'Paradise Lost and Regained' by John Milton

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Paradise Lost (PL) is considered one of the greatest works in the English language, and with good reason: it is totes awesome; like, really, really awesome. PL is an epic retelling of the world's most popular creation myth: the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It is not considered canon by any churches, as far as I know, which makes it Bible fanfic, Christian Fiction, or High Fantasy, you decide. Whichever way, it is an epic poem, and it is so very epic.

 Milton's well chosen words conjured such vivid imagery that I felt like I had a private screening of an extremely high budget blockbuster movie in my head. PL has everything in it to be a big box office hit:

• Grand battles during the Empyrean Civil War, and boy that war escalated quickly: in the first battle they only used swords and stuff, by the final battle the angels are throwing mountains at each other before God decides to intervene. Archangel Michael and Satan have a super epic duel.
• Raunchy sex. Let's just say that before God cursed it to forever lie on its belly, the serpent stood very erect in Eden, if you know what I mean.
• Tension. There's a really tense bit where Gabriel finds Satan in Eden and a squadron of angels gathers to arrest him and send him back to Hell but Satan adopts his Giant Demon Form and you're like 'oh no it's gonna kick off and Eden's gonna be trashed'.
• Stunning visuals. The flaming and frozen wastelands of Hell. Pandaemonium, Hell's capital city, designed by Mulciber, formerly one of Heaven's greatest architects. The Garden of Eden. The Creation of Earth. Earth's conversion from a paradise to its current state.
  
  
  [A digression: Back when I was in high school our Religious Education teacher told us, in the lesson on arguments for and against God's existence, that the Earth was so perfectly placed that if the axis were tilted 1 degree further towards the Sun, all life would fry, and if it were tilted 1 degree away, all life would freeze, and when you think about this it seems impossible that it could've happened by chance so God must have placed it there so perfectly.
  
  
  Very shortly after this lesson I discovered that what she had said was bullshit. There is a habitable zone around the Sun in which life is capable of surviving. Axial tilt varies over millennia, life has survived. Axial tilt is responsible for seasons: when the northern hemisphere is pointed towards the sun, it is Summer; when it is pointed away, it is Winter. Thus, any part of the Earth not on the equator will be a different distance from the Sun at different times of the year, and life survives.
  
  I was able to forgive the teacher, because I assumed that this must have been a fairly recent discovery for her to have missed out on it.
  
  Not so: Milton, writing in the 17th century, knew that the axis was responsible for seasons. After Adam and Eve succumb to temptation, God gets the angels to make some changes to Earth so it is no longer a Paradise, which includes rotating the axis to give the planet its seasons. Before the Fall, Earth was perpetually in springtime.
  
  I don't like being lied to, and think lying in defence of God is incredibly damaging to the Church, as is denial of scientific discoveries: a true religion with a true God has no need to fear science increasing man's knowledge, because it can only lead to a greater appreciation of the majesty and complexity of Creation. Only false gods fear being found out.]
• Despair and, ultimately, hope. After they mess up, Adam and Eve are Not Very Happy: they consider suicide rather than letting their progeny live in a wrecked world. To cheer them up, Michael shows them great and terrible visions of the future, of Cain and Abel, of the sinful, of the flood, of humanity's great empires and kingdoms, and of the eventual redemption of Man through the Son of God. Tearful, they leave Eden and see the rest of the world before them. Overall, the ending is optimistic about humanity's prospects. A feel-good ending, if you will.

In the opening, Milton says that he is writing the poem to 'justify the ways of God to men', and there is considerable controversy over how well he has done this. Morally, the poem has aged: there has been a lot moral progress since it was written. Milton's God is a tyrant, and Satan is a rebel fighting for freedom. Satan is the most developed character; he is the protagonist of the first few books, and his quest to ruin Adam and Eve is almost a heroic quest for vengeance against the cruel God. Milton's beliefs are not conventionally Christian: he rejects the Trinity: the Son of God is a separate, lesser entity to the Father God; there is no mention of the Holy Spirit. I can't help but think that Milton has unwillingly written a poem which, because of attitude changes over the centuries, now reads as an attempt to justify the ways of Satan to men. Maybe Satan was Milton's muse all along!

Milton is not very nice to women. I got the impression from PL that he had some serious issues in this regard. He repeatedly calls for the complete subjugation of women by men, saying that they were made for servitude. He is not very nice to Eve, who he sees as the cause of all man's woe: she is the weaker half of the first human pair; she succumbs to Satan's tempting, and convinces Adam to sin too, because Adam is in love with her. She is treated worse than the heroic Satan. Later, when they realise they have messed up, Adam has a big rant about how annoying women are, and how it would have been much better if God had only created men, and since the angels seem to cope well enough loving each other while all being masculine (there is a really awkward bit earlier in the poem when Adam asks Raphael if angels in heaven love each other like him and Eve do; Raphael blushes and awkwardly tries to explain that they do and the love between angels is a purer, greater love than the love between humans), why couldn't God have thought of some other way to make new humans instead of through women. Issues much.

Paradise is a beautiful work of art, and is not ruined by Milton's archaic opinions. I can see why it is held in such regard. Highly recommended. The in-head blockbuster movie was so good I wanted to buy merchandise afterwards. However, it is a classic you have to be ready to enjoy. You have to be able to comfortably read and enjoy 17th century English. So, if you read this section:

'Wide was spread

That war and various; sometimes on firm ground
A standing fight, then, soaring on main wing,
Tormented all the air; all air seemed then
Conflicting fire. Long time in even scale
The battle hung; till Satan, who that day
Prodigious power had shown, and met in arms
No equal, ranging through the dire attack
Of fighting Seraphim confused, at length
Saw where the sword of Michael smote, and felled
Squadrons at once; with huge two-handed sway
Brandished aloft, the horrid edge came down
Wide-wasting; such destruction to withstand
He hasted, and opposed the rocky orb
Of tenfold adamant, his ample shield,
A vast circumference. At his approach
The great Archangel from his warlike toil
Surceased, and glad, as hoping here to end
Intestine war in Heaven, the arch-foe subdued
Or captive dragged in chains, with hostile frown
And visage all inflamed first thus began.'

And think 'Da fuk did I just read?' or feel the need to lie down and rest, you need to level up your reading skill before attempting this badboy.

If, however, you read that and got that battle was cray cray, sometimes on land, sometimes on air, and was an even match for a long time until Satan, who had managed to beat everyone he had fought so far, spotted Michael, who was kickin' ass with his badass fiery sword wiping out whole squadrons of rebel angels in one swipe (like Sauron in the prologue to Lord of the Rings), hurried towards him with his shield which he thought would block Michael's sword, Michael saw Satan approach, stopped fighting, hoping to end the war by beating Satan, and starts speaking with a hostile frown on his face, then you should be ready to enjoy this beast of a poem.

Paradise Lost is the first epic poem I have ever read, and it convinced me to read more of the form. So I read the sequel to PL: Paradise Regained (PR). Smaller in both scope and length, PR is an enjoyable, but ultimately disappointing, sequel. PR deals with Jesus' last days in the desert, when Satan tempts him with food and riches, but Jesus resists and wins. It feels silly to complain that the ending of PR feeling like a deus ex machina, given that the protagonist is the Son of God, but it does feel that way. Very abrupt, too.