I'm not sure who anymore--was it C. S. Lewis?--but someone who knows far more about John Milton than I do created an answer to an almost eternal question about Paradise Lost--is Satan really the hero?
It's an unavoidable question because Satan seems far more attractive than any other character. After having been cast out of heaven, his beastly monstrosity is created in Book I, Satan assesses his great fall:
Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,
Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat
That we must change for Heav'n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light?
He doesn't moan or weep or curse his fate, not one bit--he says, very well then. . .
Be it so, since he [ 245 ]
Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right:
Nothing he can do about it, he says, thus
fardest from him is best
Whom reason hath equald, force hath made supream
Above his equals.
Therefore, let's rumble--
Farewel happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail [ 250 ]
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
There's just something wonderful in his unsullied determination to make something of his personal, God-less horror.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n. [ 255 ]
Satan gets the most famous lines in Paradise Lost.
Now back to Lewis--or whoever I remember reading long ago--who claimed Milton wasn't somehow psychologically under Satan's thumb. Even though the whole story of Paradise Lost is purposefully written to gain, eventually, Paradise Regained, it's impossible not to argue that it's Satan who steals the show, Satan who looms over the whole thing, Satan who is the real, if anti-, hero.
The best way of understanding that--or the only way I remember well--is to say that Milton knows that that's the way we apprehend reality. Human beings--fallen human beings, Milton would surely say--are forever taken by evil. They may not love it, but it nonetheless dominates their (our) lives. We need evil to document our goodness. We need someone wicked to keep a shine on our righteousness.
Milton had it down. Satan comes off hugely in PL because he always does.
Conservatives need Maxine Waters or Nancy Pelosi to kick around, just like Donald Trump needs Hillary. Libs need the man with orange hair. We all need evil ones, and if we don't have them, we create 'em. It's what we do.
At the end of the Cold War era, when the Berlin wall came down, I remember reading people who claimed the times were going to go a little bonkers because nationally and culturally, psychologically and spiritually, the west was going to have to create a new "evil one," and the quest wasn't going to be pretty.
Or this way in the history of Protestantism. A faction of believers suspects that others in the fellowship have turned away from truth. So they break away, start yet another church, another denomination, where in a few years, the pure and holy, once again, begin to question each other's purity and holiness until, once again, there's a new church of the really pure.
Milton's Satan takes us in not because Milton was a closet admirer of the Devil, not just because we are enchanted by evil, but because we need evil.
Me too. I'll admit it.
Fear comes naturally to us, which may well be why the most frequent command in all of holy scripture is "fear not." It's really hard to learn not to fear. It'd be nice if we could.
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail [ 250 ]
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
There's just something wonderful in his unsullied determination to make something of his personal, God-less horror.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n. [ 255 ]
Satan gets the most famous lines in Paradise Lost.
Now back to Lewis--or whoever I remember reading long ago--who claimed Milton wasn't somehow psychologically under Satan's thumb. Even though the whole story of Paradise Lost is purposefully written to gain, eventually, Paradise Regained, it's impossible not to argue that it's Satan who steals the show, Satan who looms over the whole thing, Satan who is the real, if anti-, hero.
The best way of understanding that--or the only way I remember well--is to say that Milton knows that that's the way we apprehend reality. Human beings--fallen human beings, Milton would surely say--are forever taken by evil. They may not love it, but it nonetheless dominates their (our) lives. We need evil to document our goodness. We need someone wicked to keep a shine on our righteousness.
Milton had it down. Satan comes off hugely in PL because he always does.
Conservatives need Maxine Waters or Nancy Pelosi to kick around, just like Donald Trump needs Hillary. Libs need the man with orange hair. We all need evil ones, and if we don't have them, we create 'em. It's what we do.
At the end of the Cold War era, when the Berlin wall came down, I remember reading people who claimed the times were going to go a little bonkers because nationally and culturally, psychologically and spiritually, the west was going to have to create a new "evil one," and the quest wasn't going to be pretty.
Or this way in the history of Protestantism. A faction of believers suspects that others in the fellowship have turned away from truth. So they break away, start yet another church, another denomination, where in a few years, the pure and holy, once again, begin to question each other's purity and holiness until, once again, there's a new church of the really pure.
Milton's Satan takes us in not because Milton was a closet admirer of the Devil, not just because we are enchanted by evil, but because we need evil.
Me too. I'll admit it.
Fear comes naturally to us, which may well be why the most frequent command in all of holy scripture is "fear not." It's really hard to learn not to fear. It'd be nice if we could.
We need grace. Badly. That's what Milton knew.
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