Even though I don't hold with religious belief, that didn't stop me from adoring Dante's Divine Comedy and I've loved Homer's epic poems. Yet I can't say that Milton's Paradise Lost spoke to me. Much of the poem felt repetitive and bloated with discourses on such matters as heliocentric theory. His recapitulation of Genesis is part plagiarism, part bizarre twisting. (Among other things, according to Milton, "God the Son" who would become Jesus was really the Creator.) Unlike Dante, who never lost the human even when dealing with the divine, in Paradise Lost so much is focused on God, Satan, and their angelic allies. Only Adam and Eve are human--and the depiction of Eve gave me no end of problems. And unlike others Milton is compared to such as Homer, Dante, Chaucer and Shakespeare, if Milton has a sense of humor, I completely missed it.
I did recognize passages of beauty and grandeur in Paradise Lost, but rather disconcertingly they were almost always spoken by Satan. "The Mind is its own place and itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." Ironically, according to the introduction to the edition I read, Milton was himself a rebel. He supported Cromwell's republic which executed a anointed monarch and argued against censorship in his treatise Areopagitica. It seems incongruous that in Paradise Lost he seeks to "justify the ways of God to men" by making disobedience and a desire for knowledge the root of all evil. So maybe it's not that surprising that Romantics such as Shelley and Blake would see Satan as the hero of Milton's epic. Especially since Milton's God has all the hallmarks of a despot. Milton describes God as a "sov'reign King;" the purpose of angels and humans is to praise (flatter) him, he's arbitrary, capricious and rigid in his commands, jealous of his power, willing to sacrifice others for his ends and decrees "torture without end."
I found it hard not to gag at the depiction of Eve from the start who says to Adam, "God is thy law, thou mine." It's not all negative. It's through Eve that Milton depicts humans arriving at self-awareness and Milton is sex positive. He insists the unFallen Adam and Eve had sex for instance and he supports marriage. But Milton emphasizes Eve's subordination, inferiority and centrality to the human tragedy throughout. Says Adam:
Of Nature her the inferior, in the mind
And inward faculties, which most excel;
In outward also her resembling less
His image who made both, and less expressing
The character of that dominion given
O'er other creatures.
God sends a warning through the Angel Raphael to Adam--not Eve--merely telling him "to warn thy weaker." Eve succumbs because of flattery and vanity. Adam disobeys God out of love, joining her in sin because he fears otherwise they'd be divided. So woman is weak in herself--man only if and when he's weakened by woman. "Sin" is also female with parallels to Eve--a grotesque demoness who is the daughter of Satan and through an incestuous union with him the mother of Death. Both Sin and Eve are in league with Satan and bring death into creation.
Unlike the case with Homer, I can't blame an initial negative reaction to Milton as the result of being forced to read him in school, a lack of maturity or a bad translation. Milton wrote in English and I've read Paradise Lost only recently for the first time. However, Milton greatly influenced the Romantic poets and even how many Christians see the story of Adam and Eve and Satan. Because of that I'm glad I read the poem and do encourage others to read it. Besides the glints of beauty, many of Milton's religious views are, well, unique. The glimpse of his political views are interesting too--almost libertarian.
He gave us only over Beast, Fish, Fowl
Dominion absolute; that right we hold
By his donation; but Man over men
He made not Lord; such title to himself
Reserving, human left from human free.
Nevertheless, unlike Homer or Dante, I can't by any means see Paradise Lost as a favorite or a work I'd ever reread nor am I tempted to read the sequel, Paradise Regained.
