I have gone through a few drafts of this post, and they just keep getting longer, so I am going to try a simple one and hope a conversation will come from it.
Simply put, I love “Paradise Lost” by John Milton. I have read it and listened to it more than thirty times and each time I feel like I get a new little gem of poetic excellence.
What I love about it, most, is the poetic craft. Milton’s command of meter is astounding, better than anyone I can think of. His imagery and metaphor are powerful and his syntax is luxurious (my previous posts were getting long because I was starting to get into the weeds on these kinds of things!). I don’t agree with Milton’s views on everything, but that is to be expected. His verse is just too gorgeous to put away.
I am curious, does anyone else love Milton? Tell me why you love him too! If I get some responses I can go more in-depth about my own fascination.
Also, do you admire a Greek or Latin poet? Tell me why!
The influence of Vergil, and particularly the Aeneid, on Paradise Lost is also well known. I have an early 20th century commentary for students in which the commentator quotes Paradise Lost at least every other page.
A couple years ago I took a “life-long learning” seminar on Paradise Lost led by a professor of English at a local college in which we divvied up parts and read through the poem (I was Satan), and he cut out all the mythological similes!
Admittedly some of them are rather obscure, but really!
It takes a bit of applied autism to assume Milton’s theological anxieties and feel real sympathy with him in Paradise Lost, I feel. He flows like music, but to me never seems to come down from his lofty heights to notice anything human. He is infinitely more epic than Homer, but that’s a little too epic for a mere mortal. I rarely lose my consciousness of the poet and his style, which always seems to get out in front of his subject.
My encounter with Paradise Lost was rather short. We read some parts for a course in college, but I remember vividly how different his language felt…epic.
My heart beats for Homer, though. It’s really hard to put into words, but I just love the way how the Homeric epics can seem simple and complex at the same time. And after all those centuries, millenia even, I read it and still find that the characters are so well made; their motivations, their hopes and fears, and their struggles still strike a chord. And even when you know how the story will end it’s no less captivating.
