CHAPTER 4: MILTON MATTERS
John Milton’s praiseworthy epic poem Paradise Lost presents English heroic verse without rhyme comparable to that of Homer in Greek or Virgil in Latin, ‘Rime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age’ (S Simmons — printer’s note to reader).
Ovid recommends the writer kick off a work in media rem, or in the middle of the action. In Paradise Lost we spot Satan face-down in the mud of Hell, ‘Driv’n headlong from the Pitch of Heaven’ (II:772):
Had cast him out from Heav’n, with all his Host
Of Rebel Angels, by whose aid aspiring
To set himself in Glory above his Peers,
He trusted to have equal’d the most High,
If he oppos’d; and with ambitious aim
Against the Throne and Monarchy of God
Rais’d impious War in Heav’n and Battel proud
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurld headlong flaming from th’ Ethereal Skie
With hideous ruine and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine Chains and penal Fire,
Who durst defie th’ Omnipotent to Arms. (I:37-49)
Milton rewinds the shooting match in Books V and VI to show the star striker Satan illuminated under floodlights in ‘dubious battle’ against the ‘Tyranny of Heaven’ with a gang of ne’er-do-wells who are later identified as militant Arsenal fans:
His count’nance, as the Morning Starr that guides
The starrie flock, allur’d them, and with lyes
Drew after him the third part of Heav’ns Host (V:705- 707)
Does Satan, the rotten runt of a riotous brood, exist permission of God? Is Satan on a mission from God? ‘... though strange to us it seemd/ At first, that Angel should with Angel warr’ (VI:91-92). Are we then the losers from the War in Heaven given a substitute’s chance? Or are we the victors from the side that fought against fascism? Have we a noble inheritance?
Is Satan right to protest against the imposition of new match rules? Is Satan a supporter of democracy protesting the imposition of a North-Korea-like family dictatorship?
... the work
Of secondarie hands, by task tranferd
From Father to his Son? strange point and new!
Doctrin which we would know whence learnt: who saw
When this creation was? rememberst thou
Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being?
We know no time when we were not as now;
Knew none before us, self-begot, self-rais’d
By our own quick’ning power (V: 850-858)
Satan steaming and snorting and sporting the latest fighting fashions on the Elysian Fields of Heaven, ‘in his Sun-bright Chariot sate’ is flanked ‘in terrible array/ Of hideous length’ ... ‘On the rough edge of battel’, ‘Satan with vast and haughtie strides advanc’t/ Came towring, armed in Adamant and Gold’ (VI:100-110) and is met by Abdiel with the sword of truth:
So saying, a noble stroke he lifted high,
Which hung not, but so swift with tempest fell
On the proud Crest of Satan, that no sight,
Nor motion of swift thought, less could his Shield
Such ruin intercept: ten paces huge
He back recoild; the tenth on bended knee
His massie Spear upstaid; (VI:189-195)
Devoid of grace and parachute Satan propelled by Jesus’ big boot free-falls kicking and protesting from the high grass of Heaven down into the seed-husk chaff of Space:
Nine dayes they fell; confounded Chaos roard,
And felt tenfold confusion in thir fall
Through this wilde Anarchie, so huge a rout
Incumberd him with ruin (VI:871-874)
Satan and comrades are converting from the charming to the chimeric:
But O how fall’n! how chang’d
From him, who in the happy Realms of Light
Cloth’d with transcendent brightness didst outshine
Myriads though bright (I 84-87)
Satan’s lackeys lie lifeless in a lake of mud like lazy limp licentious lizardy insects — their modern counterparts a sickening dense mass of Arsenal militants — and here Milton relies on the ear rather than the eye:
Thick swarm’d, both on the ground and in the air,
Brusht with the hiss of rustling wings. As Bees
In spring time (I:767-769)
Milton immerses the reader in the dire, iry, briery fiery mire of tired Satan’s new allotment tipped with the charm and imagery of Uptown Tottenham:
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed
With ever-burning Sulphur unconsum’d (I:65-69)
Satan writhes in a ‘Dungeon horrible, on all sides round/ As one great Furnace flam’d’ (I:61-62) roasting with ‘obdurate pride and stedfast hate’ (I:58):
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe
Counfounded though immortal: But his doom
Reserv’d him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him (I:51-56)
The star-studded Satan ‘Majestick though in ruin’ (II:305) soothes his mercurial mind with the balmy resolution to continue his ‘Errands in the gloomy Deep’ (I:152), ‘Which if not Victory is yet Revenge’ (II:105), to ‘suffer and support’ his pains, and to work in the ‘heart of Hell’ a ‘mightier service’. The mentality of the abuser quickly adopts the demulcent demur of the doleful victim:
That with sad overthrow and foul defeat
Hath lost us Heav’n, and all this mighty Host
In horrible destruction laid thus low,
As far as Gods and Heav’nly Essences
Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains
Invincible, and vigour soon returns,
Though all our Glory extinct, and happy state
Here swallow’d up in endless misery (I:135-142)
Satan and his swinging soul band of sad creatures conspire against the common cause with the coarse, caustic, sanctimonious poison of a Conservative Party conference:
Fall’n Cherube, to be weak is miserable
Doing or Suffering: but of this be sure,
To do ought good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. (I:157-162)
Satan counts himself ‘the king of infinite space’, ‘bounded’ like Hamlet in a ‘sterile promontory’ and festering in a ‘foul and pestilent congregation of vapours’ ‘in which are many confines, wards and dungeons’ (Hamlet II ii):
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. (I:254-255)
When the best quotes come, they come not single troop-lines but in battalions.
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n. (I:262-263)
Satan, glorying in the new-kindled kingdom of a playground bully, conjures lines that could have come from Hamlet at the court of King Claudius:
... how wearisom
Eternity so spent in worship paid
To whom we hate (II:247-249)
The world’s a prison but all the players are free to strut their stuff on the Stage of Life:
Our own good from our selves, and from our own
Live to our selves, though in this vast recess,
Free, and to none accountable, preferring
Hard liberty before the easie yoke
Of servile Pomp (II:253-257)