Paradise Lost by John Milton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars Wowed by imagination and language-- Milton’s Puritan epic Paradise Lost (1667/74) gets off to an amazing start with Book I. The compelling anti-hero Satan and his fellow fallen angels have just been exiled from Heaven to Hell, “this dark and dismal house of pain,” where they speed-build Pandemonium. It's all sublime fantasy, majestic poetry, vivid language, wonderful epic similes, and absorbing psychology. Many delicious phrases like “by harpy-footed Furies hail'd” and “Hell trembled as he strode” and famous lines like “The mind is its own place, and in it self/ Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n” and “Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.” Check out this wonderful description of Satan: Then with expanded wings he stears his flight Aloft, incumbent on the dusky Air That felt unusual weight, till on dry Land He lights, if it were Land that ever burn'd With solid, as the Lake with liquid fire; And this epic simile describing his “ponderous shield,” whose broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the Moon, whose Orb Through Optic Glass the Tuscan Artist views At Ev'ning from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new Lands, Rivers or Mountains in her spotty Globe. And this fantastic physiology: For Spirits when they please Can either Sex assume, or both; so soft And uncompounded is thir Essence pure, Not ti'd or manacl'd with joynt or limb, Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones, Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose Dilated or condens't, bright or obscure, Can execute thir aerie purposes, And works of love or enmity fulfill. Yikes—I’d better get going on my *concise* summary of the next eleven books! In Book II, the impious crew debate their next move: Hunker down in Hell? Naw. Renew the war against Heaven? Better not. Revenge ourselves on God by messing with his newest creation, man? Hmm. Satan meets his daughter Sin and his son/grandson by her (!), Death, and then scouts out earth, hanging there from a gold chain, ripe for the tainting. In Book III Satan approaches earth as God watches without interfering: his creations have free will, else no point in creating them. Someone will have to die to balance man’s impending sin and thereby save man for grace! Volunteers? What about the Son of God? *The sacrifice feels less heroic when Jesus declares that he’ll defeat Death by being resurrected. In Book IV, Satan spies on paradise, violently conflicted as to whether to submit to God or to mess up man, deciding on the latter, because “my self am Hell.” Adam and Eve are insufferably innocent, Eve revoltingly obedient to Adam (“my Guide/ And Head”), saying things like, “God is thy Law, thou mine: to know no more/ Is womans happiest knowledge and her praise.” I thus get a kick out of Satan enviously watching them and saying things like, You’ll soon join me in my less pleasing place! *Our pre-fall “general ancestors” Adam and Eve shamelessly have sex ‘cause God wants them to have pleasure (in wedlock) and to increase. In Book V Raphael pep talks Adam about obedience and contentment. He explains why God gave his creations free will (without it, obedience is meaningless) and recounts the story of Satan’s rebellion (sparked by his jealousy over God’s promotion of Jesus), including a rebel-rousing speech to the angels: are we going “to begirt th' Almighty Throne/ Beseeching or besieging”? And, hey, paradise is delightful: Awake, the morning shines, and the fresh field Calls us, we lose the prime, to mark how spring Our tended Plants, how blows the Citron Grove, What drops the Myrrhe, and what the balmie Reed, How Nature paints her colours, how the Bee Sits on the Bloom extracting liquid sweet. In Book VI Raphael vividly depicts to Adam the three-day war between Satan and his minions and God and his. It’s like a mini-Iliad—but nobody dies, because though the angels feel pain, they are immortal, ethereal, and quick-healing. The “obsequious” angels rout the “atheist” rebels, who return with dread new war engines only to be smothered by some sacred mountains, until finally the Son of God kicks the impious crew out of Heaven and sends them falling nine days to Hell. Book VII has Raphael vividly tell Adam how God created the heavens, earth, light, dark, lands, seas, plants, creatures, etc. in six days. It too closely follows Genesis—though there are splendid descriptions of animals coming into existence. In Book VIII Adam tells Raphael his memories of being created, not unlike Frankenstein’s creature telling his story (except Adam had a loving and caring creator), including God interdicting the knowledge tree. And the making of Eve from Adam’s rib. Adam’s account of waking up alive for the first time and enjoying his new world and body is splendid: By quick instinctive motion up I sprung, As thitherward endevoring, and upright Stood on my feet; about me round I saw Hill, Dale, and shadie Woods, and sunnie Plaines, And liquid Lapse of murmuring Streams; by these, Creatures that livd, and movd, and walk'd, or flew, Birds on the branches warbling; all things smil'd, With fragrance and with joy my heart oreflow'd. Starting with another super Satanic soliloquy as the fiend possesses a serpent’s body, Book IX relates the tempting of Eve and-- So saying, her rash hand in evil hour Forth reaching to the Fruit, she pluck'd, she eat: Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe, That all was lost. Wow. Adam decides to eat and die with Eve. Fruit-full and intoxicated, they enjoy carnal pleasure till they pass out, waking up the next day hungover and recriminatory, like any bickering couple: Why didn’t you stay by me? Why didn’t you force me to stay? In Book X Jesus compassionately punishes the sinners. God curses the poor serpent (more victim than Adam and Eve!). God/Jesus tells Adam the moral: your wife was made to serve you, so you lost all when you unleashed her. Sin and Death make a bridge over chaos from hell to earth (“Mace petrific”! “Gorgonian rigor”! “Asphaltic slime”!), while Satan oversees the anti-terraforming of the earth, making it hostile to man. In Book XI, Jesus brings Adam and Eve’s repentant prayers to God, who says death will remedy their pain and lead to a better second life, and Michael goes to banish the penitents from Eden but give them hope, so he reveals to Adam the future, from Cain and Abel to the Flood. Eve promises Adam, “I’ll never from your side stray,” while bruising the serpent becomes their life goal. In Book XII, Michael continues revealing the future to Adam, listing horrible diseases and deaths (thanks, Eve!) and relating the Exodus and Christ Redeemer stories: goodness infinite to bring grace out of evil, the fortunate fall. Michael preaches virtue, faith, patience, temperance, love, charity: paradise within thee. And our father and mother exit Eden, Eve in meek submission, and “the World was all before them.” About the Naxos audiobook, Anton Lesser reads the poem with understanding, empathy, wit, and pleasure; lovely melancholy music by John Jenkins and William Lawes, English composer contemporaries of Milton, introduces and concludes the twelve books. Finally, I recoil from the sexist Christian vision of the poem, and its Bible summaries bore me, but the insight that we have heaven or hell within us according to our thoughts, actions, and personalities, rings true. And the language, imagination, epic similes, and Satan are all wonderful. View all my reviews
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