Paradise is not Lost

I read "What in Me is Dark" recently. It's a book about the influence of Milton's epic on future thinkers, writers, and (yes) imprisoned felons (the author taught literature classes to prisoners).

For several centuries, Milton's Paradise Lost was considered the great epic of the English language. It is not read as widely today because modern readers have lost a taste for long, difficult poetry. Nonetheless, its influence continues.

Thomas Jefferson admired both the poem and some of Milton's political treatises. MIlton was a supporter of Cromwell and an anti-royalist. His political sympathies were revealed in his poetry, in which Satan is often portrayed as a noble rebel who refused to abide dictatorship.

William Blake (another Milton admirer) wrote that, "Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of angels and God and at liberty when of Devils and Hell because he was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it." Perhaps the author of "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" was on to something.

Another Milton fan was Wordsworth, who in his "Prelude" wrote of the French Revolution: "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!" Other romantic poets were also fans. IN "Frankenstein" Mary Shelley has the monster read Paradise Lost. The monster resembles both Adam and Satan -- like Adam who disobeys God because he cannot bear the thought of losing Eve, the monster turns on the doctor when Dr. Frankenstein refuses to give him a wife.

Of course there is not only nobility in Milton's Satan, but cruelty and avarice. Slaves (perhaps) do not seek liberty for all, but wish to become slave owners. Revolutionaries like Lenin and Stalin and Castro have followed the same path. In Wordsworth's day, Napoleon was an example.

Are revolutions doomed to fail? Will their perpetrators -- like Lucifer -- inevitably wish to replace the king instead of abolishing the kingdom? Can heaven be a utopia if it is ruled by a dictator? Shouldn't freedom be mandatory for utopias?

As a final treat, at the end of Milton's poem, as Adam and Eve are being expelled from Eden, MIlton ends the poem with these beautiful lines:

Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate
With dreadful faces thronged, and fiery arms:
Some natural tears they dropt, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.

"The world was all before them..." Was paradise lost? Or gained?

Some more research suggests that Alfred Lord Tenny[son borrowed from Milton in his "Ulysses". That magnificent work, redolent of both Milton and Dante, ends thus:

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield[

Here is Milton's version, from Satan, which reminds us that Odysseus is confined to Dante's circle of hell imprisoning liars and deceivers:

And courage never to submit or yield
And what is else not to be overcome

That’s a brilliant connection — and it really deepens the resonance of Ulysses. Tennyson’s voice feels almost defiant in the face of aging and loss, while Milton’s line carries that darker, relentless resolve. It's fascinating how both summon the will not to yield, yet in such different moral contexts — Tennyson's Odysseus as a noble striver, and Milton's Satan as a tragic rebel. Makes you wonder whether Tennyson saw heroism in defiance itself, regardless of its consequences.

Thanks for drawing the thread between the two — it makes me want to reread both with fresh eyes.