If you think that Satan and the demons aren’t sufficiently punished for tricking Eve (then Adam) into cursing mankind, this is what happens in Book 10 after Satan tells the horde what he did to the humans (lines 501-503): Were I thought death menaced would ensureĪnd fear of death deliver to the winds. Whose virtue for of good still good proceeds, Shall separate us, linked in love so dear, Rather than death or aught than death more dread One heart, one soul in both whereof good proof this day affords, declaring thee resolved, A friend read what I chose, which is what Eve says to Adam after he has come across her following her bite of the forbidden fruit.
That sounds weird (you’re choosing something written about human damnation?) until you see what love is expressed between the two human characters.
I did use part of Paradise Lost as a reading at our wedding. In part because I tried reading Paradise Regained (and still should) but was knocked off because I purchased the poem with no footnotes explaining what I was reading. I would say that if you venture to read it that you should get a paperback version that explains all the demons and the classical images. I could spend the rest of this post going over the particulars on Paradise Lost (and, again, the war in heaven), but I know that would make my post very long, and I can’t do the poem justice. I break in here or I’ll make you read all of Milton:
While Sin has the keys to hell, Lucifer convinces her and Death to let him out through chaos and eventually to Earth/Eden. If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,Īnd kennel there yet there still barked and howled
#Paradise lost figure full
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rungĪ hideous peal yet, when they list, would creep, She’s there with her son, Death (Lucifer had raped Sin which begat Death Death raped Sin, resulting in hell-hounds):Ī cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing barked In escaping hell, Lucifer reaches its entry gate, where he comes upon his daughter, Sin. A place with new beings (people) and perhaps they could mess with them a little. Eventually Lucifer suggests they check out this new place God was talking about before the war. Leading to Lucifer’s notable line that it would be “Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.” A little while later all of the demons arise, build their “ pandemonium” (a word Milton invented) and gather there to figure out what to do. It’s after this that he rouses Beelzebub. Lucifer looks about him to understand where they all are (book 1, lines 60-64):Īs one great furnace flamed yet from those flames Under thy conduct, and, in dreadful deedsįearless, endangered Heaven’s perpetual King, He’s chained to a burning lake of Sulfur and the first thing he does is rail against God (book 1, lines 128-132): The story starts in media res, with Lucifer waking up in hell after he and the other rebel angels were thrown out of heaven. First, the abridged version, and then the entire poem two times in paperback. I’ve been lucky enough to read Paradise Lost more than once. Even the non-cosmic Adam and Eve parts build to a declaration of love which sufficiently proves humanity’s worth among gods and monsters. Seriously, as much as I love Shakespeare, nothing has ever blown away my brain like Paradise Lost. This is that rare exception where true complexity produces actual awe. It didn’t take long to realize that the only way I could understand what I read was to recite it out loud. I held onto my Norton Anthology, which had its abridged version, and plunged into it during one winter of unemployment in the late 1990s. I owe my interest in the poem to an English Lit class I took as a senior in college. A college major in writing is good for something: those on the side of Lucifer (later known as Satan). It contains most spectacularly the battle in heaven between the angels on the side of God vs.
#Paradise lost figure movie
The language reminds you of Shakespeare’s, but there’s no way you’ll see the story in a play (and, as of now in February 2021, no movie of Milton’s Paradise Lost appears on the horizon).Īlong with the story of the fall of man, Paradise Lost includes Milton’s descriptions of the creation of the heavens and earth, with a shoutout to the telescope and the man who invented it. Originally published in 1667, Paradise Lost has 10,000 lines of blank verse in 12 books (originally published in 10, he reconfigured it into 12 seven years later). So starts John Milton’s Paradise Lost, his poem about man’s fall in Eden. And the fruit/Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste/Brought death into the world, and all our woe,/With loss of Eden, till one greater Man/Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,/Sing heavenly muse.
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