Should have read classics discussion

Congratulations, Lisa! Isn't it a wonderful feeling? I'll post my final book thoughts to finish up:

Book IX & X

Wow! There was so much information, action and images packed into these two books, particularly book IX.

At the beginning of book IX, Milton mentions his celestial patroness or Muse, telling of her impartations of inspired verse and that he is not skilled enough on his own to create such poetic display. There are certain scholars who feel that Milton's brilliance is not as apparent in the latter parts of the poem as the beginning (I am not noticing this, but, of course, I'm not a scholar), so I wondered if he is setting up this humble claim as a reason for a decrease in poetical ability……??

Again Satan's torment is palpable and his personification of deception alarming. Occasionally he still feels joy, peace, happiness and knows what they mean, yet with any positive emotion felt, his rage, self-loathing and malice return at even greater strength.

I had to wonder while I was reading this, whether Adam and Eve were familiar with deception. They would have had no exposure to it, but God did mention that they were completely equipped to meet their deceiver. I imagine, that while Adam and Eve had a certain sense of wonder and innocence, that they were not created as children. They were created as full-grown beings with sense and reason. It was their free-will that gave them the right to choose, and they made an horrendous mistake.

I had to shudder at the speech Satan gave his minions. Once again, he is only concerned with power and prestige: "Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers ---". He gives the image of an army: "a broad way is now paved, to expedite your glorious march" and says that man's disgrace is "worth their laughter". Chilling.

The most poignant lines of the poem:

"O much deceived, much failing, hapless Eve,
Of thy presumed return! event perverse!
Thou never from that hour in Paradise
Found'st either sweet repast or sound repose;
Such ambush, hid among sweet flowers and shades,
Waited, with hellish rancour imminent,
To intercept thy way, or send thee back
Despoiled of innocence, of faith, of bliss." (404 - 411)

Book XI & XII

Wow, what a marathon ending! These last two books appeared rushed to me; Milton packed nearly the whole Old Testament teachings into these two books/chapters. Again, I'm not an expert in poetry, but the sound, tone and pacing of the poem did not feel as grand, as beautiful or as skilfully woven, when compared to the rest. There were certainly brilliant moments, but only snacks here and there instead of the smorgasbord to which we've become accustomed. In fact, it is certainly ironic that these two chapters were so packed with information, yet I'm having to think harder to find areas of the poem to comment on.

When Michael showed Adam the future, he gave him images in book XI but only narrative in Book XII. Was this because Adam would be overwhelmed by the visual evidence of the results of their sin? Or is it simply the structure Milton chose for the poem?

For the first time, I noted a commentary on his own times inserted into the text, and his push for a "rational liberty." (see above, Book XII, lines 79 - 101) However as interesting as it was, again I felt it was rushed or inserted before the poem end, a pet topic that Milton felt the need to bring to the forefront.

Historically, there are so many Paradise Lost paintings/engravings of stern angels pointing the way out of Heaven, and Adam and Eve running like stricken and tragic sinners, yet actually the angel gave them hope and then gently led them out of the Garden. Within a destructive, disastrous, heartbreaking circumstance, Milton did a spectacular job of revealing hope and restoration without altering their condition, a lovely combination of encouragement, pathos and reality.

Not only can I not believe that I've come to the end of this read, I can't believe that I waited so long to read it. Milton's verse is so grand and beautiful! I will definitely read this again in the very near future.


Review of Paradise Lost

Review of A Preface to Paradise Lost by C.S. Lewis

April, May, June, July...boy, did I get sidetracked! I'm glad you didn't let the thread die on the vine. Chapter 9 is a juicy one. It opens with Satanic mist and Lucifer's agonized rage when he vapors himself into the garden and declares it Heaven 2.0. This is the part I think people must skip over when they claim that Milton was on the devil's side. Satan fully appreciates the new Creation--he is still basically an angel and the people and animals and cool trees and stuff strike a chord with him that would be joy if he weren't so mad about being passed over for promotion. He admits to himself that his purpose is not to take over Eden and live there--he knows that won't work--or even to make himself feel better. If anything, wrecking Creation is going to make him feel even worse, both because he is destroying a thing of such beauty and because God is going to come after him. Again. Probably worse this time. But he doesn't care. The important thing to him is the momentary comfort of being the one to blow up God's master work. (Who would invite this guy out for a drink? Ultimately, he is a Class A cry baby and a jerk.) So he finds himself a sleeping snake, muttering ironically to himself, "what will ambition and revenge not descend to?"

Eve meanwhile is feeling crowded. "Dear, go prune something over there and give me some oxygen."

"But, what if something bad happens?"

"Seriously, Babe, what is the point of living in paradise if we have to be joined at the hip and go about looking over our shoulders? Look around. What could possibly tempt me to risk all this?"

What, indeed?

Satan stumbles, or slithers, across Eve and is overawed--for a moment "stupidly good" and "disarmed of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge." Which, when he gets a hold of himself, just makes him even madder. The poor snake, meanwhile, has no idea what's going on. Satan speaks a bit of well-aimed flattery, and Eve naturally says, "Hey, a talking snake! How'd that happen?"

"Funny story," says the snake. He tells her about that tree with the nice fruit over there...

"Oh, dear! You're not supposed to eat off that one! You should be dead!"

"Ah, but I'm not." Ho ho ho. "People just say that to be politically correct, but believe me, it's great fruit. It'll put hair on your chest. Look at me--I can talk. Think what it will do for you. I'm thinking goddess."

"Oooo--gimme!"

Adam glances at his watch and gets the creeps. He finds his beloved lumbering home with a whole branch of forbidden fruit.

"It's yummy! Plus it's nutritious and deifying!"

"Oh, dear."

Adam prefers to suffer whatever the consequences may be rather than be separated from Eve, which she finds extremely touching. Adam gives the fruit five stars and declares they've been missing out. Then they have rough sex and wake up with hangovers, feeling cheap and dirty. It's the first time each has noticed the other's morning breath. Okay I put that in. They look each other over like, ew, yuck, just put that away, will you? Of course, they've been running around naked all this time, but they've never felt guilty before. They know they want to hide something, and their bodies being so receptive to the exhilaration of rebellion, they start looking around for blankets. The more they try to cover up, the more exposed they feel. So they start to bicker, bicker, bicker. They do, however, come up with some fetching Josephine Baker skirts.

In book 10, the guardians of the garden say, Oops. And God says, Yeah, don't worry about it. We all did our due diligence, so they can't claim it was anybody's fault but their own. Plus, Eve was right. Paradise is a half-baked state. Like Kansas, you need to be smacked on the head with a house to make you realize there's no place like home. What's free will if you don't exercise it? They'll be fine. Now, who wants to go and rescue them from spiritual and bodily death?

The Son volunteers to shoulder the penalty himself, but there is so much to do in the meantime. First, A&E need to be sorted out, so off he goes to the garden to track them down. "Hey, man. Are you avoiding me?"

Adam suffers confusion, one of the many consequences of his new sinful state. "Hm, well, if you want to know, uh, darn, if I tell you the whole story, Eve will get half the blame, and I don't exactly want that, although, it is basically her fault, but still, I feel like such a cad, implicating her like that, I really feel I should leave her out of this, but, I'm not sure that would make sense since you are omniscient and all and I don't think I'm that good a liar, so yeah, it's Eve's fault."

"Adam, thou art a jerk."

Eve confesses sideways. "I was tricked by a talking snake!"

"Eve, though art a jerk too. Snakes can't talk, Did that not seem at all suspicious to you?"

The snake rubs his eyes and says, "What's going on now?" in parseltongue.

And then the curses are passed out. The snake, though innocent, will always inspire the horror Eve should have detected had she used her common sense. He will also be the carrier of the prophetic judgement of Satan, who will figuratively bite the foot of a descendant of the woman (the Son) who will metaphorically stomp on Lucifer's head. Which explains why people feel compelled to hit even nonvenomous snakes with shovels, excusing their blood thirst with the cry, "Better safe than sorry."

Speaking of Eve's seed, it's arrival will be complicated, risky, and gross, and society will be patriarchal and stifling. The earth will no longer be into people and will just go about it's own business, producing hornworms that will be rude to tomatoes and predators that will be rude to everybody else and heavy clay soil and crabgrass. Humankind will discover bread and then gluten. The economy will give rise to a rat race in which men will break their backs to earn their day of leisure, and then die "for thou out of the ground wast taken; know thy birth, for dust thou art, and shalt to dust return."

So, it's bad, but it could be worse. In the first hint of climate change, it begins to grow chilly, and the Son, knowing it's going to get worse gives them some nice fur coats--a merciful but gruesome reminder of what things have come to.

Meanwhile, Sin and Death have grown bored and come to the conclusion that if Satan can go to Creation, so can they. Figuring that a new road will be needed for all the tourists visiting earth from Hell and for the inevitable migration of souls from earth to Hell, they build the necessary infrastructure. When Satan sees what his kids have made, he is so proud he could just bust.

Adam grumbles and tells Eve to beat it, but she cries and he gives in. Eve figures they don't have much time so they really ought to be nice to each other, but Adam says, "Nah, looks like we're going to be here a while." Eve doesn't want her kids growing up in a world like that, so she suggests they kill themselves, but Adam says, "Nah, he gave us some coats. Let's just go say we're sorry and try to smooth things out."

Book 11 has A&E earnestly praying for forgiveness. As God instructs the angel Michael to boot the pair out of the garden--politely but firmly, A&E watch a bird and a beast in hot pursuit of their dinners. Adam remarks that things doesn't look good for them.

Michael arrives and tells them they are being evicted. Death is something they have sort of gotten comfortable with--they don't actually know what it is, but ceasing to exist doesn't sound nearly as bad as exile. Exile they get.

To boost their spirits, Michael describes the history of humankind down to the flood. Which he picks up and continues in Book XII. When he gets to the part where Jesus is born, Michael explains the riddle of the snake's bruised head. The curses are merely curses and not the sentence, which can only be death. The Son will intervene and serve the sentence himself, allowing humankind to go free and confounding the devil. Adam is greatly relieved. (Eve has nodded off--she's had a rough day.)

Michael tells Adam "This having learnt, thou hast attained the sum of wisdom;...add virtue, patience, temperance, add love--the soul of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loth to leave this Paradise, but shalt possess a Paradise within thee, happier far." And then follows one of my favorite lines from anywhere. A&E, having been led by Michael to the outskirts, take one look back and dry their eyes. "The world was all before them."

Satan is such a compelling character and I know he tends to get all the sympathy and admiration. He seems more human than Adam or Eve, but that may be because the A&E we meet haven't been "humanized" yet by experience. They have only begun to bicker and wallow in remorse and sling hurtful remarks and shout profanities out of car windows. We know they will soon enough resemble their descendants, and we know that when they do get back to Kansas they will not be the same creatures that wandered their solitary way out of Eden. They resemble Lucifer in their flash of ambition and their rebellion, but unlike him they seek a way back to God, which means moving forward, through life, despite a pile of curses and a guarantee of more or less continual failure. Innocence is gone, but knowledge has made goodness of another order possible. Satan is the ultimate tragic figure, but A&E as they step out of Eden overshadow him with their own kind of grandeur.

Congratulation, Lisa!!! That's a great achievement.

Lisa, are you on for climbing Mount Divine Comedy over in the 50 Books to Read Before you Die group? Sorento? Cleo? Anybody?

Longhare wrote: "Lisa, are you on for climbing Mount Divine Comedy over in the 50 Books to Read Before you Die group? Sorento? Cleo? Anybody?"

The Divine Comedy in a month?! Ooo hoo, that's not for me. I do have the urge to read it again, but I'd like to go slowly and savour each book. Are you thinking of tackling it, Longhare?

I spent quite a bit of 2015 on it (a month is unrealistic in my world) so it's still relatively fresh. I may skim it and check out the Coursera online class that was recommended. By the bye, after I finished the Comedy I decided to read the Decameron--I totally recommend. It is such a hoot! I thought it would take forever (100 stories), but the stories are all very short and hilarious. Plus it's just prose in English translation so its much easier on the brain, so to speak. A nice change!

Longhare wrote: "I spent quite a bit of 2015 on it (a month is unrealistic in my world) so it's still relatively fresh. I may skim it and check out the Coursera online class that was recommended. By the bye, after ..."

I'd like to check out the Coursera course. I took a course on The Inferno from EdX and it was terrible. They had some sort of social agenda and the course regressed to arguments of whether they should have shown a movie about the Indonesian genocide, and whether you were "guilty of the sin of incontinence" if you didn't watch it. Just weird!

The Decameron is HIGH up on my list. Right now I'm trying to get through The Faerie Queene and it's very slow going, but probably because I'm trying to compile posts as well as read.

Have you read The Canterbury Tales yet? They were also hilarious and lots of fun!

I also took the EdX course. It had a very narrow focus, I remember, but I have a tendency to cherry pick anyway. I wish I had more time to get involved in the discussion forums and things, but, ain't gonna happen. I did learn a few things, but I thought the Mazzota lectures were more helpful for what I needed. Also, his Italian accent helped me through many a load of dishes.

I have only read bits and pieces of the Faerie Queene. It's high up on my list, but so is the Canterbury Tales. I did find a pretty entertaining lecture series on Spenser and Milton from William Flesch at Brandeis (Open Culture; free and easy to find). I definitely feel much more prepared to read the FQ now.

I'm also trying to squeeze in books by people who are still breathing and trying to make a living at writing books. I think I need another lifetime or two.

Oops. Correction. Not Coursera--Great Courses. $35. Hm. I've wondered about these, whether they were worth paying for--not so much whether the product deserves to be paid for but whether, given my bad attitude regarding homework, I would benefit.

Longhare wrote: "Oops. Correction. Not Coursera--Great Courses. $35. Hm. I've wondered about these, whether they were worth paying for--not so much whether the product deserves to be paid for but whether, given my ..."

I have a course from the Great Courses on The Divine Comedy which I plan to view at some point. The problem is "Time", which I don't have much of at the moment.

Ah, you write books! Excellent! I'd like to be able to write for a living, but sadly somehow I got into accounting. I'm not quite sure why ..... ;-)

Coming in late to the conversation, sorry. I would love to tackle more mountains, be it Divine, Canterbury, or Illiad! However, doing them in month would not work for me, as you can tell, I tend to dawdle over books, unless I have some tough task masters to keep me going! (Hint,hint)!:) I do feel like I tend to take more from the conversations than give. I love having my own private tutors in both of you!

I edit books. I would write books if I had more time and space to concentrate. You know what they say about doctors making the worst patients...

Accounting is close kin to fiction writing. The puzzle aspects are very similar: following the through lines and making the numbers balance.

Lisa wrote: "Coming in late to the conversation, sorry. I would love to tackle more mountains, be it Divine, Canterbury, or Illiad! However, doing them in month would not work for me, ..."

Weren't we supposed to do PL in a month? I never could follow directions.

Longhare wrote: "Lisa wrote: "Coming in late to the conversation, sorry. I would love to tackle more mountains, be it Divine, Canterbury, or Illiad! However, doing them in month would not work for me, ..."

Weren't..."

Yep, that didn't quite work out too well!

I thought it worked out great! I do enough deadlines in real life. I like my reading to roam free.

Longhare wrote: "I thought it worked out great! I do enough deadlines in real life. I like my reading to roam free."

We went the free range route for sure. What book would you be interested in climbing next? It can be done as a group read, just with an indeterminate time period. I'm up for some more climbing...

I'm kind of leaning toward Canterbury Tales, just because I haven't read them. Maybe Cleo has a suggestion? Are we allowed to just start a thread--how does that work?

Longhare wrote: "I'm kind of leaning toward Canterbury Tales, just because I haven't read them. Maybe Cleo has a suggestion? Are we allowed to just start a thread--how does that work?"

I think The Canterbury Tales is a good choice. I've recently read it, but again, have all my notes, so I could join in. I'd like to explore it more deeply too, as sometimes one is very uncertain as to what Chaucer is doing.

At some point, I'd like to read The Decameron, but I have too much going on to attempt it now, and I'd like to finish The Faerie Queene first. But whatever you decide, I'll try to participate in some way. :-)

Cleo has notes! That cinches it for me. Come to think of it, I think I need to round up a copy of the book. Can we start next week? And maybe it's time to start a new thread.

I do want to read Canterbury Tales at some point, so I will try jumping into it with you.

Sorento, cool.

Lisa, you have a couple of other groups reads going. Do you want to make it September?

Canterbury Tales it is and I will put it to start next week! If you would like to add a thread, I think that you just go under the new thread discussion and start from there. I will have to check that the restrictions are off, because for awhile, I had random people starting threads on off the wall topics. Now I must go load up my Kindle with Canterbury Tales and Alice in Wonderland, don't think that I can mix those two up. How long would you like me to put the read for?

I took three months to read through it. It was a good pace and let you muse about the stories. But whatever the general consensus is, I'm fine with.