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PARADISE LOST AND PARADISE REGAINED JOHN

Introduced by Orlando Reade

MILTON

JOHN MILTON

John Milton was born on 9 December 1608. He studied at St Paul’s School and then at Christ’s College, Cambridge. He wrote poetry in Latin and Italian as well as English and travelled in Italy between 1638 and 1639. He married Mary Powell in 1642 but their relationship quickly broke down and they lived apart until 1645, when Mary returned to him. They had four children, three daughters and a son who died in infancy. During the Interregnum after the execution of Charles I, Milton worked for the civil service and wrote pamphlets in support of the new republic as well as beginning work on his masterpiece, Paradise Lost. His first wife died in 1652 and he married again in 1656, although his second wife died not long afterwards in 1658. When the monarchy was restored in 1660 Milton was arrested but was released with a fine. In 1663 he married his third wife and he is thought to have finished Paradise Lost in this same year. He published the companion poem, Paradise Regained, in 1671. John Milton died on 8 November 1674.

ALSO BY JOHN MILTON

Comus Lycidas

Samson Agonistes Poems

JOHN MILTON PARADISE LOST AND PARADISE REGAINED

EDITED BY

Gordon Campbell

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY Orlando

Reade

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Paradise Lost was first published in 1667

Paradise Regained was first published in 1671 This paperback first published in Vintage Classics in 2024

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INTRODUCTION

Everyone complains about it. It is long – ‘No one ever wished it longer’ said Samuel Johnson. The story it tells is too familiar – ‘detestable’, said Goethe, and ‘worm-eaten’. Its language is difficult to understand – ‘harsh and barbarous’ said T. S. Eliot. It contains unacceptable views: Virginia Woolf called its author ‘the first of the masculinists’. But none of them could help admiring John Milton’s Paradise Lost. ‘This is the essence of which almost all other poetry is the dilution’ Woolf effused. It is the result of ‘exalted genius’ admitted Eliot. ‘Poetical and oratorical genius’ added Goethe. It ranks first ‘among the productions of the human mind’ conceded Johnson. It wasn’t just writers who admired Paradise Lost: in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was required reading across the English-speaking world, devoured by milkmaids and kings, priests and heretics, slaves and slaveowners. In the increasingly secular modern age, its reputation has endured, and in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries satanist priests, biker gangs, environmentalists, black nationalists and white supremacists have been affected by its visions. More so, perhaps, than any other work of English literature, it has inspired strong feelings and controversial opinions.

First published in 1667, Paradise Lost is an epic poem, modelled on those of ancient Greece and

Rome, especially Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (8th century BCE), Virgil’s Aeneid and Lucan’s Pharsalia (both 1st century BCE). Epics are long poems, telling stories of heroic acts and world-changing events: terrible wars, torturous journeys, tragic love affairs and the founding of long-lasting empires. The epic tradition had been advanced by Christian authors in the medieval and Renaissance periods, including Dante’s Divine Comedy (early 14th century), Luis Camões’ Os Lusíadas (1572) and Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered (1581). Milton tried to surpass them all, doing ‘things unattempted in prose and rhyme’ (Book 1, line 16). In its twelve books (or chapters), Paradise Lost tells the story of the Fall of Adam and Eve. But it doesn’t start there. Milton goes all the way back to before the beginning of creation, to show us where the world went wrong and what we can do about it.

The poem begins with an invocation – a characteristic feature of epic – in which the poet asks his muse to inspire him. His muse is a divine spirit, and he calls for her to infuse his writing with divine purpose:

What in me is dark

Illumine, what is low raise and support: That, to the height of this great argument I may assert eternal providence, And justify the ways of God to men. (1.21–25)

These lines set out the soaring ambition of Paradise Lost: to reconcile the facts of violence and suffering

with the existence of an infinitely just and loving God. What follows is a Christian story, but it is a highly unorthodox one, full of darkness, temptation and doubt.

The story opens in Hell, where Satan wakes up after rebelling against God in Heaven. He and his followers then debate what to do next, ultimately deciding to travel up to the newly created world and tempt Adam and Eve to disobey their Creator. This is not in the Book of Genesis: it is an original fiction, taken from other parts of scripture and folk stories about the devil. Milton used these to create a backstory for the Fall. In retelling this story of human origins, Milton argues that God gave Adam and Eve the freedom to disobey him. This is a theological argument, intervening in Protestant debates of the seventeenth century, and a political one. Milton believed that all humans enjoy a Godgiven liberty to think for themselves, and this is why republics are better than monarchies. More explicitly than many works of literature, Paradise Lost tells us its author’s own beliefs. Later in the poem, Milton describes himself ‘In darkness, and with dangers compassed round’ (7.26–27). To read Paradise Lost is to wonder what happened to him.

John Milton was born in London in 1608. His family were middle-class Protestants: wealthy, cultured and aspirational. He was sent to St Paul’s School and then Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he

mastered Ancient Greek and Latin. These skills could have been the foundation of a career as a clergyman or lawyer. But, after graduating, Milton instead pursued what one biographer calls the ‘fantastick [sic] luxury of various knowledge’: studying mathematics, trying to read all of classical literature, and writing increasingly ambitious short poems. In 1638, he went on a tour of Italy, where he met the blind scientist Galileo, who had been imprisoned by the Inquisition discoveries. By the time he returned to England, Milton had been radicalised. He now believed that the Church of England bishops were a threat to Protestant liberty. At that time, he was also making notes for a work of literature on a Biblical or historical subject, including ‘Paradise Lost’ as a possible title. He seems to have known it would be his greatest achievement. But he didn’t write it. In 1642, the English Civil War broke out and he put his literary ambitions to one side.

The English Civil War was the result of tensions that had been growing for some time. King Charles I was Catholic-leaning, indecisive and autocratic, and his Parliament was packed with anti-Catholic Protestants who were unwilling to be dictated to. When the two sides became irreconcilable, Milton’s loyalties were obvious. He emerged as a public figure at this time, putting his name on pamphlets attacking the bishops as instruments of oppression. In 1642, he married a young woman called Mary Powell but only a month later she abandoned him,

going back to her family as the civil war was breaking out. Milton responded to this traumatic episode by writing a series of pamphlets on marriage law, in which he argued that divorce be made possible for incompatible couples. This made him notorious.

In 1649, King Charles I was executed, the monarchy was abolished, and a new government was established. They offered Milton a position, Secretary of Foreign Tongues, which involved writing and diplomatic correspondence. He also sat on the Council of State, the executive body governing the nation, and wrote propaganda for the new government. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes claimed the civil war had happened because English men read too much classical literature. Some men wanted England to establish a republic like those of Ancient Greece and Rome, where policy would not come from the whims of a single leader, but from rational debate between freethinking Protestant men. Milton wrote treatises defending this radical political experiment. Then, after several years of instability, Cromwell made himself the Lord Protector of England. This wasn’t the democracy Milton had dreamed of, but he still said Cromwell was ‘the man most fit to rule’. Then Cromwell died, and the government fell apart. In 1660, the dead king’s son returned to restore the monarchy in England. As someone who had championed the regicide, Milton was threatened with execution, but he was eventually granted

a reprieve. It was then that he returned to his abandoned epic.

Milton composed most of Paradise Lost between 1660 and 1665. During that time, he was living in London with his children. His first wife Mary had eventually returned to him, bearing three daughters before dying in childbirth. He remarried, but his second wife, Katherine, died several years later. He had also gone blind. He received his poem by divine inspiration at night, and in the morning he would dictate it to a secretary. The composition of an epic poem by a blind man is an extraordinary accomplishment, but it came at a cost. In those years, Milton’s relationship with his daughters broke down. They resented his forcing them to read to him in languages they couldn’t understand and they didn’t like their stepmother. Finally, Milton sent his daughters away to work for other families. In art, unlike in life, Milton believed in the possibility of repairing relationships, and the arc of Paradise Lost bends from revenge to forgiveness. We watch as the world becomes fallen but it remains one in which there is a chance to begin anew. *

To read Paradise Lost is to undertake a quest. It can be helpful to do so with fellow travellers but adventurous readers can conquer it alone. It is challenging in parts, but immensely rewarding for those who reach the end. The reader can find help when they need it: the notes in this edition explain unfamiliar

words and difficult lines, and many other resources are available. Some aspects of the poem remain a mystery even to experts, so the reader should not expect to understand it all. Some of its confusion is intentional – the reader is free to make sense of it on their own.

Liberty is all-important in this poem. The ‘Note on the Verse’, which acts as a short introduction to Paradise Lost, explains its poetic form in terms of political freedom. The form is unrhyming iambic pentameter, also known as blank verse. Every line has five stressed syllables and five unstressed syllables, alternating in the following pattern:

Of man’s first dis-o-be-dience, and the fruit Of that for-bi-dden tree whose mor-tal taste . . .

Milton tells us that choosing not to rhyme has allowed him to restore an ‘ancient liberty’ to epic poetry (since Homer and Virgil’s epics didn’t rhyme either). This means that the poem’s form is comparable to the political revolution he had championed. He also allows himself liberty with respect to the metre, so you might notice lines that don’t fit the pattern above.

Liberty is also something we experience in relation to the plot. Paradise Lost presents us with familiar characters – God and Satan, Adam and Eve – but they are not as we expect. At first, Satan appears to be the hero of the poem, and it is his reasoning that we hear long before we encounter

God’s. Satan’s speeches are sublime, majestic and powerfully convincing. He tells Beelzebub, his second-in-command:

To bow and sue for grace

With suppliant knee, and deify his power Who, from the terror of this arm, so late Doubted his empire – that were low indeed (1.111 – 114)

Satan refuses to bow down to God, even though he has lost the war. In this, Satan sounds a lot like Milton, an unrepentant enemy of kings. By contrast, when God appears he is curiously unsympathetic. Working out why Milton made Satan sound so much like himself is one of the great mysteries of Paradise Lost – which has inspired centuries of debate – and it is something for the reader to work out for themself.

Reading Paradise Lost, we are bound to lose our footing. Milton often uses extended metaphors, known as ‘epic similes’: richly poetic (and sometimes intensely disorientating) comparisons. At one point, Milton compares a crowd of devils to fairy elves, Whose midnight revels, by a forest side

Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees . . . (1.781 – 784)

As we read, the ground seems to shift beneath our feet: the swarming devils are like ‘fairy elves’, or rather like elves as seen by a tired peasant, who thinks

he might be dreaming. We could see this as a trap: by imagining these fairies, we wander off the path of righteousness only to be corrected by the reminder that they are devils. But excessive suspicion is its own error. Sometimes we should be suspicious of this poem’s beauty, sometimes instructed by it, and sometimes astonished, like the tired peasant, delayed by what he sees, or thinks he sees, beneath the visiting moon.

One of the most astonishing things about Paradise Lost is its cosmic imagination. Satan sets out on an odyssey out of Hell, crossing outer space (which Milton calls Chaos), and eventually plunging into our solar system:

Through the pure marble air his oblique way Amongst innumerable stars, that shone Stars distant, but nigh-hand seemed other worlds; Or other worlds they seemed (3.564–567)

Satan passes these ‘other worlds’ without stopping to investigate. Again, the poem leaves us uncertain what is true. Milton was living at a time when the discoveries of Copernicus had unsettled the traditional Earth-centred model of the universe, but when the new, sun-centred model was not yet widely accepted. Later in the poem, Adam has a dialogue with the archangel Raphael about the nature of the universe that resembles Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), the book that defends Copernicus’s theory, which had been suppressed by the Vatican. The angel

counsels Adam to be cautious in his assumptions about the universe, but the reader can’t help but think of those ‘other worlds’.

The most beautiful passages of Paradise Lost are those about Adam and Eve. Milton allows himself substantial freedom in imagining how Paradise works. He invents delightfully concrete details: lions fooling around with goats, the roses without thorns, and Adam and Eve’s raw vegan diet. These passages also contain Milton’s most moving love poetry. ‘With thee conversing I forget all time,’ Eve tells Adam. This would not be Paradise without him, she says:

neither breath of morn, when she ascends With charm of earliest birds, nor rising sun

On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, flower, Glistering with dew, nor fragrance after showers, Nor grateful evening mild, nor silent night, With this her solemn bird, nor walk by moon, Or glittering starlight, without thee is sweet.

(4.650–656)

Even in Eden, however, their relationship is fraught with anxiety. Milton coined the word ‘self-esteem’, and it is exactly what Adam lacks. In a peculiar echo of Milton’s own abandonment by his wife Mary, when Eve sees Adam for the first time, she runs away. Milton describes her temptation by Satan as a marital infidelity. Milton has a reputation for grandiosity but the passages describing what happens after the Fall, as Adam and Eve learn

to forgive each other, are simple, humane and moving.

Milton expected that Paradise Lost would be read by ‘fit audience . . . though few’ (7.31). The only people who read it, he said rather defensively, would be those who were worthy of it: people of learning and virtue. Happily, he was wrong on both accounts. Over the past three hundred and fifty years, Paradise Lost has been read by many people who didn’t share in his classical education and others whose lives would have shocked the puritanical poet (who was so austere he didn’t even drink water between meals). Readers have enjoyed the liberties of interpretation that it offers. Some have seen Satan as a freedom fighter, others as a tyrant. One critic compared Milton’s God to Stalin, but others have seen him as a realistic portrait of a disappointed father. Some have called Eve a mere doll for Adam’s desires, others as the poem’s most vivid character.

Milton finished Paradise Lost in a plague year, 1665. He had left the disease-infested London and taken refuge in a pretty rural village, Chalfont St Giles. You can still visit the cottage where he may have composed the final lines, which describe Adam and Eve leaving Paradise and going out into the world. It is a scene of mixed emotions, but we must not imagine them unhappy. Adam and Eve have learned that our imperfect world is still one worth living in. This lesson is the fulfilment of Milton’s ambition to ‘justify the ways of God to

introduction men’, and each reader must judge for themself whether he succeeded. The final lines of Paradise Lost are, to my mind, among the most beautiful in English literature. Kingsley Amis recommended them as a hangover cure. But I think you have to read the first 10,000 to get the full effect.

Orlando Reade, 2024

9780099529460