Hello and welcome to Episode 31 of Read Paradise Lost with me, Jane Davis, a podcast and Substack newsletter about my project to read all of Paradise Lost by John Milton, aloud, and with a sometimes word-by-word, sometimes line-by-line discussion.
This is a one-take recording with no editing, so forgive noise of seagulls, my coughing, or sound of men drilling next door. Rough and ready reading is what you get.
See Episode 1 for an introduction to the project.
We’re reading nearly 90 lines this week, and I’ll do them roughly sentence by sentence.
Last week we’d seen Satan sinking, swimming, climbing, flying, clawing his way across Chaos, changing shape but never his determined aim: get to Earth and ruin the new race. Now he reaches the centre of Chaos and addresses the powers that reside there - Chaos, Darkness, Rumour, Chance, Tumult, Confusion, Discord.
T' whom Satan turning boldly, thus. Ye Powers
And Spirits of this nethermost Abyss,
Chaos and ancient Night, I come no Spy, [ 970 ]
With purpose to explore or to disturb
The secrets of your Realm, but by constraint
Wandring this darksome Desart, as my way
Lies through your spacious Empire up to light,
Alone, and without guide, half lost, I seek [ 975 ]
What readiest path leads where your gloomie bounds
Confine with Heav'n; or if som other place
From your Dominion won, th' Ethereal King
Possesses lately, thither to arrive
I travel this profound, direct my course; [ 980 ]
Directed no mean recompence it brings
To your behoof, if I that Region lost,
All usurpation thence expell'd, reduce
To her original darkness and your sway
(Which is my present journey) and once more [ 985 ]
Erect the Standard there of ancient Night;
Yours be th' advantage all, mine the revenge.
Here’s smooth Satan, the diplomat, ‘I come no spy’, landing in a strange new court, and indirectly asking for sympathetic help, presenting himself as someone ‘alone, and without guide, half lost’ and just passing through. Also - whisper it - my purpose may also serve you, he hints.
no mean recompence it brings
To your behoof, if I that Region lost,
All usurpation thence expell'd, reduce
To her original darkness and your sway
(Which is my present journey) and once more [ 985 ]
Erect the Standard there of ancient Night;
Yours be th' advantage all, mine the revenge.
My vengeful mission will extend your boundaries, friend. And the next speaker is Chaos, ‘the Anarch old.’
A reader wondered how a place (Chaos a region bordering both Hell and Heaven) could also be a person, a character with looks and voice. Is it both, she asked? Yes, I replied, because why not? Milton has given a kind of face to Sin, to Death… he’s asking you now to imagine a kind of centring, a solidifying of the elements of Chaos compressing into this weird figure;
Thus Satan; and him thus the Anarch old
With faultring speech and visage incompos'd
Answer'd. I know thee, stranger, who thou art, [ 990 ]
That mighty leading Angel, who of late
Made head against Heav'ns King, though overthrown.
I saw and heard, for such a numerous Host
Fled not in silence through the frighted deep
With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout, [ 995 ]
Confusion worse confounded; and Heav'n Gates
Pourd out by millions her victorious Bands
Pursuing.
Why ‘faltering speech’, we wondered? Why his face ‘incompos’d’? Perhaps ancient old age? Perhaps being disturbed by Satan’s presence? Perhaps that just how chaos is?
Chaos is not knowing, an in between state, said a reader.
Chaos knows all about Satan and the fall of the rebel angels and we readers get to hear an account of this that may not be biased - as the versions we’ve heard in Hell almost certainly were. The defeat seems greater than we’ve heard it before - then it was just God ‘with his thunder’, but now Chaos speaks of ‘ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,/
Confusion worse confounded.’
And now, also for the first time, we see other, knock-on effects of the war in Heaven and the fall of the rebels. Chaos, ancient as it is, has suffered of late - losing ground to God who keeps using the ‘dark materials’ to create new places - Hell, Earth.
I upon my Frontieres here
Keep residence; if all I can will serve,
That little which is left so to defend [ 1000 ]
Encroacht on still through our intestine broiles
Weakning the Scepter of old Night: first Hell
Your dungeon stretching far and wide beneath;
Now lately Heaven and Earth, another World
Hung ore my Realm, link'd in a golden Chain [ 1005 ]
To that side Heav'n from whence your Legions fell:
If that way be your walk, you have not farr;
So much the neerer danger; go and speed;
Havock and spoil and ruin are my gain.
I was interested to see that Chaos lives at his own frontier. This is unusual surely - normally a ruler lives in a palace at the centre of things…Hampton Court not Hull or Hadrian’s Wall (for American readers, Washington not Wisconsin or the West Coast). But Chaos is a frontiersman. Why?
Perhaps because he is under siege (God keeps using the stuff of chaos to create and that limits Chaos’ extent) perhaps because he is in a state of war, or at least under attack? He certainly feels he has little ‘left to defend’.
A note in my Fowler (Longman) edition argues that the ‘our’ of line 1001 should read ‘your’. (The printed ‘our’ seems to involve Chaos in the troublemaking…?) In other words, it is Satan who is the root cause of Chaos’ loss of territory. It is because of Satan that God created Hell, and that new place, Heaven and Earth.
Still, he is happy to let Satan pass through because ‘Havock and spoil and ruin are my gain.’.
He ceas'd; and Satan staid not to reply, [ 1010 ]
But glad that now his Sea should find a shore,
With fresh alacritie and force renew'd
Springs upward like a Pyramid of fire
Into the wilde expanse, and through the shock
Of fighting Elements, on all sides round [ 1015 ]
Environ'd wins his way; harder beset
And more endanger'd, then when Argo pass'd
Through Bosporus betwixt the justling Rocks:
Or when Ulysses on the Larbord shunnd
Charybdis, and by th' other whirlpool steard. [ 1020 ]
Given safe passage, and understanding he is close to his goal, Satan takes off, literally like a rocket. The energy of the creature! He must fire up through ‘fighting Elements, on all sides round’, facing more difficulty than Odysseus or Ulysses in their epic journeys. But hard as it is, up he goes. Those who feel Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost presumably feel it strongly at points like this - when the energy is hugely impressive. But I’ve seen a drunken man running down Smithdown Road swinging an axe - that was energetic, but for me, it takes more than energy to be a hero.
So he with difficulty and labour hard
Mov'd on, with difficulty and labour hee;
But hee once past, soon after when man fell,
Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain
Following his track, such was the will of Heav'n, [ 1025 ]
Pav'd after him a broad and beat'n way
Over the dark Abyss, whose boiling Gulf
Tamely endur'd a Bridge of wondrous length
From Hell continu'd reaching th' utmost Orbe
Of this frail World; by which the Spirits perverse [ 1030 ]
With easie intercourse pass to and fro
To tempt or punish mortals, except whom
God and good Angels guard by special grace.
Following those great journeying heroes, we have two lines that gives us the same nouns (‘difficulty’, ‘labour’) twice, and then a sudden and complete change of time and place.
We are with Satan, labouring to get cross this final bit of chaos, but after the semi-colon we are in an unspecified future, ‘after when man fell’, when Sin and Death have built highway across the same place.
We are invited thus to see these two slices of time as almost back to back. Satan’s huge difficulty once achieved, well, no problem! There’s now a ‘broad and beat'n way/Over the dark Abyss.’
It’s as if the speed of the verse cuts to the chase! Bridge! Done!
a Bridge of wondrous length
From Hell continu'd reaching th' utmost Orbe
Of this frail World; by which the Spirits perverse [ 1030 ]
With easie intercourse pass to and fro
To tempt or punish mortals,
I’ll pass quickly over - for now, we may need to come back to it - those mortals ‘whom/God and good Angels guard by special grace.’ But if you are interested you can look up Milton’s thoughts on the presence of Angels in the lives of believers in his theological work De Doctrina Christiana.
Having seen the bridge, completed, and working, as it were, we return to Satan’s narrative time, and find the journey towards Earth almost complete.
But now at last the sacred influence
Of light appears, and from the walls of Heav'n [ 1035 ]
Shoots farr into the bosom of dim Night
A glimmering dawn; here Nature first begins
Her fardest verge, and Chaos to retire
As from her outmost works a brok'n foe
With tumult less and with less hostile din, [ 1040 ]
That Satan with less toil, and now with ease
Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light
And like a weather-beaten Vessel holds
Gladly the Port, though Shrouds and Tackle torn;
Or in the emptier waste, resembling Air, [ 1045 ]
Weighs his spread wings, at leasure to behold
Farr off th' Empyreal Heav'n, extended wide
In circuit, undetermind square or round,
With Opal Towrs and Battlements adorn'd
Of living Saphire, once his native Seat; [ 1050 ]
And fast by hanging in a golden Chain
This pendant world, in bigness as a Starr
Of smallest Magnitude close by the Moon.
Thither full fraught with mischievous revenge,
Accurst, and in a cursed hour he hies. [ 1055 ]
Wow ! the size of it! said one reader. And what’s this about ‘nature’? A new word or thought to us who have been living and thinking down in Hell for 30 episodes. There didn’t seem to be any ‘nature’ down there. As light dawns, approaching this border, we see this force, or presence, or mode for the first time;
here Nature first begins
Her fardest verge, and Chaos to retire
As from her outmost works a brok'n foe
With tumult less and with less hostile din,
Is Nature then a kind of order? the place/being that abuts chaos but is quite different? Is nature created? Is it part of God? We don’t know, but certainly from now on, we are going to be looking out for that word ‘nature’ and trying to work out what it is…
As we approach both ‘nature’ and the regions of light, Satan finds the going easier and is once more able to fly. He is entering a more ‘natural’ element, perhaps? Natural even to him, who has so profoundly lost his heavenliness?
Satan with less toil, and now with ease
Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light
And like a weather-beaten Vessel holds
Gladly the Port, though Shrouds and Tackle torn;
Or in the emptier waste, resembling Air, [ 1045 ]
Weighs his spread wings,
I found myself pitying him here, as he sails into sight like a battered sailing ship, ‘Shrouds and Tackle torn’.
And now he looks at last at Heaven, and then Earth:
Or in the emptier waste, resembling Air, [ 1045 ]
Weighs his spread wings, at leasure to behold
Farr off th' Empyreal Heav'n, extended wide
In circuit, undetermind square or round,
With Opal Towrs and Battlements adorn'd
Of living Saphire, once his native Seat; [ 1050 ]
And fast by hanging in a golden Chain
This pendant world, in bigness as a Starr
Of smallest Magnitude close by the Moon.
Thither full fraught with mischievous revenge,
Accurst, and in a cursed hour he hies. [ 1055 ]
There’s Heaven, extended wide, far-reaching but indeterminate of shape, and with, a reader pointed out, ‘battlements’ - it’s a place that must defend itself. And then we see, for the first time, our beautiful little universe:
And fast by hanging in a golden Chain
This pendant world, in bigness as a Starr
Of smallest Magnitude close by the Moon.
Oh lovely, vulnerable sight. Like Heaven the shape and size seems hard to fix - it is both huge (‘in bigness as a Starr) and tiny (‘Of smallest magnitude’.)
And so we come to the end of Book 2, with Satan heading towards us like a bullet.
Thither full fraught with mischievous revenge,
Accurst, and in a cursed hour he hies.
Well done readers, we’ve finished Book 2 and next week we’ll open Book 3 and find ourselves, while Satan keeps heading our way, with God in Heaven.
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