Paradise Lost, Book II
Book II is not the longest in Paradise Lost (Books ix and x are longer), but it felt that way to me. Yet here Milton’s framework forms. We see that Milton’s Jehovah is perhaps not all-knowing and all-powerful. He does not, perhaps cannot kill Satan, ‘progeny of heaven,’ and his ‘fiery seraphim.’ In fact, Satan, “hell’s dread emperor,” reigns “with pomp supreme” and enough autonomy to contemplate another battle with God:
Must we renounce, and changing style be called
Princes of hell? For so the popular vote
Inclines, here to continue, and build up here
A growing empire; doubtless; while we dream,
And know not that the king of heaven hath doomed
This place our dungeon, not our safe retreat
Beyond his potent arm…
…for he, be sure,
In height or depth, still first and last will reign
Sole king, and of his kingdom lose no part
By our revolt, but over hell extend
His empire, and with iron sceptre rule
Us here, as with his golden those in heaven.
[lines 311-324]
Iron is the stronger metal, hence its use in Hell. As if even God’s iron can hold back the hordes of Hell, or at least, Satan himself. For Satan will get out of Hell, and go to search for humans, though
“…long is the way
And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.”
In fact, perhaps billions of light years separate heaven and hell, in a Miltonian cosmology where the Big Bang came when Satan and his angels were tossed out of heaven. Eventually (several billion years later, perhaps), earth became home to humankind (in Miltonian biology, we humans are intelligently designed, rather than evolved, but he was writing in 1667).
….There is a place
(If ancient and prophetic fame in heaven
Err not) another world, the happy seat
Of some new race called Man, about this time
To be created like to us, though less
In power and excellence, but favored more
Of him who rules above;
[lines 330 to 350]
We also see that unlike Homer’s underworld or Dante’s Inferno, Milton’s Hell harbors beauty. The fallen angels, for instance, can refresh themselves with singing.
…Others more mild,
Retreated in a silent valley, sing
With notes angelical to many a harp
Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall
By doom of battle; …
their song was partial, but the harmony
(What could it less when spirits immortal sing?)
suspended hell, and took with ravishment
The thronging audience.
[lines 546-555]
Not that hell is a nice place. Hell, painted by Milton, breathes fire, unlike the passive, sneaky Evil we often see in church:
…let us rather choose
Armed with hell flames and fury all at once
O’er heaven’s high towers to force resistless way,
Turning our tortures into horrid arms
Against the torturer; when to meet the noise
Of his almighty engine he shall hear
Infernal thunder, and for lightning see
Black fire and horror shot with equal rage
Among his angels; and his throne itself
Mixed with Tartarean sulphur, and strange fire,
His own invented torments.
[lines 60-70]
Book II also holds verses that I think highlight one of the things that influences some modern atheism: subservience vs. ambition.
….Suppose he should relent
and publish grace to all, on promise made
Of new subjection; with what eyes could we
Stand in his presence humble, and receive
Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his throne
With warbled hymns, and to his Godhead sing
Forced alleluias; while he lordly sits
Our envied sovereign, and his alter breathes
Ambrosial odours and ambrosial flowers,
Our service offerings? This much be our task
In heaven, this our delight; how wearisome
Eternity so spent in worship paid
To whom we hate.
[lines 237-249]
So while I remember suffering through this book, there were clearly good things in it, too. It perhaps had some allegorical tie-ins with the reversal of Cromwellian power, which occurred during the period Milton was writing Paradise Lost.