Today, we had a comparative exercise in my classes. We juxtaposed the two versions of Satan that we've seen in the poetry we've studied this year: Dante's monstrosity...
...and Milton's manipulator:
Both poets tackle the issue of Satan in a unique, world changing way. This video helps explain what I mean by that. Anyway, since we read both Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost, we get a chance to look at the Arch Heretic in different ways.
Dante's version is monstrous, munching on the three worst traitors: Brutus, Cassius, and Judas Iscariot. He's frightening and impressive and...passive. He's a representation of what was lost when Satan rebelled against God.
Milton's version, however, is much more human-like (save the wings) and his gifts of rhetoric, leadership, ambition, and power are made manifest even in the early pages of the poem. Unlike Dante's Old Scratch, this fallen Lucifer is an active agent, seeking to undermine God.
As a result, my students tend to feel like, of the two, Milton's version is the scarier one. Sure, the Dantesque concept is frightening, and that'd be a horrible way to go, but the Miltonic approach is more subtle, more difficult to anticipate and understand. The students recognized that the subtlety of the Serpent is more fearful than his fangs.
An interesting difference, too, is that Dante's trapped Prince of Darkness is not only oblivious to the world, he doesn't even notice Virgil and Dante clambering about his waist in an attempt to scale the hairy sides and escape from Hell. He's a backdrop, a set piece. Compounding this, the readers don't have to worry about 'facing' this version of Satan: Dante is our vicarious agent, and his peril seems minimal. We therefore have a buffer between us and the danger.
Milton's Satan is much more personable. Dante (and his Satan) look into the poem, on display, as it were, behind glass. Milton's Satan is on the other side of the display. His inward sentiments, his fears and postures, his point of view becomes a crucial way of interpreting the poem. Indeed, it's hard to pin down exactly what Milton wants us to understand of the events. For example, Satan tells Beelzebub that, in the War in Heaven, the rebel angels fought so well that they "shook [God's] throne" (1.105). Yet later, when Raphael--a loyal angel--discusses the war, he claims the victory came easily: "Yet half his strength he put not forth" (6.853). But because we see the first version through Satan's eyes, and the other version through Raphael's, we have spin. Satan is supposedly an old liar, yet he tells the truth in many other instances in the poem. He can lie, but that doesn't mean he's in the act of lying perpetually. Raphael isn't about to lie, but he also is an angel--not infallible (obviously, or else Satan, also an angel, could not have fallen) and possibly telling the story in the most favorable light that he knows. We don't really know, and that's part of what I love about Milton: In a poem that is designed to test the limits of choices, we're encouraged to pick what type of story we're reading.
So that's why, of the two, I'd pick Milton's Satan--at least, so far as analyzing literature is concerned. In real life--well, ruminations on the Prince of Darkness will need to happen another day.
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| It might be hard to see, but this Satan isn't being pensive; he's eating souls. |
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| He's grappling with his new role as Prince of Darkness, not grousing about a headache. |
Dante's version is monstrous, munching on the three worst traitors: Brutus, Cassius, and Judas Iscariot. He's frightening and impressive and...passive. He's a representation of what was lost when Satan rebelled against God.
Milton's version, however, is much more human-like (save the wings) and his gifts of rhetoric, leadership, ambition, and power are made manifest even in the early pages of the poem. Unlike Dante's Old Scratch, this fallen Lucifer is an active agent, seeking to undermine God.
God's plans will be frustrated by Satan's--that's the plot of the whole thing. Now, Milton will go to great lengths to allow God the freedom to allow this sort of thing, to turn every evil deed into an eventual good in a divine type of kung fu, but the point isn't about Satan's success: It's that he tries....If then his ProvidenceOut of our evil seek to bring forth good,Our labour must be to pervert that end,And out of good still to find means of evil (1.162-165)
As a result, my students tend to feel like, of the two, Milton's version is the scarier one. Sure, the Dantesque concept is frightening, and that'd be a horrible way to go, but the Miltonic approach is more subtle, more difficult to anticipate and understand. The students recognized that the subtlety of the Serpent is more fearful than his fangs.
An interesting difference, too, is that Dante's trapped Prince of Darkness is not only oblivious to the world, he doesn't even notice Virgil and Dante clambering about his waist in an attempt to scale the hairy sides and escape from Hell. He's a backdrop, a set piece. Compounding this, the readers don't have to worry about 'facing' this version of Satan: Dante is our vicarious agent, and his peril seems minimal. We therefore have a buffer between us and the danger.
Milton's Satan is much more personable. Dante (and his Satan) look into the poem, on display, as it were, behind glass. Milton's Satan is on the other side of the display. His inward sentiments, his fears and postures, his point of view becomes a crucial way of interpreting the poem. Indeed, it's hard to pin down exactly what Milton wants us to understand of the events. For example, Satan tells Beelzebub that, in the War in Heaven, the rebel angels fought so well that they "shook [God's] throne" (1.105). Yet later, when Raphael--a loyal angel--discusses the war, he claims the victory came easily: "Yet half his strength he put not forth" (6.853). But because we see the first version through Satan's eyes, and the other version through Raphael's, we have spin. Satan is supposedly an old liar, yet he tells the truth in many other instances in the poem. He can lie, but that doesn't mean he's in the act of lying perpetually. Raphael isn't about to lie, but he also is an angel--not infallible (obviously, or else Satan, also an angel, could not have fallen) and possibly telling the story in the most favorable light that he knows. We don't really know, and that's part of what I love about Milton: In a poem that is designed to test the limits of choices, we're encouraged to pick what type of story we're reading.
So that's why, of the two, I'd pick Milton's Satan--at least, so far as analyzing literature is concerned. In real life--well, ruminations on the Prince of Darkness will need to happen another day.
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