PARADISE LOST ~ OUTLINE
With Line References
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fall Satan awakens all his Legions, who lay till then in the
same manner confounded; They rise, thir Numbers, array of
Battel, thir chief Leaders nam'd, according to the Idols known
afterwards in Canaan and the Countries adjoyning. To these
Satan directs his Speech, comforts them with hope yet of
regaining Heaven, but tells them lastly of a new World and
new kind of Creature to be created, according to an ancient
Prophesie or report in Heaven; for that Angels were long
before this visible Creation, was the opinion of many
ancient Fathers. To find out the truth of this Prophesie, and
what to determin thereon he refers to a full Councel. What his
Associates thence attempt Pandemonium the Palace ofSata
rises, suddenly built out of the Deep: The infernal Peers there
sit in Councel
BOOK I - Satan and the fallen angels in Hell
A. Introduction to the poem, and first invocation [ 1 -]
B. Satan and his lieutenant awaken in the lakeof fire [50-282]
1. Satan's speech, refusing to accept defeat [84-]
., . . 2. Beelzebub's speech, fearing eternal slavery in Hell [128-]
. . 3. Satan's speech, vowing to resist [156-]
4. They rise off the lake and light on solid ground [192-]
5. Satan's speech, .accepting Hell as his new capital [242-]
6. Beelzebub urges Satan to speak to the fallen angels [271]
C. Satan rallies his troops [283-669]
1. Satan calls them out of the lake where they lay [283-]
.. 2. The multitudes fly out of the lake [331-]
.3. The high ranking angels come forth one by one [376521]
a) Moloch [381-]
b) Chemos [406-]
c) Baalim and Ashtaroth [421-] '
d) Astoreth [437-]
e) Thammuz [446-].
, f) Dagon [457-]
g) Rimmon [467-]
h) The Egyptian gods [476-]
i) Belial [490-]
j) The Olympian gods [507-]
, 4. They assemble before Satan [522-]
5. Satan's speech [622-]
D. The devils build their palace, Pandemonium [670-]
E. They assemble within to hold council [752-797]
\ OF MansjFirst Disobedience, ana the Fruit
(5FffiaEEoSidderrTree, WhOSHTrtDrtaU^st
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, [ 5 ]
Sing Heav'nlv Muse,that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sign Hill [ 10 ]
Delight thee more, and Siloa 's Brook that flow'd
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonfan-Mniint, whilfiLJtpursues [ 15 ]
<^TKihgs unattempted yet in Proseofc Rhime.
And chiefly Thou u Spirit~tfiaT3ost prefer
Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread [ 20 ]
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumin, what is low raise, and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence, [ 25 ]
Ajrtdyjustifie the wayes of God to men)
cA+
Paradise Lost
BOOK1
THE ARGUMENT
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This first Book proposes, first in brief, the whole Subject,
Mansdisobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradisewherein
he was plac't: Then touches the prime cause of his fall the
Serpent, or rather Satan in the Serpent; who revolting from
God, and drawing to his side many Legions of Angels, was by
thecommand of God driven out of Heaven with all his Crew
intolhegre$tDeep. WhicfTactiofipastoverTEfiePoem
hasts into the midst of things, presenting Satan with his
Angels now fallen into Hell, describ'd here, not in the Center
(for Heaven and Earth may be suppos'd as yet not made,
certainly not yet accurst) but in a place of utter darkness,
fitliest call'd Chaos: Here Satan with his Angels lying on the
burning Lake, thunder-struck and astonisht, after a certain
space recovers, as from confusion, calls up him who next in
Order and Dignity lay by him; they confer ofthir miserable
y
Say first, for Heav'n hides nothing from thy view
Nor the deep Tract of Hell, say first wturtcause
MoVd-pur Grand Pargnts in that happy State,
Favour'd of Heav'n soJughl^JplalToff [ 30 ]
From thir Creator, and transgress his Will
Forone restraint; Lords of the Woridbesides?
Whofirst seduc'd them to that foul revolt?
th' infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile
Stird up with Envy and Revenge, deceiv'd [ 35 ]
The Mother of Mankind, what time hisjffide
Had cast him outfrom Heav'n, with all his Host
Of Rebel Angels, fry whose aid asmring
To set himself in Glory above his Peers,
He trusted to have equal'd the most High, [ 40 ]
If he oppos'd; and with ambitious aim
Against the Throne and Monarchypf God
Rais'd impious Wai^inJJe^rLand Battel proud
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurld headlong flaming from th' V.fherpa] Skip [ 45 ]
With hideous mine and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire,
Who durst defie th' Omnipotent to Arms.
Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night [ 50 ]
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe
Confounded though immortal: But his doom
Reserv'd him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain [ 55 ]
Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes
That witness'd huge affliction and dismay
Mixt with obdurate pride and stedfast hate:
At once as far as Angels kenn he views
The dismal Situation waste and wilde, [ 60 ]
A Dungeon horrible, on all sides round
As one great Furnace flam'd, yet from those flames
n^Jo light, but rather darkness visifcig
Serv'd onely to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace [ 65 ]
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed
With ever-burning Sulphur unconsum'd:
Such place Eternal Justice had prepar'd [70]
For those rebellious, here thir Prison ordain'd
In utter darkness, and thir portion set
As far remov'd from God and light of Heav'n
As from the Center thrice to th' utmost Pole.
O how unlike thejplace from whence they fell! [ 75 ]
There the companions of his fall, o'rewhelm'd
With Floods and Whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
He soon discerns, and weltring by his side
One next himself in power, and next in crime,
Long after known in Palestine, and nam'd [ 80 ]
Beelzebub. To whom th' Arch-Enemy,
And thence in Heav'n call'd Satan, with bold words
Breaking the horrid silence thus began.
If thou beest he; But O how fall'n! how chahg'd
From him, who in the happj^eahnsjofLight [ 85 ]
Cloth'd with transcendent brightness didst out-shine
Myriads though bright: If he Whom mutual league,
Uiuted"thoughts arCTcouiisels, equal hope—And hazard in the Glorious Enterprize,
Joynd with me once, now misery hath joynd [ 90 ]
In equal ruin: into what Pit thou seest
From what highth fall'nr so much thp pfr^ngog-p^v'H
He with his Thunder: and till then who knew
The force of those dire Arms? yet not for those,
Nor what the Potent Victor in his rage [ 95 ]
Can else inflict, do I repent or change,
Though chang'd in outward lustre; that fixt mind
And high disdain, from sence of injur'd merit,
That with the mightiest rais'd me to contend,
And to the fierce contention brought along [ 100 ]
Innumerable force of Spirits arm'd
That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring,
His utmostpower with adverse power oppos'd
lubiousfBattet^n the Plains of Heav'n,
And'ShooK his "throne. What though thp Kp^ }->p lost? [
105]
All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,
And study of revenge, munortaThate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And whatis else not to be overcome?
That Glory never shall his wrath or might [ 110 ]
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deiiie his power,
Who from the terrour of this Arm so late
Doubted his Empire, that were low indeed,
That were an ignominy and shame beneath [ 115 ]
This downfall; since by Fate the strength of Gods
And this Empyreal substance cannot fail,
Since through experience of this great event
In Arms not worse, in foresight much advanc't,
We may with more success frdhoge resolve [ 120 ]
To wage b3£fgpfce ofgufle^temal Warr^
Irreconcileable, to ottrgranci ^oe,
Who now triumphs, and in th' excess of joy
Sole reigning holds th^ Tyrannypf Heav'n.
y*S*WBSV
So spake th' Apostate Angel, though in pain, [ 125 ], )
Vaunting aloud, but rackt with deep despare:
And him thus answer'd soon his bold Compeer.
O Prince, O Chief of many Throned Powers,
That led th' imbattelld Seraphim to Warr
Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds [ 130 ]
Fearless, endanger'd Heav'ns perpetual King;
And put to proof his high Supremacy,
Whether upheld by strength, or Chance, or Fate,
Too well I see and rue the dire event,
That with sad overthrow and foul defeat [ 135 ]
Hath lost us Heav'n, and all this mighty Host
In horrible destruction laid thus low,
As far as Gods and Heav'nly Essences
Can perish:for the mind and spirit remain^
Invincible, and vigour soon returns, [ 140 ]
Though all our Glory extinct, and happy state
Here swallow'd up in endless misery.
But what if he our Conquerour, (whom I now
Of force believe Almighty, since no less
Then such could hav orepow'rd such force as ours) [ 145
Have left us this outsoirirand strength intire
Strongly to suffer and support our pains, ,^
That we may so suffice his vengeful ire, i
Or do him mightier service as his thralls
By right of Warr, what e're his business be [ 150 ]
Here in the heart of Hell to work in Fire,
Or do his Errands in the gloomy Deep;
What can it then avail though yet we feel
Strength undiminisht, or eternal being
To undergo eternal punishment? [ 155 ]
v^n Whereto with speedy words th' Arch-fiend reply'd.
Fall'n Cherube, to be weak is miserable
Doing or Suffering: but of this be sure,
To_dooughtgoodnever-wfllbe our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight, [ 160 ]
As being the contrary to his high will
Whomjyp resist If theqhis Providence
/Outof our evil seek to brmg^orth good,
H)ur laboufHgwstJae^ojperv^ that end,
And out of good stillto find means nf pvil; [ 165 ]
Which oft times may~succeed, so as perhaps
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb
His inmost counsels from thir destind aim.
But see the angry Victor hath recall'd
His Ministers of vengeance and pursuit [ 170 ]
Back to the Gates of Heav'n: The Sulphurous Hail
Shot after us in storm, oreblown hath laid
The fiery Surge, that from the Precipice
Of Heav'n receiv'd us falling, and the Thunder,
Wing'd with red Lightning and impetuous rage, [ 175 ]
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep.
Let us not slip th' occasion, whether scorn,
Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe.
/^K3eest thou yon dreary Plain, forlorn and wilde, [ 180 ]
' ihe seat of desolation, voyd of light,
Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend
From off the tossing of these fiery waves,
There rest, if any rest can harbour there, [ 185 ]
And reassembling our afflicted Powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our Enemy, our own loss how repair,
How overcome this dire Calamity,
What reinforcement we may gain from Hope, [ 190 ]
If not what resolution from despare.
Thus Satan talking to his neerest Mate
With Head up-lif t above the wave, and Eyes
That sparkling blaz'd, his other Parts besides
Prone on the Flood, extended long and large [ 195 ]
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the Fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr'd on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the Den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that Sea-beast [ 200 ]
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim th' Ocean stream:
Him haply slumbring on the Norway foam
j^S^Sti
ie Pilot of some small night-founder'd Skiff,
seeming some Island, oft, as Sea-men tell, [ 205 ]
With fixed Anchor in his skaly rind
Moors by his side under the Lee, while Night
Invests the Sea, and wished Morn delayes:
4-
So stretcht out huge in length theArch-fiend lay
Chain'd on the burning Lake, nor ever thence [ 210 ]
Had ris'n or heav'd his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought [ 215 ]
Evil to others, and enrag'd might see
How all his malice serv'd but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace and mercy shewn
On Man by him seduc't, but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath and vengeance pour'd. [ 220 ]
Forthwith upright he rears from off the Pool
His mighty Stature; on each hand the flames
Drivn backward slope thir pointing spires, and rowld
In billows, leave i'th' midst,a horrid Vale.
Then with expanded wings he stears his flight [ 225 ]
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 such appear'd in hue, as when the force [ 230 ]
Of subterranean wind transports a Hill
Tom from Pelorus, or the shatter'd side
Of thundring ;£fafl,whose combustible
And fewel'd entrals thence conceiving Fire,
Sublim'd with Mineral fury, aid the Winds, [ 235 ]
And leave a singed bottom all involv'd
With stench and smoak: Such resting found the sole
Of unblest feet. Him followed his next Mate,
Both glorying to have scap't the Stygian flood
As Gods, and by thir own recover'd strength, [ 240 ]
Not by the sufferance of supernal Power.
Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,
Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat
That we must change for Heav'n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he [ 245 ]
Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right: fardest from him is best
Whom reason hath equald, force hath made supream
Above his equals. Farewel happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail [ 250 ]
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
ArpindjtKjyse^reRaH^
ie mind is its own place, and in it sel
lake a Heav'n erf HgLa Hril of Hqay'J
What matter wherej if I be st
And what I should be, all but less then he
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Ffere atjeast
We shall be/freej th' Almighty hath not built
Herefbr his envy, will not drive us henc [ 260 ]e:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
Tojgign4s-^rffTambition thougFTmsHell:
Better to rfipi in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.
li wherefore let We then our faifhfefTfriends.
th' associates and copartners of our loss [ 265 ]
^/K^5L&*J^
Lye thus astonisht on th' oblivious Pool,
And call them not to share with us their part
In this unhappy Mansion, or once more
With rallied Arms to try what may be yet
Regaind in Heav'n, or what more lost in Hell? [ 270 ]
So Satan spake, and him Beelzebub
Thus answer'd. Leader of those Armies bright,
Which but th* Omnipotent none could have foyld,
If once they hear that voyce, thir liveliest pledge
Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft [ 275 ]
In worst extreams, and on the perilous edge
Of battel when it rag'd, in alTassaults
Thir surest signal, they will soon resume
New courage and revive, though now they lye
Groveling and prostrate on yon Lake of Fire, [ 280 ]
As we erewhile, astounded and amaz'd,
No wonder, fall'n such a pernicious highth.
He scarce had ceas't when the superiour Fiend
Was moving toward the shoar; his ponderous shield
Ethereal temper, massy, large and round, [ 285 ]
Behind him cast; the 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 Fesolef
Or in Valdarno. to descry new Lands, [ 290 ]
Rivers or Mountains in her spotty Globe.
His Spear, to equal which the tallest Pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the Mast
Of some great Ammiral, were but a wand,
He walkt with to support uneasie steps [ 295 ]
Over the burning Marie, not like those steps
On Heavens Azure, and the torrid Clime
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with Fire;
Nathless he so endur'd, till on the Beach
Of that inflamed Sea, he stood and call'd [ 300 ]
His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans't
Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks
In Vallombrosa. where th' Etrurian shades
High overarch't imbowr; or scatterd sedge
Afloat, when with fierce Winds Orion arm'd [ 305 ]
Hath vext the Red-Sea Coast, whose waves orethrew
Busiris and his Memphian Chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursu'd
The Sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore thir floating Carkases [ 310 ]
And broken Chariot Wheels, so thick bestrown
Abject and lost lay these, covering die Flood,
Under amazement of thir hideous change.
He call'd so loud, that all the hollow Deep
Of Hell resounded. Princes, Potentates, [ 315 ]
Warriers, the Flowr of Heav'n, once yours, now lost,
If such astonishment as this can sieze
Eternal spirits; or have ye chos'n this place
After the toyl of Battel to repose
Your wearied vertue, for the ease you find [ 320 ]
To slumber here, as in the Vales of Heav'n?
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn
To adore the Conquerour? who now beholds
Cherube and Seraph rowling in the Flood
With scatter'd Arms and Ensigns, till anon [ 325 ]
His swift pursuers from Heav'n Gates discern
th' advantage, and descending tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked Thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this Gulfe.
Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n. [ 330 ]
~ )
They heard, and were abasht, and up they sprung
Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch
On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread,
Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake.
Nor did they not perceave the evil plight [ 335 ]
In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel; -•
Yet to thir Generals Voyce they soon obeyd
Innumerable. As when the potent Rod
Of Amrams Son in Egypts evill day
Wav'd round the Coast, up call'd a pitchy cloud [ 340 ]
Of Locusts, warping on the Eastern Wind,
That ore the Realm of impious Pharaoh hung
Like Night, and darken'd all the Land of Nile:
So numberless were those bad Angels seen
Hovering on wing under the Cope of Hell [ 345 ]
'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding Fires;
Till, as a signal giv'n, th' uplifted Spear
Of thir great Sultan waving to direct
Thir course, in even ballance down they light
On the firm brimstone, and fill all the Plain; [ 350 ]
A multitude, like which the populous North
Pour'd never from her frozen loyns, to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous Sons
Came like a Deluge on the South, and spread
Beneath Gibralter to the Lybian sands. [ 355 ]
Forthwith from every Squadron and each Band
The Heads and Leaders thither hast where stood
Thir great Commander; Godlike shapes and forms
Excelling human, Princely Dignities,
And Powers that earst in Heaven sat on Thrones; [ 360 ]
Though of thir Names in heav'nly Records now
Be no memorial blotted out and ras'd
By thir Rebellion, from the Books of Life,
Nor had they yet among the Sons of Eve
Got them new Names, till wandring ore the Earth, [ 365 ]
Through Gods high sufferance for the tryal of man,
By falsities and lyes the greatest part
Of Mahkind they corrupted to forsake
God thir Creator, and th' invisible
Glory of him that made them, to transform [ 370 ]
Oft to the Image of a Brute, adorn'd
With gay Religions full of Pomp and Gold,
And Devils to adore for Deities:
^^^k.
Then were they known to men by various Names,
And various Idols through the Heathen World. [ 375 ]
Say, Muse, thir Names then known, who first, who last,
Rous'd from the slumber, on that fiery Couch,
At thir great Emperors call, as next in worth
Came singly where he stood on the bare strand,
While the promiscuous croud stood yet aloof? [ 380 ]
The chief were those who from the Pit of Hell
Roaming to seek thir prey on earth, durst fix
Thir Seats long after next the Seat of God,
Thir Altars by his Altar, Gods ador'd
Among the Nations round, and durst abide [ 385 ]
Jehovah thundring out of Sion, thron'd
Between the Cherubim; yea, often plac'd
Within his Sanctuary it self thir Shrines,
Abominations; and with cursed things
His holy Rites, and solemn Feasts profan'd, [ 390 ]
And with thir darkness durst affront his light.
First Moloch, horrid King besmear'd with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents tears,
Though for the noyse of Drums and Timbrels loud
Thir childrens cries unheard, that past through fire [ 395 ]
To his grim Idol. Him the Ammonite
Worshipt in Rabba and her watry Plain,
In Argob and in Basan, to the stream
Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such
Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart [ 400 ]
Of Solomon he led by fraud to build
His Temple right against the Temple of God
On that opprobrious Hill, and made his Grove
The pleasant Vally of Hinnom, Tophet thence
And black Gehenna call'd, the Type of Hell. [ 405 ]
Next Chemos, th obscene dread of Moabs Sons,
(^ From Aroar to Nebo, and the wild
Of Southmost Abarim; in Hesebon
And Horonaim, Seons Realm, beyond
The flowry Dale of Sibma clad with Vines, [ 410 ]
And Eleale to th' Asphaltick Pool.
Peor his other Name, when he entic'd
Israel in Sittim on thir march from Nile
To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe.
Yet thence his lustful Orgies he enlarg'd [ 415 ]
Even to that Hill of scandal, by the Grove
Of Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate;
Till good Josiah drove them thence to Hell.
With these came they, who from the bordring flood
Of old Euphrates to the Brook that parts [ 420 ]
Egypt from Syrian ground, had general Names
Of Baalim and Ashtaroth, those male,
These Feminine. For Spirits when they please
Can either Sex assume, or both; so soft
And uncompounded is thir Essence pure, [ 425 ]
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, [ 430 ]
rAndFor
works
thoseof
thelove
Raceorofenmity
Israel oftfulfill.
forsook
Thir living strength, and unfrequented left
His righteous Altar, bowing lowly down
To bestial Gods; for which thir heads as low [ 435 ]
Bow'd down in Battel, sunk before the Spear
Of despicable foes. With these in troop
Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians call'd
Astarte, Queen of Heav'n, with crescent Horns;
To whose bright Image nightly by the Moon [ 440 ]
Sidonian Virgins paid thir Vows and Songs,
In Sion also not unsung, where stood
Her Temple on th' offensive Mountain, built
By that uxorious King, whose heart though large,
Beguil'd by fair Idolatresses, fell [ 445 ]
To Idols foul. Thammuz came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allur'd
The Syrian Damsels to lament his fate
In amorous dittyes all a Summers day,
While smooth Adonis from his native Rock [ 450 ]
Ran purple to the Sea, suppos'd with blood
Of Thammuz yearly wounded: the Love-tale
Infected Sions daughters with like heat,
Whose wanton passions in the sacred Porch
Ezekiel saw, when by the Vision led [ 455 ]
His eye survay'd the dark Idolatries
Of alienated Judah. Next came one
Who mourn'd in earnest, when the Captive Ark
Maim'd his brute Image, head and hands lopt off
In his own Temple, on the grunsel edge, [ 460 ]
Where he fell flat, and sham'd his Worshipers:
Dagon his Name, Sea Monster, upward Man
And downward Fish: yet had his Temple high
Rear'd in Azotus, dreaded through the Coast
Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon [ 465 ]
And Accaron and Gaza's frontier bounds.
Him follow'd Rimmon, whose delightful Seat
Was fair Damascus, on the fertil Banks
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams.
He also against the house of God was bold: [ 470 ]
A Leper once he lost and gain'd a King,
Ahaz his sottish Conquerour, whom he drew
Gods Altar to disparage and displace
For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn
His odious off'rings, and adore the Gods [ 475 ]
Whom he had vanquisht. After these appear'd
A crew who under Names of old Renown,
Osiris, IsiSfOrus and their Train
With monstrous shapes and sorceries abus'd
Fanatic Egypt and her Priests, to seek [ 480 ]
Thir wandring Gods disguis'd in brutish forms
Rather then human. Nor did Israel scape
th' infection when thir borrow'd Gold compos'd
The Calf in Oreb: and the Rebel King
Doubl'd that sin in Bethel and in Dan, [ 485 ]
Lik'ning his Maker to the Grazed Ox,
Jehovah, who in one Night when he pass'd
From Egypt marching, equal'd with one stroke
Both her first born arid all her bleating Gods.
Belial came last, then whom a Spirit more lewd [ 490 ]
Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love
Vice for it self: To him.no Temple stood
Or Altar smoak'd; yet who more oft then hee
In Temples and at Altars, when the Priest
Turns Atheist, as did Ely's Sons, who fill'd [ 495 ]
With lust and violence the house of God.
In Courts and Palaces he also Reigns
And in luxurious Cities, where the noyse
Of riot ascends above thir loftiest Towrs,
And injury and outrage: And when Night [ 500]
Darkens the Streets, then wander forth the Sons
Of Belial flown with insolence and wine.
Witness the Streets of Sodom, and that night
In Gibeah, when the hospitable door
Expos'd a Matron to avoid worse rape. [ 505 ]
These were the prime in order and in might;
The rest were long to tell, though far renown'd,
th' Ionian Gods, of Javans Issue held
Gods, yet confest later then Heav'n and Earth
Thir boasted Parents: Titan Heav'ns first born [ 510 ]
With his enormous brood, and birthright seis'd
By younger Saturn, he from mightier Jove
His own and Rhea's Son like measure found;
So Jove usurping reign'd: these first in Greet
And Ida known, thence on the Snowy top [ 515 ]
Of cold Olympus rul'd the middle Air
Thir highest Heav'n; or on the Delphian Cliff,
Or in Dodona, and through all the bounds
Of Doric Land; or who with Saturn old
Fled over Adria to th' Hesperian Fields, 1520 }
And ore the Celtic roam'd the utmost Isles.
All these and more came flocking; but with looks
Down cast and damp, yet such wherein appear'd
Obscure some glimps of joy, to have found thirxhief
in despair,
to have
found
themselves
not lost [ 525 ]
'/Not
In loss
it self; which
on his
count
nance cast
Like doubtful hue: but he his wonted pride
Soon recollecting, with high words, that bore
Semblance of worth, not substance, gently rais'd
Thir fahting courage, and dispel'd thir fears. [ 530 ]
Then strait commands that at the warlike sound
Of Trumpets loud and Clarions be upreard
His mighty Standard; that proud honour claim'd
Azazel as his right, a Cherube tall:
Who forthwith from the glittering Staffiinfurld
th* Imperial Ensign, which full high advanc't [ 535 ]
Shon like a Meteor streaming to the Wind
With Gemms and Golden lustre rich imblaz'd,
Seraphic arms and Trophies: all the while
Sonorous mettal blowing Martial sounds: [ 540 ]
At which the universal Host upsent
A shout that tore Hells Concave, and beyond
Frighted the Reign of Chaos and old Nigjit.
All in a moment through the gloom were seen
Ten thousand Bannersrisg into the Air [ 545 ]
With Orient Colours waving: with them rose
A Forest huge of Spears: and thronging Helms
Appear'd, and serried shields in thick array
Of depth immeasurable: Anon they move
In perfect Phalanx to the Dorian mood [ 550 ]
Of Flutes and soft Recorders; such as rais'd
To hight of noblest temper Hero's old
/•^•ftv
Arming to Battel, and in stead of rage
Deliberate valour breath'd, firm and unmov'd
With dread of death to flight or foul retreat, [ 555 ]
Nor wanting power to mitigate and swage
With solemn touches, troubl'd thoughts, and chase
Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain
From mortal or immortal minds. Thus they
Breathing united force with fixed thought [ 560 ].
Mov'd on in silence to soft Pipes that charm'd
Thir painful steps o're the burnt soyle; and now
Advanc't in view, they stand, a horrid Front
Of dreadful length and dazling Arms, in guise
Of Warriers old with order'd Spear and Shield, [ 565 ]
Awaiting what command thir mighty Chief
Had to impose: He through the armed Files
Darts his experienc't eye, and soon traverse
The whole Battalion views, thir order due,
Thir visages and stature as of Gods, [ 570 ]
Thir number last he summs. And now his heart
Distends with pride, and hardning in his strength
Glories: For never since created man,
Met such imbodied force, as nam'd with these
Could merit more then that small infantry [ 575 ]
Warr'd on by Cranes: though all the Giant brood
Of Phlegra with th' Heroic Race were joyn'd
That fought at Theb's and Ilium, on each side
~ \
Mixt with auxiliar Gods; and what resounds
In Fable or Romance of Uthers Son [ 580 ]
Begirt with British and Armoric Knights;
And all who since, Baptiz'd or Infidel
sjousted in Aspramont or Montalban,
Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond,
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore [ 585 ]
When Charlemain with all his Peerage fell
By Fontarabbia. Thus far these beyond
Compare of mortal prowess, yet observ'd
Thir dread commander: he above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent [ 590 ]
Stood like a Towr; his form had yet not lost
AU her Original brightness, nor appear'd
Less then Arch Angel ruind, and th' excess
Of Glory obscur'd: As when the Sun new ris'n Looks through the Horizontal misty Air [ 595 ]
Shorn of his Beams, or from behind the Moon
In dim Eclips disastrous twilight sheds
On half the Nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes Monarchs. Dark'n'd so, yet shon
Above them all th' Arch Angel: buthjsiace [ 600 ]
Deep scars of Thunder had intrencht, and care
Sat on his faded cheek, but under Browes
Of dauntless courage, and considerate-Pride
Waiting revenge: cruel his eye, but cast
Signs of remorse ana passion to behold [ 605 ]
The fellows of his crime, the followers
(Far other once beheld in bliss) condeinn'd
For ever now to have thir lot in pain,
Millinnfinf Spirits for his fault amerc't
Of Heav'nTand from Eternal SpIendorgJlung [ 610 ]
For his revolt, yet faithfull how they stood,
Thir Glory witherd. As when Heavens Fire
Hath scath'd the Forrest Oaks, or Mountain Pines,
With singed top thir stately growth though bare
Stands on the blasted Heath. He now prepar'd [ 615 ]
To speak; whereat thir doubl'd Ranks they bend
From wing to wing, and half enclose him round
With all his Peers: attention held them mute.
Thrice he assayd, and thrice in spight of scorn,
Tears such as Angels weep, burst forth: at last [ 620 ]
Words interwove with sighs found out thir way.
O Myriads of immortal Spirits, O Powers
Matchless, but with th' Almighty, and that strife
Was not inglorious, though th' event was dire,
As this place testifies, and this dire change [ 625 ]
Hateful to utter: but what power of mind
Foreseeing or presaging, from the Depth
Of knowledge past or present, could have fear'd,
How such united force of Gods, how such
As stood like these, could ever know repulse? [ 630 ]
For who can yet beleeve, though after loss,
That all these puissant Legions, whose exile
Hath_emptied Heav'n> shall fail to re-agcend
Self-rais'd, and repossess thir native seat?
For mee be witness all the Host of Heav'n, [ 635 ]
If counsels different, or danger shun'd
By me, have lost our hopes. But he who reigns
Monarch in Heav'n, till then as one secure
Sat on his Throne, upheld by old repute,
Consent or custome, and his Regal State [ 640 ]
Put forth at full, but still his_strength conceal'd,
Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fallHenceforth his might we know, and know our own
So as not either to provoke, or dread
New warr, provok't; our better part remains [ 645 ]
To workinclose design,by fraudor guile
What force^effected not: that heno less
At length from us may find, who overcomes
By force, hath overcom^buthalf his foe.
Space may produce new Worlds; whereof so rife [ 650 ]
There went a f^elnT=IeavJTrthat he ere long"
Intejid^
A gPnprgHrm, whom hisjchoire-regprd
Should favour equal to the Sons of Heaven:
Our first eruption, thither or elsewhere: [ 655 ]
For this Infernal Pit shall never hold
Caelestial Spirits in Bondage nor th' Abyss
Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts
Full Counsel must mature: Peace is despaird, [ 660 ]
For who can think Submission? Wanjhen, Warr
Open or understood must be resolved.
ie spake: and to confirm his words, out-flew
Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs
Of mighty Cherubim; the sudden blaze [ 665 ]
Far round illumin'd hell: highly they rag'd
Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arms
Clash'd on thir sounding Shields the din of war,
Hurling defiance toward the vault of Heav'n.
There stood a Hill not far whose griesly top [ 670 ]
Belch'd fire and rowling smoak; the rest entire
Shon with a glossie scurff, undoubted sign
That in his womb was hid metallic Ore,
The work of Sulphur. Thither wing'd with speed
A numerous Brigad hasten'd. As when Bands [ 675 ]
Of Pioners with Spade and Pickax arm'd
Forerun the Royal Camp, to trench a Field,
Or cast a Rampart. Mammon led them on,
Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell
From heav'n, for ev'n in heav'n his looks and thoughts [
680]
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of Heav'nss pavement, trod'n Gold,
Then aught divine or holy else enjoy'd
In vision beatific: by him first
Men also, and by his suggestion taught, [ 685 ]
Ransack'd the Center, and with impious hands
Rifl'd the bowels of thir mother Earth
For Treasures better hid. Soon had his crew
Op'nd into the Hill a spacious wound
And dig'd out ribs of Gold. Let none admire [ 690 ]
That riches grow in Hell; that soyle may best
Deserve the precious bane. And here let those
Who boast in mortal things, and wond'ring tell
Of Babel and the works of Memphian Kings
Learn how thir greatest Monuments of Fame, [ 695 ]
And Strength and Art are easily out-done
By Spirits reprobate, and in an hour
What in an age they with incessant toyle
And hands innumerable scarce perform.
Nigh on the Plain in many cells prepar'd, [ 700 ]
That underneath had veins of liquid fire
Sluc'd from the Lake, a second multitude
With wondrous Art found out the massie Ore,
Severing each kind, and scum'd the Bullion dross:
A third as soon had form'd within the ground [ 705 ]
A various mould, and from the boyling cells
By strange conveyance fill'd each hollow nook,
As in an Organ from one blast of wind
To many a row of Pipes the sound-board breaths.
Anon out of the earth a Fabrick huge [ 710 ]
Rose like an Exhalation, with the sound
Of Dulcet Symphonies and voices sweet,
Built like a Temple, where Pilasters round
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid
With Golden Architrave; nor did there want [ 715 ]
Cornice or Freeze, with bossy Sculptures grav'n,
The Roof was fretted Gold. Not Babilon,
Nor great Alcairo such magnificence
Equal'd in all thir glories, to inshrine
Belus or Serapis thir Gods, or seat [ 720 ]
Thir Kings, when JEgypt with Assyria strove
In wealth and luxurie. th' ascending pile
Stood fixt her stately highth, and strait the dores
Op'ning thir brazen foulds discover wide
Within, her ample spaces, o're the smooth [ 725 ]
And level pavement: from the arched roof
Pendant by suttle Magic many a row
Of Starry Lamps and blazing Cressets fed
With Naphtha and Asphaltus yeilded light
As from a sky. The hasty multitude [ 730 ]
Admiring enter'd, and the work some praise
And some the Architect: his hand was known
In Heav'n by many a Towred structure high,
Where Scepter'd Angels held thir residence,
And sat as Princes, whom the supreme King [ 735 ]
Exalted to such power, and gave to rule,
Each in his Hierarchie, the Orders bright.
Nor was his name unheard or unador'd
In ancient Greece; and in Ausonian land
Men call'd him Mulciber: and how he fell [ 740 ]
From Heav'n, they fabl'd, thrnwrj fry anprry-fo7>/>
Sheer o're the Chrystal Battlements: from Morn
To Noon he fell, from Noon to dewy Eve,
A Summers day; and with the setting Sun
Dropt from the Zenith like a falling Star, [ 745 ]
On Lemnos th' JEgean lie; thus they relate,
Erring; for he with this rebellious rout
Fell long before; nor aught avail'd him now
To have built in Heav'n high Towrs; nor did he scape
By all his Engins, but was headlong sent [ 750 ]
With his industrious crew to build in hell.
Mean while the winged Haralds by command
Of Sovran power, with awful Ceremony
And Trumpets sound throughout the Host proclaim
A solemn Councel forthwith to be held [ 755 ]
At Panddsmonium the high Capital
Of Satan and his Peers: thir summons call'd
From every Band and squared Regiment
By place or choice the worthiest; they anon
With hunderds and with thousands trooping came [ 760 ]
Attended: all access was throng'd,.the Gates
And Porches wide, but chief the spacious Hall
(Though like a cover'd field, where Champions bold
Wont ride in arm'd, and at the Soldans chair
Defi'd the best of Paynim chivalry [ 765 ]
To mortal combat or carreerwith Lance)
Thick swarm'd, both on the ground and in the air,
Brusht with the hiss of russling wings. As Bees
In spring time, when the Sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth thir populous youth about the Hive [ 770 ]
In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers
Flie to and fro, or on the smoothed Plank,
The suburb of thir Straw-built Cittadel,
New rub'd with Baum, expatiate and confer
Thir State affairs. So thick the aerie crowd [ 775 ]
Swarm'd and were straitn'd; till the Signal giv'n.
Behold a wonder! they but now who seemd
In bigness to surpass Earths Giant Sons
Now less then smallest Dwarfs, in narrow room
Throng numberless, like that-Pigmean Race [ 780 ]
Beyond the Indian Mount, or Faerie Elves,
Whose midnight Revels, by a Forrest side
Or Fountain some belated Peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while over-head the Mqon .
Sits Arbitress, and neerer to the Earth [ 785 ]
Wheels her pale course, they on thir mirth and dance
Intent, with jocond Music charm his ear;
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.
Thus incorporeal Spirits to smallest forms
Reduc'd thir shapes immense, and were at large, [ 790 ]
Though without number still amidst the Hall
Of that infernal Court. But far within
And in thir own dimensions like themselves
The great Seraphic Lords and Cherubim
In close recess and secretaonclave sat [ 795 ]
A thousand Demy-Gods on golden seat's,
Frequent and full. After short silence then
And summons read, the great consult began.
.y*sm%.
The End of the First Book.
A CRITIC AT LARGE
RETURN TO PARADI5E
■j^SP
l ^y
The enduring relevance of John Milton.
BY JONATHAN R05EN
Sometime
in 1638JohnMih;on
pnlilpn Oalilei
in Florence. Thevisited
great
astronomer was old and blind and under
house arrest, confined by order of the In
quisition, which had forced him to recant
his belief that the earth revolves around
the sun, as formulated in his "Dialogue
/0Hb\
Concerning the Two Chief World Sys
tems." Milton was thirty years old—his
own blindness7his^own arrest, and his
own cosmological epic, "Paradise Lost,"
all lay before him. But the encounter left
a deep imprint on him. It crept into Taradise Lost," where Satan's shield looks like
the moon seen through Galileo's tele
scope, and in Milton's great defense of
free speech, "Areopagitica," Milton recalls
his visit to Galileo and warns that En
gland will buckle under inquisitorial forces
if it bows to censorship, "an undeserved
thraldom upon learning."
Beyond the sheer pleasure of picturing
the encounter—it's like those comic-book
specials in which Superman meets Bat
man—there's something strange about
imagining these two figures inhabiting
the same age. Though Milton was the
much younger man, in some ways his
world system seems curiously older than
the astronomer's empirical universe. Mil
ton depicted the earth hanging fixed from
a golden chain, and when he contem
plated the heavens he saw God enthroned
and angels warring. The sense of the new
and the old colliding forms part of Mil
ton's complex aura. The best-known por
trait of his mature years makes Milton
that he is really not all that short, despite
what his enemies say. Though he coined
the name "Pandemonium"—"all the
demons"—for the palace'that Satan and
his fallen crew build in Hell, he also coined
the word "self-esteem," as contemporary
a concept as there is and one that gov
erned much of Milton's life.
This year is the four-hundredth anni
versary nf Mil ton's hrrtftranrr there* are a
host of Milton books to mark the occa
sion: the Modem Library has brought out
"The Complete Poetry and Essential
Prose," edited by William Kerrigan, John
Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon, and
not long ago Oxford University Press
published an edition of "Paradise Lost"
introduced by Philip Pullman, whose
young-adult trilogy "His DarkMaterials"
draws its title and much of its mythic enc-efgy from "Paradise Lost." (Titles involv
ing sight and blindness often come from
Milton: "LookHomeward, Angel,""Eyeless in Gaza," "Darkness at Noon," "Dark
ness Visible.") There is a new edition of
lEaradise Lost" edited by the scholar Bar
bara Lewalski, whose monumental biog
raphy of the poet came out a few years
ago, and Oxford is launching an elevenvolume series of all Milton's works, edited
by Thomas Corns and Gordon Camp
bell. Corns and Campbell are also jointly
publishing a biography of Milton in time
for the birthday, later this year, and Corns
is editing 'The Milton Encyclopedia," for
Yale University Press. A new critical study
by the Princeton scholar Nigel Smith
look like the dyspeptic brother nf the, .hear* the prnvnrafivp fiflp ""fa TVfjfonJBf*-
man on the Quaker Oats box, but he is^Pter Than Shakespeare?," and there has
far moreour contemporary than Shake- been a recent spate of books with titles
speare. who died wReTTTVffltom^^seven. like "Why MiltonMatters" and "Milton
in Popular Culture, pointing out Mil
Nobody would ever wonder whei
ton was really the author of his own work ton's influence on everyone from Mal
Though "Paradise Lost7' is a dilation on a colm X, who read "Paradise Lost" in
moment in Genesis, it contains passages prison md13entifred with Satan, lu Helen
sqrjersonal that you cannot reajgjbar with- Keller, who created theJSimMilton So
out knowing that the author was a blind ciety for the Blind. "Milton in Popular
man fallen on "evil days.' tLven in his po
Culture" reminds the reader that in the
litical prose, Milton will pause to tell us movie "Animal House," Donald Suther
72
THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 2, 2008
land's Professor Jennings gives a lecture
on "Paradise Lost," taking a bite of an
apple as he suggests that the Devil has
more fun, before confessing to his unre
sponsive students that even 'Mrs. Milton
found Milton boring," and so does he.
That judgment, alas, still clings to
Milton. Never mind that there were actu
ally three Mrs. Miltons, and that Milton,
who defended divorce and even polyg- «
amy, was a sensuous Puritan, exquisitely
attuned to the "amorous delay" of life in
Eden: Adamand Eve have sexin the gaF
denjkfere theyeat thg.apple. ffiever minrl
that Milton participated in an earthshattering revolution in which he de
fended the killing of a king; that he was a
radical poet who, though he had imagina
tive power to bum, put aside his art for a
decade of political activism. Never mind
that he survived imprisonment, the threat
, of execution and assassination, the plague
| and the Great Fire of London, and, blind
land disillusioned, dictated the greatest
/long poem in the English language.
1608,
in London.
father was9,
a
John
Milton
was bomHis
on December
scrivener, a job that went beyond the
drawing up of legal documents and in
cluded moneylending, which he apparendy did with such success thathis son
did not actually have to y^rfr for aTwinjy
As a boy, Milton was so studious that, he
later recalled, from his twelfiiidsi^
rceh^erdjdljeave myjstudies for my
bed beferellie hour of midnight"—thus
laying the foundation. foFvast erudition
and eventual blindness, Alongside the
usual Latin and Greek, Milton received
instruction in French, Italian, and He
brew, and perhaps even Aramaic and
Sjaaac. His father, who wasTgifted mu
sician known for his psalm arrangements,
also made sure that his son had a thor
ough musical education.
When Milton was sixteen, he started
at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he
excelled at composing Latin verse and
earned the nickname the Lady of Christ's,
because of his delicate looks and chas
tity—though he also later boasted that as
a young man he was seldom without a
sword and could beat many stronger
men at fencing. After seven years at Cam
bridge, Milton retreated to his ^father's
house in the countryside for five more
years of isolated, self-directed study. By
the end of this time, he had produced a
ists after the Games were over. Since to the airport, for example, or the
sidering the long-term use of the site
then, cities have been keen to use the cleanup of some of the roadways lead
was essential. 'We needed a plan th
Olympics to leverage other civic im
ing to the Olympic Green. Bordering could accept other civic, cultural, rec ^
provements, on the premise that if one stretch of congested elevated ring ational, and commercial uses, so th
you're spending billions to refurbish a road, stone walls, like the ones sur
place would become a major dejdn***^
city you should at least invest in build
rounding the old Beijing hutongs, or al
tion," he said. Sasaki envisions t )
ings that have long-term utility. That's leyway neighborhoods, have been Olympic site as becoming ^Sge park,
why the legacy of the 1996 Olympics, erected. But, with not much behind with each of the major buiEngs taking
in Atlanta, isn't any of the athletic them, they are little more than a stage on a public functionJJne Bird's Nest
buildings but a major new park and set—Potemkin hutongs designed to will remain as the nMonal stadium, its
housing for athletes that became new distract visitors from the fact that so capacity reduced^ a more practical
dormitories for Georgia Tech.
many real hutongs are being demolished
thousaj«y the removal of sev
The plan for the 2012 Olympics, in for high-rise construction. In today's eighty
eral tiers oiMk\ the Water Cube will
London, takes this idea a step further. Beijing, forcible eviction is common, lose almytwo-thirds of its seventeen
Although there is one flashy commission and hundreds of thousands of people thousan#seats, the upper tiers to be refor a British architect (an aquatics center, have been displaced to make way for
plac^py multipurpose rooms. "You are
designed by Zaha Hadid, in the form of the Olympics. The brightness of the
tg a city, not a spatial extravaganza
a giant wave), the London Olympics are Olympic halo gives Beijing's relendess
X will be interesting just for sixteen
distinctly short on architectural extrava
expansion a surface sheen, but it's only
lays," Pieprz said.
ganzas. The main stadium, to be de
a distraction from the city's deep
But, whatever the architects feel, it's
signed by a large American firm that has planning problems, such as air
not clear that the Chinese are really that
had a lock on football and baseball stadi
water pollution and overcrowds
interested in long-term uses. The focus
ums for years, will be dull compared to
In general, the Chinese audpGrities is on August, and on confirming before
the Bird's Nest. When I talked to Ricky have been less interested^rsolving the world Beijing's status as a modern,
Burdett; a professor of architecture and these problems than injKeping the global city. However well the buildings
urbanism at the London School of Eco
construction engine gojjgat full throt
are refitted afterward, it's hard to see
nomics, who is an adviser to the London tle. Still, the Olymp^rte did require how the Olympic park will relate to the
Olympics, he told me that London did some planning an^Ki 2002, a compe
rest of the city, beyond being a welcome
not feel the need to prove itself through tition was held ^create a master plan.
piece of green space in an increasingly
It attracted eipnes from ninety-six ar
spectacular works of Olympic architec
sprawling metropolis. The
ture. "We had a big debate over whether chitects aroudra the world, and was won built-up,
success of what China has built for tt/^j
we should build a new stadium at all," by a Bos«i firm, Sasaki Associates.
Olympics will ultimately be measurea
he said. 'We were much more interested Despit«s straight-line connection to not
by how these buildings look during
in how an intervention on this scale the Mbidden City, the Olympic Green the Games but by the kind of change
will affect a city socially and culturally."
ffcome
a district
a forest
that, in
of recent
undistinguished
years, has they bring about in the city. The bil
The British government plans to invest *lie^i
lions of dollars spent on the Olympic
roughly nineteen billion dollars in an
igh-rise apartment buildings and com
site, after all, are only a fraction of the
mercial towers. (The site also includes a money that has been invested in con
Olympic site, in the East End of Lo
don. When the Olympics end, mud^f mundane athletic compound erected struction in Beijing since the Games
the area will become a park, and saKs of for the 1985 Asian Games, and these were awarded to the city, in 2001. The
private development sites aroupTit are leftover structures are all being refur
city, however, has yet to build a public
bished for the Olympics.) Dennis space as inventive as that of post-Olym
expected to enable the governjKnt to re
coup much of its investn^Kt. Burdett Pieprz, the president of Sasaki, who pics Barcelona, or to think of the im
said, "London has alwawbeen poor in was in charge of the scheme, explained pact of the Olympics in terms as so
the east and rich in thmvest. The Lon
to me that the firm struggled for a long phisticated as pre-Olympics London.
don Olympics caqjRalance London." time with the question of how to treat In
both conception and execution, the
Beijing's axis. The Chinese tradition of best of Beijing's Olympic architecture is
aligning important public buildings unimpeachably brilliant. But the devel
Beijing,
ties. FoMul
ev«ntly,
thehas
sleekother
modernity
prioriof created "a huge temptation to put the
also exemplifies traits—the
much oyie construction, there's no stadium right on the axis," he said. "But opment
reckless embrace of die fashionable and
the global, the authoritarian planning
mistaJjjpg the old-fashioned monu- we decided that in the twenty-first cen
mer ist approach behind it. This is tury we were beyond that, and that we heedless of human cost—that are else
Olympics driven by image, not by should, instead, symbolize infinity, and where denaturing, even destroying, the
cnsitive urban planning. It's true that the idea of the people in the center, not fabric of the city. ♦
'there has been a much needed and a building." So Sasaki placed the sta
well-executed expansion of Beijing's dium just to the east of the axis and the
/<*^^V
subway system, but most of the impact Water Cube just to the west; the space NEWYORKER.COM
of the Olympics has been cosmetic— directly on the axis was left open.
More photographs from Beijing, and an
the trees planted along the expressway
audio interview with Paul Goldberger.
Pieprz told me that he felt that con
and Dante further inspired his epic am
bitions. The trip was fraught with Miltonian paradox: at_a time_when his
Puritan sympathies:
'
:.
• ' • ■■■
-
'
«
tions of the human form, and the lan
guorous Mediterranean climate. Re
turning to England the next year, he was
increasingly drawn into the religious
struggles that would erupt openly fn
g f v . :■ . ;■" <
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'/ ■'■"■-■
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■:'"/. '■' .:■"
"t is difficult for a modern reader to
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and religion that Milton inhabited and
that led to those wars. His father had
been disinherited for rejectingrTheTami.atnoJrc raith in favor or_
ism, out, in £,ngiana, wnere Jrienry vlll
had brought about the Protestant Refor.1
r
r.
.
1
•
.
•
r
.
i
purpose of remarrying, the lines between
faith, political conviction, and personal
expediency were particularly thin. By
Milton's time, further schisms had
emerged. With Charles I at its head, An-
toward Puritanism, attracted by its idea
and trumped all institutional hierarchies.
follow this line. He could read the He-1
brew Bible in the original and had ab-1
sorbed aspects of rabbinic culture; in- 1
deed,_his Hebraism helped radicalize his
Milton's Satan is charismatic, but Milton consistently shows his cause to be unjust.
handful of lasting poems, including the
great elegy "Lyridas^-eeeftskuied. by the
Arrwrrnr,™ Arith nf fl^College friend.
"Lycidas," like much of Milton's lon
ger poetry, takes anugyetof actual Baasative—the friend's shipwreck—and blows
it up to allegorical proportions withelab-
y. But it the allusions escape con
temporary readers, and we're never quite
sure why his friend Edward is called Ly
cidas, there is a deep nrusic that sweeps
over the reader like
'^e heart of the poem: "Look homeward
[real * ~—rniBt»r??H>Ii^ nKKTff.C*^
a
For Milton, the rupture of the Civil
the end, the poem manages to enact the Wgxs_ coincided with a more personal
stages of mourning for a body lost at sea, StrifeTln June71b42, he married Mary*
and to achieve a resolution of psalmlike Powell, the daughter of an Oxfordshire
authority and Christian consolation, fused squire who owed Milton money, but just
a few months after the wedding she left
with unexpected emotional immediacy
Milton's house to return to her parents.
Weep no more, woeful shepherds, wee;
Mary was only seventeen (Milton was
no more,
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
thirty^three), ar
Sunk though he be beneath the wat'ry
she was sent away or ran off.. But soon
after her departure—she was absent for
Ir/1638, me year "Lycidas" was pub- three years—Milton wrote a treatise ad
lishea^-Milton—still essentially un
vocating divorce, which, characteristi
known but with a fixed notion of future cally, was both an idealistic crvfor per
greatness—sailed for Europe. It was on sonal liberty and an act of self-justification.
nrfi..T»BiitrorB.TOiiTET^^^^^T^t^BflBTOi«»Ew--:»*i' Wil»UifflJt»ulTr "4-'
Galileo, but he also came into contact a reading of Deuteronomy, but although
THE NEW YOWIER, JUNE 2, 2008
damentalist. 1n(\MA, he publishedrAreo- called "The Tenure of Kings and Mag
pagitica," his defefise^offree speeovde^ istrates" that helped bring Milton to the
daring that truth—which he compares attention of Oliver Cromwell. He was
to the broken body of Osiris, in Egyptian appointed SeeE&Earyjor Foreign Tongues
myth—can never be wholly known on soon afterward.
earth until the Second Coming of the
Milton served the Commonwealth as
Messiah; we therefore must all search for a-.transiator^ polemicist, and all-around
truth in every way we can, which means house intellectual tie claimed that the
not censoring the press. For Milton, the writing of his long pamphlets in defense
archy was restored with Charles Pi's ac
cession to the thronejjn_1660.
During tha^estoratiok, despite a
broad act of amnesty, tWe who had
abetted and defenTfeaTthe killing of
Charles I were hanged, drawn, and quar
tered. Several of Milton's friends and as
sociates suffered this grisly fate, and he
might have as well, had it not been for
retribution.) Though he did continue to ton spent
. ne displays an optimism
that, in its mixture of manliness and
statecraft, sounds like a speech by Teddy
Roosevelt:
[I virtue,
I cannot
praise a fugitive
and cloistered
unexercised
and unbreathed,
thar
never sallies out and sees her adversary, but
\ slinks out of the race where that immortal
garland is to be run for, not without dust and
heat. . . . That which purifies us is trial, and
trial is by what is contrary.
What was for many a time of terrify
ing anarchy—this was, after all, the
world that produced Hobbes's "Le
viathan"—was for Milton a great~religious reckoning. In common with many
radical Protestant groups, he saw the
idea of a relationship to God unmediated
by ecclesiastical authority as a justification
for beheading the titular head of the An
glican Church, Charles I. It was defend
ing the regicide of 1649 in a pamphlet
U. liven then, MilTower "of London
sonnet on his blindness, 'When I con- lolled in retaliation for his scathing atsider how my light is spent"—he laid tacks on those who resisted the Cromaside plans for the grand epic he had long wellian tide,
contemplated in favor of his political -^^_
work, which he saw as religious service. Tt wasinHrhls~dimate thatMrkon began
Milton genuinely thought he was help- J-writing "Paradise Lost." The pbem's
ing to fashion the Kingdom of God on cast of characters—Adam, Eve, SatVn,
earth, and—hard as this has proved for a God, and the Son of God (not the same
later, secular age to understand—he was thihgjfor Milton, as God)—says somesomeone who would rather live there thing arfrmjJvTilrnn's qpeaiag'merary
than write a poem about it. -sl/_ ambition and about hig_r|wiri^ng faith ,
This may also explain why he contiriT*" inqxiliticaljEsnliiHons. Through the pre-1^
ued to serve the state even when Crom- ceding years, Milton had suffered a numwell dissolved Parliament, in 1653, giv- ber of personal disasters: in 1652, his wife
ing way to the autocracy of the Pro- f"Mary died in childbirth, and a son didd-j
tectorate, in which Cromwell assumed the following month. In 1658, his second
virtually kinglike powers. Even after wife, whom he had married two years be- j
Cromwell's death, in 1658, when his son fore, died as well, foEowed a month after
Richard succeeded him, Milton re- / that by their daughter. Furthermore, in
mained loyal to the cause, though with the year of Mary's death Milton's blindincreasing ambivalence. Soon, the Army ness became total, a fact that informs the
removed Richard from power; the mon- tone and texture of "Paradise Lost," as
does the total collapse of his political- 1
theological
hopes.
'
Milton had carried his epic around in
.'■■"■■
' -■
■:
side him for many years, and any number
■' ■■' ■:■
"'i:-['[.-'■:"
of calamities—including the outbreak of
bubonic plague from 1664 to 1665,
tJBKii!:
getting it all down on paper. Its very
completion must have seemed like divine
Providence to Milton. Even while writ
ing it, he believed that he shared a muse
with Moses and King David and that she
visited him nightly in his dreams; he
woke up and dictated his poem in seemexhilaration of the poem s composition,
and the heavy burden of its complex
meanings, contributes to the thrilling
tension of "Paradise Lost."
Milton's burning question, how things
could have gone so wrongltr-humar.
"Ooh, we're sooo impressed."
j-ate the apple and
brought "death into the world, and all
our woe." (It is part of the poem's power
that the reader is implicated in the
Milton is carried back further than Adam
and Eve. Doled out in the course of the
epic, as tales within tales, is the narrative
of Lucifer, the highest in a vast hierarchy
of angels, who grows jealous at the pro
motion of God's son to the position of
Messiah. He organizes a revolt, loses,
and is thrown with his many followers
into Hell. The ecstatic descriptions of
Satan's fall, great fire-breathing phrases
with the sinews of a dragon, exhibit Mil
ton's rhetorical power to the full:
Hurled headlong flaming from /
th'ethereal sky -y
With hideous ruin and combustion
down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms.
To make up for the angelic absence, God
creates earth and Eden and Adam and
cides to conquer it, by cunning, for him
self and his devils.
The fact that the devils inJiP-aradise
TfETfit PtP fflilprl rp-l/nlnftrmaripc rri-irpc t-U*>
THE McLEAN center
position that forces him to deny that he
was even created by God and to tell his
followers. 'We know no timewhen we
:" Besides, Satan is com
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pletely miserable, body and soul, and he
slinks away in the most ignominious
fashion after seducing Eve.
Those who trumpet Satan's glory
often neglect the nobility of his adver
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saries, most memorably a low-ranking
angel who finds Satan disguised in Eden
and touches him'with a spear. Instandy,
Satan springs up in his actual form, since
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angelic touch reveals his true nature.
Satan is horrified to discover that his
own fall has transfigured him so that he
is no longer recognizable as Lucifer; he
stands "abashed" and, contemplating
this junior angeL "felt how awful rood-
WHAT'S THE
BIGIDEA?
goodness (the word, in its seventeenthcentury usage, means "awe-inspiring")
was as powerful an engine of Milton's
work as the glamour of evil.
Of course, the clash of opposing
forces brought out great poetry in Mil
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ton; there is sheer delight in the face-off
between Satan and Gabriel, the warrior
angel charged with keeping Eden safe (a
poem a weird undertowTi
great pathos, for instance,,when Satan
encounters one of his followers disfigured
by the fall:
If thou beest he; but O how fall'n! Hovi
changed
From him, who in the happy realms of
light
Clothed with transcendent brightness
didst outshine
Myriads thou
The loss of place and power is felt in
the most immediate and personal way.
^robably the most famous remark about
flake's judg_ the Devil's
r—^Land since the
Romantics many critics have sought to
save Satan's soul_hy making his evil a
form of Promethean good. But although
Milton's Satan is charismatic—and his
God, as even ardent Miltonists tend to
accept, dull in the extreme-—Milton
adroitiy climbs out of this 1
hole and shows Satan's cause to
threatens:
Beautiful paint
for homeowners
with good taste
and a brain.
If from this hour
Within these hallowed limits thou
chained.
Satan, unimpressed, responds:
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rrom my prevailing arm.
For all the angelic, divine, and infer
nal fireworks, though, it is with man
kind that Milton's sympathies He. We
first meet Adam and Eve holding hands
in the garden, and we see them last
holding hands and striking out together
into a fallen world. They are constantly
HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES
l 'HAJ
I
:
changing, constantiy evolving even be
fore their fall. My favorite of all the re
cent Milton books, Margaret Olofson
in mBWHGtJff^' f^r^ai|
t how cecu
just. Milton supported the g
m's only
against the Creator of the Universe, a real job, bef
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THE NEW YORKER., JUNE 2, 2008
"\0
Foreign Tongues, was as a teacher and am's words to Eve after he has made the uphold the rights of individuals whose
decision to eat the apple and fall with distasteful views might be curtailed dur
tutor.) The author draws on her own ex
her. At this point in the poem, it is un
ing a time of war. Milton s spirit, min
perience as a parent and teacher to em
clear
to
Adam
and
Eve
whether
or
not
gling prophetic zealotry with a sort of
phasize the earthy humbleness that an
chors this loftiest of poems. Milton may she will live, but Adam decides that he pragmatic humanism, is thoroughly
have set out to "justify the ways of God would.rather dieAadth hn thanjiye alone: woven into the fabric of American life.
Like other disappointed Puritans, Mil
to men," but he was a deep defender of " T o l o s e ^ ^
Ad
ton might easily have sailed for the literal
am's
decision
to
eat
the
apple
is
compli
human dignity. God notes tha*-fe.e has
New Worid, but he instead setded for an
cated—he
might
have
interceded
for
made Adam and Eve "sufficienmhave
Eve
had
he
not
fallen,
too—but
there
is
imaginary one that was to exert a strong
stood, though free to fall." Thaimeedoito
was paramount to Milton, who ctepartda no undoing the beauty of his speech, and influence on America s Founding Fa
from mainsfrrar" Pntntnnic»-wHyjp.rt-- the teacher told us, in a voice thick with thers. (In Thcmia^JbffeEs^4kfirary
ing the idea of predestination. Free will, emotion, that he had just recited these cojpjawnpLiLC bouk, Affijj^rf appears
mere llian aiiy udiei poeL) He shares
divinely given, is a glory, but evefypar- words to his own bride:
traits both with the first theocratic Euroent knows the pain of letting go, and it
How can I live without you, how forgo
pean settlers andjwith the'Enlightenis remarkable how much this book about
Thy sweet converse and love so dearly
joined,
"our first parents" is itself about parent- V< \To live again in these wild woods
ing an urge for Biblical fulfillment with
i n ^ ^ t k fl u g E ^ ^
a 11
a c - ^ / forlorn?
an urge for radical new beginnings.
Should God create another Eve, and I
counts, a dreadful parent:
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
Milton ffird shortlyflftercompleting
The concepFoffeedom is also crucial
Would never from my heart.
his
revision of "Paradise Lost/' in 1674,
in the relationship between Adam and
and
was buried in die church of St. Giles
Adam
is
rescued
from
despair
after
Eve. They argue when Eve wants to go
the
fall
by
his
love
for
Eve
and
by
her
Cripplegate, in London. In 1790, dur
off alone: Adam, warned about Satan,
wants her close, but Eve counters by fortitude and love for him. In a sense, ing a renovation of the church, the grave 1
was dug up, because church elders
pointing out that unless she has freedom they rescue each other.
wanted to pinpoint the exact burial spot
tn An wrnn fi sbp rsmTBe VirtUflUg {"What
ar#€lise Lost" was published in so they could erect a monument. The
■«JfcfthT love, virtue unassayed?"). Adam,
I664 though Milton, after com- coffin was located and left, lying deep in
who is technically Eves parent as well as
the ground. The next day, a group of cu
pleftng-^raradise Regained" and "Sam
partner, having given up a rib for her cre
rious local men, including a churchwar
ation, assents, praising her virtue and son Agonistes," revised it into its final
a publican, and a pawnbroker, after
logic. The fact diat she is right but then form in 1674. Milton did many things den,
succumbs to temptation is part of the with "Paradise Lost": he revived ancTl a "merry-meeting," hauled it out of the
hard knowledge tto^av-at die heart of then killed off the classical epic, he made ground. They prized back the leaden lid,
his personal theology into literary scrip
and, carried away by ghoulish irrever
Milton s notion dffi^dota.
Milton s treatmeht^fwomen has not ture, he fused the Hebrew Bible and the ent devotion, or simple greed, knocked
out Milton s teeth for souvenirs. They
traditionally won him the admiration of New Testament, making the Son pres
hanks of his hair, which he had
feminists—Virginia Woolf called him ent at the creation. "Paradise Lost" is si^ grabbed
"the first of tEe masaalinists," thinking multaneously personal, national, and worn down to his shoulders, like Adam,
and which came away easily, and
perhaps ot the contrasting description of universal, a poem that claims divine in- snatched what bones they could from
Adam and Eve: "For contemplation he spiration but is clearly made up, a poem
and valour formed / For softness she and with ancient origins and contemporary under the shroud.
The next day, a gravedigger named
sweet attractive grace." Adam is upright interpolations that confuses the very no
Elizabeth
Grant, with the aid of work- .
and strong, Eve is like a vine that needs tion of old and new. A number of recent
men
who
kept
the church doors barred
to ding. (EniiljLDidrinson referred to scholars who have focussed on Milton's
to
all
but
those
willing to pay the price of
Milton as "d^grat A^st/") But there knowledge of Hebrew see echoes in his
a
pot
of
beer,
put
the remains on display.
have lately been a numberof feminist literary strategy of rabbinic Midrash,
Order
was
eventually
restored, but the
readings of Milton, and though they human stories that helped embody di
news
shocked
the
country—the
poet
vine meaning and in the process became
can't explain away that primal inequal
Cowper wrote a poem about the dese
ity, certainly they have a lot to point to, divine themselves.
In America, where God and the Devil cration. Milton was reburied, but, like
such as Eves argument for indepen
the torn figure of Osiris in "Areopagitlive alongside Western rationalism, Mil
dence in Eden.
ton
seems
right
at
home.
After
the
at
ica," he was incomplete. Still, a man
Milton may not have been much of
named Philip Neve, who wrote an ac
tacks
of
September
11th,
it
was
possible
a husband, but it is the love between
count of what happened after interview
to
find
Milton
invoked
to
remind
us
of
Adam and Eve that makes the fall en
the
nature
of
absolute
evil—his
Satan
re
ing the participants, managed to buy up
durable. I was first turned toward Mil
ton years ago, in a required freshman ally is a model terrorist, who, having whatever "relics" he could and return
them to the coffin before reinterment. ~
abandoned hope of a happy home, de
English class, when the teacher—a re
Most hauntingly, perhaps, he had man
votes
his
energy
to
destroying
the
lives
of
served young man who had been born in
others—and
at
the
same
time
quoted
to
aged to recover a rib. ♦
China—suddenly read aloud to us Ad76
THE NEW YOUKER, JUNE 2, 2008
)
Under the Gargoyle
Qu^r^\
Teaching Milton
By REYNOLDS PRICE
boy at Duke in the mid 1950s in three- paraplegia at the age of fifty-two that I've
courses taught by three very different struggled to convey the mystery of his poetx
I discovered
teachers. Then
the wotk
I studied
of John
himMilton
at Oxford
as a ry
of-tomy
as happiness
many Dukeand,
students
finally,,
as-Lcan-reach.
my survival of
for thtee years, wrote a thesis on him, and Obviously, my feeling fot Milton's wotk
returned to Duke where I've taught him has evolved in those five decades; and that
since 1958. At times I feel that my telations evolution has changed my teaching of the
with his work have lasted as long as he has poems (owing to its socketing in a complex
enduted among us—and he was born four political situation, I've never taught much
hundred years ago, on December 9, 1608. of his prose). Initially, I began a semester's
What has tewarded me so continuously wotk with sevetal hours of attention to his
in the work of a man whom some readers find brief early poems, the matchless "Lycidas"
repugnant? When I first encountered him, I (the greatest of shortet English poems), his
was captured by the outright love of beauti- sonnets, and finally Paradise Lost and Samful language which drove him. Far more son Agonistes. As the years have passed, and
than meaning or moral intention, I felt the the background of Duke undergraduates has
urgency of his need to generate memorable changed radically, I spend little time on the
vetsions of the English language; and I be- early verse. Comprehending its demands regan to see how successfully he did so. quires considerable knowledge of the world
Since I was thirteen I'd been aware of a of Milton's early life, and so few Duke stusimilar love in myself and had written poems dents have read enough to prepare them for
and a play which attempted that same such an encounter (they've readjajjttle of
power. Unremarkable though my boyish arvy thing). Now we spend a few weeks on the
wotk now seems, I can recall the excite- indispensable "Nativity Ode" and on "Lyment with which I wrote the pieces. Before cidas," and then—with some introduction
I came to tead Milton, I'd to the events of Milton's
tead Shakespeare in high $0 ifTipOrtdtlt lldS MiltOfl adult life—we move fors c h o o l — M a c b e t h a n d J u l i u s . ■ . , £ w a r d t o watd
t e ntowten
e eweeks
k s o nonPPar
arCaesar-and had surren- been tO the COre Of ITiy a^selj0SL
adise Lost.
dered to his narrative gen- hdPPineSS and, finally, ITiy No epic
No epic
poem
poem
ininany
anyEuroEuro
ius; but my meeting with • ■ f n-,r,n|Qf1;, at pean pean
language—and
The
language—and
TheDi~
Di
Comedy
notan
an epic
Milton, some three years ^IVIVdl Ul pdldpitiyid dL vin£ vine
Comedy
is isnot
later, was of a different or- the 3C]e Of flfty-tWO that —approaches
—approachesParadise
Paradise Lost
der of power—one that's i> i innla'H tn rnnwaw in initsitsnarrative
narrative fascination
fascination
npvpr relented.
~un,«i i' ve
iiwyyieu
convey
„nj fhp
iin„,lisrir brilliance
Wim^re
never
vc ™
UWCU iu
LULUI
lvc* and
the linguistic
Such power is inexplica- the mystery Of fliS POetfy with which it evokes its
ble—as is all beauty—from a_ 3C manu hi il/o cri irlnntc story of the fall of mankind
the smallest flower to the lU db mdn" UUKe 5lUaemS through Satan's temptation
ceiling of the Sistine Chap- 9S I C3fl feSCn. of Eve and the rescue of
si, the giant pillars of Dur- both Adam and Eve from
ham Cathedral in England, or Milton's Ian- their fall by the grace of God (rescued
guage and structure from his first great poem though they are, their willful disobedience
("On the Morning of Christ's Nativity") till of God's command in eating from the forthe late sonnet on the wife who, owing to bidden tree will leave them, and all their
his blindness, he never saw, and the over- genetic descendants, matred by an eternal
whelming ten thousand lines of Paradise degree of sin).
Lost. Yet so important has he been to the core A majority of my students today lack cer
www.dukeraagazine.duke.edu
tainty about the literal truth of the Genesis
story of a fall or the scat of otiginal sin, but I
think I convince many of them of the gravi
ty with which Milton advances the old
story and his conviction of our ongoing
guilt as the children of Adam and Eve. And
in recent years, I ve found my own answer
to the long-unsolved question of the identi
ty of Milton's hero in the poem—is it Satan
(as so many believe), Adam, ot the Son of
God Himself? Surely, though, we gradually
learn that the hero of the poem is Eve,
when she concludes that salvation for her
self, and the husband whom she has cheat
ed, lies in her falling suppliant and implor
ing Adam's forgiveness. Milton sees that
the human race could literally not have
continued without her generous gesture.
The scene of Eve's begging and Adam's
raising her to upright forgiveness is as
moving as any in Shakespeare's tragedies,
and nowhere does Shakespeare's verse sur
pass Milton's power. I've long felt that
most women ate better creatures than men.
Milton is sometimes thought of as being a
misogynist, but the conclusion of his epic
profoundly denies that charge. And after
a history of four hundred years, Milton is
more alive than ever. Male or female, if
you missed him in college, it's by no means
too late to add his genius to the depths
of your mind. Since his power as a moral
teacher is as great as his beauty, you may
well be a better creature once you read
the last line.
Price '55 is James B. Duke Professor of
English and the author of thirty-seven volumes
of fiction, poetry, memoir, essays, and plays
His new memoir, Ardent Spirits, will be
published this spring.
Harkness Discussion of Book I of Milton's Paradise Lost
1. Bold thesis: to "justify the ways of God to men" (26) ^\
2. How does God plan to use Satan's evil (162)
3. "The mind is its own place, and in itself/Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n." (254)
• Do you see any connections to Hamlet here?
4. "Here at least/We shall be free" (258)
• How are freedom and hell/evil related here? America (home of the free and the brave?).
5. What is hell?
• "Hell is other people" (Sartre)
• Hell is having it your way all the time (C.S. Lewis)
6. "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n." (263)
7. "Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall." (642) What tempted Satan to attack God?
8. "... who overcomes/By force, hath overcome but half his foe" (649)
9. What is Satan's plan (644-662)
10. What do you think of Satan? Why? Do you sympathize with him? Does Milton want you to?
• How has Milton perhaps tricked you? (Page 179); Stanley Fish, Surprised by Sin
11. Is vice inherently more interesting than virtue?
12. impious: Not pious; wanting piety; irreligious; irreverent; ungodly; profane; wanting in reverence'for the
Supreme Being; as, an impious deed; impious language. Syn: Impious, Irreligious, Profane.
Usage: Irreligious is negative, impious and profane are positive. An indifferent man may be irreligious;
a profane man is irreverent in speech-and conduct; an impious man is wickedly and boldly defiant in the
strongest sense. Profane also has the milder sense of secular. -C. J. Smith. Source: Webster's
Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
13. What connections do you see with Pope, Austen, Swift, and Shakespeare re: the nature of man and evil. '^i
14. "A creature revolting against a creator is revolting against the source of his own powers—including even his
power to revolt."—C.S. Lewis (96)
15. Satan's main argument is that he is a self-existent being (not a creature)
16. Definition of Satan = adversary; accuser.
When used as a proper name, the Hebrew word so rendered has the article "the adversary" (Job 1:6-12;
2:1-7). In the New Testament it is used as interchangeable with Diabolos, or the devil, and is so used
more than thirty times. He is also called "the dragon," "the old serpent" (Rev. 12:9; 20:2); "the prince of
this world" (John 12:31; 14:30); "the prince of the power
of the air" (Eph. 2:2); "the god of this world" (2 Cor. 4:4); "the spirit that now worketh in the children of
disobedience" (Eph. 2:2). Source: Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary