Sunday Pages: "Paradise Lost"

An epic poem by John Milton

Dear Reader,

To get my degree in English Literature, I had to take classes in two of the three Major Authors: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton. This was mandatory. During my semester “abroad” at NYU, I’d taken a class on Joyce. I argued with the department heads that this should satisfy the “Major Authors” requirement, but they were obdurate as Pharaoh: Joyce was not a Major Author, the Chaucer class was full, it was Milton or bust.

This wound up being a fortuitous thing. Milton was one of the best classes I took at Georgetown. (Shout-out to Professor Shulman!) My knowledge of the poet and his work was limited to Donald Sutherland’s pot-smoking professor mocking him in Animal House. But John Milton is indeed a Major Author, and Paradise Lost—ten thousand lines of blank verse on the topic of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden, published in its final form in 1674, when the poet was 65 years old and totally blind(!)—is, unequivocally, one of the greatest works ever written in the English language.

For whatever reason, I felt, reading Paradise Lost in class, that I had some special insight into Milton’s mindset. I connected to it. As a working text, we used a lovely, oversized 1993 edition edited by Roy Flannagan, a professor at Ohio University. I was convinced, and remain so, that his reading of the work is totally wrong. There are voluminous footnotes, most quite useful, but when Flannagan gets into the interpretation of the work, he’s wildly off base. It got to where it was like reading Nabokov’s Pale Fire, where the footnotes to the poem are deliberately off and tell their own story. (Indeed, I see now, flipping to the title page, that I have underlined Flannagan’s name and written, in block letters: MORON. Harsh!)

Paradise Lost begins with Satan and his diabolical cohorts writhing in agony on a lake of fire in Hell, lamenting their loss to God and the army of angels. Thus the devils, by their banishment from Heaven, are the first characters to “lose” Paradise. On the very first page of my copy of the book, 22-year-old me wrote this:

Your reading of the poem depends entirely on your definition of “lost.” Pro-God reads “lost” as in “I have lost something, now I shall find it.” We read “lost” as “Satan lost to God,” like a battle.

Paradise lost, like Baltimore lost. But…isn’t that backwards? Did not Paradise prevail? It is this inversion of polarities, the question of which side is actually good and which evil, that has me thinking about Paradise Lost this week, as I shall soon explain.

The first two “books” are about Satan, Beelzebub, Moloch, Belial, and the other demons (literally) picking themselves off the floor, licking their wounds, processing their defeat, and figuring out what to do next. They determine, in spirited debate, that using conventional warfare to defeat God is a non-starter. The best recourse is to take His favorite charges—Adam and Eve—and convert them to the Dark Side. The rest of the work is about that diabolical endeavor, and the poem ends with the “bless’t pair” banished from Eden, as the demons are banished from Heaven. There are excellent monologues by the major characters—including the leading man in this eternal saga, Satan—interspersed with interminable passages by a long-winded narrator with a yen for literary allusion and a penchant for poor spelling. (In Milton’s defense, he was blind.)

Convention wisdom, and Roy Flannagan, suggests that this long epic poem about well-known Biblical figures, derived from the Book of Genesis, and involving the ultimate battle between good and evil, is about religion. To which I say: Fie! It is not about religion; it is about politics! It is about democracy versus monarchy!

Milton was a man of faith, for sure, but he was most of all a revolutionary—a small-r republican. He was a big Oliver Cromwell guy. He even worked in Cromwell’s government. He loathed the monarchy, particularly the autocratic Charles I. Milton’s first big publication was the Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England—a polemic against press censorship and a cri de coeur for free speech. Charles I, of course, was tried for treason and [checks notes] beheaded. Milton wrote a piece justifying the regicide. When the Commonwealth collapsed, then, he was a man on the run. After the Restoration, Milton had to be extremely careful in expressing his still-radical political views. So he disguised them in a long poem about God and the Devil. Even the narrator of the poem—which the reading public and the royal censors would conclude was Milton’s own editorial voice—is pro-God. That was done, I submit, to insulate himself from danger, and should be discounted. The characters, and Satan in particular, give voice to what the poet really believed. As readers, we are supposed to identify with, to like, “Heaven’s fugitives.”

Stripped of the religious cloaking, Paradise Lost becomes something closer to Star Wars—more Jedi than Jesus. Here is the plot: Refusing to tolerate further oppression by a petty, insecure, and seemingly immortal tyrant, a coalition of mutineers takes arms against the overlord. The rebels lose, and are exiled to a horrible place that they nevertheless warm to and take possession of. Unable to overthrow the tyrant, and unwilling to try again to do so, they decide instead to show the tyrant’s most faithful subjects—brainwashed members of His powerful cult of personality—that the tyrant is not what He seems. In this endeavor, the mutineers are successful. The subjects awaken from their stupor and see the light—even as they, too, are exiled.

There is ample textual evidence to support my reading. Hell is a democracy; Heaven is an absolute monarchy. Here is Satan, in Book One, describing life in the clouds with God:

And what is else not to be overcome?
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power
Who, from the terror of this arm, so late
Doubted his empire—that were low indeed;
That were an ignominy and shame beneath
This downfall; since, by fate, the strength of Gods,
And this empyreal substance, cannot fail;
Since, through experience of this great event,
In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,
We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war,
Irreconcilable to our grand Foe,
Who now triumphs, and in th’ excess of joy
Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven.

(Note: I’m going to boldface the lines I think are the most important going forward, in case the long blocks of free verse and old-timey spelling make your eyes glaze over.)

In other words, Satan refuses to kneel before the wicked tyrant, the Almighty God. (WE WILL NOT BOW DOWN! I WILL NOT BOW DOWN!) Rather, he will make peace with the fiery pit they now call home. This Satan monologue is one of the most famous passages in Paradise Lost:

Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy for ever dwells! 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 Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

In Book Two, the demons debate. It’s an open debate, unlike in despotic Heaven, where God has the final and only word. The leader of the devils is not there because of force, but because he is a true leader:

Satan exalted sat, by merit raised
To that bad eminence;

And he intends for Hell to be ruled by the members equally:

Where there is, then, no good
For which to strive, no strife can grow up there
From faction: for none sure will claim in Hell
Precedence; none whose portion is so small
Of present pain that with ambitious mind
Will covet more!

Flannagan in his ridiculous footnote explains it wrongly: “There is no reason for political factions to grow up in Hell, since there is no reason for any fallen angel to ask for more prominence…than he already has. Satan is lying to the angels while he is in the act of claiming precedence in Hell. He speaks, after all, from a throne.”

But Satan is not lying. “We now debate,” he says to his cohorts. “Who can advise may speak.” And he means it, because the devils all have their say. And they are all on thrones, like at Olympus.

Mammon points out that, even if God accepts them back into Heaven, Heaven sucks. It’s all bowing down and kissing the ring and singing shitty songs in the choir, and he’s over that:

Suppose he should relent
And publish grace to all, on promise made
Of new subjection; with what eyes could we
Stand in his presence humble, and receive
Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his throne
With warbled hymns, and to his Godhead sing
Forced hallelujahs, while he lordly sits
Our envied sovereign, and his altar breathes
Ambrosial odours and ambrosial flowers,
Our servile offerings? This must be our task
In Heaven, this our delight. How wearisome
Eternity so spent in worship paid
To whom we hate! Let us not then pursue,
By force impossible, by leave obtained
Unacceptable, though in Heaven, our state
Of splendid vassalage; but rather seek
Our own good from ourselves, and from our own
Live to ourselves, though in this vast recess,
Free and to none accountable, preferring
Hard liberty before the easy yoke
Of servile pomp.

Beelzebub explicitly calls for a popular vote:

Thrones and Imperial Powers, Offspring of Heaven,
Ethereal Virtues! or these titles now
Must we renounce, and, changing style, be called
Princes of Hell? for so the popular vote
Inclines—here to continue, and build up here
A growing empire;

Even the narrator concedes that “with full assent / They vote.” He refers to the meeting as the “Synod of Gods” and “the Stygian Counsel.” They are anti-monarchy! They are small-r republicans!

Meanwhile, in Heaven, God is just a brutal, cruel tyrant, genocidal and capricious. He is unforgiving of disloyalty. Unlike Satan, He sits “High Thron’d above all highth.” He is the celestial equivalent of a fascist dictator—the sort of God today’s American Christian zealots obey and admire. He flat-out says he chooses a few humans to favor and leaves others out in the cold:

Some I have chosen of peculiar grace
Elect above the rest; so is my will:
The rest shall hear me call, and oft be warnd
Thir sinful state

And anyone who crosses him is toast. Not just anyone—innocent children too. He takes out entire families, like they do in North Korea:

Disloyal breaks his fealtie, and sinns
Against the high Supremacie of Heav’n,
Affecting God-head, and so loosing all,
To expiate his Treason hath naught left,
But to destruction sacred and devote,
He with his whole posteritie must dye,
Dye hee or Justice must; unless for him]
Som other able, and as willing, pay
The rigid satisfaction, death for death.

There are plenty of other examples of the democracy/monarchy polarity at work here. God is a tyrant, and His heir is Jesus, but the problem is that God is immortal, so what need of heirs?

In Book Five, in what is arguably the best single line in the entire poem, an angel talking to Adam and Eve explains what the abusive God demands from His subjects:

Our voluntarie service He requires

In certain circles this is known as “consensual non-consent.” It is the sort of mindfuck employed by cult leaders. In Book Six, Satan reasons with Adam and Eve, explaining his own reasons for bailing on Heaven: the death of freedom and of individual liberty.

At first I thought that Libertie and Heav’n
To heav’nly Soules had bin all one; but now
I see that most through sloth had rather serve,
Ministring Spirits, traind up in Feast and Song;

Even the angels concede that God hoards knowledge, denying his subjects the ability to learn, as Rafael says to the couple in Book Eight:

the rest [of knowledge]
From Man or Angel the great Architect
Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge
His secrets to be scann’d by them who ought
Rather admire

God is afraid that, once people realize he doesn’t have a monopoly on wisdom, they will turn on him. He loves the uneducated! By Book Nine, Eve—smarter than Adam by orders of magnitude, because of course she is—has figured this all out:

Let us not then suspect our happie State
Left so imperfet by the Maker wise,
As not secure to single or combin’d.
Fraile is our happiness, if this be so,
And Eden were no Eden thus expos’d.

Basically, Paradise is paradise in name only. Satan explains that God has “deterrd” them from

atchieving what might leade
To happier life, knowledge of Good and Evil;
Of good, how just? of evil, if what is evil
Be real, why not known, since easier shunnd?
God therefore cannot hurt ye, and be just;

Or: if He hurts you, He cannot then claim to be morally superior. That’s how abusers act! Eating the apple, and thus trespassing before God, is a symbolic gesture that renounces His tyranny, that explodes His cult:

Not just, not God; not feard then, nor obeyd:
Your feare it self of Death removes the feare.
Why then was this forbid? Why but to awe,
Why but to keep ye low and ignorant,
His worshippers; he knows that in the day
Ye Eate thereof, your Eyes that seem so cleere,
Yet are but dim, shall perfetly be then
Op’nd and cleerd, and ye shall be as Gods,
Knowing both Good and Evil as they know.

Again, Eve knows the deal:

For us alone
Was death invented? or to us deni’d
This intellectual food, for beasts reserv’d? …
What fear I then, rather what know to feare
Under this ignorance of good and Evil,
Of God or Death, of Law or Penaltie?

This is also a callback to Book One, when one of the devils suggests that trying again to attack God might compel Him to get angry enough to kill them all dead, and death—nonexistence—is preferable to living in torment or in vassalage.

Then comes the climax, through the God-cult narrator’s eyes:

she pluck’d, she eat:
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost.

Ah, but the poem does not end with abject surrender, nor of doom and gloom. Adam and Eve are in the same position as Satan and the demons in Book One: exiled from a place that is superficially lovely but oppressive and soul-destroying. Eden is guarded by fascist angels with flaming swords—but the two would not go back even if the gate had no sentry:

They looking back, all th’ Eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat,
Wav’d over by that flaming Brand, the Gate
With dreadful Faces throng’d and fierie Armes:
Som natural tears they drop’d, but wip’d them soon;
The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way.

Did they lose Paradise? Or did Paradise lose? I hold with the latter. God was unable to keep them in His cult. Adam and Eve leave with nothing, as people do when leaving cults. The reward is in their newfound perspective, found wisdom, the prospect of the hopeful unknown at their feet, and the freedom to explore it. This is preferable to a life of miserable oppression.

Why was I moved to write this piece today, more than half a life after originally having this idea and making notes and marking passages in my copy of Paradise Lost to support my thesis? Because I have lately seen, in the actions of the Christian nationalists—Leonard Leo, Kevin Roberts, and the other zealots behind the tyrannical Project 2025—an attempt to pervert the teachings of Jesus, to cloak despotic oppression in religious imagery: to invert, as Milton does in his epic poem, the good and the evil.

The Christian Nationalists’ God is petty, insecure, cruel, authoritarian. Their God, like their favored presidential candidate, demands above all else obedience and loyalty. Their God sees only a few as “elect”: Mike Johnson and his ilk, straight men, blastocysts and frozen embryos. All the others He casts out. Their God is not inclusive; their Paradise, a fascist state. Our side, meanwhile—we who value democracy, diversity, inclusivity, toleration, separation of church and state, sharing of resources, helping the sick and vulnerable, valuing women (go, Eve, go!), and so on—they view as Satanic, just as Milton does (ironically) in Paradise Lost. Even their new name for us—woke—drips with irony, as their power depends on their followers not waking up to the totalitarian threat to our American way of life. They rely on withholding knowledge, as God withholds knowledge from Adam and Eve; hence their blistering attacks on public education. In November and beyond, we must make sure, come Hell (ha ha) or high water, that this Christian Nationalist Paradise loses.

And yes, the last two weeks have been difficult to bear with respect to the news. Trump has secured some ill-deserved victories. The Supreme Court seems hellbent on helping him. The Republicans have lined up behind him. It is tempting, in these emotional troughs, to give up. I am not immune to these feelings, not by any means.

Milton has something to say about that, too. In Book One, Satan sees his defeated angels wallowing in self-pity and rebukes them:

Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!

Tattoo those words on my very soul.

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ICYMI

With LB under the weather, Jen Mercieca filled in as co-host on The Five 8. Our guest was Lisa Graves:

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Photo credit: Drawing by Gustave Dore, submitted by Tom Cool.