ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the Blakes’ garden in Lambeth, where they planted a grapevine, then turns to their garden in Felpham, the main earthly setting of Milton. Milton can be read as Blake’s meditation on the garden and the wild, and what kind of cultivation is necessary not only for grapevines and other plants but also for humans, and all creation, to come to fruition. After an initial exploration of cultivation in Blake, this chapter juxtaposes two crucial passages in Milton on vegetable and human cultivation: the flower chorus, and the description of the Vintage. The flower chorus shows how a blend of cultivation and wildness reveals the visionary eternal forms of plants in which they are endowed with human-like capacities of sensibility and creativity. The Vintage, conversely, treats humans as plants, and shows how cultivation itself can go “wild” when its violence edges over the limit of salutary pruning into deadly harm. Yet Blake purposely leaves unresolved whether the violence of the Vintage leads to the transformation of the human grapes or to tragic disaster; he avoids justifying violence by a redeeming result, and recognizes the contingency of all work of cultivation.
