• In total there are 0 users online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 0 guests (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
    Most users ever online was 700 on Tue Mar 19, 2024 1:03 am

Paradise Lost: Bk II

#61: Jan. - Mar. 2009 (Fiction)
Ibid
Eligible to vote in book polls!
Posts: 29
Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2008 1:33 pm
16
Been thanked: 3 times

Unread post

So, these are a few of the things that I found particularly interesting (besides the altogether awesome description of hell throughout Book II)
(quotes are from dartmouth.edu translation)

1) "Turning our Tortures into horrid Arms
Against the Torturer; when to meet the noise
Of his Almighty Engin he shall hear [ 65 ]
Infernal Thunder, and for Lightning see
Black fire and horror shot with equal rage
Among his Angels; and his Throne it self
Mixt with Tartarean Sulphur, and strange fire,
His own invented Torments."
- These are the words of Moloch, who is laying his case for full on open war with heaven. I found it intriguing that as he lists all of the terrible weapons they have at their disposal he also conceeds that all of those weapons have been invented by god.
Unless I'm mistaken these "tortures and torments" would be unpleasant things. I'm confused by the fact that God is the creator of bad things as well as good. Isn't the point of later in this book claiming that Sin sprang from the head of Satan then was raped by him and he in turn fathered death to illustrate the fact that Satan is the creator of all that is bad?
Again, this is me struggling with the convoluted theology, not precisely the text itself.

2) Belial's speech adds an interesting tidbit to the conversation that was held in the thread for Book I - about whether angels can in fact be killed.
"Thus repuls'd, our final hope
Is flat despair; we must exasperate
Th' Almighty Victor to spend all his rage,
And that must end us, that must be our cure, [ 145 ]
To be no more
; sad cure; for who would loose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through Eternity,
To perish rather, swallowd up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night, [ 150 ]
Devoid of sense and motion? and who knows,
Let this be good, whether our angry Foe
Can give it, or will ever?"

- This is interesting because it seems that even the angels in hell (demons?) aren't sure whether or not they can be killed. Belial says that's what they should hope for yet he's not sure if God can or will do it-(see bold)
User avatar
DWill

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6966
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:05 am
16
Location: Luray, Virginia
Has thanked: 2262 times
Been thanked: 2470 times

Unread post

I found the language in Bk. II to be more difficult. It's not the vocabulary or Milton's spelling, but the syntax, which appears to be more like badly translated Latin at times. This is 60 years after Shakespeare, yet it's less like English to me.

About the demon's council, I picked up that none of the speakers but Satan believe that they have any chance to strike at God's throne or to get the best of God in any other way. Even Moloch favors open war only because that is the only option to being miserable in Hell, and some measure of revenge would feel good. But all think that God can't be beat, except Satan. The traditional way to look at that would be to say that Satan has enormous pride, which is a form a self-deception. He deceives himself. Another way to look at it, though, is that he won't accept what is only reputed; he has to find out for himself. But he's smart enough to know that so soon after being beaten, war isn't the best path.

I thought the "interlude" after the council was kind of amusing, where in imitation of the classical epics Milton has the demons holding contests, exploring Hell, and having seminars and such.

The meeting with Sin and Death and the story told about Satan's fatherhood of them seemed like burlesque allegory to me. It isn't in keeping with the impression we have of Satan so far, but that is what Milton intends, to take some of the glory away from Satan. It was also pretty bold of Milton to make Heaven the place of the origin of Sin. I wasn't surprised here that Milton implies that only through God's sufferance does Satan's ploy to get the gates open work.

Sin and Death amain
Following his track, such was the will of Heav'n, [ 1025 ]


That was a good moral that Milton draws from the admirable unity that the demons show (from the Dartmouth online edition):

O shame to men! Devil with Devil damn'd
Firm concord holds, men onely disagree
Of Creatures rational, though under hope
Of heavenly Grace; and God proclaiming peace,
Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife [ 500 ]
Among themselves, and levie cruel warres,
Wasting the Earth, each other to destroy:
As if (which might induce us to accord)
Man had not hellish foes anow besides,
That day and night for his destruction waite.

And so, off Satan goes to see what trouble he can stir up in the new territory of earth. Here's a question to end with: The cosmology that Milton uses is Ptolemaic and from Greek myth. Yet Copernicus published his On Celestial Motions in 1543, more than 120 years before Milton began PL. Why didn't Milton get with the program? He wasn't some kind of throwback and was well aware of even recent developments in science.
User avatar
Robert Tulip

2B - MOD & SILVER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6497
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2005 9:16 pm
18
Location: Canberra
Has thanked: 2717 times
Been thanked: 2659 times
Contact:
Australia

Unread post

The philosophical problem of Paradise Lost is set out in the following lines from Book 2, where Milton says that reasoning about providence, foreknowledge, freedom and fate is difficult. My view here is that freedom can be understood on the model of resistance to disease: sin is like a virus on the planet, and humanity is strengthened by going through the illness, while gaia prepares antibodies. Freedom that lacks the fortitude to resist destruction is not real. It is like Einstein's view of time, that the future is just as real as the past, but life is so complex that this theory cannot diminish freedom. In other words, Jesus Christ is the vaccine innoculating planet earth against the cancer of sin.
Others apart sat on a Hill retir'd, In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will and Fate, Fixt Fate, free will, foreknowledg absolute, [ 560 ] And found no end, in wandring mazes lost. Of good and evil much they argu'd then, Of happiness and final misery, Passion and Apathie, and glory and shame, Vain wisdom all, and false Philosophie: [ 565 ] Yet with a pleasing sorcerie could charm Pain for a while or anguish, and excite Fallacious hope, or arm th' obdured brest With stubborn patience as with triple steel.
User avatar
Thomas Hood
Genuinely Genius
Posts: 823
Joined: Sun Feb 17, 2008 7:21 pm
16
Location: Wyse Fork, NC
Been thanked: 1 time

Unread post

DWill wrote:The cosmology that Milton uses is Ptolemaic and from Greek myth. Yet Copernicus published his On Celestial Motions in 1543, more than 120 years before Milton began PL. Why didn't Milton get with the program? He wasn't some kind of throwback and was well aware of even recent developments in science.
Probably because Milton was aware of the dehumanizing effect of science -- the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge -- the shadow tree of the Tree of Life. Traditional cosmology -- astrological cosmology -- projects humanity onto the heavens by means of the Zodiacal Man -- the Great Man or Logos. The Great Man on the Cosmic Tree is as Christ on the cross, so the crucifixion is an antitype of the cosmic type. Persons with a greater orientation toward matter are hostile to such an interpretation of the cosmos.

Milton explicitly endorses the astrological worldview in Book 10 when the world is modified for the seasonality that follows sin:

To the blanc Moone
Her office they prescrib'd, to th' other five
Thir planetarie motions and aspects
In Sextile, Square, and Trine, and Opposite,
Of noxious efficacie, and when to joyne [ 660 ]
In Synod unbenigne, and taught the fixt
Thir influence malignant when to showre,
Which of them rising with the Sun, or falling,
Should prove tempestuous . . .

I found this chart helpful:

(1) Before the Fall of the Angels

HEAVEN
------------------------
CHAOS

(2) After the Fall of the Angels

HEAVEN
------------------------
CHAOS
------------------------
HELL

(3) After the Creation of the World

HEAVEN
------------------------
THE WORLD
------------------------
CHAOS
------------------------
HELL
User avatar
Saffron

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
I can has reading?
Posts: 2954
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:37 pm
15
Location: Randolph, VT
Has thanked: 474 times
Been thanked: 399 times
United States of America

Unread post

DWill wrote: Here's a question to end with: The cosmology that Milton uses is Ptolemaic and from Greek myth. Yet Copernicus published his On Celestial Motions in 1543, more than 120 years before Milton began PL. Why didn't Milton get with the program? He wasn't some kind of throwback and was well aware of even recent developments in science.
It seems very logical that Milton would go with the old geocentric model of the universe. He is after all, telling a biblical story -- the bible puts the earth at the center of the universe. It also makes sense in that Milton is retelling a myth -- myth is not science. PL is allegory, creation myth and epic all rolled into one fantastical story; too much reality or science would undermine his purpose.
User avatar
DWill

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6966
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:05 am
16
Location: Luray, Virginia
Has thanked: 2262 times
Been thanked: 2470 times

Unread post

Probably because Milton was aware of the dehumanizing effect of science -- the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge -- the shadow tree of the Tree of Life. Traditional cosmology -- astrological cosmology -- projects humanity onto the heavens by means of the Zodiacal Man -- the Great Man or Logos. The Great Man on the Cosmic Tree is as Christ on the cross, so the crucifixion is an antitype of the cosmic type. Persons with a greater orientation toward matter are hostile to such an interpretation of the cosmos.
I think taditionally, the Tree of Knowledge is the tree of knowledge of good and evil. By eating fruit from the tree, humans became capable fo knowing good only through knowing evil. Knowledge equalling knowledge of science? This is a different, untraditional interpretation. I don't think Milton was taking a stand against a scientific view that had been around for generations. I'd go more along with Saffron's view.
Milton explicitly endorses the astrological worldview in Book 10 when the world is modified for the seasonality that follows sin
It might appear that way from the passage. But is Milton necessarily endorsing any particular conception of the cosmos in PL? Are we to think that this extremely conscientious Christian "believes in" astrology? I don't want to say this is just a poetic coup of sorts for Milton--to Christianize what had had pagan origins--because it is not trivial. But Milton thought that in earlier traditions there were shadows of truth, that in these traditions people were working toward a truth that only became fulfilled in God and Christ. Giving the planets' influence as a result of sin being loosed in the universe (by God, essentially) gives some credence to those who before believed in astrology. So I see Milton as a true humanist in this sense, not saying that the beliefs of lapsed traditions came to naught; saying they may have some validity from the standpoint of a better truth. (I know nothing about the Zodiac or astrology, obviously.)

On Milton's cosmology in PL, there is a good "map" in my Milton book. It shows a kind of acorn shaped universe, with Heaven at the top represented by a pinnacle of light. Below that is a vast Chaos, and below that is Hell. The "World" is an extremely small orb hanging by a chain from Heaven's gate. It is not the earth, but the "earth system" of the earth and the planets and sun revolving around it, with several other bands on the outside. I had not noted that the territory of the "world" was believed to be miniscule compared to the rest of the universe. I couldn't find an online representation to post for people to look at.
User avatar
DWill

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6966
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:05 am
16
Location: Luray, Virginia
Has thanked: 2262 times
Been thanked: 2470 times

Unread post

Saffron wrote:It seems very logical that Milton would go with the old geocentric model of the universe. He is after all, telling a biblical story -- the bible puts the earth at the center of the universe. It also makes sense in that Milton is retelling a myth -- myth is not science. PL is allegory, creation myth and epic all rolled into one fantastical story; too much reality or science would undermine his purpose.
My intro to PL says that the old geocentric model was still published in books in Milton's day, so he might have also been aware that readers would have expected this more familiar and comfortable model. But the authorities disagree on whether Milton himself was a convinced Copernican. It's a little hard to see him committing himself to the Ptolemaic system while disbelieving it, even for the purpose of writing a poem. To a large extent, if not entirely, he must have understood the Bible to be historically and factually accurate. We'll probably have to keep looking at this question.
User avatar
Saffron

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
I can has reading?
Posts: 2954
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:37 pm
15
Location: Randolph, VT
Has thanked: 474 times
Been thanked: 399 times
United States of America

Unread post

DWill wrote: But the authorities disagree on whether Milton himself was a convinced Copernican. It's a little hard to see him committing himself to the Ptolemaic system while disbelieving it, even for the purpose of writing a poem. To a large extent, if not entirely, he must have understood the Bible to be historically and factually accurate. We'll probably have to keep looking at this question.
I've been to the library and poking around online trying to get nearer to an answer to the question posed by DWill a few posts back. It seems that there has been much discussion of this matter of cosmology through the years. Scholars can't seem to agree or even stay with there own positions, as to why Milton went with a Ptolemaic cosmology. Here is the explanation given in the book I check out from the library, John Milton by Gerald J. Schiffhorst, p.125:

"While relying for poetic purposes on the traditional Ptolemaic, geocentric cosmology, the poet nevertheless includes many references in the epic to the then new scientific discoveries of Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, and others. That the poet's imagination was stirred by such discoveries is apparent from his fascination with the telescope and with vast spatial perspectives, yet he maintained a more conservative sense of a measurable, circumscribed world in which God, not space, is infinite. The rich interplay between old and new conceptions of space in Milton's work presents a dual perspective whereby Earth as viewed by man is contrasted with its perception from afar"

"
User avatar
Robert Tulip

2B - MOD & SILVER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6497
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2005 9:16 pm
18
Location: Canberra
Has thanked: 2717 times
Been thanked: 2659 times
Contact:
Australia

Unread post

A pair of Miltonic diagrams of the cosmos and Satan's path are at http://unurthed.com/2007/02/ Heaven is not shown. My surmise is that Milton knew the Copernican findings were correct, but his primary purpose was the moral lesson of the tale of fall and redemption, so the physical accuracy was secondary to the big story.

All the characters are in any case allegorical symbols for cosmic archetypes, and it is probably rather hard to shoehorn Adam and Eve into a scientific paradigm. This produces a basic unease for me about the book, that a false cosmology produces false ethics. As I mentioned earlier, his decision to lump Isis with the fallen angels looks like one symptom of this false cosmology.

The 'crystaline sphere' he describes around the fixed stars was intended by Ptolemy to account for the precession of the equinox, using the term 'trepidation'. An epic tale of human destiny based on the scientific account of precession would be a real humdinger.

It is actually mentioned in Book 3, line 480:
[ 480 ]They pass the Planets seven, and pass the fixt, And that Crystalline Sphear whose ballance weighs The Trepidation talkt, and that first mov'd;
And for an explanation of where angels fear to tread http://www.thestarofthemagi.com/precess ... dation.htm
Robert
User avatar
Robert Tulip

2B - MOD & SILVER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6497
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2005 9:16 pm
18
Location: Canberra
Has thanked: 2717 times
Been thanked: 2659 times
Contact:
Australia

Unread post

Thomas Hood wrote:the crucifixion is an antitype of the cosmic type
Is this typology like a fractal reading - as above so below?
Post Reply

Return to “Paradise Lost - by John Milton”