Paradise Lost

Book I

”As one great furnace flames, yet from those flames / No light, but rather darkness visible”

• Satan and co. when relegated to Chaos (or Hell, which came out of Chaos?) after stirring up conflict in Heaven.

“…hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new possessor: one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.”

“Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.”

“…firm and unmoved / With dread of death to flight or foul retreat…”

• Describing the throng of fallen angels rallied by Satan. Beautiful language

  Book II

“his form had yet not lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than Archangel ruined, and th’ excess
Of glory obscured: as when the sun new ris’n
Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams…
Darkened so, yet shone
Above them all th’ Archangel: but his face
Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care
Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows
Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride
Waiting revenge…”

Upon voting what to do following their exile, Moloch votes to go back to war. Furious, wrathful, scorned is Moloch. Belial, however, votes to stay in Hell and surrender. Belial means lit. ‘throws off the yoke’ as per the r Rabbinical tradition, and was referred to those who oppose established authority, civil or religious. Here is Belial described by Milton:

“For dignity composed and high exploit:
But all was false and hollow; though his tongue
Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear
The better reason, to perplex and dash
Maturest counsels: for his thoughts were low;
To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds
Timorous and slothful: yet he pleased the ear,
And with persuasive accent thus began.”

• Belial seems akin to a nihilist, someone who cares about nothing and thus rolls over into meaningless retreat, whereas Moloch believes in something but the wrong thing.

“Others apart sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wand’ring mazes lost.”

• Free will debates, wandering in mazes lost.

Satan volunteers to go meddle with Earth. On his way out of Hell, Sin and Death guard the exit. Sin, it turns out, emerges out of the head of Satan after an internal (?) vision that enamoured him. Then, the joy Satan took in delighting in Sin impregnated her, and she birthed inbred Death. Birthing Death ripped her apart, flung entrails and all, and Satan did not recognize her at the gate (symbol of initial delight in sin and retrospective disgust post-indulgence).

Sin is given the key to Hell by God and instructed to under no circumstances open its doors. Satan persuades her by telling her and Death that they will be able to occupy earth.
“Thou art my father, thou my author, thou
My being gav’st me; whom should I obey
But thee, whom follow?”
Says Sin. Of course, in shortsighted fashion, Sin neglects what gave rise to her father.

Book III

“And where the river of bliss through midst of Heav’n
Rolls o’er Elysian flow’rs her amber stream;
Bind their resplendent locks inwreathed with beams…”

“So spake the false dissembler unperceived;
For neither man nor angel can discern
Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone,
By his permissive will, through Heav’n and Earth:
And oft though wisdom wake, suspicion sleeps
At wisdom’s gate, and to simplicity
Resigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill
Where no ill seems.”

• Hypocrisy as the only evil unseen.

Book IV

“horror and doubt distract
His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir
The Hell within him, for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell One step no more than from himself can fly
By change of place.”

• Satan as Hell itself.

“Me miserable! Which way shall I Ay Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;”

• Again.

“And all amid them stood the Tree of Life,
High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit
Of vegetable gold; and next to life
Our death the Tree of Knowledge grew fast by,
Knowledge of good bought dear by knowing ill.”

• The tree of knowledge as death. Reminds of the Upanishadic “Who sees variety and not the Unity wanders on from death to death.”

“airs, vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance
Led on th’ eternal spring.“

• Pan was the Grecian god of nature. Pan means ‘all’.

“though both
Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed;
For contemplation he and valor formed,
For softness she and sweet attractive grace,
He for God only, she for God in him”

• Not equal… She for God in him…

“His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clust’ring, but not beneath his shoulders broad”

“She as a veil down to the slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Disheveled, but in wanton ringlets waved
As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet reluctant amorous delay.”

“and other rites
Observing none, but adoration pure
Which God likes best…”

Book V

“Happiness in his power left free to will,
Left to his own free will, his will though free,
Yet mutable…”

“well we may afford
Our givers their own gifts, and large bestow
From large bestowed, where nature multiplies
Her fertile growth, and by disburd’ning grows
More fruitful, which instructs us not to spare.”

• The instructive nature of nature’s selfless offerings, which encourage more vegetable growth

“though spring and autumn here
Danced hand in hand.”

• The unity of opposites has not yet been broken through the fall.

“Heav’nly stranger, please to taste
These bounties which our Nourisher, from whom
All perfect good unmeasured out descends,
To us for food and for delight hath caused
The earth to yield;”

• Unmeasured good. Not by design, not architected, not carefully accounted, but goodness poured out beyond measure.

“O Adam, one Almighty is, from whom
All things proceed, and up to him return,
If not depraved from good, created all
Such to perfection, one first matter all,
Endued with various forms, various degrees
Of substance, and in things that live, of life;”

• Neoplatonic. From which all come, to which all return. Unity into multiplicity back into unity.

“Differing but in degree, of kind the same.”

• Raphael to Adam, humans and angels are different in degree, not in kind. Made of the same Godstuff.

Book VI

“Thyself not free, but to thyself enthralled.”

“For strength from truth divided and from just,
Illaudable, naught merits but dispraise
And ignominy, yet to glory aspires
Vainglorious, and through infamy seeks fame:
Therefore eternal silence be their doom.”

Book VII

“…till by degrees of merit raised
They open to themselves at length the way
Up hither, under long obedience tried,
And Earth be chang’d to Heav’n, and Heav’n to Earth,
One kingdom, joy and union without end.”

“Thus God the heav’n created, thus the earth,
Matter unformed and void: darkness profound
Covered th’ abyss: but on the wat’ry calm
His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspread,
And vital virtue infused, and vital warmth
Throughout the fluid mass…”

“…so the wat’ry throng,
Wave rolling after wave, where way they found,
If steep, with torrent rapture, if through plain,
Soft-ebbing; nor withstood them rock or hill,
But they, or under ground, or circuit wide
With serpent error wand’ring, found their way,
And on the washy ooze deep channels wore…”

• Picture mountains surging out of the deep and water washing around them in torrential film.

Book VIII

“To love thou blam’st me not, for love thou say’st
Leads up to Heav’n, is both the way and guide;”

Book X

Thoughts on the characters of Sin and Death

• Death proceeds Sin. Sin as estrangement from God (eternal) towards the self (temporary, perishable). This error towards perishability yields… perishability, death.
• Sin as the incestuous mother of Death. Sin is by nature incestual, it is a relationship between self and self rather than self and God. This begets deformity (Death is very much deformed), rather than conformity (a ‘forming-with’) with God.

“To trust thee from my side, imagined wise,
Constant, mature, proof against all assaults,
And understood not all was but a show
Rather than solid virtue, all but a rib
Crooked by nature, bent, as now appears,“

“But self-destruction therefore sought, refutes
That excellence thought in thee, and implies,
Not thy contempt, but anguish and regret
For loss of life and pleasure overloved.”

• The suicidal urge ironically finds itself in a regret for loss of life