Better to Reign
The Fall of the Rebel Angels
Pieter Breugel the Elder
So Lucifer, that force
that never stops trying
to undo the fabric of creation
never stops trying to break
that divine universe of order
never stoops to obeisance
of its captain and creator.
In the divine plan
in the face of eternity
can his stubborn perversity,
his destructive persistence
be explained?
Numinous envious Lucifer,
once numbered among
the angels above,
who fell from grace
in a paroxysm of envy,
an excess of vitality,
his gigantic wings still
flailing as he fell,
carried by the will of God
to that place below, still spiteful,
still sinning against the light, still
with his cohorts of translated fiends,
burning, glorious, spitting fire,
ready to challenge eternally
God and his works.
By any stretch, a rebellion
from the start
doomed to failure.
Who fights with God?
And for what?
In the dutiful waiting-room
of creation who cares
what's at the core?
Good or bad, light or dark,
the tyranny of the womb remains,
rolling out all things perforce,
pouring out a sea of forms
tireless creator
indifferent to their destinies.
What's really at stake here
in this rebellion of the angels?
In this unnecessary doubling of the frame,
in this Manichean complication?
In our proprietary Christian myth,
we hear the music of God
and the good angels
already celebrating;
the preordained war is over
before it started.
What chance did Lucifer have?
Look at Breugel's painting,
the fall of the rebel angels;
in its premise
in the landscape itself
a foregone conclusion.
God's gentle voluminous angels
go about their business,
abstractedly beating down
the rebellious foe, caught in the act,
a horde of fanciful creatures, mutants,
a hybridized crawling, flying, whirling
patchwork of half-human, half-beast
half-plant, half-assed whatnots
unready for the fray,
looking as frightened as fish
in a dangerous aquarium.
And there is Saint Michael,
leading the fight from on high,
a skinny fantoccio
in drab cutout armor
thoughtfully swatting away
at this colorful garden
of slapdash monstrosities
this cabinet of curios
less suited to fight
than provide amusement
and a light workout for
the Heavenly Host.
Breugel the Elder, Bosch as well
shared a sly and secretive
sense of humor,
a sense of balance
about the Four Last Things.
It shows in their work,
especially this Fall
of the Rebel Angels,
its emphasis on how strange
and silly evil can look
and good dull and detached
in the midst of primal battle;
the two sides
supposedly fighting it out
for the greater glory of God,
His sanitary minions somehow
maintaining His dignity
against a foolish fearful troop
of willful grotesqueries,
a surreal crew
popping out in all directions;
rebel angels limned
not at all as angels
but as stand-ins, placeholders
for humanity or worse,
the whole world gone to a hell
of ingenious contraptions
to better illustrate our vices,
our weaknesses, our failings
and perhaps God's ultimate failure
to keep us safe.
Well, it all ends,
one way or another,
in art, in life,
and leaves us thinking
there's much to be said
for Heaven and Hell.
We like the idea
we have someplace to go
after here, so why not
light-filled and sky-high
billowing or, worse luck,
down in the dark
and tortured cockeyed till
the end of time?
Breugel the Elder and Bosch
painted both kingdoms
to perverse perfection.
There they are,
my blue heaven
with saints and angels
peeping out of a paradise
bizarre as the Tower of Babel
and a hell as full
of crazy dislocations
and false shapes
as a Lenten carnival.
As far as Lucifer's
heroic desperate rebellion
he never had a chance in hell,
so to speak,
his only chance
and as his only chance
there he ended.
(First published in Compass Rose Magazine.)
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| Jack D. Harvey |
