notion of light as well as the Lucille/Lucifer connection, in which she says that she sees writing as a way of “keeping back the darkness” which exists in one’s life. She expresses the darkness in herself through Lucifer but does so by bathing him in light. She addresses the “dark side of herself,” saying that by writing about it she “validate[s] what is human” explaining that darkness is a part of every person and that it must be acknowledged in order for one to have balance. She believed that you have to have grace as well as darkness, which is why her Lucifer is, again, not represented as a dark figure but as a “bringer of light.” In an earlier interview with Holladay she says, I’ve said that I know there’s Lucifer in Lucille, because I know me – I can be so petty, it’s amazing! And there is therefore a possibility of Lucille in Lucifer. Lucifer was doing what he was supposed to do, too, you know? It’s too easy to see Lucifer as all bad. Suppose he were merely being human. That’s why the Bible people – it’s too easy to think of them as all mythological, saintly folk. It is much more interesting to me that these were humans – caught up in a divine plan, but human. That seems to me the miracle. (188)5 Her depiction of a Lucifer who is not all bad, but merely human, allows her to work through her relationship with God. Hull points out “after being told that ‘God is Light,’ – Clifton maintains her designation of Light as ‘personification’ for ‘Transcendent Being,’ but still attaches it to Lucifer, who is God’s opposite, or, at the least, is certainly not God.” She attaches it to herself as well – also a not-God, but certainly, in a sense, closer to God than perhaps Lucifer should be. Hull tells us that Clifton “responds to this puzzlement by asking, ‘If God is God – is there a “not God?” – which means that if God is everything, ‘He’ is also Lucifer, who can then be seen as (part of) God, and hence as Light” and the same can be said for Clifton6. Because God is everything, everything is part of God, including God’s opposite. Clifton uses Lucifer in a way which allows her to safely and anonymously pose her questions to God. She uses the ideas of light and darkness in order to justify evil, and at times, she lets us know that the distinction between good and evil cannot be so clearly identified. By inverting the way in which we normally define these terms, and by aligning herself with Lucifer, she allows herself a way to explore her universe, and a way in which to ask her questions to a God whom she doesn’t necessarily identify with. These are all ideas which are undoubtedly prevalent in Milton’s Paradise Lost where he explains that the entire purpose of writing his epic is to “assert eternal providence / And justify the ways of God to men” – a claim which begs the question, why do God’s ways need justification in the first
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