Leatherbound Classics: John Milton, Paradise Lost

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the World, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, 

Sing, Heavenly Muse, that on the secret top

Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed

In the beginning how the heavens and earth

Rose out of Chaos:  or, if Sion hill

Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed

Fast by the oracle of God, I thence

Invoke thy aid to my adventrous song,

That with no middle flight intends to soar

Above th'Anonian mount, while it pursues

Things unattempted yet in prose or rime.

John Milton's 1665 epic/religious poem, Paradise Lost, is often compared to the works of Homer, Vergil, and Ariosto.  It certainly is the most ambitious epic poem extant in English, covering nearly 10,000 lines and twelve books (or parts) of poesy, but there is more than just mere length that makes Paradise Lost an enduring monument to English Renaissance literature.  It also contains historical value, for its (limited) insight into mid-17th century religious attitudes, particularly during a time when the Puritan movement was fracturing into Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, and other Dissenters from the established Church of England.  But even more than that, Paradise Lost is an oddity in which classical forms are followed slavishly, even when it might be odd to consider the role of the Muse in the world of the omnipotent and omnipresent triune God.

Most readers of Paradise Lost focus their praise on the first two books and the depiction of the fallen Satan as a brooding, pre-Romantic anti-hero whose motivations we relate to and with which we perhaps may sympathize.  Certainly there is something seductive about this bravado outburst in Book I:

Here at least
we shall be free; the 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.

However, Milton's story is about more than just the insidiousness of evil and its desire to give full reign to ambition while forswearing any oaths of allegiance or servitude to God.  Consider the opening remarks of God the Father to Christ the Son in Book III:

'Only-begotten Son, seest thou what rage
Transports our Adversary?  whom no bounds
Prescribed, no bars of Hell, nor all the chains
Heaped on him there, nor yet the main abyss
Wide interrupt, can hold; so bent he seems
On desperate revenge, that shall redound
Upon his own rebellious head.'

Here we begin to see the true conflict of the poem.  It is not that of the rebel Satan fighting the good (evil?) fight against the heavenly despot, alluring as that chic image of a diabolic Che Guevara might be to many.  Rather, the main conflict in Paradise Lost revolves around the frailty of those who desire to be free of the bonds they imagine enveloping themselves.  Satan, in his desire to wreak havoc upon Creation during his descent from servant to covetous, rebellious outlaw, is to learn that all things, good and bad alike, only serve to reflect the greater glory.  This is a troubling sentiment for many readers, both during Milton's day and today; God certainly appears at first glance to be callous toward humans and their suffering due to Adam's Sin.

However, when viewed as both a literal and metaphoric expression of Calvinist theology, Paradise Lost takes on a different shade of meaning.  After the Fall, the poem does not content itself with alluding to the host of afflictions that torment humanity.  Rather, as is the case in Book XI with the scenes involving Noah, the emphasis is on the Elect, those whom God has foreseen as being just and righteous and how it is through that mystery of grace that humanity comes eventually to the Redeemer.  As a poetic presentation of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, Paradise Lost certainly captures the hopeful element of that theological school much more than the hell and brimstone sermons of a Cotton Mather or Jonathan Edwards could ever aspire to do.

This is not to say that Paradise Lost is free from deficiencies.  Its structure certainly is unwieldy at times.  Milton apes the mannerisms of the Classical poets to such a degree that his poetic metaphors clash with his religious theme.  Often too much space transpires from the laudatory opening lines of several books to the actual thematic issues addressed later on in those Argument sections, resulting in muddled lines whose power is reduced by Milton's propensity to wax eloquent just a bit too long.  This is especially evident in scenes such as the one late in Book III where he attempts to contrast humanity's failed attempts at reconciliation (such as the references to the Dominicans and Franciscans to underscore the faults of Catholicism) with the divine Will and Judgment.  Milton frankly often takes too long to get to the point and several scenes meant to underscore the Divine plan for redemption suffer under the weight of the artificiality of poetic devices such as the raging of the muse, the in media res cutaway scenes, and the hearkening back to Classical poets, none of whom were Christians and whose works dealt with themes very different from those Milton essayed to cast into verse.

Yet despite these problems, Paradise Lost certainly packs a punch nearly 350 years after its initial publication.  Next to the King James translation of the Bible, it perhaps was one of the most quoted English poems from the 17th century to influence English and American writers.  Its synthesis of Classical poetic elements with Calvinist doctrine served to inspire generations of writers to seek out ways to weave elements of both into their own writings.  Even today, in our much more secular age, Milton's poetry moves us because of how easily we can relate to several of the characters, from Satan to Adam and Eve.  Paradise Lost may not be the easiest poem to read, especially when it comes to considering its thematic elements, but it certainly is a powerful work that serves as the epitome of 17th century English writing, particularly that of a religious bent.

The 5x3 reading/reviewing challenge

I discussed this a few weeks earlier on a forum, but for some reason I neglected to post this here.  For 2011, I have set myself an arduous reading challenge.  No, I'm not going to try to read more than 562 books this year (my all-time high, reached back in 2009).  Nor am I going to try to read X amount of 2011 releases.  Instead, my reading goal may sound a bit more modest, until one stops to think just what this actually entails.

I am going to embark on what I call a 5x3 reading/reviewing contest.  For this year, I am going to read and review (if at all possible, read for the first time) at least one work in the three original genres of Prose, Poetry, and Drama, in five different languages (English, Spanish, French, Italian, and Latin; German may be a supplemental, as my reading comprehension in that language is lower than the other five).  For the most part, I have the materials at hand and likely will do more than one in some of these languages.  For example, I have already completed the English poetry component of this challenge by giving my thoughts on the Easton Press edition of The Poems of John Keats, whose work I had never read in full until this year.  I may read an earlier or contemporary play (one that I have yet to read), but I've finished the prose work part (at least the reading segment) when I read several works, including Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, which I'll review in the near future.

The biggest challenge I'm facing this month is reading Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary in French for the first time (I've read it in translation, but I haven't re-read it since I was 22 or 23).  I hope to finish it in the next week or two (reading only 1-3 chapters a day, without aid of the translation, although I'll likely read the translation after I finish it in the original to make sure I grasped everything), with a review before the end of the month.  As for French poetry, it might be Baudelaire while for the play it'd be something by either Racine or Moliére.

The Italian component will consist of reading Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato for the poem, Pirandello's Liolà for the play and something by Calvino for the prose work.  Too many choices in Spanish for the prose, Rubén Darío for the poem, and perhaps one of Calderón de la Barca's plays for that final part.  In Latin, either Catullus or Vergil for the Poem, Suetonius for the prose, and Plautus for the play.  And at some point, I'm going to read more of Schiller's plays, in both German and English translation.

Ambitious?  Of course.  Pretentious?  Only if it's having pretensions of challenging myself, as otherwise the person making such an accusation could in turn be considered a dullard.  Educational?  Probably.  Fun?  Almost certainly.  Definitely beats waxing eloquent over a polished turd being marketed as a "hot" 2011 release, no?

Leatherbound Classics: The Poems of John Keats

O kindly muse! let not my weak tongue faulter

In telling this goodly company,

Of their old piety, and of their glee:

But let a portion of ethereal dew

Fall on my head, and presently unmew

My soul; that I may dare, in wayfaring,

To stammer where old Chaucer us'd to sing.

"Endymion," Book I

For years, John Keats has been a favorite poet of mine, yet until recently I had never deigned to read more than the odd poem or excerpt that I would run across in a poetry anthology or material that I might read in preparation for teaching literature.  When I began collecting the Easton Press 100 Greatest Books Ever Written, one of the books I marked for purchasing was a chronological collection of Keats' poetry, The Poetry of John Keats.  I bought it for the rainy days, the snowy days, the days where I might want to sit in the summer heat and dream of ruins and those belles dames san merci.

Reading Keats can be a moving experience, depending on how one approaches him.  He is not a classicist like John Milton; his hymns are not sonorous but rather light upon first glance.  Keats displays an appreciation for classical motifs, but he is as apt to self-deprecation (as witnessed in the excerpt quoted above) as he is to sing to his muse.  When he appropriates classical characters, such as Hyperion, he does not fit his lines into well-worn literary channels.  Rather, what makes Keats a joy to read are those moments in which the characters live, breathe, and ache.

Keats did not live long; he was dead before reaching his twenty-seventh year.  Yet in a remarkable five-year period before his death in 1821 from tuberculosis, he created some of the most memorable passages in Romantic poetry.  Here below is another passage from "Endymion" that I have reflected upon several times:

"I'll smile no more, Peona; nor will wed
Sorrow the way to death; but patiently
Bear up against it:  so farewell, sad sigh;
And come instead demurest meditation,
To occupy me wholly, and to fashion
My pilgrimage for the world's dusky brink."

Perhaps some will find signs of youthful angst in those lines, but it is the grim resolution that attracts my attention.  It is speaking to those who have passed through sorrow and romantic despair to the other side, to where meditative contemplation comes to fill the space left vacant by hope and then sorrow.  In reading Keats, I focus not so much on how his lines are constructed (although they flow quite well), nor do I look upon his treatment of themes (wondrous as his longer poems are in recasting classical motifs), but rather upon how his words speak to me and how I react in turn.

Keats' imagery perhaps is the best quality in his poetry.  Whether he be talking of the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," as found in "On Autumn," or if he be referring to the ghosts of lost love in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," or if he references the dreams of fanatics in "The Fall of Hyperion," in just a few words vivid, almost palpable images spring up in the reader's mind.  However, Keats does more than just imbue these images with just the faint semblance of life.  Rather, he creates moments in which Lycius might find life before it is drained from him in "Lamia," or where wanderers coming upon ruins might perceive what had been and what might still be.  Although there are rough patches where the lines might not match the elegance expected from classical works, Keats' strength is in the raw power of those scenes which he captures with just a few well-placed, emotional lines.  It is this emotional power that re-creates for us moments which we have fleetingly experienced but never quite realized their power until Keats reveals them for us.  For this, Keats will continue to speak to us long after this world has faded into another autumn night.

More books that I wish I'd see others discussing/reading

I'm not much of a trend-follower these days; I receive and occasionally read several of the same books that I see several other online reviewers promoting, but I rarely feel the need to comment on them, since they receive more than their fair share of coverage compared to their actual literary merits.  However, there are several fine works, old and newish alike, that I wish I'd see more coverage of by a wider variety of readers.  The books listed below do not all belong to a particular time, place, or genre, but instead are just some good stories that I'd like to see more people cover (I do hope to cover more of these myself in the coming months and years):

Brian Evenson, Altmann's Tongue

Michael Cisco, The Narrator

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

John Crowley, Ægypt Cycle (four novels)

Charles Finney, The Circus of Dr. Lao

Stepan Chapman, The Troika

Gustave Flaubert, The Temptation of St. Anthony

Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

A. Merritt, The Face in the Abyss

Charlotte Lennox, The Female Quixote

Raymond Queneau, Saint Glinglin

Robert Irwin, The Arabian Nightmare

Gustav Meyrinck, The Golem


Any of these strike your fancy?

A propos this weekend's tragic shooting

Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave
A paradise for a sect; the savage too
From forth the loftiest fashion of his sleep
Guesses at Heaven; pity these have not 
Trac'd upon vellum or wild Indian leaf
The shadows of melodious utterance.

John Keats, "The Fall of Hyperion"

Wake me up from their terrible dream, please?

List here the "classics" or other recommended readings you didn't enjoy earlier in life

In the near future, I'm going to be starting a little project.  But first, I could use a bit of help.  Over the 10-11 years that I've been active on various online fora, I have seen several passing references to hating certain books, often "classics," that were either assigned to be read in school or were tried at a certain time without much success.  As someone who teaches both history and language arts/reading/grammar, this interests me for professional reasons.

If you would, please list some of the books you read years ago that you remember hating.  Don't tell me why you hated it (unless you feel driven to do so, I suppose), but just give me an idea of whether or not that book was assigned reading and the approximate age that you first read it.  Thanks!

P.S.  Robert Stanek and Terry Goodkind do not constitute "classics" for purposes of this post.

January 7: Books Leaving, Books Coming In

After being laid up much of the past eight days or so with a severe cold/bronchial infection, I finally had the opportunity to go trade in more of my books (and about three dozen of my dad's that he gave to me in order to clear his own shelves) for books to purchase for my students, for class sets, and a few for my own.

Some of these books were good, yet not the sort that I'd need (or want) to re-read a second time, a few more were merely mediocre, a couple were distinctly full of suckitude (like the Huso), and three were never read due to lack of interest.

Perhaps a few of you might be reading this and wonder to yourselves, "How could he get rid of _____?  That's a very good book!", but then again, compare that to the books that I did buy for myself with the store credit received from these books and from the $71 I had left over from three weeks ago:

Bilingual Greek and Latin editions of two early historians, a translation of a famous medieval German poem, Zweig in Italian translation, and two very old editions of two Twain novels that I have yet to read.

Then there's Schiller in the original German, Parzival in the original German, Rousseau in French, Calvino in Italian, a couple more Italian writers, all of which is worth more to me now than recently-published work that is much more likely to end up remaindered than being remembered two years from now.  And then there are three earlier purchases:  two Easton Press editions and the unexpurgated first volume of Twain's autobiography.  Guess I'm gearing up for a Twain reading session in the coming weeks, much of it dealing with his lesser-known works.

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