Space. The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the star-tripper Satan — to fly or not to fly a fiendish errand, to boldly fleece the fresh-faced human race, and ‘to gorge the flesh of Lambs or yeanling Kids’ (III:434), upon the ‘firm opacous Globe’ (III:418):
‘Me miserable! which way shall I flie
Infinite wrauth, and infinite despaire?
Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav’n.
O then at last relent: is there no place
Left for Repentance, none for Pardon left?
None left but by submission; and that word
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame
Among the spirits beneath, whom I seduc’d
With other promises and other vaunts
Then to submit, boasting I could subdue
Th’ Omnipotent. Ay me, they little know
How dearly I abide that boast so vaine,
Under what torments inwardly I groane:
While they adore me on the Throne of Hell,
With Diadem and Scepter high advancd
The lower still I fall, onely Supream
In miserie’ (IV:73-92)
Satan’s grand tour on ‘A violent cross wind’ (III:487) of Earth’s highlights includes of course the Spurs’ temple at White Hart Lane (Elysian Fields) to Zeus (Pat Jennings).
‘Of this frail World; by which the Spirits perverse
With easie intercourse pass to and fro
To tempt or punish mortals, except whom
God and good Angels guard by special grace’ (II:1030-1033)
The full-blooded exploits of Satan are for ever fuelled with the throbbing, pumping, fast food of pain:
‘But pain is perfect miserie, the worst
Of evils, and excessive, overturnes
All patience’ (VI:462-464)
The terrible temptation of fast food — the lowest point of human existence — tum-thumpingly irresistible to Satan and his ravenous pack of Arsenal fans:
‘My Hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and filth
Which mans polluting Sin with taint hath shed
On what was pure, till cramm’d and gorg’d, nigh burst
With suckt and glutted offal, at one sling
Of thy victorious Arm’ (X:630-634)
But Milton’s ambiguities, real or imaginary, have their limit. Having branded Satan a liar — ‘and with lyes/Drew after him the third part of Heav’ns Host’ (V:705-706) — Milton seals Satan’s liability: ‘The miserie, I deserv’d it’ (X: 727).
Satan’s silken, slippery analysis mixes warped logic with cold clarity:
‘But what will not Ambition and Revenge
Descend to? who aspires must down as low
As high he soard, obnoxious first or last
To basest things. Revenge, at first though sweet,
Bitter ere long back on it self recoils’ (IX:168-172)
Adam, condemned to be free in the Garden of Eden, continues the contention, and counters God with the complaint that any caring parent shudders to hear: ‘Wherefore didst thou beget me? I sought it not’ (X:762). And why is God so dead-kean to get shot of his kiddies?
[Adam]: ‘... O fleeting joyes
Of Paradise, deare bought with lasting woes!
Did I request thee, Maker, from my Clay
To mould me Man, did I sollicite thee
From darkness to promote me, or here place
In this delicious Garden?’ (X:741-746)
Brothers and sisters, our final protest against a Life of Pain, and the Pain of Life, inflicted and gifted by our absent father, the reigning fascist intergalatic empire-builder, Elohim ‘mad-dog’ God:
[Adam]: ‘Thy terms too hard, by which I was to hold
The good I sought not. To the loss of that,
Sufficient penaltie, why hast thou added
The sense of endless woes? inexplicable
Thy justice seems’ (X:751-755)
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