Sing, Heavenly Muse...

So, I recently finished reading Paradise Lost. No big deal. I managed to do it over a hectic semester by reading mostly on my bus ride to and from school, and a little bit before bed. Some times I just had to force myself to read it, because 17th century verse isn't always my first choice in reading material, especially when we're doing it 7 days a week in school. But after being up to my eyeballs in Shakespeare, it became less of a challenge to wade through John Milton's meandering syntax than it was when I first bought it a couple of years ago. Actually the language itself is a little easier to understand than Shakespeare, as it was written nearly half a century after Shakespeare stopped. Either way, it' done, and not only did I finish it and understand it, but I really enjoyed it, too!

Some of the imagery was quite powerful, and some moments were downright cinematic in scope. The War in Heaven, for example, is narrated in dramatic detail, from Lucifer squaring off with Archangel Michael on the battlefield, to God blasting open a huge hole in Heaven to run the rebellious angels into, banishing them to Hell. They fall for days on end through Chaos, which such an amazing and myth-sized image, falling for so long, through a dimension we can't quite comprehend. The descriptions of the angels in their war array, and Raphael when he visits Adam in Eden, and Eden itself--all of these are quite a feast for the imagination.

I found it curious that Milton used Biblical and Classical myth as metaphors and references to what was going on in the story. Obviously he was just tailoring it to the audience, which was fluent in those stories, and using them the same way any other writer of that time did (and still do); I still found it funny that they should be used to explain what in this context were the very first events to happen in Time.

Now I'm no expert on Milton, but I couldn't help but notice a few interesting aspects to this poem, which its Introduction provided by Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldber can back me up on.

An aspect that changes the story quite radically is the presence of the Son of God, who in the Christian context, has existed since the beginning, in an immaterial form. He is the one who does all of the Father's bidding in the story, including pursuing the angels out of heaven, and discovering Adam and Eve after they've eaten the Forbidden Fruit. And he is the reason that Lucifer rebels in the first place. It is God's appointment of the Son as heir to His entire Kingdom that makes Lucifer jealous and wonder why they must be ruled at all. This serves as an interesting plot point and inciting incident for Lucifer, and something we see in stories throughout time--I can think of a couple of political dramas that deal with this exact scenario.

One of the most interesting parts of the whole story was its objective which Milton states at the beginning, to 'justify the ways of God to men'. This very statement, as the Introduction observes, suggests that the good in God's works aren't necessarily self-evident, and that they need to be justified. This suggests as well that this was something that Milton struggled with in his own faith. It also makes sense considering Milton's political alignment--to my understanding he supported Cromwell's Commonwealth and the upheaval of the monarchy. This is probably most clearly shown in the character of Lucifer/Satan. I found myself sympathizing with him, in his discontent with the way things are run in Heaven. He questions God, and sees him as an autocratic ruler who must be challenged. Perhaps he's misguided in this, but it's a sentiment I can definitely understand. He's painted more as a tragic hero than an outright monster: deeply flawed because of his pride, but, to us, deeply human. I don't think Milton means for us to root for Satan necessarily, because as the story goes along he becomes less and less heroic. But all the same, it's familiar, and I don't doubt that Milton would've given him the same complexity of character if he didn't have the same questions in his heart. While reading these early chapters, I was even wondering how I might adapt it into a piece for the stage. I'm sure it's been done before, but I'd like to try myself.

Milton was also very good at equivocating between the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems of the universe. Milton was apparently friends with Galileo, so he was familiar with the concept, and it was a hot topic at the time. He would use both models when describing heavenly bodies and their functions in the course of the narrative, which means that while he wasn't necessarily saying that Copernicus and Galileo are right because that might get him in trouble, he acknowledges them, which means he isn't saying the model is wrong. It's little things like this that can make this work more incendiary and subversive if they were less subtle.

I also sympathized with Adam and Eve of course. Like any good tragedy where you know the ending, it is only tragic because you feel for the character. Especially because after they're punished for their crime, you can't help but wonder if it was such a bad thing, really. God says they're born with free will, and yet you can only be free to choose if you have at least one other alternative to choose from, i.e. good, and evil. They are warned that if they eat from the Tree of Knowledge, they will die. Only they don't completely understand the gravity of such a thing until they eat the fruit, so they are kind of set up in this. Obviously this is a concept that people still struggle with, because the answer is never wholly satisfying, and even after the poem ends, the ripple of that feeling still remains. Milton does an admirable job in trying to justify the ways of God to men, but it's something I'm sure even he knew he couldn't do with complete success. I also get the feeling that he didn't want that either. If he gave a straight answer, that God is good, Satan is evil and Adam and Eve did wrong, then there would be no complexity, thus no drama. But that's not what the story sets out to do. Like a good piece of writing it doesn't prescribe a solution, but invites us to search these waters for ourselves. The Introduction goes into all of this in greater (and more eloquent detail), but they are things that I came upon myself in the reading of it.