Book Review: Paradise Lost by John Milton
1. Milton is good at turmoil, bad at bliss. Famously, Paradise Lost opens with Satan’s rousing expressions of defiance, and those speeches in Book I remain the epic’s greatest moments:
What though the field be lost? All is not lost; the unconquerable will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield.
But when Satan arrives in Paradise, and we’re given a tour—what a poetic opportunity, to describe the Garden of Eden!—it may leave you cold:
Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm, Others whose fruit burnished with golden rind Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true, If true, here only, and of delicious taste; Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks Grazing the tender herb, were interposed... Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose: Another side, umbrageous grots and caves Of cool recess, o’er which the mantling vine Lays forth her purple grape...
“Lays forth her purple grape”! The garden scenes close with Adam and Eve making shameless, innocent love:
into their inmost bower Handed they went; and eased the putting off These troublesome disguises which we wear, Straight side by side were laid, nor turned I ween Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rights Mysterious of connubial love refused...
This is bland stuff—their muted passions rising only to “Eve did not say no.” (Make what you will of Milton’s later remark, about the marriage bed, that “Here Love his golden shafts employs.”) But there is an erotic moment in Paradise Lost. It comes later, in the dream Satan whispers into Eve’s sleeping ear. In that dream an angel visits, and looks at the forbidden tree, and asks Eve “is knowledge so despised?” He picks the fruit, eats it, and offers it to her. She recounts his offer to Adam in the morning:
Here, happy creature, fair angelic Eve, Partake thou also; happy though thou art, Happier thou mayst be, worthier canst not be: Taste this, and be henceforth among the gods ... So saying, he drew nigh, and to me held, Even to my mouth of that same fruit held part Which he had plucked; the pleasant savoury smell So quickened appetite, that I, methought, Could not but taste.
No long boring words like “umbrageous” here. The strength of Eve’s passion shows even in her stutter—“to me held, / Even to my mouth of that same fruit held...” I know there are theological reasons why this, and not the sex, is the sexy moment, but as a philosopher I’m taken by the idea that, in Paradise, it’s the prospect of knowledge that will overwhelm you with desire.
2. Satan comes off rather well, at least in the first half of the poem, and despite Milton’s intentions: thus Blake’s assertion that Milton was of the Devil’s party. But that goes too far. While the narrator’s attempts to undermine Satan are less than successful, there are moments, even in the first half, when Satan is cast in a poor light. Take the angel Gabriel’s interrogation of Satan, after Satan is caught in Eden and hauled before him. The moment works because the defamation is put in the mouth of a character, not the narrator, and because it’s another piece of heroic speechifying, where Milton is in his element:
thou sly hypocrite, who now wouldst seem Patron of liberty, who more than thou Once fawned, and cringed, and servilely adored Heaven’s awful monarch?
This fawning and cringing Satan, this angel of servile admiration, is a counterweight to the noble and courageous front that Satan presents to the other devils in Hell.
3. Milton early on announces his aim, to justify the ways of God to men. Satan, we are told, is moved to his rebellion by Jesus-envy: until the Son was made, Satan had thought that he was the favorite. But like every good philosopher, Satan has arguments to justify what he was going to do anyway. Are his arguments good? What response to them is given?
Satan appeals to the values of liberty and equality, no small things—Abraham Lincoln even mentioned them once in a speech. Before the fall, when arguing the other rebellion-curious angels into revolt, Satan says
...what if better counsels might erect Our minds and teach us to cast off this yoke? Will ye submit your necks, and choose to bend The supple knee? Ye will not, if I trust To know ye right, or if ye know yourself Natives and sons of Heaven possessed before By none, and if not equally all, yet free, Equally free... Who can in reason then or right assume Monarchy over such as live by right His equals, if in power and splendour less, In freedom equal?
If it’s hyperbolic to equate monarchy with a system of slavery, there’s some truth to it, and it has fired and fed many successful (and dare I say just) revolutions. Hearing the speech, one faithful angel, Abdiel, offers a rebuttal:
Unjust thou say’st Flatly unjust, to bind with laws the free, And equal over equals to let reign, One over all with unsucceeded power. Shalt thou give law to God, shalt though dispute With him the points of liberty, who made Thee what thou art[?]
Abdiel then asserts that God is good and just, and therefore that no decree of his could be unjust; this begs the question. Fortunately that’s not where he rests his case. Supposing, he says, that it is unjust
That equal over equals monarch reign; Thyself though great and glorious dost thou count, Or all angelic nature joined in one, Equal to him begotten son, by whom As by his word the mighty Father made All things, even thee, and all the spirits of heaven By him created in their bright decrees [...]
But how is Satan’s argument here engaged? Satan concedes that not all are equal; his assertion is that they are equally free, and that’s why monarchy is unjust. Abdiel denies equality, but does he deny equal liberty? I don’t see how: he emphasizes, here and in the earlier part of his reply, that God made Satan (and everything else); but why that should cast doubt on Satan’s claim that he and God are “in freedom equal” is unexplained.
A little more sic et non on this point would have been helpful. Instead, Satan takes the bait. Accepting that the argument hinges on whether God created the angels, Satan audaciously denies it:
That we were formed then say’st thou? ... Doctrine which we would know whence learned: who saw When this creation was? rememb’rest thou Thy making, while the maker gave thee being? We know no time when we were not as now; Know none before us, self-begot, self-raised By our own quickening power.
Sympathy is lost once bold lies are marshaled to support one’s cause—fitting, I suppose, for this particular character.
(To be continued...)
See also: Late Milton; Milton, Meter, and Style.