] as gross [as he, unlike the pure air of Paradise], and to mortal food [as opposed to the food for immortals in Paradise], since mortal food will best prepare him for his own dissolution caused by sin."

Perhaps that is a defensible reading, but then I can't make sense of of incorrupt / Corrupted. Does of mean from here? Adam went from being incorrupt to being corrupted? But what does incorrupt mean? It can't mean what it seems to, "incorruptible," because Adam was corrupted. Does it simply mean "innocent"?

Alternatively, I thought perhaps distemper, gross to air might mean "a foul-smelling distemper,” and as gross might refer back to purge him off ... as gross. That, however, makes And mortal food difficult grammatically. However I try to read the passage, I'm left with phrases that are hard to make sense of semantically, syntactically, or both.

What is a grammatical yet comprehensible way to make meaning of every part of this passage?

Answer 1

The question already has the right interpretation of each part: it’s just a matter of putting them together.

1. In “purge him off as a distemper, gross”, the complements “as a distemper” and “gross” are both modifiers of “him”. I think this would be clearer with another comma after “gross”, but sometimes we have to make do with the punctuation we are given. Other examples of Milton stacking up complements like this include “his ponderous shield ethereal temper, massy, large and round, behind him cast” (1.284–286), and “there to pine immovable, infixt, and frozen round, periods of time” (2.601–603).

2. In “of incorrupt corrupted”, we need the following sense of “of”:

   of, prep. I.3. Indicating a situation, condition, or state out of or away from which something moves, or is figured as moving: from, out of. Obsolete.

   a1586   To be thus banished of thy counsels.   Sir P. Sidney, Arcadia (1590).

   _{Oxford English Dictionary.}

   The OED’s last citation for this sense is from 1670, so that it may already have been archaic when Milton used it, but that would not be inconsistent with the style of the poem.

3. In “of incorrupt corrupted”, we need the following sense of “incorrupt”:

   incorrupt, adj., 3. Morally uncorrupted; pure in life; esp. faithful and upright in the discharge of duty, not to be bribed or led into wrongdoing.

   1660   Such a king, who..may have no vitious favorite, may hearken only to the wisest and incorruptest of his Parlament.   J. Milton, Readie Way Free Commonwealth 13.

   _{Oxford English Dictionary.}