It's Sunday. Here's something slightly more religious: Paradise Lost.
I started another reread of Paradise Lost this last week. My school is having an informal book club about the poem and, though I won't be able to attend as often as I wish, it's exciting to read Milton again.
One of the interesting things that was brought up during the discussion was the mistrust most of the participants had of Satan. I mentioned before some of my experiences discussing the Prince of Darkness, but that was in the formal school setting. In this conversation, we could be even more forthright, and since most of us were LDS, we were able to dive into more specific theological implications than I do with my students. (The added benefit was that we didn't have to waste any time explaining what happened in the book, as summarizing and explaining the text is a huge piece of my pedagogy.) As we wandered through Book I, it quickly became apparent that there was a reluctance to embrace the character Satan. What he claimed, what he said, what he did was treated with suspicion, especially when he said or did things that would otherwise be admirable.
This is something that I hadn't noticed before, but now I'm able to put my finger on it more fully: Hearing Lucifer in Paradise Lost carries with it an immense amount of cultural and religious baggage that is so ingrained that it's easily overlooked. That is, when I (and most of the group) read Book I, we didn't hear a guy named Satan, we heard Satan.
Now, Paradise Lost is openly, deliberately, and necessarily an extrascriptural, yet inherently biblical, text. The poem is beyond scripture not only in terms of time of composition (mid-1600s), but also in expression and style. As I tell my students, "It's basically Bible fan-fic. And it's really good." Milton's purpose was, in some ways, to explore the Bible in his own terms, mostly the first few chapters of Genesis, and to do that meant that he had to go beyond the scriptures, yet anchor it fully within the believed divinity of that text. The result of this is a melange of expectations and assumptions that Milton, most likely, assumed were natural: When speaking of Satan within his poem, people would associate it with the then-common understanding of the fallen angel.
But that's not what Milton's Satan is. Indeed, the fact that I have to modify "Satan" with the possessive "Milton's" shows that whom we're discussing here is his own character, his own personage, his own being--inasmuch as characters have their own being (which I think they do, but that's a different essay). Whatever the devil may (or mayn't) be "in real life", he isn't recorded as doing and saying what Milton sets down. There isn't any biblical indication of the satanic nuances that Milton imbues in his creation. In many ways, part of what makes this poem so fantastic is the fantastical, with Milton as the Creator of the poem and his creations--Satan, the Father, the Son, Adam, Eve, and the panoply of angels (some of his entire invention)--running about the page.
But the Eve of Paradise Lost isn't the Eve of the Bible, nor the Heavenly Father nor Heavenly Son. These characters could be renamed and the poem could, in many ways stand nearly as tall.
And that's the crazy-cool thing (among hundreds of other crazy-cool things in Paradise Lost) about the poem: It can be approached from different angles (and angels). In a poem that is so tightly focused on choice (look at the pervasive and powerful use of the conjunction or throughout the work, for example), there are options for interpretation. Do you come from the concept of a story, no different in terms of its greater Truth or reality than, say, the gods and their decisions in The Iliad? Or, because it is the work of a Christian, it ought to be read by fellow Christian believers that what's being said here holds a more literal truth to it? In other words, is Satan the Satan, slightly modified? Or is he an archetype of the trickster god, a Jungian supplement that is both inheritor of and inspiration for similar beings throughout time?
The default position of my group was certainly the former. This makes reading about and, therefore, appreciating Satan considerably more fraught. Some students have shouted out during our readings of the poem, perhaps intuitively sensitive to this, "I love Satan!" If one reads Paradise Lost as extracanonical scripture (another play on the name of the poem suggests itself here), then reading the poem really goes along with the Blakean declaration:
In fact, a compelling reason to read Paradise Lost as you would, say, The Odyssey, is because it forces you to read the story as it is written. In some ways, I envy my Buddhist, Norse pagan, Wicca, agnostic, and whatever else students, because they inherently read the poem this way. They see a character whose name happens to be Satan and they begin with the mystery of en medias res. What's going on here? Why is he on a lake of fire? What has he done that he's in a place with "darkness visible"? The story can then unfold, the dual tragedies of Satan's Fall and that of Adam and Eve. The hope at the end of the poem--showing that the characters of Adam and Eve wish to return to their God, despite His harsh punishments--and proceeding into the future world...all of that can be read with the same enthusiasm as any drama.
There's a lot to be said about bringing the religious reading to bear against Paradise Lost. But there's also worth in hearing what Satan has to say within his own context. And that's something each reader has to decide.
I started another reread of Paradise Lost this last week. My school is having an informal book club about the poem and, though I won't be able to attend as often as I wish, it's exciting to read Milton again.
One of the interesting things that was brought up during the discussion was the mistrust most of the participants had of Satan. I mentioned before some of my experiences discussing the Prince of Darkness, but that was in the formal school setting. In this conversation, we could be even more forthright, and since most of us were LDS, we were able to dive into more specific theological implications than I do with my students. (The added benefit was that we didn't have to waste any time explaining what happened in the book, as summarizing and explaining the text is a huge piece of my pedagogy.) As we wandered through Book I, it quickly became apparent that there was a reluctance to embrace the character Satan. What he claimed, what he said, what he did was treated with suspicion, especially when he said or did things that would otherwise be admirable.
This is something that I hadn't noticed before, but now I'm able to put my finger on it more fully: Hearing Lucifer in Paradise Lost carries with it an immense amount of cultural and religious baggage that is so ingrained that it's easily overlooked. That is, when I (and most of the group) read Book I, we didn't hear a guy named Satan, we heard Satan.
Now, Paradise Lost is openly, deliberately, and necessarily an extrascriptural, yet inherently biblical, text. The poem is beyond scripture not only in terms of time of composition (mid-1600s), but also in expression and style. As I tell my students, "It's basically Bible fan-fic. And it's really good." Milton's purpose was, in some ways, to explore the Bible in his own terms, mostly the first few chapters of Genesis, and to do that meant that he had to go beyond the scriptures, yet anchor it fully within the believed divinity of that text. The result of this is a melange of expectations and assumptions that Milton, most likely, assumed were natural: When speaking of Satan within his poem, people would associate it with the then-common understanding of the fallen angel.
But that's not what Milton's Satan is. Indeed, the fact that I have to modify "Satan" with the possessive "Milton's" shows that whom we're discussing here is his own character, his own personage, his own being--inasmuch as characters have their own being (which I think they do, but that's a different essay). Whatever the devil may (or mayn't) be "in real life", he isn't recorded as doing and saying what Milton sets down. There isn't any biblical indication of the satanic nuances that Milton imbues in his creation. In many ways, part of what makes this poem so fantastic is the fantastical, with Milton as the Creator of the poem and his creations--Satan, the Father, the Son, Adam, Eve, and the panoply of angels (some of his entire invention)--running about the page.
But the Eve of Paradise Lost isn't the Eve of the Bible, nor the Heavenly Father nor Heavenly Son. These characters could be renamed and the poem could, in many ways stand nearly as tall.
And that's the crazy-cool thing (among hundreds of other crazy-cool things in Paradise Lost) about the poem: It can be approached from different angles (and angels). In a poem that is so tightly focused on choice (look at the pervasive and powerful use of the conjunction or throughout the work, for example), there are options for interpretation. Do you come from the concept of a story, no different in terms of its greater Truth or reality than, say, the gods and their decisions in The Iliad? Or, because it is the work of a Christian, it ought to be read by fellow Christian believers that what's being said here holds a more literal truth to it? In other words, is Satan the Satan, slightly modified? Or is he an archetype of the trickster god, a Jungian supplement that is both inheritor of and inspiration for similar beings throughout time?
The default position of my group was certainly the former. This makes reading about and, therefore, appreciating Satan considerably more fraught. Some students have shouted out during our readings of the poem, perhaps intuitively sensitive to this, "I love Satan!" If one reads Paradise Lost as extracanonical scripture (another play on the name of the poem suggests itself here), then reading the poem really goes along with the Blakean declaration:
The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.Milton's Satan is far more convincing, charismatic, and rounded as a character than anyone else in the poem. Centuries of criticism have revolved about the antagonist of the Bible, having approached the text from the point of view of a quasi-religious value to the text. Now, I personally agree with this quote from Walter Savage Landor:
A rib of Shakespeare would have made a Milton; the same portion of Milton, all poets born ever since.There is a level of bardolatry that's less trendy but just as pervasive among Miltonists, which only enhances the expectation that, if we're reading a based-on-the-Bible story, we have to treat it the same way as the Bible; that we have to make it holy, even if it isn't. Now, that's hard for me to say, because I really do find holy things inside Paradise Lost. Like, if God doesn't speak as beautifully and movingly as Milton has him speak--or, preferably, better (since He is God)--then I'll probably have a flash of disappointment. Nevertheless, the poem can be read as such, without carting around the need to judge Satan as the biblical Satan, to allow him to be worth his own merits, to lament his tragic fall as much as possible.
In fact, a compelling reason to read Paradise Lost as you would, say, The Odyssey, is because it forces you to read the story as it is written. In some ways, I envy my Buddhist, Norse pagan, Wicca, agnostic, and whatever else students, because they inherently read the poem this way. They see a character whose name happens to be Satan and they begin with the mystery of en medias res. What's going on here? Why is he on a lake of fire? What has he done that he's in a place with "darkness visible"? The story can then unfold, the dual tragedies of Satan's Fall and that of Adam and Eve. The hope at the end of the poem--showing that the characters of Adam and Eve wish to return to their God, despite His harsh punishments--and proceeding into the future world...all of that can be read with the same enthusiasm as any drama.
There's a lot to be said about bringing the religious reading to bear against Paradise Lost. But there's also worth in hearing what Satan has to say within his own context. And that's something each reader has to decide.