User talk:Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri

OF THE PLAY MACBETH-A TRAGIC HERO ,REFERENCE TO SUPERNATURALISM AND ITS IMPACT “Man is not the creature of circumstances Circumstances are the creatures of man.”

                               Macbeth, throughout the play, is presented as one much above the ordinary beings, and, as such, he fulfils the basic -requirements of being a tragic hero. Shakespeare, introduces him as a brave general, a bold, resolute man of action who through as also referred to “Valor’s minion”, “Bellona’s bridegroom’’, the king’s ‘’valiant cousin’’, a very “eagle’’ among ‘’sparrows’’, a ‘’lion’’ among ‘’hares’’.  It is a play, which is depicting a complete destruction, wrestling with creation. It is a study of the disintegration and damnation of a man. And yet, Macbeth is a ‘tragic hero’. Here presents, the hero’s complete symbolic life-journey in a reflective pattern to ensure the only operation of evil in this world.

‘Macbeth: “Come, let me clutch thee: I have thee not,fatal vision,sensible To feeling as to sight?” ‘

                           In the third scene of the first act of the play though the hero accepts evil overtly, there is a suggestion that, even before the commencement of action of the play, he has fallen under the influence of evil.

‘Banquo : ..“Merciful powers, Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature Gives way to repose.”

                            The Witches, merely prophecy certain things for Macbeth. They do not influence him in any concrete manner, but the effect of the prophecy is to make Macbeth, start as if he were already guilty of harboring dangerous ideas. It is a fact that his ambition impels him towards “the swelling act of the imperial theme”, though his conscience fills him with horror at the idea that has come to him about how to gain the throne.

‘Macbeth: “Come what come may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.” ‘

                        Macbeth, is the starkest and the least discursive of Shakespeare’s tragedies as Granville-Barker has pointed out.  The deterioration of Macbeth’s character illustrates the theme of conscience and its decline. From a brave soldier and noble person Macbeth reaches a state when he is a soulless man, a beast chained to a stake like a beast!

‘Second Witch: “By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes; Open locks, whoever knocks.” ‘

                  The forces of evil are always ready to ensnare man; but they have their limitations. They do not, indeed cannot, force man into evil; they can merely tempt man to choose to follow evil ways. Macbeth, deliberately choose- not once, but several times in the play-the evil path. At every stage of Macbeth’s degeneration we witness the choice being made deliberately, at the same time there is a sense of inevitability, about Macbeth’s choices.

‘Macbeth: “How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags! What is’t you do? All the Witches: A deed without a name.” ‘

                      Much more, than the other elements, the Witches introduce an element of supernatural mystery and fear into Macbeth. According to Charles Lamb,” They are foul anomalies, of whom we know not whence they are sprung, or whether they have beginning or ending. As they are without human passions, they seem to be without human relations. They come with thunder and lightning and vanish to airy music.”It is significant that the play opens with a brief meeting of the Three Witches.

‘Old Man: “Threeescore and ten I can remember well; Within the volume of which time, I have seen Hours dreadful and things strange, but this sore night Hath trifled former knowings.” ‘

                   The opening scene, in fact is important, in that which makes a complete sense of mystery, strikes the keynote of the play:

..’ Second Witch: “When the hurly-burly’s done, When the battle’s lost, and won. Third Witch: That will be the ere the set of sun. First Witch: Where the place? Second Witch: Upon the heath. Third Witch: There to meet with Macbeth.’’ ‘

When we meet the Witches again in Act I, Sc.iii, we get to know of their physical aspects. They are withered and not dressed like earthly beings; their fingers are choppy and lips skinny. They look like women, and yet they are bearded. They can at will vanish into air, can foresee the future, and possess more than mortal knowledge. They are by no means the ordinary witches of popular super -station; they are more powerful beings, resembling rather the “Goddesses of Devine “as Holinshed calls them. Shakespeare has endowed they may have power over Nature, but that power is not -absolute. 05:46, 20 May 2013 (UTC)Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri (talk) They may have power over a man’s soul but that power is not absolute either. It is when a mortal mind is tainted that they can have an influence on it. Their prophecy only gives a definite shape to the dark thoughts that have already been smoldering in Macbeth’s mind. The thought of assassinating Duncan occurs to him independently of ‘them’-without any hint from ‘them’. Macbeth reads into the prophecies a “supernatural soliciting”, to murder and, Lady Macbeth looks upon them as “metaphysical aid.” The Witches in Macbeth never solicit nor aid- this is nothing -but a wishful thinking.
‘Macbeth: ‘’Why sinks that cauldron? And what noise is this? “ ‘
The most- distinct suggestion, of the supernatural in Macbeth comes from Banquo’s Ghost. There is no doubt that we can see with Macbeth the uncanny apparition, the blood blotched ghost. Banquo’s Ghost plays an important role in the action of tragedy. The horror of its sight compels Macbeth to make many a comprising disclosure. As Coleridge points out them, “as true a creation of Shakespeare’s as his Ariel and Caliban” and “wholly different from the representation of Witches in the contemporary writers, and yet presented a sufficient of witches in the contemporary writers, and yet presented a sufficient external resemblance to the creatures of vulgar prejudice, to act immediately on the audience.”
‘All the Witches: “Double, double toil and trouble,

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.” ‘

                         Though the Witches here do not have a direct share in its action they are a very important part of the play. The play from its very beginning continues under their evil shadows until the shadows are finally lifted in the last scene with Macduff’s entry with “the usurper’s cursed head.”  The tragedy would lose all its magnificence without its strange atmosphere and the atmosphere would amount to nothing without the presence of the Witches.

‘All the Witches: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair, Hover through the fog and filthy air.”

                       Lenox describes the ‘unruly’ night in some detail:

“Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say Lamentings heard i’ th’ air; strange screams of death, And, prophesying with accents terrible Of dire combustion, and confused events, New hatch’d to th’ woeful time, the obscure bird Clamour’d the live long night; some say, the earth Was feverous, and did shake.”

                           In the next scene, Ross and the Old Man discuss of similar events that have taken place during the fateful night:

‘Old Man: ‘On Tuesday last

A falcon tow’ring in her pride of place,

Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at and kill’d.” ‘

                            The portents suggest a topsy-turvy situation in Nature and emphasize the naturalness of Macbeth’s heinous deed in murdering Duncan who is at once his king, kinsman and guest.
                                                  ‘Ross: “And Duncan’s horses, a thing most strange and certain,

Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race, Turn’d wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out, Contending ‘gainst obedience as they would Making war with mankind.” ‘

                                 The accounts of these supernatural happenings hence are helping towards the atmosphere of horror in the play.  -          ‘An owl shrieks

Lady Macbeth: ..’’It was the owl that shriek’d, the fatal bellman Which gives the stern’st good-night.” ‘

                                       King Edward, the Confessor was thought to be inspired with a gift of prophecy and also to possess the gift of healing infirmities and some incurable diseases.  Though one motive of the references may have been to flatter JamesI, another valid justification on dramatic grounds, is that the good supernatural described here is a contrast to the evil supernatural of the witches. Man’s actions are, therefore, not isolated but closely connected to various forces operating in the universe. At the same time, it is made to clear that effect would be different if Man did not succumb to the evil within him.

‘Lady Macbeth: “Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here And fill me from the crown to the toe topfull Of direst cruelty.” ‘

                                    It is noticeable that Macbeth himself never blames the Witches for his sinister actions. The supernatural elements contribute to the play a rich texture, raise the tragedy to a cosmic dimension to a sense of Fate, operating in man’s life in Macbeth. Macbeth’s failure to utter the word ‘Amen’ is also accepted only as a psychologic. The air-drawn dagger is not strictly a part of the supernatural. The visionary dagger that Macbeth perceives just before committing Duncan’s murder has been interpreted more as a projection of Macbeth’s heated mind than as a concrete reality to be felt and known. It is he who makes it possible for Birnam Wood to come to Dunsinane Castle shutting himself up inside. It is he who senselessly murdering Macduff’s family rouses Macduff who is “none of woman born”- to revenge. Before his end, he simply blames the juggling fiends as they, “keep the word of promise to our ear and break it to our hope.”

“Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;

Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun.”

- Shakespeare’s Art, therefore, is evolving from a Deep Understanding of the Complexity of Human Nature!

(References, words, sentences, ideas, settings and elaboration from ‘William Shakespeare’s Macbeth- A critical evaluation’, Dr. S. Sen, and other.)

OF THE PLAY MACBETH-A TRAGIC HERO ,REFERENCE TO SUPERNATURALISM AND ITS IMPACT

“Man is not the creature of circumstances Circumstances are the creatures of man.”

                               Macbeth, throughout the play, is presented as one much above the ordinary beings, and, as such, he fulfils the basic -requirements of being a tragic hero. Shakespeare, introduces him as a brave general, a bold, resolute man of action who through as also referred to “Valor’s minion”, “Bellona’s bridegroom’’, the king’s ‘’valiant cousin’’, a very “eagle’’ among ‘’sparrows’’, a ‘’lion’’ among ‘’hares’’.  It is a play, which is depicting a complete destruction, wrestling with creation. It is a study of the disintegration and damnation of a man. And yet, Macbeth is a ‘tragic hero’. Here presents, the hero’s complete symbolic life-journey in a reflective pattern to ensure the only operation of evil in this world.

‘Macbeth: “Come, let me clutch thee: I have thee not,fatal vision,sensible To feeling as to sight?” ‘

                           In the third scene of the first act of the play though the hero accepts evil overtly, there is a suggestion that, even before the commencement of action of the play, he has fallen under the influence of evil.

‘Banquo : ..“Merciful powers, Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature Gives way to repose.”

                            The Witches, merely prophecy certain things for Macbeth. They do not influence him in any concrete manner, but the effect of the prophecy is to make Macbeth, start as if he were already guilty of harboring dangerous ideas. It is a fact that his ambition impels him towards “the swelling act of the imperial theme”, though his conscience fills him with horror at the idea that has come to him about how to gain the throne.

‘Macbeth: “Come what come may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.” ‘

                        Macbeth, is the starkest and the least discursive of Shakespeare’s tragedies as Granville-Barker has pointed out.  The deterioration of Macbeth’s character illustrates the theme of conscience and its decline. From a brave soldier and noble person Macbeth reaches a state when he is a soulless man, a beast chained to a stake like a beast!

‘Second Witch: “By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes; Open locks, whoever knocks.” ‘

                  The forces of evil are always ready to ensnare man; but they have their limitations. They do not, indeed cannot, force man into evil; they can merely tempt man to choose to follow evil ways. Macbeth, deliberately choose- not once, but several times in the play-the evil path. At every stage of Macbeth’s degeneration we witness the choice being made deliberately, at the same time there is a sense of inevitability, about Macbeth’s choices.

‘Macbeth: “How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags! What is’t you do? All the Witches: A deed without a name.” ‘

                      Much more, than the other elements, the Witches introduce an element of supernatural mystery and fear into Macbeth. According to Charles Lamb,” They are foul anomalies, of whom we know not whence they are sprung, or whether they have beginning or ending. As they are without human passions, they seem to be without human relations. They come with thunder and lightning and vanish to airy music.”It is significant that the play opens with a brief meeting of the Three Witches.

‘Old Man: “Threeescore and ten I can remember well; Within the volume of which time, I have seen Hours dreadful and things strange, but this sore night Hath trifled former knowings.” ‘

                   The opening scene, in fact is important, in that which makes a complete sense of mystery, strikes the keynote of the play:

..’ Second Witch: “When the hurly-burly’s done, When the battle’s lost, and won. Third Witch: That will be the ere the set of sun. First Witch: Where the place? Second Witch: Upon the heath. Third Witch: There to meet with Macbeth.’’ ‘

When we meet the Witches again in Act I, Sc.iii, we get to know of their physical aspects. They are withered and not dressed like earthly beings; their fingers are choppy and lips skinny. They look like women, and yet they are bearded. They can at will vanish into air, can foresee the future, and possess more than mortal knowledge. They are by no means the ordinary witches of popular super -station; they are more powerful beings, resembling rather the “Goddesses of Devine “as Holinshed calls them. Shakespeare has endowed they may have power over Nature, but that power is not -absolute. They may have power over a man’s soul but that power is not absolute either. It is when a mortal mind is tainted that they can have an influence on it. Their prophecy only gives a definite shape to the dark thoughts that have already been smoldering in Macbeth’s mind. The thought of assassinating Duncan occurs to him independently of ‘them’-without any hint from ‘them’. Macbeth reads into the prophecies a “supernatural soliciting”, to murder and, Lady Macbeth looks upon them as “metaphysical aid.” The Witches in Macbeth never solicit nor aid- this is nothing -but a wishful thinking.
‘Macbeth: ‘’Why sinks that cauldron? And what noise is this? “ ‘
The most- distinct suggestion, of the supernatural in Macbeth comes from Banquo’s Ghost. There is no doubt that we can see with Macbeth the uncanny apparition, the blood blotched ghost. Banquo’s Ghost plays an important role in the action of tragedy. The horror of its sight compels Macbeth to make many a comprising disclosure. As Coleridge points out them, “as true a creation of Shakespeare’s as his Ariel and Caliban” and “wholly different from the representation of Witches in the contemporary writers, and yet presented a sufficient of witches in the contemporary writers, and yet presented a sufficient external resemblance to the creatures of vulgar prejudice, to act immediately on the audience.”
‘All the Witches: “Double, double toil and trouble,

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.” ‘

                         Though the Witches here do not have a direct share in its action they are a very important part of the play. The play from its very beginning continues under their evil shadows until the shadows are finally lifted in the last scene with Macduff’s entry with “the usurper’s cursed head.”  The tragedy would lose all its magnificence without its strange atmosphere and the atmosphere would amount to nothing without the presence of the Witches.

‘All the Witches: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair, Hover through the fog and filthy air.”

                       Lenox describes the ‘unruly’ night in some detail:

“Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say Lamentings heard i’ th’ air; strange screams of death, And, prophesying with accents terrible Of dire combustion, and confused events, New hatch’d to th’ woeful time, the obscure bird Clamour’d the live long night; some say, the earth Was feverous, and did shake.”

                           In the next scene, Ross and the Old Man discuss of similar events that have taken place during the fateful night:

‘Old Man: ‘On Tuesday last

A falcon tow’ring in her pride of place,

Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at and kill’d.” ‘

                            The portents suggest a topsy-turvy situation in Nature and emphasize the naturalness of Macbeth’s heinous deed in murdering Duncan who is at once his king, kinsman and guest.
                                                  ‘Ross: “And Duncan’s horses, a thing most strange and certain,

Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race, Turn’d wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out, Contending ‘gainst obedience as they would Making war with mankind.” ‘

                                 The accounts of these supernatural happenings hence are helping towards the atmosphere of horror in the play.  -          ‘An owl shrieks

Lady Macbeth: ..’’It was the owl that shriek’d, the fatal bellman Which gives the stern’st good-night.” ‘

                                       King Edward, the Confessor was thought to be inspired with a gift of prophecy and also to possess the gift of healing infirmities and some incurable diseases.  Though one motive of the references may have been to flatter JamesI, another valid justification on dramatic grounds, is that the good supernatural described here is a contrast to the evil supernatural of the witches. Man’s actions are, therefore, not isolated but closely connected to various forces operating in the universe. At the same time, it is made to clear that effect would be different if Man did not succumb to the evil within him.

‘Lady Macbeth: “Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here And fill me from the crown to the toe topfull Of direst cruelty.” ‘

                                    It is noticeable that Macbeth himself never blames the Witches for his sinister actions. The supernatural elements contribute to the play a rich texture, raise the tragedy to a cosmic dimension to a sense of Fate, operating in man’s life in Macbeth. Macbeth’s failure to utter the word ‘Amen’ is also accepted only as a psychologic. The air-drawn dagger is not strictly a part of the supernatural. The visionary dagger that Macbeth perceives just before committing Duncan’s murder has been interpreted more as a projection of Macbeth’s heated mind than as a concrete reality to be felt and known. It is he who makes it possible for Birnam Wood to come to Dunsinane Castle shutting himself up inside. It is he who senselessly murdering Macduff’s family rouses Macduff who is “none of woman born”- to revenge. Before his end, he simply blames the juggling fiends as they, “keep the word of promise to our ear and break it to our hope.”

“Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;

Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun.”

- Shakespeare’s Art, therefore, is evolving from a Deep Understanding of the Complexity of Human Nature!

(References, words, sentences, ideas, settings and elaboration from ‘William Shakespeare’s Macbeth- A critical evaluation’, Dr. S. Sen, and other.) Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri (talk) 17:15, 20 May 2013 (UTC)Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the help page). www,booksie.com/mystery_crime/essay[reply]

== Yet Now Of The Topics I Have Written-

                               ==ITS OF RIGHT DECISION NONE OF THIS MINE INTENDED TO WRITE IN AN ARTICLE-STYLE, I PORTRAIT ON THE USER PAGE AS AN ESSAY--------------THE WRITING,THUS IS ONLY THE DRAFT OF ESSAY.

ENGLISH ORGANIZATION PERSONALLY ON SELECTIVE MODERN LITERATURE, HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE,PERSONAL MOMENTS- FOR THIS VIEW OF THE FOLLOWING LINK AND ALSO TO ACADEMIA.EDU(RITUPARNA RAY CHAUDHURI_PRESIDENCY COLLEGE)-

[www.booksie.com/essay/rituparna ray chaudhuri]

Chapters covered yet now: 1) Analysis of Lady Macbeth's Character. 2) Eliot's Preludes. 3) T'Merchant of Venice. 4) Supernatural elements and Impacts throughout the play 'Macbeth'. 5) Do the Witches in fact have any power,in the play 'Macbeth'. 6) Can Macbeth be called a tragic Hero? 7) My Few Days With Afghan Mom Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri (talk) 21:36, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Your submission at Articles for creation

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Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia! Libby norman (talk) 09:13, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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MY SOLILOQUY-HOW SHALL I IMPROVE MYSELF MORE...?

As my profile in LinkedIn: Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri

self-job at self- teaching and research centre

   India
   Research

Current

   Self Centre,
   Self Tuition Centre,
   Self-Help

Education

   Gokhale Memorial Girls' School.

SUMMARY OF MY BACKGROUND AS IN LINKEDIN

I studied in Presidency College, Calcutta to be an independent research worker. Love to English Literature, Language and Philosophy is my passion. I,though consult many books--- but strongly only believe and have confidence on my own creativity,as far possible..

The writings will be worth only when, if help others both in education and also socially that written in different sites as recently given in advisors in academia.edu. Thanks to the readers of different places throughout accepting my writing' at these different sites and shall be more glad to you if anybody helps me more.

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS ELT August 30, 2013 at 3:20pm

Teaching is at higher level means a teacher should always prepare own from every nook of the knowledge they are providing on to various categorical students. I always throw up the discussion upon a particular student on the particular topic.I ask them to let me ask and challenge at every point of their satisfaction. as such both the high and higher level students have a very throw-up challenging communication to me on other hand also beside a respectful teacher-student relationship also.More I am thankful to academia.edu and also as Google scholar that are helping me constantly to convince these higher class students to have more faith upon the ways i want to express them but obviously with no doubt hundred and thousand critical questions,again.... I accept it gladly for I also feel, indeed life is a challenge....and more I am ready to face also.

"The more evidence that I demonstrate of impact, the more likely it is that the promotion committee will realize the different ways in which impact can be shown. Academia.edu stats proves to some of our committee members that what they help fund—the work we produce from such funding—actually gets looked for, read, printed, etc"

- Tim Ritchie www.booksie.com,academia.edu

www.booksie.com,academia.edu Experience Tuition Teacher Self Centre March 2006 – Present (7 years 8 months)

I am a teacher to distribute only my creative style of -writing among my school and the university students, as a hobby on other side, writing on different sites as mentioned in experiences. Readers can click at www.rituparna ray chaudhuri.com. As a regard to the Web Results, I feel to be more confident upon myself when I find my name on the title of literature-history as its part..

- I TRY TO WRITE FOR THE GENERATION TO LEARN, THE PEOPLE AND ITS IMPACT ON SOCIETY-

- - - - POSTED TO ACADEMIA.EDU---

Rituparna Roy Choudhury posted to Academia.edu (RITUPARNA RAY CHAUDHURI) Thanks to the Social-Web( ACADEMIA.EDU) ,along with also other sites, in accepting constantly and widely my one of papers 'Macbeth- - -Supernatural Elements and Impacts in the play' that has yet been taken like a storm.. ! (RITUPARNA RAY CHAUDHURI)

My Few Days With Afghan Mom Self Tuition Centre March 2006 – Present (7 years 8 months)Kolkata Area, India

1.Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri (click at Google/Google Scholar thru' different web,i.e.-booksie.com) 2.http;//www.booksie.com/essay/rituparna ray chaudhuri 3. refer to sparknotes also under Literature: study guides of Macbeth, T' Merchant of Venice and Eliot'TM Poetry( Shehanaz profile,for detail refer to news of booksie.com/essay/rituparna ray chaudhuri) 4.booksie.com/poetry/rituparna ray chaudhuri(click at google) etc....

5.http:/www.academia.edu/rituparna ray chaudhuri (Presidency College)

(Open)1 project

Self-Help My Few Days With Afghan Mom Self-Help March 2006 – Present (7 years 8 months)Madhyamgram,Kolkata

I am independent to my own profession.

Its indeed, really feels to be so nice!!!

THANKS TO MY GOD-

Thanks to my readers,kn-owns and unknowns within the country and abroad, for constantly giving me courage and confidence to continue my writings in different sites.

Thanks... and feeling now to be happy as one of the Google Scholars (Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri), to be labelled as Wikipedia, to get constant guidance from wiki.com, to be at English Literature at Literature- Study-Online (BBC English Literature through Google Web-booksie.com,Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri), again to be one of as research workers in academia.edu and so on to many other sites in accepting my writings.

Highly grateful to the readers,viewers and critics in going through my documents and inspiring me more to maintain my suitable rank. Thanks also to many of the top countries encouraging me more to enhance the creative styles of writing a complete answer regard of the topic that to be given..

More thanks to my co-editor of University of Malta in choosing my one of writings,as cited in many sites.

I hope, I can go more forward,---as much obviously I can.

DOMAIN NAME OF RITUPARNA RAY CHAUDHURI IN ACADEMIA.EDU-

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Web Search Results 1 - 10 of about 80

Academia.edu | Search | Search Academia.edu

Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri. ... more articles and responses from an Academia.edu spokesperson and its users ... information available about him in the public domain. www.academia.edu/…le/search?q=Search%20Academia.edu Academia.edu | Facebook

Academia.edu. 17,619 likes · 327 talking ... the high level of corruption in Brazil whose annual cost is around R$ 41 ... Rituparna Roy Choudhury posted to ... www.facebook.com/Academia.edu?filter=2

(RITUPARNA ROY CHOUDHURY/RITUPARNA RAY CHAUDHURI)

Self Self-Target March 2006 – Present (7 years 8 months)

From the very beginning I have liked to be independent in my own profession. However, the different sites of the details of my submitted-documents, at a few length, are provided in my Facebook account- http://lnkd.in/bevZjEz /(Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri).

- - - - .

(Rituparna Roy Choudhury)

self-job self- teaching and researchcentre March 2006 – Present (7 years 8 months)

Organizations Self-organization Publications Self-Help(Link) Google Projects rituparna ray chaudhuri(Link) May 2013 – Present

It is worth to serve the writings that not only should have an educational value,but also socially to be improved more. More that, I get much inspiration and confidence upon myself from the different sites to publish my writings and also of different types of educated messages that I received constantly in times,in the LinkedIn ..I am really grateful to these mentors and also of what I am endorsing for..

[My respect to these persons..- Best Quotations From Famous People- Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom, while discouragement often nips it in the bud. Any of us put out more and better ideas if our efforts are truly appreciated. (Alexander Osborn)]less Languages

   English
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Skills & Expertise Most endorsed for...

   46Research
   34Teaching
   24Facebook
   17Public Speaking
   15English
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   14Spanish
   12Microsoft Word
   10Blogging
   9Creative Writing ....

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   9Editing
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Education Gokhale Memorial Girls' School. Graduate. B.A., Humanities 2000

Presidency College,Calcutta

Activities and Societies: Dance, music, theatre, flute.

Do you know what is the derived word of 'Nostalgic'?

Do you know what is the derived word of 'Nostalgic'? Gokhale Memorial Girls' School School Promotion, Humanities

Additional Info

   Interests
       Dance,
       music,
       theatre,
       flute.
   Personal Details
   Birthday	October 20, 1980
   Advice for Contacting Rituparna

   http://www.booksie.com/Rituparna_Ray_Chaudhuri
   http:/www.academia.edu/rituparna ray chaudhuri (Presidency College)

O..MY SWEET DARLINGS- - -

"MY WONDERFUL-GIFT"''

"Like every year, this year has also on the complete-absence of my knowledge proved to me quite surprising and with no doubt later a very auspicious moment!..

Sometimes I wonder I must be blessed in by My God so Hugely to have such wonderful gifts He has provided me. The constant..the adoration,the love and a new-built relation is really an awesome gift from my such Wonderful Darlings,rather than any of lots of material gifts on the eve of 'Teachers Day'..

Thanks to my junior,senior,senior-most, ex-students in wishing me this day. May God always Bless them in every path of their individual Successful Life.."

Rituparna Roy Choudhury / Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri

LET THE GENERATION WILL THINK ON THEIR OWN STYLE-FORM ABOUT A MORE ENHANCED- BETTER -LIFE--- -----....

I TRY TO WRITE FOR THE GENERATION TO LEARN, THE PEOPLE AND ITS IMPACT ON SOCIETY-''

I get much inspiration and confidence upon myself from the different sites to publish my writings and its acceptance widely, and also of different types of educated messages that I received constantly in times,in the LinkedIn ..I am really grateful to my all mentors and also of what I am endorsing for..

[My respect to these persons..- Best Quotations From Famous People- Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom, while discouragement often nips it in the bud. Any of us put out more and better ideas if our efforts are truly appreciated. (Alexander Osborn)]..

I AM HONORED 'BEST QUOTATIONS FROM FAMOUS PEOPLE' IN TAKING ME AS A PART...- - !!

                      A LOT THANKS TO 'Best Quotations From Famous People'--

Best Quotations From Famous People "Judge a person from the core of your heart but not from his appearance or the reality that we see only." -Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri

Thanks to Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri https://www.facebook.com/rituparna.raychaudhuri /(Rituparna Roy Choudhury)/

ON SELF-RELIANCE- -

                                      SELF-HELP AND SELF-CONFIDENCE

What I believe is mostly in Self-Help.It feels me better to depend on self-position to acquire a certain feet of triumph in own life.....As far as-considering on myself I only have believed my God, my Confidence,my Determination,my Struggle and my Destiny. And next I left everything to the world to judge my ability.....

Hence,herein it appears to me very bad when any person is therefore requesting me to recommend him/her on the basis of his/her profile.But of-course, with no doubts here I can certainly only and surely will promote about the qualities of the person more forward to the society..

IT IS FEELING TO BE NICE- -

Thanks to my readers,kn-owns and unknowns within the country and abroad, for constantly giving me courage and confidence to continue my writings in different sites.

More thanks to co-editor of University of Malta in choosing my one of writings,as cited in many sites.

I hope, I can go more forward,---as much I can.

Trace how Blake’s thought develops from his poem ‘The Lamb’ and ‘The Tyger’ together- “I have no name: I am but two days old.” What shall I call thee? “I happy am, Joy is my name.”

                                         Sweet Joy befall thee!” ’
The good character as well as the bad abstractions such as virtues and vices is framed up in symbols to elaborate their suggestiveness and implications. Blake’s symbology is too large and complex to be given in brief. His symbols help to express his visions which may be obscure to a common reader. Blake says: “Allegory is addressed to the intellectual powers, while it is altogether hidden from the corporeal. Understanding is my definition of the Most Sublime Poetry.” From this it is clear that in his view poetry is concerned with something else than the phenomenal world and that the only means of expressing it is through what he calls ‘allegory’. For Blake allegory is a system of symbols which presents events in a spiritual world.

“The modest Rose puts forth a thorn, The humble Sheep a threatening horn; White the Lily white shall in love delight, Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright.” Blake imagined himself under spiritual influences. He saw various forms and heard the voices of angels, fairies, kings of the past and even God; the past and future were before him and he heard in imagination, even the awful voice which called on Adam amongst the trees of the garden. In this kind of dreaming abstraction, he lived much of his life; all his s works are stamped with it. Though this visionary aspect explains much of the mysticism and obscurity of his work, it is also the element that makes his poems singular in loveliness and beauty. It is amazing that he could thus, month after month and year after year, lay down his engraver after it had earned him his daily wages, and retire from s the battle, to his imagination where he could experience scenes of more than-earthly splendor and creatures pure as unfallen dew. Like Swedenborg, Blake narrates things unheard and unseen; more purely a mystic than Swedenborg, he does not condescend to dialectics and scholastic divinity. Those who fancy that a dozen stony syllogisms seal up the perennial fountain of our deepest questions, will affirm that Blake’s belief was an illusion, constant and self-consistent and harmonious with the world throughout the whole of a man’s life, cannot differ from much reality. However, it is also important to note that he was unlike common atheists. “Selfish Father of Men! Cruel, jealous, selfish Fear! Can delight, Chained in night, The virgins of youth and morning bear?” In the clash of creeds, it is always a comfort to remember that sects with their sectaries, orthodox or otherwise, could not intersect all, if they were not in the same plane. [My spiritual intelligence is certainly becoming confused by your words of conflicting conclusions, therefore ascending one of them; please reveal definitely that by which I may obtain the greatest benefit.] We find in Blake’s poetry many of the elements characterizing Romantic poetry. “The world of imagination is the world of Eternity”, says Blake. In his championship of liberty, his mysticism, naturalism, idealization of childhood, and simplicity Blake could be called a precursor of Romantic poetry in nineteenth century England.

“Now enjoy….

Dip him in the river who loves water….. The busy bee has no time for sorrow….. The most sublime act is to set another before you…. The cistern contains: the fountain overflow….” In explaining these lines we waver in interpreting the drops of tears that water the heaven as the outcome of the rage of the defeated rebelling angels or as tears of mercy. If this wrath is one of the two aspects of God, the tiger’s cruelty and wildness is only superficially fearful. It can otherwise be construed as a prophetic rage. But after, all wrath and mercy unite at the same point where the ultimate reality of God is felt. There are two means for the achievement of the goal, the first being through the ‘innocence’ of the lamb and other being through the ‘experience’ of the tiger. The close of the poem gives us the clue: the daring of the creator whether God or man is the cleansing wrath of the tiger. Blake is first and foremost a poet of visions and mysticism. But of, his visions are not confined to a narrow streamline of thought about futurity alone; they take the present into consideration and unfold those aspects of contemporary society detrimental to free growth of the mental powers of man. He ridicules the artificial ethos of religion that professes a complete negation of man’s sensual life and vehemently argues for a more complete life which combines the senses and the spirit. He probes beneath the surface of things and exposes the roots of social vices, the hidden sores and scars of a tradition-bound society. “Can a mother sit and hear An infant groan, and infant fear? No, no! never can it be! Never, never can it be!” Blake’s maxim that the human soul is made of contrary elements can be applied here also. Indistinct and imagination or the beastly and divine nature of man is necessary for a fuller life of the soul and for its progress. It is a grievous mistake to sanctify the lamb and turn an eye of defiance towards the tiger. Blake opposes such a view and gives equal prominence to sense and soul, the wild and meek aspects of human beings. “Does spring hide its joy When buds and blossoms grow?” What holds our attention is not merely the brute’s beauty but the mystery and purpose behind its creation. In ‘The Lamb’ the poet visualizes the holiness of the lamb and child and unifies them with Jesus Christ. It is obvious that the link that connects these figures is ‘innocence’. The harmlessness of the lamb and the purity of the heart of a child are nothing but the manifestation of heart nor does he act premeditatedly. The air of innocence is clearly visible on the face of all the three of them. “How sweet is the Shepherd’s sweet lot! From the morn to the evening he strays; He shall follow his sheep all the day, And his tongue shall be filled with praise.” More than this element of innocence there is another thread of connection between the lamb and Christ. Christ refers to himself as the Lamb of God: “The lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” In the Bible Christ is referred to both as a lamb and as a shepherd. In this aspect the lamb has a religious significance too. (“The whole universe is a symbol, and God is the essence behind.” ~ Swami Vivekananda ~)

‘The Tyger’ displays the poet’s excellence in craftsmanship and descriptive skill. In the forest of experience Blake finds the bright- eyed tiger which appears to involve all the cosmic forces. The tiger has made its appearances in the ‘Prophetic books’ of Blake. The poet’s reliance in the cosmic and preternatural forces is increasingly exemplified and asserted when he describes the creation and the creator of the tiger. The creator is a supernatural being and not necessarily the Christian God. The creation, according to another elucidation takes place in an extraordinary cosmic commotion. When the constellations turn round in their course there is a move from light to darkness. The pattern and method of asking questions here are quite different from those employed in ‘The Lamb’. In ‘The Tyger’ the questions are put in a terrified and awe-inspired tone. It is also held that ‘The Tyger’ deals with the colossal problem of evil, but in Blake evil does not exist as an abstract quality. Instead, the evil is embodied in the wrath of God. Christ, like all other Gods, has a dual duty. He punishes the sinners and offenders and loves the followers. Thus Christ or God becomes the God of both love and unkindness. The fire is a popular symbol of wrath. Milton and Spenser have described wrath as fire, but we are not to misapprehend Blake’s use of wrath as one of the ‘deadly sins’ by the miracle and morality plays. Blake finds virtue in wrath and what he describes in the righteous indignation or the wrath of a pious soul. In addition to this, if we also construe the symbolic meaning of the forest, then we can substantiate the meaning of the lines.

“Tyger Tyger burning bright In the forests of the night. “ The poet is struck with surprise and awe to behold the wild animal’s majestic elegance and grandeur. Its symmetry is fearful and the glow of its eyes is unearthly. When the process of creation is over, “a terrible beauty is born.” The strength of the animal and its moves/ are its peculiar features. The tiger beyond its superficial beauty is a prototype of God whose harsher aspect is present n the wildness of the creature. It is a contrast and counterpart to the innocence of the lamb. The poet wonders: “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” In the poem ‘The Tyger’ a description of the process of creation is given, but no clarification is given about who the creator is. In the first stanza the creator is described as having wings by which he may have reached the skies to bring the fire for the lusture of the wild beast. The creation of the tiger is conveyed in words and phrases which, though meaningful in their totality, do not yield any explicit elucidation of the creator. We sense the strong shoulders thrusting forward in the process of forging the body of the carnivore. The dexterity of the strokes is further conveyed in the ‘dread hand’ which is gifted with unprecedented craftsmanship. If the ‘dread feet’ and ‘dread hand’ are applied to those of the busily engaged creator we can elicit the fact that those limbs are busy in working diligently. At the moment of achieving the perfection of his sublime creation the poem grows tense, the questions are broken in midway and the speaker’s hindered gasps let out incomplete phrases of exclamation. “The star floor. The watery shore. Is given thee till the break of day.” In the world of innocence even the meanest creature such as a lamb (which is low only in the eyes of human beings) is treated as having unbound divinity. Here is an exclusive unification of the three characters- Christ, child and the Lamb who constitute the Christian concept of ‘Trinity’ in the world of innocence. Blake’s concept of God is closely aligned to his mysticism. He conceives of God as the very epitome of characteristics which man is capable of developing. If he nurtures these qualities, man can attain godliness-it merely depends on what set of qualities a man develops. A child asks a lamb if it knows its merciful creator, its feeder or the giver of its delightedful and cosy clothing of fleece. He also asks the lamb whether it knows who gave it its tender voice that fills the valleys with pleasant joy and music. Quite childlike, the lines “Little lamb who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?” are repeated, presumable with wonder in the eyes of the child. The speaker does not wait for any answer. He tells the lamb that its creator is one who is called after the name of the lamb itself. He is one who calls Himself a lamb. He is meek and mild and came on earth as a little child. The poem comes to have a meaningful pause at this juncture. The questions are asked, answers done and the child (or the poet) turns to conclude the lines in a wise hymnal vein or spiritual implication. He says: “I a child, and thou a lamb, We are called by His name:” Blake intends to suggest that the great purpose of wrath is to consume error, to annihilate those stubborn beliefs which cannot be removed by the tame “horses of instruction.” It is typical of Blake to ask questions when he is overpowered by wonder and amazement and it is effective especially in the case of this poem, where it results in an “intense improvisation”. The phrase ‘fearful symmetry’- whatever is possible in symbolic suggestions- is clearly ‘’the initial puzzle’’ the ‘symmetry’ implies an ordering hand or intelligence, the ‘fearful’ throws doubt about the benevolence of the creator. The ‘forest of the night’ is the darkness out of which the tiger looms brilliant by contrast: They also embody the doubt or confusion that surrounds the origins of the tiger. In the case of the lamb the creator “is meek and he is mild”:”He became a little child”. In the case of the tiger creator is again like what he creates. The form that must be supplied Him is now that of the Promethean Smith working violently at the forge. The tiger is an image of the Creator: its dreadly terror must be His.

“In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?”

There is scarcely any poem in Songs of Innocence and of Experience which does not have a symbolic or allegorical or allusive implication. Though these poems are rendered in the simplest possible poems is somewhat scriptural- simple and profound at the same time.  The Biblical allusions add prodigious significance to his poems when foe example, we read the ‘The Shepherd’ it commemorates Christ as the Good Shepherd and reminds us that the parables are clad in pastoral elements. Without reference to the Bible the poem, ‘The Shepherd’ is meaningless and insignificant. Furthermore, Blake makes use of Biblical phrases too, as we see in the poem ‘The Lamb’.

“Gave thee life, and bid thee feed, By the stream and o’er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly, bright: Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice?” In Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Blake’s symbols are not as obscure or abstruse as we find them in his other poems. In his later poems (Prophetic Books) they are rather incomprehensible. The principal symbols used by Blake have been classified by critics as innocence symbols. Many of these, of course, overlap, and among themselves weave richness into Blake’s poetry. “Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down, And the dews of night arise...” In the first, the word ‘dews’ evokes an image of harmlessness but in the second context it evokes a feeling of chill and damp. In the first there is a feeling that the night will pass, but in the second poem the word “dew” assumes further ramifications of meaning. It implies materialism, the philosophy of experience, the indifference to spiritual truth. Knowledge of these symbolic meanings enriches our understanding of the poem. Blake gives his own interpretation to traditional symbols. The rose traditionally associated with love and modesty assumes the aura of ‘sicknesses and disease in Blake for he considered love to be free and honest and open in order to be good. The lily’s purity assumes added depth in Blake’s poetry, not because it is chaste but because it feels honestly. The sun flower’s movement with the sun has deep meaning: on the one hand it represents a search for spirituality: on the other, it expresses regret for being attached to the ground. The simple vocabulary and movement of Blake’s verse should not lull us into a feeling that the thought too is childish. Indeed there is a complex thread of syllogism in his poetry that gives multiple layers of meaning to his words. Sometimes this syllogism even lends obscurity to his poems because it evolves out of Blake’s own system of symbols. The manner in a particular mood is a remarkable illustrated in the ‘Nurse’s Songs’ in Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience occur in both poems: yet the feelings evoked because of the accompanying words are in sharp contrast. “To this day they dwell In a lonely dell. Nor fear the wolfish howl Nor the lion’s growl.” The world of ‘Experience’ welcomes a child of sorrow, who rather than being a fiend himself is also born into a monstrous world of totems and taboos. Strange to notice, it is not actually upon the growing boy that the shadows of prison house close; on the other hand, the shadows spread on the infant at the moment of birth itself. Predictably enough, there is no scope of a ‘heaven’ lying about its infancy. Its struggle begins from the very moment of its birth, it is choked from the very start of its life and it finds its only rest on its mother’s breast. As a contrast to ‘Infant Joy’ here the child is not a ‘joy’ but a ‘fiend’ and neither its mother nor the father, though it is not explicit from Blake’s poem, accords a warm s welcome to him. The child hides behind the cloud. The speaker is evidently the child himself who laments against life. “But to go to school in a summer morn, Oh! It drives all joy away Under a cruel eye outworn The little ones spend the day In sighing and dismay.” Admittedly, the poem brings out Blake’s ideas on love and hints at his well-known belief that sex is not sinful. For Blake nakedness is a symbol of pure innocence and he lauds uninhabited love. The Golden Age is that in which the people have love for their fellowmen and mingle with one another freely. In the Golden Age love is not a crime but a grace and beauty signaling unbridled innocence, but in the present age the most tender sentiments are frozen by the ‘trembling fear’ coming from the cruel eyes of experience. “In every cry of every Man In every Infant’s cry of fear In every voice, in every ban The mind-forged manacles I hear.” Blake’s vision of man in Songs of Experience, especially with reference to ‘A Divine Image’ can be summed up as, ‘’ The human dress is forge iron The human form is a fiery forge, The human face a furnace sealed, The human heart its hungry gorge.” The poem ‘A Divine Image’ is a contrast to ‘The Divine Image’ in its very title. In ‘The Divine Image’, the definite article ‘The’ shows the real, one and only Divine Image. In ‘A Divine Image’ the indefinite article ‘A’ points at a particular divine image which has a unique growth. The contrast is also visible in the two stanzas of these two poems. “For Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face, And Love the human form divine. Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace…” can be seen as a stark contrast to the lines of ‘A Divine Image’ that run as: “Cruelty has a human heart And Jealousy a human face; Terror the human form divine And Secrecy the human dress.” This is truly terrifying. His soul (the human form) is burning with frightfulness within the iron body of secrecy (the condition of deceit; his face is a furnace sealed up wherein jealousy rages; his heart is recklessly cruel. The imagery is similar to that of ‘The Tyger’, but where the Tiger had broken all bounds as a symbol of regeneration, man is here imprisoned in a ‘dress’ of an iron suit, of his own forging; and all his energies burn within it, consuming him. “For I dance, And strength and breadth, And the want Of thought is death;” Blake is not merely a revolutionary thinker on man’s physical or corporeal freedom; he is also one who broods over the spiritual freedom or spiritual salvation of mankind. The former point, showing Blake as a humanitarian, cans be well understood from poems such as ‘The Chimney-Sweeper’, ‘Holy Thursday’ and ‘A little Girl Lost’. In all these cases Blake’s fury makes him lash out at the hypocrisy of man and the society that enslaves children to utter lifelessness. In ‘Holy Thursday’ Blake’s sympathetic and compassionate heart shares the agony of the children and his pent up feelings are let out through an ironical comment: “Beneath them sit the aged men wise guardians of the poor, Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.” William Blake is considered a precursor of Romantic Movement in English Literature. Romanticism laid considerable stress on the elements of imagination, nature worship, humanitarianism, liberty, mysticism and symbolism. It differed from the outlook expounded by the preceding age of Neo classicism which promoted the notion of reason, balance and logic with regard to prose and poetry. The Romantic creed of poetry rests on recording the simple emotions of humanity in a simple diction. Recollections of childhood (nostalgia) are also a common subject of Romanticism. “When the voice of children are heard on the green And whisperings are in the dale, The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind, My face turns green and pale.” But of, the flood of feelings gains more fury in the poem of the same title in Songs of Experience: “Is this a holy thing to see In a rich and fruitful land. Babes reduced to misery, Fed with cold and usurious hand?” With vehemence Blake argues for the freedom of human energy too. He deplores any religion that denies sexual and emotional life of man. Virility and vigour are divine and its free play should never be hindered. “He is called by thy name, For he calls Himself a Lamb. He is meek, and He is mild; He became a little child.” Many of Blake’s poems celebrate the divinity and innocence of not merely the child but also the least harmless of creatures on earth, namely the lamb. The child asks the lamb if it knows who has created out. The child does not wait but answers his questions himself. He does so, we feel, not because the lamb cannot communicate, but because the child is so enthusiastic and eager to mention the creator and his virtues. He refers to the meekness of Christ, his glorious infancy as well as his reference to himself as a lamb. He concludes with a reference to his own and the lamb’s affinity to God and thus establishes their oneness. Qualities of simplicity, innocence and divinity are extended even to the world of animals and the innocent creatures like the lamb are raised from their level of lowness in the human eye. Both the child and Christ are unified with the lamb and the three forms the Trinity on earth. “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forest of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?” In ‘The Shepherd’ the Shepherd is depicted as enjoying vast freedom, and his fortune is praised. He is so fortunate that he can wander about in carefree way wherever he chooses and sing in praise of God. Not only is he always near his lambs, listening to their innocent cries, bleats and answering bleats ,but he is never exposed to the world of ‘Experience’ where he may be startled by roars of cruelty and fierceness. This is a simple pastoral poem in which liberty and freedom are praised. We are again brought to realize the affinity of lamb and innocence. “Frowning, frowning night, O’er this desert bright Let the moon arise, While I close my eyes.” The pastoral convention, which represents the occupations of shepherds in an idealized way, against an idealized country background had to face severe criticism in the eighteenth century because of its unreality. It was held that men and women were neither so joyful nor carefree, nor so innocent, as they were represented; but according to Blake, young children do have these qualities, they live in a golden world of their own. This convention is used by Blake to give us an insight into childhood, and one ‘state of human soul’. In the poem, the poet tells us about the valley along which he goes piping and about his sudden meeting with a child. The child bids him pipe a song about a lamb- another pastoral element. The ‘pipe’ is a conventional pastoral musical organ on which the shepherds play melodiously as the sheep graze. It is also worth nothing that when the child appeals to him to write down the song, the poet says “And I plucked a hollow reed, And I made a rural pen And I stained the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear.”

The phrase ‘reed’, ‘rural pen’ and ‘water clear’ contributes much to the elements of pastorals or rustic innocence.

In the so-called world of experience, callousness, tyranny and insincerity await the blithe new-comer and subject him to an entire transformation. The child –turned-youth experiences a curb on his spontaneous instincts, by the repelling codes of social moralities and etiquettes. There is hypocrisy in full swing and there is cruelty. In this unsavoury forge, he is reshaped and bestowed with an altered outlook. He is no more the rollicking child. His fertile imagination yields to the aged atrophied intellect and mature reason. He is in fact ‘fallen’ or ‘lapsed’- fallen from his primordial abode of life. “What the hammer? what the chain? In the forest of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?” The two diverse natures- Innocence and Experience are essential for the ultimate salvation of his soul. From experience man moves to a world of higher innocence. Blake seems to argue that joy and peace, which man had experienced in his childhood, can have solid foundations only if man has experienced and overcome the impediments and unpleasant realities which day to-day life presents. That is to say, to attain a higher innocence man must be tested by suffering and misery, physical as well as emotional; he must go through the actual experience of life. Through the state of childhood innocence is charming; it is not prefect and cannot last long. For spiritual elevation, lessons from both experience and innocence are essential. “And it bears the fruit of Deceit, Ruddy and sweet to eat: And the raven his nest has made In its thickest shade.” Blake’s The Tyger blends child-like innocence with adult wisdom. The child-like innocence is revealed in the volley of questions and exclamations about the fearful symmetry of the tiger’s body and the reactions of the stars and God to the tiger’s creation. Like the innocent child the poet wonders to know who framed the tiger’s body, fearful but well-proportioned: “What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

The following volley of questions bears the stamp of child-like innocence:

“Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy.” Like a child not contaminated by the evils of experience the poet is curious to know what instruments were used to frame the tiger’s “fearful symmetry”. With the innocence of the child the poet thinks that the angels were so amazed to see the fearful tiger created that they threw down their spears and wept. He also wonders if God smiled with satisfaction to see his new creation (i.e. the tiger) - the wondering that becomes a child.

 “Your spring and your day are wasted in play,

And your winter and night in disguise.” With this child-like innocence is blended adult wisdom. The Tyger expresses the wisdom (i.e. experience) that comes of age that becomes a man who has gone through his life. The wisdom sought to be conveyed is as follows. Man passes from innocence to experience. And for experience man has to pay a bitter price not merely in such unimportant things as comfort and peace of mind, but in the highest spiritual values. Experience debases and perverts noble desire. It destroys the state of childlike innocence and puts destructive forces in its place. It breaks the free life of imagination and substitutes a dark, cold, imprisoning fear, and the result is a deadly blow to blithe human spirit. The fear and denial of life which come with experience breed hypocrisy which is as grave a sin as cruelty. To destroy these forces of experiences the benign creator assumes the role of a malignant creator. In the scheme of things the tiger is as much a necessity as the lamb. So the God who created the lamb also created tiger. In other words, God is not only a God of mercy, but also a God of wrath, the creator of Satan and social and political cataclysms. Blake’s conception of God here betrays a striking similarity with the Hindoo mythological Avtar theory. “Round the laps of their mothers Many sisters and brothers, Like birds in their nest, Are ready for rest; And sport no more seen On the darkening Green.” It is indispensible that the boy who enjoyed full freedom and liberty in innocence ought to pass into experience. This is because the design of human life gives prominence to the contrariety of human nature without which there is no ‘progression’. A complete life on earth means the life of innocence and experience. Without experience or innocence the life cycle is incomplete and imperfect. The poems of Songs of Innocence and of Experience are based on this viewpoint of contrariety. “Why of the sheep do you not learn peace Because I don’t want you to shear my fleece.” ‘The Tyger’ is typically representative of the most characteristic features of ‘experience’ which in the poetic context of Blake involves deep meaning. From this powerful symbol we construe that Blake was a devotee of energy which, for him, was an aspect of true divinity. In this poem the poet’s irrepressible curiosity at the extraordinarily exquisite creation of God finds its vent in small broken questions. After wondering at the symmetry of its body and stripes, the lusture of its eyes, the strong muscles, elegant paws and its powerful strides, the poet turns to the reaction of the creator when he beholds his own creation. The poet says that God may have smiled at the surrender of the rebelling angels at his own master craftsmanship in the creation of the tiger. The ‘stars’ are the rebellious angels under Satan. When they failed to defeat God and were beaten they threw down their spears as in surrender and moaned for their defeat. It is after this event that God started creating inhabitants for the earth. So, at the time of the defeat of the rebelling angels, God might have just finished the creation of the awesome tiger and smiled on his hidden purpose behind all his acts. “Because I was happy upon the heath, And smiled among the winter’s snow, They clothed me in the clothed of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe.” ‘The Lamb’ is the most significant poem in the section of Innocence not merely because it propounds the idea of innocence in the simplest way, but also because here we notice the poet extending the world of innocence even to the animals that are insignificant and base in the human eye. In this poem we see a child patting a lamb and asking if it knows who the giver of its life and brad is. He asks it whether it knows who has given it the silken fleece immaculate white and thin voice of its bleat. The child himself answers his questions. He defines the Almighty God as who is known after the name of his lamb who is meek and gentle. Since God descended to the earth as infant Jesus he is also called a child. The child, lamb and God are all brought to unite to form a single divine entity. The essence of the poem lies in these lines. “The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring from the eye”..

In the parables of Christ we often come across the imagery of the sheep and shepherd and in the renderings of Jeremiah the prophet, we read

“Thou, O Lord, art in the midst of us, and we are called by thy name, leave us not.” It is form these sources that the poet has drawn the imagery of lamb. The chief land marks of innocence- the lamb, the child and God fuse together in this poem and the completion of innocence is almost attained. The child finds out the manifestation of God in the lamb and himself. The divinity of lamb is not merely superficial; it is manifested in the meekness and mildness of the lamb. The lamb is a sweet hymn of tender infantile sentiment appropriate to that perennial image of meekness; to which the fierce eloquence of ‘The Tyger’, in the Songs of Experience is an antitype. In ‘The Lamb’ the poet again changes his person to that of a child and renders forth the plain childish thoughts spontaneously. “When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”

(In a conflict between the heart and the brain,

follow your heart. ~ Swami Vivekananda ~)

EXCEPT SETTING-IDEA-REFERENCE, WORDS AND SENTENCES FROM DR.S.SEN AND GOLDEN BOOK OF ENGLISH POEMS INCLUDING THE CONCEPT AND WORDS OF THE BHAGAVAT GITA ALONG WITH THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA...

Trace how Blake’s thought develops from his poem ‘The Lamb’ and ‘The Tyger’ together- “I have no name: I am but two days old.” What shall I call thee? “I happy am, Joy is my name.”

                                         Sweet Joy befall thee!” ’
The good character as well as the bad abstractions such as virtues and vices is framed up in symbols to elaborate their suggestiveness and implications. Blake’s symbology is too large and complex to be given in brief. His symbols help to express his visions which may be obscure to a common reader. Blake says: “Allegory is addressed to the intellectual powers, while it is altogether hidden from the corporeal. Understanding is my definition of the Most Sublime Poetry.” From this it is clear that in his view poetry is concerned with something else than the phenomenal world and that the only means of expressing it is through what he calls ‘allegory’. For Blake allegory is a system of symbols which presents events in a spiritual world.

“The modest Rose puts forth a thorn, The humble Sheep a threatening horn; White the Lily white shall in love delight, Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright.” Blake imagined himself under spiritual influences. He saw various forms and heard the voices of angels, fairies, kings of the past and even God; the past and future were before him and he heard in imagination, even the awful voice which called on Adam amongst the trees of the garden. In this kind of dreaming abstraction, he lived much of his life; all his s works are stamped with it. Though this visionary aspect explains much of the mysticism and obscurity of his work, it is also the element that makes his poems singular in loveliness and beauty. It is amazing that he could thus, month after month and year after year, lay down his engraver after it had earned him his daily wages, and retire from s the battle, to his imagination where he could experience scenes of more than-earthly splendor and creatures pure as unfallen dew. Like Swedenborg, Blake narrates things unheard and unseen; more purely a mystic than Swedenborg, he does not condescend to dialectics and scholastic divinity. Those who fancy that a dozen stony syllogisms seal up the perennial fountain of our deepest questions, will affirm that Blake’s belief was an illusion, constant and self-consistent and harmonious with the world throughout the whole of a man’s life, cannot differ from much reality. However, it is also important to note that he was unlike common atheists. “Selfish Father of Men! Cruel, jealous, selfish Fear! Can delight, Chained in night, The virgins of youth and morning bear?” In the clash of creeds, it is always a comfort to remember that sects with their sectaries, orthodox or otherwise, could not intersect all, if they were not in the same plane. [My spiritual intelligence is certainly becoming confused by your words of conflicting conclusions, therefore ascending one of them; please reveal definitely that by which I may obtain the greatest benefit.] We find in Blake’s poetry many of the elements characterizing Romantic poetry. “The world of imagination is the world of Eternity”, says Blake. In his championship of liberty, his mysticism, naturalism, idealization of childhood, and simplicity Blake could be called a precursor of Romantic poetry in nineteenth century England.

“Now enjoy….

Dip him in the river who loves water….. The busy bee has no time for sorrow….. The most sublime act is to set another before you…. The cistern contains: the fountain overflow….” In explaining these lines we waver in interpreting the drops of tears that water the heaven as the outcome of the rage of the defeated rebelling angels or as tears of mercy. If this wrath is one of the two aspects of God, the tiger’s cruelty and wildness is only superficially fearful. It can otherwise be construed as a prophetic rage. But after, all wrath and mercy unite at the same point where the ultimate reality of God is felt. There are two means for the achievement of the goal, the first being through the ‘innocence’ of the lamb and other being through the ‘experience’ of the tiger. The close of the poem gives us the clue: the daring of the creator whether God or man is the cleansing wrath of the tiger. Blake is first and foremost a poet of visions and mysticism. But of, his visions are not confined to a narrow streamline of thought about futurity alone; they take the present into consideration and unfold those aspects of contemporary society detrimental to free growth of the mental powers of man. He ridicules the artificial ethos of religion that professes a complete negation of man’s sensual life and vehemently argues for a more complete life which combines the senses and the spirit. He probes beneath the surface of things and exposes the roots of social vices, the hidden sores and scars of a tradition-bound society. “Can a mother sit and hear An infant groan, and infant fear? No, no! never can it be! Never, never can it be!” Blake’s maxim that the human soul is made of contrary elements can be applied here also. Indistinct and imagination or the beastly and divine nature of man is necessary for a fuller life of the soul and for its progress. It is a grievous mistake to sanctify the lamb and turn an eye of defiance towards the tiger. Blake opposes such a view and gives equal prominence to sense and soul, the wild and meek aspects of human beings. “Does spring hide its joy When buds and blossoms grow?” What holds our attention is not merely the brute’s beauty but the mystery and purpose behind its creation. In ‘The Lamb’ the poet visualizes the holiness of the lamb and child and unifies them with Jesus Christ. It is obvious that the link that connects these figures is ‘innocence’. The harmlessness of the lamb and the purity of the heart of a child are nothing but the manifestation of heart nor does he act premeditatedly. The air of innocence is clearly visible on the face of all the three of them. “How sweet is the Shepherd’s sweet lot! From the morn to the evening he strays; He shall follow his sheep all the day, And his tongue shall be filled with praise.” More than this element of innocence there is another thread of connection between the lamb and Christ. Christ refers to himself as the Lamb of God: “The lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” In the Bible Christ is referred to both as a lamb and as a shepherd. In this aspect the lamb has a religious significance too. (“The whole universe is a symbol, and God is the essence behind.” ~ Swami Vivekananda ~)

‘The Tyger’ displays the poet’s excellence in craftsmanship and descriptive skill. In the forest of experience Blake finds the bright- eyed tiger which appears to involve all the cosmic forces. The tiger has made its appearances in the ‘Prophetic books’ of Blake. The poet’s reliance in the cosmic and preternatural forces is increasingly exemplified and asserted when he describes the creation and the creator of the tiger. The creator is a supernatural being and not necessarily the Christian God. The creation, according to another elucidation takes place in an extraordinary cosmic commotion. When the constellations turn round in their course there is a move from light to darkness. The pattern and method of asking questions here are quite different from those employed in ‘The Lamb’. In ‘The Tyger’ the questions are put in a terrified and awe-inspired tone. It is also held that ‘The Tyger’ deals with the colossal problem of evil, but in Blake evil does not exist as an abstract quality. Instead, the evil is embodied in the wrath of God. Christ, like all other Gods, has a dual duty. He punishes the sinners and offenders and loves the followers. Thus Christ or God becomes the God of both love and unkindness. The fire is a popular symbol of wrath. Milton and Spenser have described wrath as fire, but we are not to misapprehend Blake’s use of wrath as one of the ‘deadly sins’ by the miracle and morality plays. Blake finds virtue in wrath and what he describes in the righteous indignation or the wrath of a pious soul. In addition to this, if we also construe the symbolic meaning of the forest, then we can substantiate the meaning of the lines.

“Tyger Tyger burning bright In the forests of the night. “ The poet is struck with surprise and awe to behold the wild animal’s majestic elegance and grandeur. Its symmetry is fearful and the glow of its eyes is unearthly. When the process of creation is over, “a terrible beauty is born.” The strength of the animal and its moves/ are its peculiar features. The tiger beyond its superficial beauty is a prototype of God whose harsher aspect is present n the wildness of the creature. It is a contrast and counterpart to the innocence of the lamb. The poet wonders: “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” In the poem ‘The Tyger’ a description of the process of creation is given, but no clarification is given about who the creator is. In the first stanza the creator is described as having wings by which he may have reached the skies to bring the fire for the lusture of the wild beast. The creation of the tiger is conveyed in words and phrases which, though meaningful in their totality, do not yield any explicit elucidation of the creator. We sense the strong shoulders thrusting forward in the process of forging the body of the carnivore. The dexterity of the strokes is further conveyed in the ‘dread hand’ which is gifted with unprecedented craftsmanship. If the ‘dread feet’ and ‘dread hand’ are applied to those of the busily engaged creator we can elicit the fact that those limbs are busy in working diligently. At the moment of achieving the perfection of his sublime creation the poem grows tense, the questions are broken in midway and the speaker’s hindered gasps let out incomplete phrases of exclamation. “The star floor. The watery shore. Is given thee till the break of day.” In the world of innocence even the meanest creature such as a lamb (which is low only in the eyes of human beings) is treated as having unbound divinity. Here is an exclusive unification of the three characters- Christ, child and the Lamb who constitute the Christian concept of ‘Trinity’ in the world of innocence. Blake’s concept of God is closely aligned to his mysticism. He conceives of God as the very epitome of characteristics which man is capable of developing. If he nurtures these qualities, man can attain godliness-it merely depends on what set of qualities a man develops. A child asks a lamb if it knows its merciful creator, its feeder or the giver of its delightedful and cosy clothing of fleece. He also asks the lamb whether it knows who gave it its tender voice that fills the valleys with pleasant joy and music. Quite childlike, the lines “Little lamb who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?” are repeated, presumable with wonder in the eyes of the child. The speaker does not wait for any answer. He tells the lamb that its creator is one who is called after the name of the lamb itself. He is one who calls Himself a lamb. He is meek and mild and came on earth as a little child. The poem comes to have a meaningful pause at this juncture. The questions are asked, answers done and the child (or the poet) turns to conclude the lines in a wise hymnal vein or spiritual implication. He says: “I a child, and thou a lamb, We are called by His name:” Blake intends to suggest that the great purpose of wrath is to consume error, to annihilate those stubborn beliefs which cannot be removed by the tame “horses of instruction.” It is typical of Blake to ask questions when he is overpowered by wonder and amazement and it is effective especially in the case of this poem, where it results in an “intense improvisation”. The phrase ‘fearful symmetry’- whatever is possible in symbolic suggestions- is clearly ‘’the initial puzzle’’ the ‘symmetry’ implies an ordering hand or intelligence, the ‘fearful’ throws doubt about the benevolence of the creator. The ‘forest of the night’ is the darkness out of which the tiger looms brilliant by contrast: They also embody the doubt or confusion that surrounds the origins of the tiger. In the case of the lamb the creator “is meek and he is mild”:”He became a little child”. In the case of the tiger creator is again like what he creates. The form that must be supplied Him is now that of the Promethean Smith working violently at the forge. The tiger is an image of the Creator: its dreadly terror must be His.

“In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?”

There is scarcely any poem in Songs of Innocence and of Experience which does not have a symbolic or allegorical or allusive implication. Though these poems are rendered in the simplest possible poems is somewhat scriptural- simple and profound at the same time.  The Biblical allusions add prodigious significance to his poems when foe example, we read the ‘The Shepherd’ it commemorates Christ as the Good Shepherd and reminds us that the parables are clad in pastoral elements. Without reference to the Bible the poem, ‘The Shepherd’ is meaningless and insignificant. Furthermore, Blake makes use of Biblical phrases too, as we see in the poem ‘The Lamb’.

“Gave thee life, and bid thee feed, By the stream and o’er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly, bright: Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice?” In Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Blake’s symbols are not as obscure or abstruse as we find them in his other poems. In his later poems (Prophetic Books) they are rather incomprehensible. The principal symbols used by Blake have been classified by critics as innocence symbols. Many of these, of course, overlap, and among themselves weave richness into Blake’s poetry. “Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down, And the dews of night arise...” In the first, the word ‘dews’ evokes an image of harmlessness but in the second context it evokes a feeling of chill and damp. In the first there is a feeling that the night will pass, but in the second poem the word “dew” assumes further ramifications of meaning. It implies materialism, the philosophy of experience, the indifference to spiritual truth. Knowledge of these symbolic meanings enriches our understanding of the poem. Blake gives his own interpretation to traditional symbols. The rose traditionally associated with love and modesty assumes the aura of ‘sicknesses and disease in Blake for he considered love to be free and honest and open in order to be good. The lily’s purity assumes added depth in Blake’s poetry, not because it is chaste but because it feels honestly. The sun flower’s movement with the sun has deep meaning: on the one hand it represents a search for spirituality: on the other, it expresses regret for being attached to the ground. The simple vocabulary and movement of Blake’s verse should not lull us into a feeling that the thought too is childish. Indeed there is a complex thread of syllogism in his poetry that gives multiple layers of meaning to his words. Sometimes this syllogism even lends obscurity to his poems because it evolves out of Blake’s own system of symbols. The manner in a particular mood is a remarkable illustrated in the ‘Nurse’s Songs’ in Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience occur in both poems: yet the feelings evoked because of the accompanying words are in sharp contrast. “To this day they dwell In a lonely dell. Nor fear the wolfish howl Nor the lion’s growl.” The world of ‘Experience’ welcomes a child of sorrow, who rather than being a fiend himself is also born into a monstrous world of totems and taboos. Strange to notice, it is not actually upon the growing boy that the shadows of prison house close; on the other hand, the shadows spread on the infant at the moment of birth itself. Predictably enough, there is no scope of a ‘heaven’ lying about its infancy. Its struggle begins from the very moment of its birth, it is choked from the very start of its life and it finds its only rest on its mother’s breast. As a contrast to ‘Infant Joy’ here the child is not a ‘joy’ but a ‘fiend’ and neither its mother nor the father, though it is not explicit from Blake’s poem, accords a warm s welcome to him. The child hides behind the cloud. The speaker is evidently the child himself who laments against life. “But to go to school in a summer morn, Oh! It drives all joy away Under a cruel eye outworn The little ones spend the day In sighing and dismay.” Admittedly, the poem brings out Blake’s ideas on love and hints at his well-known belief that sex is not sinful. For Blake nakedness is a symbol of pure innocence and he lauds uninhabited love. The Golden Age is that in which the people have love for their fellowmen and mingle with one another freely. In the Golden Age love is not a crime but a grace and beauty signaling unbridled innocence, but in the present age the most tender sentiments are frozen by the ‘trembling fear’ coming from the cruel eyes of experience. “In every cry of every Man In every Infant’s cry of fear In every voice, in every ban The mind-forged manacles I hear.” Blake’s vision of man in Songs of Experience, especially with reference to ‘A Divine Image’ can be summed up as, ‘’ The human dress is forge iron The human form is a fiery forge, The human face a furnace sealed, The human heart its hungry gorge.” The poem ‘A Divine Image’ is a contrast to ‘The Divine Image’ in its very title. In ‘The Divine Image’, the definite article ‘The’ shows the real, one and only Divine Image. In ‘A Divine Image’ the indefinite article ‘A’ points at a particular divine image which has a unique growth. The contrast is also visible in the two stanzas of these two poems. “For Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face, And Love the human form divine. Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace…” can be seen as a stark contrast to the lines of ‘A Divine Image’ that run as: “Cruelty has a human heart And Jealousy a human face; Terror the human form divine And Secrecy the human dress.” This is truly terrifying. His soul (the human form) is burning with frightfulness within the iron body of secrecy (the condition of deceit; his face is a furnace sealed up wherein jealousy rages; his heart is recklessly cruel. The imagery is similar to that of ‘The Tyger’, but where the Tiger had broken all bounds as a symbol of regeneration, man is here imprisoned in a ‘dress’ of an iron suit, of his own forging; and all his energies burn within it, consuming him. “For I dance, And strength and breadth, And the want Of thought is death;” Blake is not merely a revolutionary thinker on man’s physical or corporeal freedom; he is also one who broods over the spiritual freedom or spiritual salvation of mankind. The former point, showing Blake as a humanitarian, cans be well understood from poems such as ‘The Chimney-Sweeper’, ‘Holy Thursday’ and ‘A little Girl Lost’. In all these cases Blake’s fury makes him lash out at the hypocrisy of man and the society that enslaves children to utter lifelessness. In ‘Holy Thursday’ Blake’s sympathetic and compassionate heart shares the agony of the children and his pent up feelings are let out through an ironical comment: “Beneath them sit the aged men wise guardians of the poor, Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.” William Blake is considered a precursor of Romantic Movement in English Literature. Romanticism laid considerable stress on the elements of imagination, nature worship, humanitarianism, liberty, mysticism and symbolism. It differed from the outlook expounded by the preceding age of Neo classicism which promoted the notion of reason, balance and logic with regard to prose and poetry. The Romantic creed of poetry rests on recording the simple emotions of humanity in a simple diction. Recollections of childhood (nostalgia) are also a common subject of Romanticism. “When the voice of children are heard on the green And whisperings are in the dale, The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind, My face turns green and pale.” But of, the flood of feelings gains more fury in the poem of the same title in Songs of Experience: “Is this a holy thing to see In a rich and fruitful land. Babes reduced to misery, Fed with cold and usurious hand?” With vehemence Blake argues for the freedom of human energy too. He deplores any religion that denies sexual and emotional life of man. Virility and vigour are divine and its free play should never be hindered. “He is called by thy name, For he calls Himself a Lamb. He is meek, and He is mild; He became a little child.” Many of Blake’s poems celebrate the divinity and innocence of not merely the child but also the least harmless of creatures on earth, namely the lamb. The child asks the lamb if it knows who has created out. The child does not wait but answers his questions himself. He does so, we feel, not because the lamb cannot communicate, but because the child is so enthusiastic and eager to mention the creator and his virtues. He refers to the meekness of Christ, his glorious infancy as well as his reference to himself as a lamb. He concludes with a reference to his own and the lamb’s affinity to God and thus establishes their oneness. Qualities of simplicity, innocence and divinity are extended even to the world of animals and the innocent creatures like the lamb are raised from their level of lowness in the human eye. Both the child and Christ are unified with the lamb and the three forms the Trinity on earth. “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forest of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?” In ‘The Shepherd’ the Shepherd is depicted as enjoying vast freedom, and his fortune is praised. He is so fortunate that he can wander about in carefree way wherever he chooses and sing in praise of God. Not only is he always near his lambs, listening to their innocent cries, bleats and answering bleats ,but he is never exposed to the world of ‘Experience’ where he may be startled by roars of cruelty and fierceness. This is a simple pastoral poem in which liberty and freedom are praised. We are again brought to realize the affinity of lamb and innocence. “Frowning, frowning night, O’er this desert bright Let the moon arise, While I close my eyes.” The pastoral convention, which represents the occupations of shepherds in an idealized way, against an idealized country background had to face severe criticism in the eighteenth century because of its unreality. It was held that men and women were neither so joyful nor carefree, nor so innocent, as they were represented; but according to Blake, young children do have these qualities, they live in a golden world of their own. This convention is used by Blake to give us an insight into childhood, and one ‘state of human soul’. In the poem, the poet tells us about the valley along which he goes piping and about his sudden meeting with a child. The child bids him pipe a song about a lamb- another pastoral element. The ‘pipe’ is a conventional pastoral musical organ on which the shepherds play melodiously as the sheep graze. It is also worth nothing that when the child appeals to him to write down the song, the poet says “And I plucked a hollow reed, And I made a rural pen And I stained the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear.”

The phrase ‘reed’, ‘rural pen’ and ‘water clear’ contributes much to the elements of pastorals or rustic innocence.

In the so-called world of experience, callousness, tyranny and insincerity await the blithe new-comer and subject him to an entire transformation. The child –turned-youth experiences a curb on his spontaneous instincts, by the repelling codes of social moralities and etiquettes. There is hypocrisy in full swing and there is cruelty. In this unsavoury forge, he is reshaped and bestowed with an altered outlook. He is no more the rollicking child. His fertile imagination yields to the aged atrophied intellect and mature reason. He is in fact ‘fallen’ or ‘lapsed’- fallen from his primordial abode of life. “What the hammer? what the chain? In the forest of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?” The two diverse natures- Innocence and Experience are essential for the ultimate salvation of his soul. From experience man moves to a world of higher innocence. Blake seems to argue that joy and peace, which man had experienced in his childhood, can have solid foundations only if man has experienced and overcome the impediments and unpleasant realities which day to-day life presents. That is to say, to attain a higher innocence man must be tested by suffering and misery, physical as well as emotional; he must go through the actual experience of life. Through the state of childhood innocence is charming; it is not prefect and cannot last long. For spiritual elevation, lessons from both experience and innocence are essential. “And it bears the fruit of Deceit, Ruddy and sweet to eat: And the raven his nest has made In its thickest shade.” Blake’s The Tyger blends child-like innocence with adult wisdom. The child-like innocence is revealed in the volley of questions and exclamations about the fearful symmetry of the tiger’s body and the reactions of the stars and God to the tiger’s creation. Like the innocent child the poet wonders to know who framed the tiger’s body, fearful but well-proportioned: “What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

The following volley of questions bears the stamp of child-like innocence:

“Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy.” Like a child not contaminated by the evils of experience the poet is curious to know what instruments were used to frame the tiger’s “fearful symmetry”. With the innocence of the child the poet thinks that the angels were so amazed to see the fearful tiger created that they threw down their spears and wept. He also wonders if God smiled with satisfaction to see his new creation (i.e. the tiger) - the wondering that becomes a child.

 “Your spring and your day are wasted in play,

And your winter and night in disguise.” With this child-like innocence is blended adult wisdom. The Tyger expresses the wisdom (i.e. experience) that comes of age that becomes a man who has gone through his life. The wisdom sought to be conveyed is as follows. Man passes from innocence to experience. And for experience man has to pay a bitter price not merely in such unimportant things as comfort and peace of mind, but in the highest spiritual values. Experience debases and perverts noble desire. It destroys the state of childlike innocence and puts destructive forces in its place. It breaks the free life of imagination and substitutes a dark, cold, imprisoning fear, and the result is a deadly blow to blithe human spirit. The fear and denial of life which come with experience breed hypocrisy which is as grave a sin as cruelty. To destroy these forces of experiences the benign creator assumes the role of a malignant creator. In the scheme of things the tiger is as much a necessity as the lamb. So the God who created the lamb also created tiger. In other words, God is not only a God of mercy, but also a God of wrath, the creator of Satan and social and political cataclysms. Blake’s conception of God here betrays a striking similarity with the Hindoo mythological Avtar theory. “Round the laps of their mothers Many sisters and brothers, Like birds in their nest, Are ready for rest; And sport no more seen On the darkening Green.” It is indispensible that the boy who enjoyed full freedom and liberty in innocence ought to pass into experience. This is because the design of human life gives prominence to the contrariety of human nature without which there is no ‘progression’. A complete life on earth means the life of innocence and experience. Without experience or innocence the life cycle is incomplete and imperfect. The poems of Songs of Innocence and of Experience are based on this viewpoint of contrariety. “Why of the sheep do you not learn peace Because I don’t want you to shear my fleece.” ‘The Tyger’ is typically representative of the most characteristic features of ‘experience’ which in the poetic context of Blake involves deep meaning. From this powerful symbol we construe that Blake was a devotee of energy which, for him, was an aspect of true divinity. In this poem the poet’s irrepressible curiosity at the extraordinarily exquisite creation of God finds its vent in small broken questions. After wondering at the symmetry of its body and stripes, the lusture of its eyes, the strong muscles, elegant paws and its powerful strides, the poet turns to the reaction of the creator when he beholds his own creation. The poet says that God may have smiled at the surrender of the rebelling angels at his own master craftsmanship in the creation of the tiger. The ‘stars’ are the rebellious angels under Satan. When they failed to defeat God and were beaten they threw down their spears as in surrender and moaned for their defeat. It is after this event that God started creating inhabitants for the earth. So, at the time of the defeat of the rebelling angels, God might have just finished the creation of the awesome tiger and smiled on his hidden purpose behind all his acts. “Because I was happy upon the heath, And smiled among the winter’s snow, They clothed me in the clothed of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe.” ‘The Lamb’ is the most significant poem in the section of Innocence not merely because it propounds the idea of innocence in the simplest way, but also because here we notice the poet extending the world of innocence even to the animals that are insignificant and base in the human eye. In this poem we see a child patting a lamb and asking if it knows who the giver of its life and brad is. He asks it whether it knows who has given it the silken fleece immaculate white and thin voice of its bleat. The child himself answers his questions. He defines the Almighty God as who is known after the name of his lamb who is meek and gentle. Since God descended to the earth as infant Jesus he is also called a child. The child, lamb and God are all brought to unite to form a single divine entity. The essence of the poem lies in these lines. “The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring from the eye”..

In the parables of Christ we often come across the imagery of the sheep and shepherd and in the renderings of Jeremiah the prophet, we read

“Thou, O Lord, art in the midst of us, and we are called by thy name, leave us not.” It is form these sources that the poet has drawn the imagery of lamb. The chief land marks of innocence- the lamb, the child and God fuse together in this poem and the completion of innocence is almost attained. The child finds out the manifestation of God in the lamb and himself. The divinity of lamb is not merely superficial; it is manifested in the meekness and mildness of the lamb. The lamb is a sweet hymn of tender infantile sentiment appropriate to that perennial image of meekness; to which the fierce eloquence of ‘The Tyger’, in the Songs of Experience is an antitype. In ‘The Lamb’ the poet again changes his person to that of a child and renders forth the plain childish thoughts spontaneously. “When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”

(In a conflict between the heart and the brain,

follow your heart. ~ Swami Vivekananda ~)

EXCEPT SETTING-IDEA-REFERENCE, WORDS AND SENTENCES FROM DR.S.SEN AND GOLDEN BOOK OF ENGLISH POEMS INCLUDING THE CONCEPT AND WORDS OF THE BHAGAVAT GITA ALONG WITH THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SWAMI VIVEKANANDA...

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JOHN MILTON’S PARADISE LOST (BOOK-II)

The violation of the normal English word-order and other elements in Milton’s epic blank-verse, which have upset some purists, are carefully and systematically employed in order to achieve different kinds of emotional pitch, to effect continuity and integration in the weaving of the epic design and all to sustain the poem as a poem and to keep it from disintegrating into isolated fragments of high rhetoric. David Daiches: The Use of Blank –Verse in Paradise Lost.

It is a well-known complaint among the readers of Paradise Lost, that they can hardly keep themselves from sympathizing, in some sort, with Satan, as the hero of the poem. The most probable account of which surely is, that the author himself partook largely of the haughty and vindictive republican spirit, which he has assigned to the character, and consequently, though perhaps unconsciously, drew the portrait with a peculiar zest. Josiah Conder: The Hero of Paradise Lost.

To Adam and Eve are given, during their innocence, such sentiments as innocence can generate and utter. Their love is pure benevolence and mutual veneration; their repasts are without luxury, and their diligence without toil. Their addresses to their Maker have little more than the voice of admiration and gratitude. Fruition left them nothing to ask, and Innocence left them nothing to fear. Johnson.

To read Paradise Lost with appreciation and understanding, those readers of the poem who have been deprived by twentieth century doubts and denials of the privilege of reading it with a faith comparable to its author’s must accept the story as they accept Homeric fable. Whether we believe in a family of gods on Olympus or not, we must accept them as agents in Homer’s story. Whether we believe as Milton does, or whether we do not, in the interference in the affairs of men of a personal God, his son, his angels and his enemies, we must accept them as agents in Milton’s story. John S. Diekhoff: Intimate Knowledge of the Bible Necessary for a Proper Understanding and Enjoyment of Paradise Lost.

Three poets in three distant ages born Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpassed, The next in majesty, in both the last. The force of nature could no farther go: To make a third she joined the former two.

John Dryden.

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it. William Blake

“would be quite surcharged with her own weight, And strangl’d with her waste fertility; Th’ earth cumber’d, and the wing’d air dark’t with plumes, The herds would over-multitude their Lords, The Sea o’refraught would swell…”

While the former (Shakespeare) darts himself forth, and passes into all forms of human character and passion, the one Proteus of the fire and the flood; the other attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own ideal. All things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of Milton; while Shakespeare becomes all things, yet for ever remaining himself. S.T. Coleridge

OF MAN’S FIRST DISOBEDIENCE, AND THE FRUIT OF THAT FORBIDDEN TREE, WHOSE MORTAL TASTE BROUGHT DEATH INTO THE WORLD, AND ALL OUR WOE, WITH LOSS OF EDEN, TILL ONE GREATER MAN RESTORE US, AND REGAIN THE BLISSFUL SEAT, SING HEAVENLY MUSE, THAT ON THE SECRET TOP OF OREB, OR OF SINAI, DIDST INSPIRE THAT SHEPHERD, WHO FIRST TAUGHT THE CHOSEN SEED, IN THE BEGINNING HOW THE HEAVENS AND EARTH ROSE OUT OF CHAOS:

Of smallest Magnitude close by the Moon.

“Since first this Subject for Heroic Song Pleas’d me long choosing, and beginning late; Not sedulous by Nature to indite Wars, hitherto the onely Argument Heroic deem’d, chief maistrie to dissect With long and tedious havoc fabl’d Knights In Battles feigned; the better fortitude Of Patience and Heroic Martyrdom Unsung.”

What surmounts the reach

Of human sense, I shall delineate so, By linking spiritual to corporeal forms As may express them best; though what if earth Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein Each to other like, more than on earth in thought…

High on a throne of royal state, which far Outshone the wealth or Ormus and of Ind, Or where the gorgeous east with richest hand Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, Satan exalted sat, by merit raised To that bad eminence; and, from despair Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue Vain war with Heaven; and, by success untaught, His proud imaginations thus displayed:

MY ANALYSIS

THE ARGUMENT

The consultation begun Satan debates whether another battle be to be hazarded for the recovery of Heaven: some advise it, others dissuade. A third proposal is preferred, mentioned before by Satan- to search the truth of that prophecy or tradition in Heaven concerning another world, and another kind of creature, equal, or not much inferior, to themselves, about this time to be created. Their doubt who shall be sent on this difficult search: Satan, their chief, undertakes alone the voyage; is honoured and applauded. The council thus ended, the rest betake them several ways and to several employments, as their inclinations lead them, to entertain the time till Satan return. He passes on his journey to Hell-gates; finds them shut, and who sat there to guard them; by whom at length they are opened and discover to him the great gulf between Hell and Heaven. With what difficulty he passes through, directed by Chaos, the Power of that place, to the sight of this new World which he sought.

The genius of the lamented person to whose memory I have dedicated these unworthy verses was not less delicate and fragile than it was beautiful ; and where cankerworms abound, what wonder of its young flower was blighted in the bud? The savage criticism on his Endymion, which appeared in the Quarterly Review, produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind; the agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgements from more candid critics of the true greatness of his powers were ineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted.

The circumstances of the closing scene of poor Keats’s life were not made known to me until the Elegy was ready for the press. I am given to understand that the criticism of Endymion was exasperated by the bitter sense of unrequited benefits; the poor fellow seems to have been hooted from the stage of life, no less by those on whom he had wasted the promise of his genius than those on whom he had lavished his fortune and his care. He was accompanied to Rome, and attended in his last illness, by Mr. Severn, a young artist of the highest premise, who, I have been informed, ‘almost risked his own life, and sacrificed every prospect to unwearied attendance upon his dying friend. ‘Had I known these circumstances before the completion of my poem, I should have been tempted to add my feeble tribute of applause to the more solid recompense which the virtuous man finds in the recollection of his own motives. Mr. Severn can dispense with a reward from ‘such stuff as dreams are made of.’ His conduct is a unextinguished spirit of his illustrious friend animate the creations of his pencil, and plead against oblivion for his name!
It is my intention to subjoin to the London edition of this poem a criticism upon the claims of its lamented object to be classed among the writers of the highest genius who have adorned our age. My known repugnance to the narrow principles of taste on which several of his earlier compositions were modeled prove at least that I am an impartial judge. I consider the fragment of Hyperion as second to nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years.

John Keats died at Rome of a consumption, in his twenty-fourth year on the ---of ---1821; and was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in the winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place. The very subject matter of the epic lends itself to the grand manner. The result is that Milton’s style and presentation touches now heights of sublimity. He leaves his mark throughout the epic with his grand style and remarkable use of blank verse.

 “Poison came, Bion, to thy mouth, that thus was

poison-stained. How did it come to the lips of one like thee and was not made sweet? And what mortal, was so cruel as to mix for thee the poison, or give it thee, while thou didst sing? Surely he is one who fled from music.” Moschus: Epitaphium Bionis It may be well said that these wretched men know not what they do. They scatter their insults and their slanders without heed as to whether the poisoned shaft lights on a heart made callous by many blows, or one like Keats’s composed of more penetratable stuff. One of their associates is, to my knowledge, a most base and unprincipled calumniator. As to Endymion, was it a poem, whatever might be its defects, to be treated contemptuously by those who had celebrated, with various degrees of complacency and panegyric, Paris, and Woman, and A Syrian Tale, and Mrs. Lefanu, and Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Howard Payne, and a long list of illustrious obscure? Are these the men who in their venal good nature presumed to draw a parallel between the Rev. Mr. Milman and Lord Byron? What gnat did they strain at here, after having swallowed all those camels? Against what woman taken in adultery dares the foremost of these literary prostitutes to cast his opprobrious stone? Miserable man! You, one of the meanest, have not wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God…Nor shall it be your excuse that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers, but used none.

  Book-II of Paradise Lost is easily Milton’s most outstanding writing in poetry. The epic poem contains high drama, crisp narrative, vivid description and striking character portrayal.
The conclave gives Milton the opportunity to come out with realistic portrayal of his characters. Satan sets the tone for the debate by asserting his position as the first among the fallen angels. In this debate Milton brings to bear his scholarship and study of oratory giving the participants majesty of eloquence both in its sweep and dimension. 
 The high water mark of Book-I is its heightened narration and description. Book II has high drama, sharp characterization and sustained descriptive and narrative qualities. The canvas is vast and Book II gets off the ground with a major conclave of fallen angels planning how to salvage their fall.

….Or if Sion Hill Delight thee more, and Siloa’s Brook that flow'd Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventurous songs The most notable thing in the portrayal of the leaders of the fallen angels is that they impress us with their indomitable courage and unflinching determination. Milton describes the might, wisdom and eloquence of the fallen angels with such sublime power that the defiance that they hurl towards the vault of Heaven seems for the moment something more than an empty boast. They actually effect one great conquest in Hell: the victory of unconquerable will over adversity. The fallen angels respond nobly to call of their great leader and rouse themselves with matchless fortitude from their physical and mental prostration. Such an undaunted struggle against the force of adverse circumstances cannot fail to attract the deepest sympathy. Natural tendency of human nature to sympathise with the weaker side often makes the reader of an epic poem feel more affection and admiration for the defeated adversary than the victorious hero. That with no middle flight intends to soar Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime As the leaders of the fallen angels deliver their harangues it becomes clear as its usual on such occasions that the views of the leader are going to prevail. Satan emerges from the conclave as the unquestioned leader. In a few deft and powerful touches Milton has given every leader a distinctive personality and an approach of his own. The debate gives the poet an opportunity to draw finely contoured beings. The participants are acutely differentiated so that their speeches stand neatly on platforms of party and principle. Each suggestion put forward by the leaders reveals the characteristic virtues of its advocate-courage in Moloch, clarity in Belial, self-reliance in Mammon’s plan for economic development and in Beelzebub an echo of Satan. Satan’s journey through Chaos has the makings of epic adventure. As he starts on his journey he raises the hopes of the fallen angels about a turn in their fortunes. Milton’s description of the fallen angels while their leader is away on an expedition to the new world is one of the grandest things in the whole epic. When their minds were lifted to some extent by the hopes mixed by Satan, they broke up their military formation and engaged themselves in various pursuits. Some of them spent their time on the plain, some uplifted on the wing sported in the air, and some entered into a race- like the Olympian or Parthian games. As armies rush to battle in the clouds so the fallen angels contended on the plain and in the air. Others with more fury began to rend up rocks and hills and swept through the air like a whirlwind. The strong point about Book Ii is its narrative which grips and sustains the reader’s interest till the very end. Though an epic, the call to action creates intense reader interest. The announcement about the creation of a new world and a new type of being called ‘man’ in it has all the interest and curiosity of science fiction. Satan throws the gauntlet before the assembled audience that the new world should be discovered and the creature called man should be lured to join the revolt against God. The significance of Book II lies in the use of superb epic similes, each a wonderful picture in itself. Moreover these similes are not merely decorative, they have undertones of meaning. Milton’s description of Chaos and Satin’s journey through it form one of the grandest and most original portions of the epic. The final passage of Book II describes how Satan passes through the gates of Hell and makes his way through Chaos through the newly created universe. Heaven, Earth and the underworld are traditional settings in epic poetry but Chaos, Milton’s fourth setting, has no precedent. Mason says about Milton’s description of Chaos that every part of this description of the deep of Chaos as seen upwards from Hell Gates is minutely studied and considered. Altogether it would be difficult to quote a passage from any poet so rich in purposely accumulated perplexities, learned and political, or in which such a care is taken and so successfully, to compel the mind to a rackingly intense conception of sheer inconceivability. In his description of Chaos, Milton suggests that it is not so much a place or something occupying space but a state of mind. There is nothing innately evil about this real. Evil is the perversion of order. Hell founded on the principle. Evil be thou my Good, is a parody of Heaven. Chaos on the contrary is a state of simple disorder. Milton’s style of writing has a sense of grandeur about it, a style that suits epic poetry giving both his thought and expression the highest sublimity. The two definitions of epic give us the elements, both of form and style of the epic: “a narrative poem, organic in structure, dealing with great actions and great characters in a style commensurate with the lordliness of its theme, which tends to idealise these characters and actions, and to sustain and embellish its subject by means of episode and amplification.” The epic in general, ancient and modern, may be described as “a dispassionate recital in dignified rhythmic narrative of a momentous theme or action fulfilled by heroic characters and supernatural agencies under the control of a sovereign destiny. The theme involves political or religious interest of a people or of a mankind. It commands the respect due to popular tradition or to traditional ideals. The poem awakens the sense of the mysterious: the awful, and the sublime; through perilous crisis it uplifts and calms the strife of frail humanity.” Hell seemed to burst with a wild tumult. Others milder in character took themselves to a silent valley and sang angel songs to the accompaniment of a harp. Others sat on a hill and carried on discourses. Some others explored the vast region of Chaos to see if they could discover a softer climate. It has been stated that Milton was only following classical convention in describing the occupations of the fallen angels. It must be accepted however that Milton’s aim in giving this description was not only to follow a classical convention but to give a significant place to this episode in the epic. The episode is full of striking imagery that captures the reader’s mind. Then there is Satan’s confrontation with Sin and Death- a description that reveals the characters of all three and is at the same time revolting. …thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread Dove-like satst brooding on the vast abyss And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark Certain passages in Book II have a positive moral appeal and without being moralistic, these passages convey the meaning sought to be conveyed. This is because Milton conveys his message discreetly and indirectly only when there is need to do so and when the reader’s moral strength needs to be strengthened. In Paradise Lost, we find all the familiar features of the epic such as war, single combats, perilous journeys, beautiful gardens, marvelous buildings, visions of the world and the future, expositions of the structure of the universe, and scenes in Heaven and in Hell. Yet all these are so transformed that their significance and even their aesthetic appeal are new. The reason is that Milton has grafted his epic manner on to subject which lies outside the main epic tradition. By taking his subject from the Bible he had to make the machinery of epic conform to a spirit and to a tradition far removed from Virgil. Before him the best literary epic had been predominately secular, he made it theological, and the change of approach meant a great change of temper and of atmosphere. The old themes are introduced in all their traditional dignity, but in Milton’s hands they take on a different significance and contribute to a different end. Book II, like Book I, has a number of epic similes. Indeed there are as many as ten similes of this kind here. In this kind of simile, a writer starts with a comparison between, say A and B; but the second member grows bigger and bigger until it eclipses the first, with the result that while the comparison is effectively made the first, with the result that while comparison is effectively made and the idea conveyed successfully, the attendant imagery seem to be even more important. Paradise Lost may properly be classed among the greatest epic poems, though its theme is neither mythical nor historical. The theme of Paradise Lost is biblical and religious. This poem is undoubtedly one of the highest efforts of the poetical genius; and in respect of majesty and sublimity, it is by no means inferior to any known epic poem, ancient or modern. It follows the Greek model of epic poetry. The central event of this epic poem is the fall of man. The subject is derived from the Old Testament; and it is astonishing how, from the few hints given in that scripture, Milton was able to raise so complete and regular a structure in his poem. Indeed there are as many as ten similes of this kind here. In this kind of simile, a writer starts with a comparison between, say A and B; but the second member grows bigger and bigger until it eclipses the first, with the result that while the comparison is effectively made the first, with the result that while comparison is effectively made and the idea conveyed successfully, the attendant imagery seem to be even more important. Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the heighth of this great argument I may assert eternal providence, And justify the ways of God to men. When the meeting of the fallen angels has come to an end, Satan’s supremacy is described to us in words which heighten our impression of his greatness in the midst of his infernal peers, he seems to be their mighty paramount; he seems to be alone the Antagonist of Heaven; he seems to be no less than Hell’s dread emperor with pomp supreme and God-like imitated state. Round him at this time are a cluster of fiery seraphim who carry their bright and horrendous weapons. Thus not only has Satan spoken in a tone of self aggrandisement. But his dignity and majesty have been emphasized by the author also. Of course, this does not mean that Satan is the true epic hero; but this that does mean that he has been endowed by Milton with a number of heroic traits. One important effect of such similes is to contribute to the grandeur of the poem and thus to heighten its epic character. For instance, the murmur of applause which comes from the fallen angels at the end of Mammon’s speech is compared to the sound of raging winds which have subsided. This simile leads us to imagine hollow rocks, a storm which has been blowing furiously over the ocean all night, a number of tired sailors who have kept watch all night, a boat which now lies anchored in a rocky bay. A little later, the sounds which are heard in a valley when the clouds have dissolved and the sun has begun to shine brightly once again. A characteristic of Milton’s literary style in Book II of Paradise Lost is the extensive use of the epic simile to convey to his readers the grandeur and the sweep of the epic poem. In this matter Milton has the benefit of his predecessors like Homer, Virgil, Spenser and others. Milton was influenced by them to such an extent that he often borrowed their similes. However, he comes out best as the user of the epic simile when he is original and his treatment of nature, myth and legend, travel and science and technical arts. And found no end in wandering mazes lost, Here again the comparison does not just end here, but develops into an elaborate and lovely Nature picture. In another comparison, we are made to visualize Satan burning like a comet in the sky. Another simile brings to our minds the fury of Hercules who, in his agony began to uproot the pine-trees of Thessaly and who flung his servant Liches into the ocean. In this way the epic similes or the long-tailed similes as they are also known, add to the interest of the narrative and enrich the poem. The first simile is seen in the murmur of applause which comes from the fallen angels at the end of Mammon’s speech. This is compared to the sound of dying winds after a storm, heard among the caves and rocks of the coast that still retain the sound of the wind because though the storm has ceased, the wind still continues murmuring among the rocks though elsewhere it seems to have died away. An elaborate nature picture has been drawn and this simile has drawn laudatory references from critics. An epic simile as used by Milton is as long comparison of an event, object or person with something essentially different. In the hands of Milton the epic simile becomes a means to produce the desired effect. The writer starts with a comparison say between A and B. as the comparison progresses, B becomes bigger than A until it completely eclipses the first. This kind of comparison is known as the epic simile, the long-tailed simile or the Homeric simile. Some critics have suggested that Milton makes use of the epic similes for their own sake and as a result they are not integral to the epic. This criticism may be discounted because the simile as used by Milton conspicuously heightens the grandeur of the poem. Nor would it be correct to state the similes are too highbrow or pedantic to go down well with the general reader. In the hands of Milton, the epic simile becomes a thing of pure joy. His art lies in choosing the right word and packing the maximum meaning in the minimum of words. Milton uses the simile to drive home a point through an elaborate manner of presentation. It at once makes the meaning clear through a vivid presentation. Milton makes use of a natural occurrence, a classical allusion, a historical or actual event as the basis for his similes. The means may be different in each case, but the end is the same-the simile contributes to the epic grandeur of the poem. In the next epic simile a comparison has been drawn between the athletic contest of fallen angels and the strange appearances of the Aurora Borealis in the sky which in the old days was supposed to portend wars and which to the fanciful mind has the appearance of the armies fighting in the sky. The simile reminds us of those strange sights which are sometimes seen in the sky and which are supposed to signify ill fortune to human beings. Milton here suggests by comparison the devilish activities of the fallen angels who are no longer angels but have become devils. There is another simile drawn from Greek mythology when due to an error committed by the wife of Hercules he met with a painful death. The purpose of the simile is to suggest that the angels are driven to feats of desperation born of the agonies of hell. Another celebrated simile compares Satan with outstretched wings to a fleet of the largest ships then known-the Indiamen. It is an elaborate picture that Milton has drawn and shows his love of exotic scenes and associations. Just as a fleet of ships would appear to a distant observer to be floating above the water and hanging in the clouds, so seemed Satan, as he fled in the far distance pushing forward to cross the bounds of Hell. It has been described as one of the most striking of Milton’s similes. In the second epic simile the sounds of the joys of the fallen angels are compared to the joyous sounds which are heard in a valley when the clouds have faded away and the sun shines brightly again. The joy felt by the fallen angels provides an occasion for Milton to bring before the reader’s mind a most pleasing scene of Nature. The simile is important because it marks a transition from the infernal debate of the fallen angels and suggests a renewal of hope among them. Satan has been compared to various objects. In confrontation with Death he is compared to a comet with its horrid tail portending national disasters and war. On another occasion the encounter between Satan and Death is compared to two black clouds hovering “front to front”. It is a nature picture showing nature red in tooth and claw. In the hands of Milton, the epic simile is not a trick of style but comes alive through a richness of comparison and an imaginative intensity of feeling. The next simile relates to the figure of Sin. The dogs which surround the figure of Sin at the waist are compared to the dogs which tormented the monster Scylla and then to the dogs which attend on Hecate, the queen of witches. Here the reference is to classical mythology. On a third occasion Satan flying through the air is compared to the monster Gryphon who is half-eagle and half-lion who chased the one-eyed man who had stolen the gold kept in the custody of the Gryphon. The comparison is brought out that Satan was travelling with the same expectancy as the Gryphon. As Milton depicts him there is something majestic about Satan as he sits high on a “throne of royal estate”, ready to make the first speech to the assembly of fallen angels gathered in the hall of Pandemonium. Satan rises to his full height as a leader as he by turn humours, cajoles and ultimately wins the confidence of the fallen angels. Satan may have been expelled from Heaven with his fallen angels but it has not affected his spirits. In fact he sees himself as the leader of the fallen angels. Yet he is careful enough not to make the other angels feel that he has usurped this position. As one used to the art of double speak he plays it both ways. He lauds the fallen angels for making him their leader of their own choice. In the same breath he talks of his leadership position almost as a matter of divine right and in accordance with the fixed laws of Heaven. In order to ensure that what he says goes down well with the fallen angels, he holds forth on the hazards of his leadership where he stands exposed to greater risks and dangers than all of them. As such he believes there will be no need for any of them to feel jealous of his position. Ostensibly he asks his followers to choose between an open war against God or action through “covert guile”. But of, Satan has already made up his mind about his strategy and is cleverly covering up his decision by giving it the appearance of a consensus. Mammon is the next speaker after Belial and he more or less underwrites whatever Belial has said. He rejects the concept of war against God and is in favour of maintaining the status after, the expulsion from Heaven. However, he does not subscribe to Belial’s idea that God in course of time will have mercy and withdraw the punishment imposed on them. He comes out with an original suggestion that having been consigned to Hell they should exploit the hidden treasures of the place like gems and gold and create in Hell a place, equal in magnificence to Heaven. His proposal draws a round of applause from the fallen angels. Belial who follows Moloch is not Milton’s favourite for Milton introduces him with the remark that his thoughts are low, that he understandably has no time for noble deeds. But of, Milton says he is the handsomest of the angels. The stand he takes is contrary to that of Satan and Moloch. Both “open war” and “covert guile” are anathema to him and he believes in making the best of a bad situation. For him total annihilation is much worse than eternal suffering. He argues that if they accept their present lot submissively, God may have pity on them and reduce their punishment. Even if this does not come about, they would in course of time get conditioned to their suffering in Hell and then it would not be as painful as it is now. Moloch is the first to speak after Satan. Milton profiles him in very impressive language. Described as the “sceptured king”, he is strongest and the fiercest spirit who had rebelled against God. Moloch is a militant and he stands for an open war. His stand is based in his belief that the fallen angels have nothing more to fear from God’s wrath, for the outcome can be only annihilation which would be preferable to their present state or some new state of existence and since no state of existence could be worse than the present state that would be an improvement. He is all in favour of an all out war against God using the very method which he has used to torture them. Like Satan he panders to the vanity of the fallen angels by saying that according to their nature, they must ascend and rise and not descend and fall. As Moloch speaks he dilutes his concept of total war to a type of guerilla warfare. None the less he swears by plan of revenge against God. Beelzebub who is the last speaker to address the conclave acts as the echo of Satan. He does not exactly fall in line with Satan’s call of an open war against God but at the same time he considers the peace policy of Belial and Mammon as one of appeasement. He is all for taking revenge against God and supports Satan’s idea of action in the new world to turn the newly created race of man against God. Milton portrays Beelzebub in glowing colours. He occupies a high seat next only to Satan. He radiates wisdom in his outlook and compels attention in his address. Since there are no volunteers Satan takes the floor again to tell them that he fully understood the reasons for their reluctance to undertake such a hazardous journey. As their leader, he adds, it is his duty to undertake the journey for his position draws not only laurels but also dangers. He ends up by stating that they should do all they can to make their present condition tolerable for as long as they have to stay there. He uses the devices worked out by Satan to win over the fallen angels. He addresses them as “Thrones and Imperial Powers, offspring of Heaven” and congratulates the angels for supporting his proposal of an invasion of the new world. He calls for volunteers to undertake the journey to the new world stating at the same time that it is fraught with the gravest of dangers. How subtly to detain thee I devise; Inviting thee to hear while I relate; Chaos is shown as having complained that at first Hell stretching far and wide was carved out of his dominion, that is God created Hell out of space formerly occupied by Chaos. Thus Chaos loses a certain proportion of space when God created a new place called Hell. Thus the division of space was between Empyrean, Chaos and Hell. Chaos suffered a further loss when the new world with its planetary spheres was created. Soon after his address Satan terminates the meeting fearful that there may be a volunteer for the trip and that would endanger his position. The word Chaos denotes a formless void or a great deep of primordial matter. There is no real bottom of Chaos and this means that it had no fixed dimension or boundaries. All above was Empyrean, all below was Chaos. Chaos is made up of four elements which are the four possible combinations of the four principles, hot cold, moist and dry which Chaos form chance combinations. Chaos is an ambiguous world and its moral quality is no exception. Chaos has no power to resist evil and not being a part of the creation it exhibits a curious affinity with the evil which conquers it, an affinity symbolized by Satan’s pact with Chaos. And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou know'st ; Milton holds that nothing once created can be annihilated by the next chance. It will be seen there is no positive vocabulary for the description of Chaos. Milton produces his effect by negatives; without bound or dimension where there is no length or breadth, no time or place neither earth, air, fire or water. Satan’s journey through Chaos heightens not only the formless nature of Chaos but the very hazardous nature of the journey he undertakes, no doubt projecting Satan’s own courage, in going through with such a mission. Satan’s journey through Chaos requires all the courage and strength even of Satan. He finds himself for a time falling through what was later to be called airpocket only to be carried aloft again by a tumultuous cloud. His ears are assailed on all sides by stunning noise. He has no idea what direction to take until he finds the throne of Chaos and Satan’s chance meeting with him distracts from the sense of loneliness that marks the rest of the journey through a realm held in a sway by the monarch Chaos and his eldest child, Night. Satan’s meeting with the ruler of this realm is significant. Like Satan Chaos also sits on a throne and his other name is ‘Anarch’. Like Satan he too can be described as a prince of darkness. He shares the throne with Night, the first of all created things. Other denizens of Chaos are tumult, confusion, rumour and discord, making a complete mix of disorder and desolation that Chaos is. There is complete disorder in Chaos with the elements fighting against one another for mastery. The elements press the embryonic atoms in their service. The atoms are divided in their loyalties. No sooner does an element win a victory than another civil war begins. Chaos the monarch is himself the judge to give his decision as to which of the elements is the winner at a particular moment. But of, Chaos being itself the personification of confusion gives controversial decisions, thus making the civil war an even more confused affair. Next to Chaos the highest judge is Chance which determines the fate of everything. The confusion and conflict in Chaos can only end if God decided to create more worlds. Only then would harmony replace the confused fighting and disorder prevailing in Chaos. Milton falls back on myths and legends to chart out Satan’s journey through Chaos. Similar journeys have earlier been undertaken by Ulysses and Jason mainly as sea voyages. That is why we find so many allusions to the sea in Satan’s voyage. To give him a greater dimension, Milton makes him fly through the air also, but as he hears his destination, he is very much like a weary seaborne traveler reaching his destination. Chaos is agreeable to immediately come to a working arrangement with Satan. He informs him that the new world hangs from Heaven by a golden chain and he does not have to travel very much to reach it. Chaos is indeed happy if Satan’s succeeds in his mission of winning over the new world and thus taking his revenge on God. Seeing this conglomerate in Chaos, Satan shows his caliber in not buckling down to them. At the same time, he throws a bait to these as he seeks their cooperation to find his way to the new world created for man by God out of carving out a part of the empire of chaos. The bait he offers Chaos is attractive enough. If chaos helps him find his way to the newly created world he will find ways of restoring to Chaos, the part of the empire that was taken away by God to create the new world. Chaos is integral to the epic power and its significance lies in that it becomes an ally of Satan only because they share a common hatred for God. It gives Milton an opportunity to use his powerful imagination and description in giving us the firm contours of this formless shape. From Milton’s description of the ruler of Chaos the reader gets the impression that he is opportunistic enough to let others battle for him while he gives himself importance in proclaiming that he resides on the frontier of Chaos so as to be in a better position to defend his empire against encroachments. Chaos like Hell is a state of mind and Milton has a purpose in delineating it. While Hell has been depicted as a place of torment and torture, Chaos is far removed from Hell and has been presented by Milton duly as a realm of disorder. In fact Milton offers some consolation by stating that God carved out a territory from Chaos to create his new world for Man. Hell as described in Book I was a place of torture. Though a flaming inferno there was in it just as much -light as to make the darkness visible. The light also served to show the other regions of? Hell, the regions of sorrow where a flood of fire raged fed by the ever burning sulphur that was never exhausted. This was the Hell created by God after the revolt of the angels in preparation for their inevitable defeat. By indicating that Hell is both a state of mind and a place Milton gives his conception a double dimension in accordance with prevailing religious beliefs. He meets the religious requirements of those who believe that Hell is an abode of damned souls along with the fallen angels. For those who accept that Hell is a state of mind Milton gives the place a symbolic or allegorical significance. Hell for this school of thought exists in this very life and not the next life. When a sinner commits sin and has the remorse of guilt on his conscience, he is already in Hell. The mental torture that the sinner goes through is symbolized by the everlasting flames of Hell. The fallen angels themselves symbolically represent the sinners of this earth with one difference that while the sinners can repent for their sins, the fallen angels are unrepentant. In Book II Milton strengthens his description because Hell is an inseparable party of the format of the epic poem. In keeping with his own environment, Milton depicts Hell in the grimmest of colours. It is the universe of death because those angels who rejected God must experience a living death even as God is a source of life for those angels who were loyal to him. When the fallen angels enter Hell and discuss it as a place of evil for the first time they come face to face with the plight of their position in Hell. This realization becomes worse with the knowledge that this state of suffering will last for ever. While Milton conceived the story of Paradise Lost from, the Bible, Hell had to remain an integral part of his scheme. For his description of Hell Milton had to rely upon two sources, the Bible itself and classical mythology. In both he found the description adequate. In Book II of Paradise Lost he has enriched this with the strength of his imagination. The outcome is that hell becomes the fit dwelling place for all those monstrous and abhorrent sinners who are considered more monstrous than the Hydras and the Chimeras of classical mythology. By placing in it all conceivable instruments of torture Milton has fallen in line with religious thinking on the idea of hell because it fitted in admirably with his conceit of the situation. That is why both sin and death have been placed in this abode because Milton thought it proper that these figures with their horrific and frightening shapes had to find their proper place in the configuration of Hell. Both of them have a role to play in sending people to Hell and this accords well with Milton’s views on the subject. Milton’s depiction of Hell gives life to the view that Hell is a state of mind as well as a place by his accurate juxtaposition of the mind to the place. The freedom with which the poetry moves from the exterior to the inner landscape obliges us to give each word in it a continuous extension of the significance. Other poets have elaborated conventionally on the torments of Hell but not everyone has been able to give their description an inner as well as architectural meaning. The thirst I had of knowledge, and vouchsafed This friendly condescension to relate Things, else by me unsearchable; now heard With wonder, but delight, and, as is due, With glory attributed to the high Creator. There is also a river called Lethe, a river of forgetfulness, and beyond it is frozen continent torn by storms of whirlwind and hailstone. The continent contains a gulf and a marsh and serbonis which has swallowed up whole armies who tried to cross it. In the continent the damned souls feel at once the intense cold and the scorning heat. Milton gives a purpose in placing the river Lethe in the contours of Hell. The damned souls have to cross the river by a boat. Though drinking the waters cause one to forget all pain and suffering, the damned souls cannot drink the water because it moves away from them when they try to drink it. A monster called Medusa is another deterrent to the damned souls if they try to drink the waters. Milton has introduced four rivers flowing through Hell and discharging their waters into the burning lake. There is a river called Styx which is the river of bitter hatred. There is Acheron, the river of woe the waters of which are black and deep. There is Cocytus, a river for wailing and lamentation and there is Phlegethon, the waves of which are made of flames of fire. In describing the horrors of Hell, Milton puts apt descriptions in the mouths of various speakers. Moloch refers to Hell as ‘this dark opprobrious den of shame’ and ‘the prison of God’s tyranny’. Belial speaks of the eternal woe which the fallen angels have to experience. In another place he speaks of the ‘rim fires’ which are burning in Hell. There is another graphic description of the cataracts of fire which the firmament of Hell can spout forth. Mammon is shown as wondering what he can get out of Hell specially from the diamonds and gold which he believes lie buried in the soil of Hell. Like other speakers both Beelzebub and Satan are obsessed by the flames of Hell. Beelzebub describes them as corrosive fire and Satan refers to Hell as a ‘huge convex of fire’. In drawing the geography of Hell Milton has departed from previous allusions on the subject. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Hell is situated in the centre of the earth but Milton has located it in the lowest regions of Chaos. Milton tells us as much when he brings out in Satan’s talks with the Anarch that Hell was originally a part of Chaos and was carved out by God after the revolt of the angels to be their dwelling place fitted with all the instruments of torture. In Milton’s concept Hell is situated below Heaven, a fact which is confirmed with many references to the rebellious angels who descended from Heaven after their revolt. The disobedience of man is brought about through Satan; as an indirect agent: he seduces man in revenge for the punishment inflicted on him and his crew for their disobedience to God. Therefore, the action of the poem takes place not in one spot, but in three different places separated by infinity of distances: the Material Universe, Hell and Heaven, and between all of them lies Chaos. The vast comprehension of the story, both in space and in time leading up to the point of Man’s first disobedience makes Paradise Lost unique among epics, and entitles Milton to speak of it as involving “things yet unattempted in prose and rhyme.” Milton was confronted with the problem of rendering all this incomprehensible infinity plausible and credible, and he did it by presenting it symbolically in terms of human experience. The poet himself is careful to stress the point that he has been obliged to place the spiritual on the material plane, and that his pictures are purely symbolical, not literal, since human language must be employed to describe what is beyond human understanding. Once he has thus excused and explained himself, he is quite clear in his mind as to the divisions of Infinite Space. He proceeds about his business with mathematical precision even. His pictures therefore are well-defined. Book II gives the fullest picture of the deep of Chaos the “lower” part of Infinitude, but in words which are at best symbolical. Its appearance is struck off in about half-a dozen lines of the most beautiful poetry. It is ‘a huge, limitless ocean, abyss or quagmire, of universal darkness and lifelessness, wherein are jumbled in blustering confusion the elements of all matter, or rather the crude embryons of all the elements ere as, yet they are distinguishable. Therefore is no light there, not properly Earth, Water, Air, or Fire, but only a vast pulp or welter of unformed matter, in which all these lie tempestuously intermixed.’

Satan’s experience does not belie his fears. He is environed round on all sides with these fighting elements. He is harder “beset than when Argo passed through Bosporus, betwixt the jostling rocks, or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned Charybdis, and by other whirlpool steered.”

It is the hoariest in Infinite Time, having existed coeval with Heaven. From it other worlds have come into being- first Hell, later the Material Universe. Thus it is the womb of Nature and, when these worlds shall again be destroyed, her grave as well. Being illimitable and unbottomed, the way through it is described as long and hard. The turbulence of the elements in their embryonic state is so fierce that there is the danger of an object being crushed and reduced to its atoms, if caught in their welter. Satan fears as much when he describes the difficulties of the adventure in the assembly. It is possible to distinguish, though symbolically, some of the regions of this vast abrupt from the description that Milton gives of Satan’s voyage through it. The resistance of this nameless consistency is felt less by Satan in the first stage of his adventure, when he seems carried upward effortlessly, as in a cloud-chair, buoyed up by the surging smoke from the furnace mouth of Hell. But of, soon he comes upon a region which appears to be a complete vacuity, for “all unawares, fluttering his pennons vain, plumb-down he drops ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour had been falling,” were it not for an unexpected accident. In this region where Chance rules as governor, he alights upon a “tumultuous cloud”, charged with fire and saltpeter and signed by it, he is shot upward till another accident drops him in a boggy Syrtis, where the flame which seemed to consume him is quenched. Thence it is neither sea, nor good dry land, but bog and cliff, an atmosphere which is at once “strait, rough, dense or rare”, and Satan is obliged to use all his limbs to keep himself adrift. Here are the frontiers of Chaos, but they are yet so far removed from Heaven that it is darkness all round. The last lap of Satan’s journey has yet to be passed through the warring elements, before the extremity verging on Heaven is reached. In this farthest verge, dimly lit by Heaven’s brightness, Chaos has retired, ‘as from her outmost words, a broken foe, with tumult less, and with less hostile din.” Resistance here is very little, and Satan can waft himself as it were on calmer wave in dubious light till he reaches the outermost shell of the Material Universe. Milton divides Infinite Space roughly into two regions, the “upper” being a region of light, Heaven or Empyrean, and the “lower” being a region of darkness, Chaos. The impression we get of Heaven from Book II is that it is “undetermined square or round, with opal towers and battlements adorned, of living sapphire.” It is the bright and boundless region of Light, Freedom, Happiness, and Glory, which the fallen angels regret having lost altogether. It is fortified by impregnable walls, which are closely guarded by ever-wakeful sentries; yet the sacred influence of its light diffuses on the verge of Chaos, so that Satan arriving here in his flight to the world finds it more easy to traverse. In the midst of this region the Deity, though omnipresent, has His immediate and visible dwelling. ‘He is surrounded by a vast population of beings, “the Angels” or the “Sons of God”, who draw near to His throne in worship, derive thence their nurture and their delight, and yet live dispersed through all the ranges and recesses of the region, leading severally their mighty lives and performing the behests of God, but organized into companies, orders, and hierarchies. But of, Heaven at large, or portions of it, are figured as tracts of a celestial Earth, with plain, hill, and valley, wherein the myriads of the Sons of God expatiate, in their two orders of Seraphim and Cherubim, and in their descending ranks as Archangels or Chiefs, Princes of various degrees, and individual Intelligences.’ Such is the stupendous picture that Milton gives us of this hoary deep. Heaven and Chaos divided the Infinite of Space between them at the beginning of time: but soon a need arose for the creation of more worlds. Chaos, the Anarch himself, refers with regret to it, when he speaks of God having made inroads into his domain, and first scooped off a space called Hell, and later “another world hung o’er my realm, linked in a golden chain to that side of Heaven from whence Satan and his legions fell.” The atoms being in a perpetual state of war, their collisions fill the atmosphere with loud noises. Satan’s ears are pealed “with noises loud and ruinous”, more clamorous than those made by the battering engines of Bellona bent on raising a city, or by the Earth when she is torn from her axle by the fall of Heaven. As he approaches the throne of Chaos his ears are assailed by “a universal hubbub wild of stunning souring and voices all confused.” These noises become still only in the confines of Heaven. Hell is pictured as a region shut in by a “convex of fire” and barred by thrice three-folded gates, guarded by two Shapes- Sin and Death. The gates are described in some detail. Three folds are of brass, three of iron, and three of adamantine rock. They are impaled with circling fire and protected by a portcullis which none but Sin could draw up. The gates are fastened by bolts and bars and secured by a lock of a very intricate pattern. Sin has to turn all the intricate wards with her key, and then “on a sudden open fly, with impetuous recoil and jarring sound the infernal doors, and on their hinges grate harsh thunder that the lowest bottom of Erebus shook.” The wide –open gates can give passage to a whole bannered host with its extended wings, horse and chariots ranked in loose array. Out of the mouth of Hell, as from a furnace belch forth, “redounding smoke and ruddy flame.” The ruler of this Infinite Abyss is Chaos. ‘Though the presence of God is there potentially too, it is still, as it were, actually retracted thence, as from a realm unorganized and left to Night and Anarchy; nor do any of the angels wing down into its repulsive obscurities. The crystal floor or wall of Heaven divides them from it; underneath which, and unvisited of light, save what may glimmer through upon its nearer strata, it howls and rages and staggers eternally.’ Of the other world, the Material Universe, there is not much of a description in Book II. The rumour of its creation was long current in Heaven, before it actually came into existence. The moment of its creation arrived when a void was created in Heaven by the fall of Satan and his crew. God then sent His Son forth, and with his golden compasses, he centered one point of them where he stood and turned the other through the obscure profundity around (VII-224-231) (. Thus were marked out, or cut out through the body of Chaos, the limits of the new Universe of Man,-the Starry Universe which to us seems measureless, and the same as infinity itself, but which is really only a beautiful azure sphere or drop, insulated in Chaos, and hung at its topmost point or zenith from the Empyrean. Chaos mentions it as hung by a golden chain from that side of Heaven whence Satan and his legions fell. Hell is described in the book as stretching far and wide beneath Chaos. It is a kind of Antarctic region, distinct from the body of Chaos proper. It is a vast region of fire, sulphurous lake, plain and mountain, and of all forms of fiery and icy torment. In the midst is the bottomless lake of fire on which Satan and his crew were hurled down on their fall. Into it pour the four rivers- “Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate; Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep; Cocytus, named of lamentations loud heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon, whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.” Around the lake a vast space of dry land extends, formed of solid fire, with mountains, fens and bogs, full of mineral wealth. On one of these hills Pandemonium has been built entire, which rose out of it, when formed, like an exhalation. The City of Hell is afterwards built round Pandemonium on this dry ground of fire, and the country round the city is broken with rock, and valley, and hill, and plain. Further on, in another concentric band, we catch a glimpse of a desert land, “a frozen continent”, beat with perpetual storms of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems of ancient pile.” The damned are brought hither by a “harpy-footed Furies,” and they are make to feel “by turns the bitter change of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce, from beds of raging fire to starve in ice their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine immovable infixed, and frozen round, periods of time, thence hurried back to fire.” Lethe, the river of oblivion, flows round this region, and rolls eternally her watery labyrinth. The damned, on their way to and from the region of solid and liquid fire and this icy desert, have to cross this sound, and, parched and fry as their throats are, the moment they stoop to drink of its waters, they roll back from their lips. Medusa and Gorgonian terror guards the ford, and prevents the sufferers from allaying their thrust. The contours of this region are thus defined by Milton-“dark and dreary vale”, “region dolorous”, “frozen and fiery Alp”, “rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death”. The new universe does not consist merely of the Earth, but the entire firmament of planets, stars, etc. in mapping it, Milton adopts the unscientific conception of the universe then current, which had been propounded by the Greek astronomer, Ptolemy, in the second century A.D., and later expanded by Alphonso X king of Castile in the thirteenth century. According to this teaching the Earth was fixed in the centre of the Universe. It was also the centre of a system of concentric Spheres, not solid, but of transparent space , each of which carried with it one of the seven planets, in the following order-the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Beyond these seven Spheres was an eighth Sphere, containing the Firmament of the fixed Stars. The Crystalline Sphere was a ninth Sphere that was invented to account for the very slow “precision of the equinoxes”, one revolution of which occupied over 25,000 years; and beyond this was the last and tenth Sphere, the only one that was material, being absolutely opaque and impenetrable. This outer shell was called the Primum Mobile, the first moved, because it was believed to be the first created Sphere to be set in motion. Milton’s daring conception is yet further revealed in linking the Material Universe with Hell. Satan had to wing his way through the abortive gulf and run through many risks in doing so. But of, to facilitate the passage to and fro of the human race, on the one hand, and the devils, on the other, a bridge was built across Chaos between Hell and the Material Universe by Sin and Death soon after Man’s fall. It is “of wondrous length,” writes Milton, “from Hell continued, reaching the utmost orb, of this frail world.” There prevailed at the time, indeed, a more accurate conception of the Material Universe, which was formulated by Copernicus, a Polish monk and astronomer of the fifteenth century. It taught that Earth and the other planets revolve about the Sun. Milton was familiar with it also, through his acquaintance with Galileo. But of, in mapping his universe in Paradise Lost, he preferred the Ptolemaic to the Copernican system, because it was more generally known and universally adopted. ‘Yet as to the proportions of this world to the total map Milton dares to be exact. The distance from its nadir or lowest point to the upper boss of hell is exactly equal to its own radius; or in other words, the distance of Hell- gate from Heaven-gate is exactly three radii of the Human or Material Universe.’ Satan once again impresses us as being fit to be an epic hero. At the very outset in Book II, he is described as being seated on a “throne of royal state” in the midst of great splendor. We are told that from his despair he has been “uplifted beyond hope” and that now he is aspiring to rise even higher. He is insatiate to pursue his war against Heaven even though his war is doomed to fail. He tells his comrades that he has not given up Heaven as lost; and he gives them as assurance that they would rise again to Heaven and would, in fact appear to be more glorious and more awful than if they had not suffered and fall. In his second speech Satan again impresses us greatly, this time by offering to undertake a hazardous journey in search of the new world created by God. While none of the other fallen angels comes forward to undertake this arduous and dangerous task. Satan is ready to go. He speaks of the royal powers and the royal privileges which he enjoys as their leader and he therefore believes that it is his duty to undertake the task and that has been proposed. This certainly raises him in our estimation. He is not even prepared to take a companion with him: “This enterprise none shall partake with me.” And how would the Ptolemaic theory stand? In the light of this knowledge how much more absurd it would be that their Stellar Firmament with its immeasurable radius of over 100, 000 light-year “turns about once every twice twelve hours.” And if they found it difficult to believe this of the “great round Earthly Ball,” how would they taken to the discovery that the planet Jupiter, over 1300 times as large, turns round in ten hours? Milton’s cosmography is not entirely imaginary. ‘For the material data which he found necessary to his representation he restored to all manner of sources and to his own invention, employing Scriptural suggestions wherever possible and taking pains to add nothing which would be directly contrary to Holy Writ. It is not to be thought that he offered such details as the causeway from Hell to Earth, the chain by which the visible universe depended from Heaven, or the spheres themselves which encircled the earth and carried the planets and fixed stars, as obligatory to the understanding. They were simply imaginative representations which might or might not correspond to actuality. Sometimes he is deliberately vague, as when he says that Heaven is “undetermined square or round.” Often his concrete detail or measurement is useful only for the moment and defies adoption into the general scheme, as where he says that the distance from Hell to Heaven was three times the distance from the centre of the earth to the pole of the uttermost encircling sphere.’ For these reasons it is misleading to consider the plan of Milton’s Infinite Space as one of his deliberate convictions. One wonders how he would have arranged his ideas in the light of modern discoveries. Distances in the Universe (according to these discoveries), are so enormous that the mile must be discarded entirely as the unit of distance, its place being taken by the light-year, i.e., the distance through which a ray of light, travelling at 186,000 miles a second, is propagated in a year. Yet for star systems and nebulae have been discovered by the camera at the inconceivable distance of 100,000light-years, and there are others still beyond, supposed by some astronomers to be separate universe, but still within the limits of the material creation. What would Milton have bought had he known this? Would not Raphael’s words to Adam (VIII, 110-114) have taken on a new meaning? Both Sin and death are conceived and presented with propriety. Sin which is delectable in commission and hideous in its effect t, is aptly pictured as a woman fair from the waist upward but foul downward, ending her body “in many a scaly fold, voluminous and vast, a serpent armed with mortal sting.” Around her middle cluster a pack of hounds which never cease their barking. They are her offspring, and when disturbed they kennel in her womb, still continuing their howls within her body. They are described as horrid in appearance, and worse than those that afflicted Scylla, or which accompanied the night- hag, when she came riding through the air to dance with the Lapland witches. They feed on her bowls, and are a constant vexation to her. The description of the appearance of Sin reads like a visible embodiment of these words of William Dyer, a contemporary of Milton: “There is more bitterness in sin’s ending that there edger was sweetness in its acting- If you see nothing but good in its commission, you will suffer only woe in its conclusion.” Whereas in Hell-hounds that afflict her within and without, her own offspring, we see the symbolical presentation of the consequences of sin. These are some of the stunning discoveries made by modern astronomy even of that Material Universe, which Milton planned with such perfect simplicity. If these take our breath away, then what must be those undiscovered bourns, Heaven, Chaos and Hell, about which modern science is yet skeptical? Milton’s scheme looks insignificant and incoherent before all this knowledge. Yet what a staggering and stupendous conception he has given it all! The imagination is properly impressed by the infiniteness of the conception, and, with Theseus, in Shakespeare’s play, we are prepared to sympathise with him, and to regard “the best in this kind” to be no more than a shadow, “and the worst no worse, if imagination amend them.” Into a poem which deals very largely with supernatural agents, Milton introduces two shapes, the sinister figure of Sin and the grim and horrid monster, Death, who meets Satan at Hell-gate, and prevents his egress. The adequacy of their portraiture has been praised, but their consistency as allegorical personages has been questioned. Stopford A. Brooke, for example, writes thus: “Death’s image has claimed admiration and justly; but if the lines, which leave him indefinite, yet ‘terrible as Hell’, are sublime, the rest of the allegory of him and of Sin is so definite, so conscious of allegory, that it loses sublimity.” Addison was the first critic to draw attention to the inconsistency of the representation. While admitting that it is a “very beautiful and well-invented allegory,” he added, “I cannot but think that persons of such a chimerical existence are proper actors in an epic poem; therefore, there is not the measure of probability annexed b to them which is requisite in writings of this kind.” Finally, Johnson regarded the allegory as ‘unskilful’’ and complained that it is broken when “Sin and Death stop the journey of Satan, a journey described as real, and when Death offers him battle.” “That Sin and Death should have shown the way”, he continued,” to Hell, might have been allowed: but they cannot facilitate the passage by building a bridge, because the difficulty of Satan’s passage is described as real and sensible. And the bridge ought to be only figurative.” A careful analysis will show that Milton has secured consistency of portraiture, though in the allegorical significance that we read into it, the sublimity of the episode is a little detracted. Death, the grisly horror, which all of us dread, but which cannot be imagined by us in any form, is properly presented as a shape that is shapeless. The vagueness with which it is invested is in perfect keeping with our own conception of it. “Black it stood as Night, Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, and shook a fearful dart.” Coleridge has well remarked: “The grandest effects of poetry are where the imagination is called forth to produce, not a distinct form, but a strong working of the mind, still offering what is still repelled, and again creating what is again rejected: the result being what the poet wishes to impress, viz., the sublime feeling of the imaginable for the mere images.” Such a stupendous feat of the imagination is this animation of what man dreads most instinctively. The allegory, here, does not consist in the mere personification of an abstraction, but in its relation to Sin. We read in the Bible that the wages of sin is death, and Milton had made Death the offspring of Sin, just as he had made Sin the offspring of evil thought and the consort of the devil. Interrupting the mortal combat of Satan with Death, which would have ended either or both, Sin relates her history. To Satan who has forgotten her, she recounts how she rose from the left side of his head, like Juno, on a day in Heaven, when he was complotting rebellion against God. But of, Milton does not stop with rendering in visual form what merely passes in the mind. He shows also how we become reconciled to sin and finally hardened in it. “Amazement” seized all the heavenly host, she says continuing her narrative to Satan they reconciled in fear, and called her Sin, and held her for a portentous sign. But of, when she had grown familiar, she pleased “the most averse” among them, “and with attractive graces won thee chiefly , who full oft thyself in me thy perfect image viewing becam’st enamoured; and such joy thou took’st with me in secret, that my womb conceived.” The allurements of sin are here well bodied forth, and the whole passage reads like an artist’s picture of the text: “Sin is first pleasing, then it grows easy, then delightful, then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed.” The association with and the commission of sin lead inevitably in the end to hideous death; and so the offspring of Sin in the poem is the grim monster, Death. The final ruin, with all its throes and travail, is befittingly, presented in the picture o Sin’s confinement. Milton completes the picture of Sin and Death by remarking further that just as sin ends in violent death, so death is passionately fond of sinners. Hence he makes Death, as soon as he emerges from the womb of Sin fall lustfully in love with her, and become the father of all that brood of hounds, the affliction of sin, we have noticed above. The poet seals their permanent union in the words he places on the lips of Sin, that Death would have destroyed her. Death shall cease when Sin becomes extinct. The destruction of the one involves the ruin of the other. Milton thus a perfect picture of the origin of sin in the mind of man, his being hardened in it, the evil consequences that follow, and the violent end to which it finally leads him. The adequacy of the portraiture and its vividness cannot be doubted. But of, while genesis of sin is sublime enough, its later history is full of such gruesome details that it tends to detract from loftiness. It cannot but be otherwise, since there is nothing elevated in the consanguinity of Sin and death. The representation, however, is hideous enough and impressive.

The characters of sin and death are thus firmly drawn, once their reality is granted, all their deeds become plausible; there is nothing inconsistent in them, as Dr. Johnson contended. It is but natural that Death, the shadowy giant, should bar Satan’s way, and offer to fight him, for death makes no distinction between saint and sinner. Sin does well to remind Satan that Death’s dart is mortal, that he is unconquerable except by him “who rules above”. Neither is it strange that Sin should be the first to fall a victim to Satan’s temptation. He offers to bring her to the place “where thou and Death shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen wing silently the buxom air, embalmed with odours,” and she jumps at the offer, while death, the gourmand, smacks his greedy lips in joyous anticipation of the goodly feast he shall soon have. Sin hastens to open the three-folded gates; the portcullis slides to her touch, her key swiftly turns  the intricate wards, and every belt and bar of massy iron  or solid rock unfasten with ease. There is no inconsistency either in these persons quickly spanning the distance from Chaos to the Earth by a bridge, for they are eager to get into the new habitation. Thus Milton’s presentation of these two characters doesnot impinge rudely upon our credulity.  On the other hand, they are satisfying portraits of the two deadly evils of this world.

He takes the fallen angels on an ego trip when he tells them that Hell will not be able to contain them because of their angelic nature. At the same time pandering to their vanity he tells them that after rising to Heaven again, they will never have to fear a second fall. And he establishes his supremacy over them by asserting that he has risen to his high position not only through his own merit but also because he deserved this position according to “the fixed laws of Heaven.” In order not to rub the fallen angels on the wrong side he at the same time tells them that they have elected him as their leader of their own, “free choice”. Milton makes use of Beelzebub to bring out some of the more repulsive facets of Satan’s character. Beelzebub rejects Moloch’s idea of an open war and goes all out in support of a plan aimed at confounding the race of mankind in one root and at mingling and involving Earth with Hell to spite the great creator. To highlight Satan’s craftiness Milton tells us that such a wicked plan could only emanate from “the author of all ill.” By making Beelzebub come forward with the proposal, Satan wants some devilishness of the scheme to rub on Beelzebub’s shoulders so that Satan can comparatively shine in a better light. Every word that Satan utters is loaded with meaning. “O Progeny of Heaven” he calls the fallen angels in his second address to them hoping against hope that their expulsion from Heaven will not make a dent on them. He can almost congratulate himself on the success he has achieved for the fallen angels bow to him “with awful reverence” and extol him “equal to the highest in Heaven”. Another aspect of his character is brought out in his dealings with Sin and Death. At first Satan tried his bluff and bluster on Death but when he realized that death was not unbearable, he pragmatically came to terms with them. He tactfully solicits the help of Chaos to carry him to the new world where he hopes to plan his revenge on god. In depicting Satan’s character, Milton has deliberately not indicated whether the logical flaws in Satan’s opening speech are the result of a conscious effort to soothe his followers or due to a genuine self delusion. According to one critic, the utterances of Moloch, Belial, Mammon and Beelzebub represent not merely individual contributions to a debate but also a train of thoughts which passes through the mind of Satan. Macallum shows up the inconsistencies in Satan’s speech and the change it reveals in his character. There is a contrast and a touch of duplicity between what Satan says when he is alone with his second in command, Beelzebub, and what he says when he is speaking in public. Milton brings this out in a very subtle manner showing clearly Satan’s power of double think. At one moment the leader of the fallen angels is convinced that his fallen angels are invincible while at the same time he accepts that constant vigilance is necessary to prevent its overthrow. Another example of his double think is seen in the ability of the fallen angels to strike back at God. His confident words to his fallen angels have a veneer of deception. Quite often one gets the feeling that Satan becomes a victim of his own propaganda and it is difficult to tell whether he is speaking out of conviction or he becomes a victim of his deceit. Milton’s portrayal of Satan is in conformity with the progress of the action ion the epic. In the early scenes of Book II Satan is portrayed as a defiant leader shedding his charisma on the fallen angels. As the epic advances, a gradual change overtakes Satan as he begins his downward slide from the moments of high grandeur of the early scenes. As Satan is caught in the work of his own self-destruction, the effects of his fall becomes evident as the epic moves to its inevitable conclusion. “Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue Vain war with Heaven; and, by success untaught, ‘’

                          Many eminent critics of the twentieth century have explained the hollowness of the romantic attitude towards the character of Satan that was held in the nineteenth century.

Milton has endowed Satan with all the traits of double think and double speak. In fact this comes so naturally to Satan that one could look upon him as faithful representative of the politicians of our own day. He is cast in this mould and his very first utterance as he opens the debate is typical of him. He addresses the fallen angels as ‘powers and dominions’, ‘deities of Heaven’. The address is typical of his egoism. He panders to the vanity of the fallen angels by addressing them with the same attributes that they once possessed. He is clever enough to adopt this posture to stress the fact that there has been no change in their status even though they have been expelled from Heaven. Similarly, when Satan goes on to argue that Hell will be unable to hold them because of their angelic nature, the assumption is that they remain heavenly although expelled from Heaven, which seems somewhat unrealistic. When he continues with the comment that when they do rise, they will be more glorious than if they had fallen one notices that Satan is confusing military glory with the true glory of Heaven. It has been pointed out very clearly that the speech of Satan is full of inconsistencies and his character has undergone a major change, change for the worse. Alan Rudrum has analysed Satan’s opening speech in Book II: “The debate is opened by Satan, seated as Chairman ‘high on a throne of royal state’. The tone and substance of his speech is foreshadowed in the very first line, in which he addresses his colleagues as ‘powers and dominions’ deities of Heaven.’ This in itself contains no direct statement, but the implication is that no radical change has occurred as a result of their rebellion and defeat at the hands of God. It is as futile as if a number of demoted officers were to agree that among themselves they should keep up the pretence of retaining their former rank, a comforting gesture but ultimately pointless because they are out of touch with reality.” We cannot rebel against a government and at the same time derive our position among our followers from the dignity we once held within it. Satan seems on surer ground in pointing out that no one will envy him his leadership in Hell because leadership there involves pre-eminence in suffering, but note the argument he develops from this. He says that as no one in Hell will envy him his position, there will be unity and strength among the fallen angels, and they will therefore, be more likely to succeed in claiming their ‘just’ inheritance than if their initial rebellion had been successful. From this it seems natural for him to go on to reassert his position of leadership among the fallen angels, and we certainly concede that he is audacious when we hear him deriving his leadership from the ‘fixed laws against which he had rebelled. It is difficult to decide whether the logical flaws in Satan’s opening speech are the result of a conscious attempt to deceive his followers or due to genuine self-delusion. At all events, Satan’s recklessness, and his apparent inability to face facts are carried over into Moloch’s speech, which immediately follows. One critic has usefully suggested that the utterance of Moloch, Belial, Mammon and Beelzebub represent not merely individual contributions to a debate, but also a train of thought which passes through the mind of Satan. Between them they canvass all possibilities but repentance, and the conclusion they arrive at, given their initial assumptions, is the only feasible one. Revenge, on some terms, they must have and as they cannot hurt God directly they will injure man instead. Quite apart from the fact that there is no evidence that their initial failure was due to dissensions within the ranks, this is simply ‘double think’- unless we concede that God has treated them unfairly, had displaced them from a ‘just inheritance’, unless in fact we can see ground for agreeing that their rebellion had been justified. Probably Satan’s speech should be read as a ‘morale booster’ and the true hopelessness of the matter can be gauged from its inaccuracy as an analysis of the situation. It will emerge later that Satan has a different idea in mind, but for the moment he wants his followed to discuss their reascent to Heaven, and invites their opinions as to whether open war or covert guile, will best bring this about. Satan has already chalked the mode of revenge he will adopt in his war against God but he wants to make the fallen angels believe that he is being guided by them in charting out their future course of action. Very adroitly he says,” who can advise may speak” as he invites their opinions to wage open war or convert guile to bring about the objectives. He doesnot utter an unnecessary word but he ensures that what he says goes home. Like one born to leadership he is quick to point out that no one will envy him his leadership he is quick to point out that no one will envy him his leadership in Hell because he would be exposed to much greater suffering from God than any one of them. On the other hand, they had their just inheritance to achieve if they adopted the right means. Macallum has drawn our attention to the inconsistencies in Satan’s speech in Book II and the change it reveals in his character. The contrast between what Satan says when he is alone with his second in command, Beelzebub, and what he says when he is speaking in public draws attention to this duplicity. He is, after all, the father of lies. Milton’s treatment of satanic description is extremely subtle and deserves careful attention. Satan possesses the capacity that George Orwell, in his study of totalitarianism in 1984 described as the power of ‘double think’- the power of entertaining two contradictory opinions at the same time. For example, the ideal member of the ruling class is convinced in part of his mind that his party is invincible and omniscient, while with another part of his mind he recognizes that constant vigilance is necessary to prevent its overthrow. In a similar manner Satan both does and doesnot believe in the ability of his army to strike back against God. His encouraging words to his troops are half deception. Like many dictators he shows a tendency to believe his own propaganda and it is impossible to distinguish clearly at any given moment between his real convictions and the sophistry by which he controls his followers. In cutting himself off from God, Satan has rejected the sources of reason and consequently he loses his grip on reality.

Although he still has a few moments of grandeur left, the general progress of his development is downward. Milton shows us Satan’s admirable qualities first, then explores the manner in which his denial of God’s perverts his virtues and turns his power into weakness.

A further word has to be said on the paradoxical view that Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost. This appears true only if we accept the traditional epic idea of the hero as a great warrior and leader. But of, Milton as he stresses everywhere in the poem, had a very different idea of the heroic. The hero as martyr, who suffers patiently and refuses to the death to renounce hi God, is the central idea of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes as well as of Paradise Lost. His idea of the heroic, along with his own heroic temper, is what puts Milton among the great poets of the world. Undoubtedly Milton found inspiration for the figures of Sin and Death in a biblical passage: “Thus when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished, bringeth forth dead”. From this cryptic statement Milton has visualized and etched the allegorical figures of Sin and death. Both are drawn with a wealth of detail. Sin is part woman, part serpent while Death a shadowy monarch who wields a dreadful dart, is made brightening by reason of his lack of clear and solid shape. Milton has painted both of them with lurid colours, specially their origin. Sin and Death are no mere decorative pieces in this epic poem. Through their presence and their allegory the poet drives home the point that evil turns back on itself endlessly repeating the same sterile and self-destructive acts. He adds a further significance to their characters by his description. Death is shown to be something awful and mysterious. He doesnot depict any details but leaves the readers with a vague terrifying impression of a misty, shadowy but nevertheless a majestic presence. And grace that won who saw to wish her stay, Rose, and went forth among her fruits and flowers, To visit how they prospered, bud and bloom, Her nursery; they at her coming sprung, And, touched by her fair tendance, gladlier grew. This is the best example of what Macaulay calls “the dim intimations of Milton”. He begins by calling Death a shape, then he qualifies this by saying that it had no shape- a shapeless shape. Then he adds that this shapeless shape could not be called a substance or shadow. He doesnot speak of his head or his crown but what seemed his head had on-the likeness of a kingly crown. The impact of the description is black and menacing and becomes the more sinister because it just a shadow. The portrait drawn by Milton of sin is ugliness personified. The poet has used the female form to represent Sin and one can rightly call it Milton’s masterpiece of filth. Sin describes how she sprang fully grown from the brow of Satan at the moment of his rebellion in Heaven. Satan has an incestuous relationship with her. She is mistress as well as daughter and from this union is born death, so aptly labeled by Milton as “this odious offspring”. The incestuous relationship continues with Death becoming the lover of his parent. His progeny are the yelling monsters that continuously torment their mother. Alterbury in a letter to Pope challenged to show in Homer anything equal to the allegory of Sin and Death. On the other hand Johnson believes that “this unskillful allegory appears to me one of the greatest faults of the poem.” Hanford describes the episodes as loathsome but believes it has a purpose by making us aware of the real ugliness of Sin and Death. Macaffery suggests that Sin and Death inhabit a necessary borderline between myth and allegory, “between a world where physical and spiritual forces are identical and a world where spiritual force is merely indicated by physical.” Summer is happy about the characterisation specially as it places Satan in perspective and establishes the necessary relation in the epic between the comic, the heroic and the tragic. But well thou comest Before thy fellows, ambitious to win From me some plume, that thy success may show Destruction to the rest: Satan’s heroism, like his outward luster, grows less dazzling as the action proceeds: the general is not as impressive a figure as the defiant individualistic of the first scene. Milton doesnot treat Satan as a static figure; on the contrary Satan is constantly changing because he is caught in a process of self destruction. The effects of his fall are made increasingly evident in the course of the action. Milton cleverly weaves a web of intrigue between Sin, Death and Satan when they confront each other at the gates of Hell. As Sin sees a confrontation between Satan Death building up, she intervenes to stop the clash. She then discloses the relationship between Satan and Death and impresses on both the futility of their mutual antagonisms. Sin counts on Satan to tackle her to a new world of bliss and pleasure in his company and with this hope she opens the gates of Hell to let Satan go out. In assessing the part of Sin and Death in the poem we have to accept that they are integral to the poem. By depicting them in the most grotesque of forms Milton tries to project the moral purpose of the whole episode. By placing them in Hell he suggests that they rightly belong there. The double incest shown between father and daughter and son and mother makes Sin and Death all the more horrifying and repulsive. Such an impact could only be conveyed through an allegory and Milton has done just that. It must be remembered that Paradise Lost even if is close to the truth, is not literally true and is at the most a symbolic poem. Milton’s portrayal of Sin and Death has led to sharp differences among his critics. One set of critics has led to sharp differences among his critics. One set of critics led by Addison is of the view that though the allegorical descriptions are arresting enough, the two figures look out of place in the epic. He raises doubts whether persons of such chimerical existence are proper actors in an epic poem. By throwing magic herbs into the sea where Circe was bathing, the witch transformed Scylla’s body from the waist down into a mass of barking dogs.

It is through symbolism that Milton wishes to convey the horror of the encounter between Satan and Sin and Death. Hell has become the abode of the fallen angels. The introduction of Sin and Death and their encounter with Satan at the gates of Hell carries the epic forward. The figure of Sin, half-woman and half-serpent with a number of barking dogs at her waist and creeping into her womb whenever they like has predecessors in Elizabethan poetry. Milton also had another model before him. This was Spenser’s description of Error- half a horrible serpent and half a woman’s shape. Similarly Milton was beholden for his description of Death to similar earlier descriptions. However, the difference is that Milton’s description evokes terror and alarm by his description of a shadowy nothing. But of, Milton does transcend the indistinct image when he describes it as brandishing a dreadful dart just as the serpent in the lower half of Sin is described as being armed with a deadly sting. Milton’s model for Sin was the sea nymph Scylla after her transformation by the witch Circe. His next argument is that of a military strategist. As a debater, he forestalls the objection that ascent to the Empyrean on their ruinous expedition, may be difficult. But for, no! if they bethink them how their descent had been difficult when they fell, they can naturally infer that ascent is their proper motion. Let them not doubt, therefore, their ability to soar back to Heaven. The Council in Hell has correctly been described as a superhuman parliamentary debate, as majestic in eloquence as it is momentous in the consequences involved. Milton brings to bear upon the account a lifelong study of statesmanship and oratory in the leaders of the Revolution. His council is a magnified image of those human deliberations on which the fates of nations hang. Besides, Milton brought to his task his own mastery in the art of dialectic which dates from his Cambridge days, when his degree depended on his ability to argue both sides of a question. Satan has called his council to consider how best they may revenge themselves on the Almighty, whether by open war or convert guile. But of, Satan does not only propound the question; it is his will that dominates secretly the assembly. ‘Individuals may voice their convictions and display their passions, each with a type of eloquence appropriate to his personal character and temper, but the ultimately policy is predetermined.’ Four of the chiefs express their views, each in his own characteristic manner, but it is the last, Beelzebub, who unfolds the master’s mind. His final argument shows that contempt of danger which would enable a commander to lead his forces to victory. He doesnot allow the fear of worse consequences to daunt him from his war path. What can be worse than their present anguish? he asks. The worst can only be annihilation, and that were “happier far than miserable to have eternal being.” But at, can they ever cease to be? He has heard it said in some quarters that their substance is eternal, and if thus there is no fear of annihilation, there can be no fear too of a worse state than the present, since “we are at worst on this side nothing.” Their present strength then is equal to wage war Heaven; let them rise, therefore, and if they do not gain a victory, they shall have the satisfaction at least of revenge. Moloch, the belligerent type, the personification of pure and unalloyed hatred of the Almighty, is of the die-hard cast. Deeming himself equal in strength with the almighty, and indifferent even to his existence if he should be regarded less, he advises open war, with all the bluntness and outspokenness of a Colonel. Unskilled in tricks himself, he is impatient with those who those who would sit and contrieve in Hell’s dungeon, suffering all the pangs which God’s tyranny can inflict on them. Theirs is the courage to do, he tells them, and therefore let them arm themselves, even with hell flames and tortures, the weapons of destruction invented by their enemy, and point them against himself. Let the noise of his thunder be met by the noise of infernal thunder; his lightning be opposed with black fire from Hell, and His very throne be surrounded by hell-fire and sulphurous flames. Thus in the hectic fury of his vindictive hate, he draws a picture of the destruction upon which he is bent. Moloch’s speech is impetuous and fiery, and well may it have been the utterance of an Ironside commander in the councils of Oliver Cromwell. It may be worthwhile to observe,” wrote Addison, “that Milton has represented this violent impetuous spirit, who is hurried on by such precipitate passions, as the first that rises in the assembly to give his opinion upon their present posture of affairs. Accordingly he declares himself abrupt for war, and appears incensed at his companions for losing so much time as to deliberate upon it. All his sentiments are rash, audacious, and desperate such as that of arming themselves with tortures and turning their punishments upon Him who in inflicted them. His preferring annihilation to shame or misery is also highly suitable to his character, as the comfort he draws from their disturbing the peace of Heaven, that if it be not victory is revenge, is a sentiment truly diabolical, and becoming the bitterness of this implacable spirit.”

 Belial’s arguments partake of his nature. Gifted with a smooth tongue that “could make the worse appear the better reason,” he delivers a backhanded blow at Moloch. He tells the assembly that he would himself be much for open war, if what has been urged the main reason for it, itself doesnot dissuade him most. They have been told that even if they cannot be victorious, their vindictiveness yet can be satisfied.  But of, he asks, what vengeance can possibly be? The towers of Heaven are impregnable, being constantly guarded by armed angels. There is no hope of intimidating them either, for quite dauntlessly they scout far into the regions of Chaos. Or, were it possible for them to approach  Heaven, batter its strong walls, and force their resistless way in, and with Hell-flames and black fire attempt to obscure the glory of “Heaven’s purest light,” still God’s mould  being of ethereal substance, it can never be stained, and by own special virtues it will expel all baser fire and contamination. Thus, what can be left for the rebellious angels except blank despair? Revenge, therefore, is out of the question.

Belial, the next to rise after Moloch, is in every respect his antithesis. While Moloch is essentially a spirit of action, Belial is chiefly a spirit of inactivity. While Moloch has a contempt of travail and danger, Belial can hardly think of them without a tremor passing through his frame, for he is essentially slothful and sensual. While Moloch’s mind is wholly refractory and bellicose, Belial’s is sometimes speculative full of those “thoughts that wander through eternity.” Finally while Moloch is curt and plain-spoken, Belial is specious and artful. Moloch is the aggressive militarist, Belial the meek pacifist. Mammon’s speech reminds one of the pioneers and gold diggers who set out of England in the seventeenth century to distant lands and helped incidentally to fling wide the Empire of their country. His plea is the typical gold-digger’s plea; his dream is to make an El Dorado of Hell. Doubtless there must have been money-grabbers in the Long Parliament, who helped Charles I to raise his ship-money, and other obnoxious taxes. Mammon must have been drawn from one of them. There are financiers and stock-brokers today who could vie with Mammon in speculation. They are of true descent. His next argument exposes the fallacy in the hope of annihilation which Moloch had held out as a cure in their present distress. Quite pleasant- humouredly, Belial ridicules the notion, for no one, however great his then suffering may be, would ever like to be deprived of his intellectual state, with all those thoughts that wander through eternity, and wish to be swallowed up and lost in obscure extinction. Even if such an undesirable state is devoutly to be wished for, by any freak of imagination, it is doubtful whether God can give it to them, or even if He can, whether He would. For, in the first place, being immortal angels, whether God can extinguish them totally is uncertain, but, for his part, he is more than certain that he would never destroy them. When he first routed them and drove them into Hell, he consigned them to eternal suffering. Sure he will not deflect from His purpose and give them the annihilation which they so eagerly for. The third argument of Belial is a further refutation of Moloch. He had said that their sufferings were already the worst and they had nothing more to fear, if annihilation were impossible. But of, is it true that what they are going through is the worst? Let them examine their present condition. They have been permitted to rise from the lake of burning fire; they have recovered from their stupor, they have built Pandemonium, and they are now sitting in deliberate council. This, surely, is not the worst than can happen to them. They may have been worse than what they are now, if they had lain, for instance, chained to the lake of liquid fire, or, if worse tortures had been inflicted on them. That would have been the worst, and they may reasonably dread them yet. Having thus quashed his adversary’s arguments, Belial next proceeds to formulate his plan. His answers to Moloch show a true understanding of the current state of affairs, though they have all been inspired by his love of slothful ease, his passion for existence, and his cowardly fear of direr consequences. His plan too, partakes of the same characteristics of his nature. A war on Heaven can have only one of two objects-either to unseat God from His throne, or to regain their lost possessions. The first is a very remote possibility, and is never likely to happen, unless irrevocable Fate should give up its sway to fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the strife. If Heaven’s king cannot be unseated, it is vain to hope for the reconquest of their possessions; for without subduing Heaven’s king what authority can the fallen angels exercise over Him? But of, here Mammon anticipates another alternative. If they submit (some may argue) and agree to be obedient and loyal, God may publish grace and pardon them all. But of, Mammon would not entertain the idea for a moment. How can they be ever so base as to stand humbly in His presence, render implicit obedience to His commandments, and sing under compulsion songs and hymns in His praise, who has recently been their enemy, and who has lorded it over them in the fashion they are now groaning under? This is all that they can expect in Heaven, and by no amount of sophistry, can that irksome task be called delightful. Let them reflect on the magnitude of this irksomeness when they have to submit vilely to this laudation of One whom they hate all though eternity. So Mammon would not advise them to continue their vassalage in Heaven, howsoever obtained. Rather, let them seek their good in Hell itself; let them make the best use of their advantages, free and accountable to none, preferring sturdy independence to slavish yoke in Heaven. And if therein they learn by patient labour and hard endurance to create great things out of small, to convert hurtful things into useful, and turn adverse circumstances into prosperous, then their greatness would be more conspicuous. Perhaps they fear the darkness of Hell: and here Mammon’s answer to the objection is specious. Very often, he says, Heaven’s king has been founds to have obscured Himself in thick and dark clouds, from which He gathered His thunderbolts to scourge His enemies with. “As He our darkness, cannot we His light imitate when we please?” is his argument. That argument disposed of, Mammon turns to his constructive plan. In the First Book of Paradise Lost we have been told that even while in Heaven, instead of Mammon’s gaze being occupied with the vision Beatific, he had bent his looks downward admiring the golden floor. No wonder then that his thoughts now fly to the rich mineral wealth in Hell, proof of which had already been given, when Pandemonium was built. He now reminds them about the manifold riches of the place and their own mining and architectural skill. They can build an empire here, which shall be the envy of Heaven. Besides, as Belial has suggested, there is every likelihood of their being acclimatised in course of time to their surroundings. “Our temper may change into their temper.” So taking everything into consideration, it is much better to settle down in peace in Hell, and devise schemes and measures for the improvement of their lot than plot open or covert war in vain. Mammon follows next, and true to his name he is acquisitive more than aggressive. He is the type of the rapacious Imperialist, in the days when Imperialism was yet in its infancy in England. He begins by answering both Moloch and Belial; he is inclined to agree more with the latter than the former, and finally builds his future plan on Belial’s suggestion. Thus the great debate ends, and Milton carefully distinguishes between the types of statesmanship presented by Moloch, Belial, Mammon and Beelzebub. The first is militant and aggressive, the second suave and submissive, the third smug and acquisitive, while the last is resourceful and subtle. Milton must have had prototypes of them in actual life, both among the Royalists and the Puritans, and he has made admirable use of his first hand knowledge of parliamentary debates, as well as his study in classical oratory and his skill in his own University exercises in the speeches he has assigned to them. Addison’s note on this character is instructive. “Beelzebub,” he wrote, “who is reckoned the second in dignity that fell, and is, the First Book, the second that awakens out of the trance, and confers with Satan upon the situation of their affairs, maintains his rank in the Second Book as well. There is a wonderful majesty described in his rising up to speak. He acts as a kind of moderator between the two opposing parties, and proposes a third undertaking which the whole assembly gives in to. The motion he makes of detaching one of their body in search of a new world is grounded upon a project devised by Satan, and curiously proposed by him in the First Book, the project upon which the whole poem turns; as also that the prince of the fallen angels was the only proper person to give it birth, and that the next to him in dignity was the fittest to second and support it.” War, then, open, or secret, is wholly out of picture: for the Almighty is equally wise to frustrate their secret plans as He is strong to defeat their open designs. But at, neither does Belial insinuate that they shall acquiesce in their present slavish condition. He only wishes to suggest that this is much better than bringing disasters upon themselves by an open or secret war. Further there are a number of considerations which should weigh with them in agreeing with their lot. First, it is Fate (the argument of weakling) that has ordained that they should live in Hell. If they had been wise, they could have foreseen this before they broke out in open rebellion against the Almighty. It is ridiculous that those who had dared to defy Fate then, should now show fear in suffering the inevitable consequences. To abide in Hell is their doom. But of, their punishment may be reduced by their patient sufferance. This is the second consideration. In time their conduct “may much remit His anger”, and, perhaps, thus far removed, finding them to be inoffensive, and satisfied that He has punished enough, He may slacken the rage of His fury. A third consideration is that their own purer essence may either overcome their torments. Or by long endurance and custom they may get used to them, and not feel their scourge. Finally, there is the hope of what the never-ending flight of future days may bring the chance of a better life than the present which though not happy, is far from being the worst that can be endured. His counsel, therefore, is for meek acquiescence in their presence lot. Belial, the glib talker, the smooth- tongued trimmer, presents the type of conservative statesmanship, which is cultured, self sufficient, and shows a love of all the good things of life. He is the type which Shakespeare has drawn in the courtier with his parmaceti, or some scented salve or other, who meets the fiery Hotspur on the battlefield. His is the religion of ‘cultivated inaction, making its believer refuse to lend a hand at uprooting the define evils on all sides of us, and filling him with antipathy against the reforms and reformers which try to extirpate them’. Perhaps Milton has drawn the character from the many cavaliers who thronged the court of Charles I or Charles II. His speech falls into four parts. In the first he ridicules Mammon’s suggestion; in the second he answers Belial and Moloch’s pleas: in the third he makes his own proposal, and finding it generally approved, in the final part, he plans its practical operation. As for the proposition of war, there would not be any need for them to invade Heaven’s walls and force their way in for those walls are in no fear of assault or siege. Then why should they not seek some easier means of wrecking their vengeance on God? Then turning to the proposition for peace, he reminds his audience that no terms of peace have either been offered or sought. As far he can see no peace would be given to them: instead severe custody, stripes and bitter punishment only. In the same way they cannot return any honourable terms of peace themselves to Heaven; instead, enmity and hatred as they lie in their power, and schemes which would not allow their Torturer to rejoice in what He has inflicted upon His enemies. Mammon’s speech, as may be expected, wins the approval of the assembly. ‘Public opinion seems to be dangerously drifting in a direction contrary to the intention of Satan, when Beelzebub , the type of subservient politician, as responsive to the purpose of his master as badness could desire, rise clad in the aspect of impressive statesmanship to stem the tide.’ First, to stem the tide of the murmur of approval which had greeted Mammon, Beelzebub makes capital out of it by turning it into pointed ridicule. He asks the angels whether they desire to be addressed as the “off-spring of Heaven” or, merely as the “Princes of Hell”, for what should he infer from their applause of Mammon’s speech? It indicates their longing to continue in Hell and build an Empire in emulation of Heaven. A likely thing indeed, he comments sarcastically, for, he wonders whether they are not dreaming, having completely forgotten that Hell has not been intended as a place of security for them to plot against Him. No! The Almighty has intended them to dwell in it in strictest bondage as His chosen victims. Of this there can be no doubt: for whatever they may do, God will reign supreme both in Heaven and in Hell, and never allow any diminution of His authority anywhere. But at, while He rules His own angels in Heaven mildly and benevolently, He will rule them in Hell with an iron hand. Therefore no good can ever come out of their schemes of war and peace. Their last revolt has settled their fate, which they should remain out of Heaven. Having thus disposed of the arguments of Mammon, Belial and Moloch, Beelzebub introduces into the discussion a new fact, craftily held back till the progress of the debate demanded it. The assembly’s approval of Mammon’s plan clearly showed that they were for peace and no war. On this foundation of peace, and the hope of a different prosperity, Beelzebub builds his plan.

With subtle craft he reminds them of a rumour current in Heaven, when they had been its denizens, of a new place about to be created-  the happy seat of a new race called Man, who though less in splendor than the angels, would be more favoured of God. That the rumour is not unfounded is certain, for they will recollect how God promised it as His will, and confirmed it by “an oath that shook Heaven’s whole circumference.” They should now turn their thoughts to this new world and to its inhabitant. They should discover his nature, his strength and his weakness, and consider how best he may be seduced and tempted to break from his allegiance to God. Though Heaven may be guarded well, and, therefore, in-accessible, that new world may have been left to the defence of its new race. Thither they shall go, and find out means of destroying him, and driving him from his habitation, as they unavailing, they can atleast seduce him and make him break his faith with God. “This would surpass common revenge, and interrupt God’s joy in our confusion, and our joy uprise in His disturbance.”

For God may repent what he has done, and abolish His own works. This is Beelzebub’s plan, and it is for them to accept or reject it. He tactfully pauses for their response. The most interesting character in the first two books of Paradise Lost, and one who most engages our attention, is Satan. He appears as ‘a great and sublime figure, the heroic antagonist of God, the great fiend who, in spite of the hopelessness of conflict with that power “whom thunder hath made greater,” continues to fascinate us and compel our admiration.’ The technical form which Milton cast his theme required that he should present his characters on a lofty scale. Besides Satan was an Archangel, who, at the commencement of the poem, had only recently transgressed, and whose “form had not yet lost all her original brightness; he had still left in him all those supramundane virtues of a “fixed mind”, an “unconquerable will”, and a “courage never to submit or yield”. Milton was obliged to lay on these heroic qualities rather thickly in order to distinguish his antagonist from the “puny race of mankind.” Yet there haven critics who, carried away by the weight and emphasis attached to these qualities, have regarded Satan as the hero of the poem. Some have even pretended to see a certain political affinity between Satan and Milton. A more recent critic, Denis Saurat, set out to prove elaborately how Satan and Milton were personal enemies and how the poet took a keen delight in visiting acrimonious vengeance upon his foe. Nay, Milton, according to this critic, “had Satan in him and wanted to drive him out. He had felt passion, pride and sensuality. The deep pleasure he takes in his creation of Satan is the joy…peculiar to the artist… hence the strange monster Satan. Whereas inferior artists build their monsters artificially, Milton takes his, living and warm with his own life, out of himself.” But at, these criticisms hit beside the mark. Satan’s heroism may lie in his daring and his dauntlessness, in his willingness to undertake perilous risks and his readiness to go through them; but the motive behind them all is personal ambition, in the gratification of which he displays qualities which are far from heroic- a subtle and crafty mind, and a specious and hypocritical behaviour. Beelzebub had been merely the willing tool to put forth the plan: he had been content to be his Master’s Voice. The assembly, whether they recognized it as the plan of the master or not, agree to it unanimously. Beelzebub mightily pleased congratulates them on the wisdom of their choice, and commends its virtue further. It would lift them up from Hell, he continues, and place them much nearer their ancient seat of happiness, perhaps in the very vicinity of Heaven and within the circle of its golden light. Thus much conciliation for Belial and Mammon! And being in such close vicinity to Heaven, with timely excursions, they may even get access into Heaven, without hazarding a war. So much palliation for Moloch! But of, they should decide first whom they shall send on this dangerous expedition, for full of dangers it show. Their leader must be sufficiently brave to ransack the infinite the new world. Mere strength alone would not suffice, though it is highly the spies and sentries of Heaven. He would have need of all his resourcefulness. Let the assembly choose such a spirit. Needless to say that none was either proposed or volunteered. Satan alone came forward “whom now transcendent glory raised above his fellows,” and he undertook the heroic adventure. The physical sports they engaged in, whether on the plain or in the air, were like the Olympian or Pythian games of the Greeks. Some rode their fiery steeds, or engaged in chariot races, being very careful to narrow their circuit closer and closer so that they might traverse the least distance, and at the same time very cautious not to touch the stone barriers lest they should be dashed against them to pieces. A few occupied themselves in military drill and feats of war. In this they resembled the aery champions whom superstition imagined to appear in the clouds in the van of their armies, and with feats of arms cause the entire welkin to burn from either end of heaven. Another band, wild with hellish rage at their acute sufferings, tore up rocks and hills, and hurled them down in great fury, or rode the air in as whirlwind. In this they resembled the great Hercules, who returning victorious from Aechalia, was roused to the bitterest rage by his wife, and in his agony tore up the Thessalian pines, and hurled Lichas himself into the Euboic Sea. The milder and the more cultured among the angels disported themselves differently. Some among them gathered in a silent valley and turned troubadours. They sang of their heroic deeds in “notes angelical to many a harp.” Their songs were not unmixed with their complaints, that destiny have subjected them to become the slaves of Force or Chance. The subject matter of those songs was no doubt biased, but their harmony was divine. It suspended Hell, and ravished all the listening multitude. Another group sat on a retired hill, and discussed sweetly on subjects of great import and dignity, such as Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, Fixed Fate, and absolutely Foreknowledge. They initiated the chief subjects of speculation and anticipated the main trends of all secular philosophy. But of, in their attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable, they lost themselves in strange mazes of reasoning and discourse. They argued at length on the abstract doctrines of good and evil, of happiness and misery, of passion and apathy, and of glory and shame. It was all vain wisdom and false philosophy; still it had power to charm them all out of their pain and distract them from their misery. Milton is careful at this stage to point out the plan was not out of Beelzebub’s invention, for whence but from “the author of all ill”, could a plan so diabolic and so fraught with mischief for the human race issue. Porter: “Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes: it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him and disheartens him, makes him stand to and not stand to.”” The fallen angels in Hell after the departure of Satan on his heroic adventure of the discovery of the new world and the seduction of its sole inhabitant amused themselves in a variety of ways. In describing their diversions, Milton draws freely from the epic recreations of classical heroes as they are described both by Homer and Virgil. The lower sort of angels indulged in physical sports, the higher in song and poetry, the noblest of all in philosophical discourse. The adventurous were bent on exploration and discovery. As always, their doings are patterns and types of the varied activities of men. Another set of rebellious angels interested themselves in exploration. In bold and adventurous march they tried to discover whether any part of that dismal habitation was more endurable than the burning lake, or the plain of solid fire. They discovered the sources of the Styx, Acheron, Phlegethon and Cocytus, the four rivers of Hell, which poured waters into the lake of fire. They also discovered the river Lethe, which flowed far away from them, and the region it bounded , the frozen continent, to which the demand were brought periodically to undergo its icy torment. Thus, all the endeavours of the fallen angels to find some easier habitation than their present abode proved abortive. In despair, mingled with great fear, they traversed through many a dark valley and fiery mountain, ‘caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens and shades of death’. The places they passed through seemed veritable places of death. Nothing flourished in them, everything died, and nature lived there only in monstrous and uncouth and ugly shapes which were more abominable, inexpressible, and worse than the gorgons, the hydras and the chimaeras about which fables have spoken in the most terrible terms and figures. Among all the fallen angels, Satan is the supreme egoist, giving the “I” undue supremacy in his thoughts. From first to last his chief concern is himself, how best he may thrive and exalt himself. He has a lust for power, which makes him seek pre-eminence not only among the angels, but presumptuously claim parity with God. He must be great whether he is in Heaven or in Hell. Punished for his presumption in Heaven, and hurled down to Hell, he arrogates to himself the leadership of his community on the principle that it is “better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” Or, as Masson puts it, “Having a third of the Angels away with him in some dark, howling region, where he might rule over them alone, seems infinitely preferable to his puny sovereignty of an Archangel in the world of gold and emerald.” Hence, whenever he refers to his eminence, there is a noticeable pride bordering on vain-glory, which ill becomes the mouth of any genuine leaders of men. In his opening address of the conclave in Hell, for example, there is tone of self-granulation. But of, he is not content to be merely the king of Hell. Untaught by experience, he “aspires beyond thus high”. He is equally jealous in defending his position against any rival; he exaggerates the defending his position against any rival; he exaggerates the risks of the exalted state he occupies to those who have but recently tasted the bitterness of God’s wrath. Thus it is place and power that he loves most not for the benefits they may confer on others, but solely that he may be foremost. Thus did the fallen angels disport themselves; each as his nature and inclination led him. But at, their amusements were on a much more colossal scale than human words can express. Milton leaves it all to be filled in by our imagination. Milton does not leave the reader in any doubt on the matter. He introduces Satan in all the ostentation of his power. The similies by which he refers to his appearance on his throne liken him to any absolute monarch of the Orient. Later, again, when Satan interferes in the debate, volunteering his service in the perilous expedition to the new World, he is described as having been raised to transcendent glory above his fellows, and speaking with “monarchal pride”. There is a passage, indeed, in his speech, which seems to exonerate him, and present him in the light of the selfless leader of his host. But of, examined in its context, it merely proves his anxiety to secure all the glory to himself. None shall share the honours of the enterprise with him. Being their imperial monarch, it is his duty to risk himself in their behalf. He would be unworthy of his high place, if he merely content to rule them in peace; he must share the hazards of his office as he does its glory. His duty becomes greater by virtue of the higher eminence he enjoys. Thus speciously he thrusts his absolute will upon his subjects, and without giving them further opportunity to speak, he dismisses them. Milton sets this scene in Hell in direct apposition with another in heaven where God Almighty announces his foreknowledge of the Fall of Man, and proclaims that he shall be saved if one among them will “pay the rigid satisfaction, death for death.” “Which of ye,” He asks, “will be mortal to redeem Man’s mortal crime?” None volunteers, and “silence was in Heaven.” But of, the Son of God comes forward finally, and undertakes the atonement for Man. His is not the tone of self-assertion that Satan’s is, but meek and gracious. And the behavior of either at the conclusion of their speeches is a further contrast. “Thus saying, rose the Monarch (Satan), and prevented all reply; Prudent lest, from his resolution, others among the chief might offer now.” This is superciliousness excelsior, the conduct of a hypersensitive absolutism. On the other hand, “His (Christ’s) words here ended, but his meek aspect Silent yet spake, and breth’d immortal love to mortal men, above which only shone Filial obedience.” This is absolute detachment from self, perfect devotion to a public cause. The same contrast is still further emphasized in the reaction of the audience to the two speeches. “Admiration seized all Heaven”, but the crew of Satan “bend towards him with awful reverence prone, and as a god extol him equal to the Highest Heaven.” Satan need not have taken the trouble of shutting out all further discussion about the enterprise , for not one of these devils dared to oppose him; ‘they dreaded not more the adventure than his forbidding.’ They had been cowed into such meek and abject submission. Satan tyrannous hold upon his subjects in nowhere else so much emphasized. Like the tyrant that he is, yet eager to preserve the formality and appearance of a republic in his government, he imposes his will upon his subjects in a very subtle manner. He has his own tool in Beelzebub, and having summoned the assembly and desired them to deliberate on the revenge they have taken on God, he uses Beelzebub to propose his plan. Milton makes it plain that the enterprise of seducing man did not originate with Beelzebub, but with Satan; and if the latter did not propose it himself, it was only his eagerness to appear that he was guided in all his actions by the will of his subjects. All the evidence so far examined thus makes it perfectly clear that Satan was an archangel ruined, greedy for power and jealous to preserve what he had acquired, ambitious of more, ostentatious, self-willed and tyrannical. This is first impression that Milton is careful to produce at the opening of his Second Book. To confound the race Of mankind in one root, and Earth with Hell To mingle and involve, done all to spite The greater Creator. The Old Testament provides Milton with a considerable part of his narrative material in Book I. He believed that the fallen angels lost the names they had borne in heaven before their fall and had taken the names of heathen idols, by which names they were worshipped by the tribes with whom the Hebrews came into contact, like the Ammonites, the Moabites and the Philistines. These gods parade in epic style in Book I. 381-505, and two of the most important, the first and the last, Moloch and Belial, appear again as principal speakers in the great debate in Book II. The next trait that we note in him is his passion for restless activity. In his very nature, says Mason, Satan was the most active of God’s archangels: ever doing some great thing, ever thirsting for some greater thing to do. Hence “uplifted high from despair” he schemes and plans, and resolves on the expedition which Beelzebub outlines in the poem. He has discussed it thoroughly with his bosom- companion, and having decided to venture on it, in spite of its dangers, he orders the building of Pandemonium, summons all the angel orders into it, and sits in council over them. Eager to carry out the plan himself, he first makes Beelzebub stress on the nature of the perils, then he himself proceeds to enlarge on them, and thus succeeds in getting himself approved as the prosperous spirit to venture on it. And no sooner does he dissolve the council, than he puts on swiftest wings, and he is gone. But of, all his activity is vindictive. It is to work out malice on God. His mission is to destroy what God has brought into being. He “represents cosmical negativity incarnate”. Hence he promises Sin and Death to glut their maw immeasurably by seducing the race of mankind, and to Chaos, the Anarch, he holds out the hope of reducing Earth “to her original darkness and your sway, and once more erect the standard there of ancient Night.” His is a destructive genius, maliciously bent on ruining God’s fair creation, merely to gratify his spite. “Yours be the advantage all, mine the revenge!” expresses with force of an epigram this trait of his character. Malice prepense against the Almighty leads him to be unscrupulous in this means and methods. Milton has made him propound the grand principle of his existence in Book-I..but he had reaped bitterly the fruits of an open revolt; therefore, in this book, he plans “covet guile”, and to achieve this end he studiously cultivates the arts of hypocrisy in overcoming all intermediate obstacles. Disdainful as he is of rout whose ruin he has brought about, he flatters and cajoles them into approving him for their leader in the enterprise. Despising as he does their weaker intelligence and their love of ease, he extols the harmony they have achieved amongst themselves, and bids them be merry the while he is absent from Hell. While these qualities are scarcely worthy of sympathy yet there are certain other traits in him which evoke our spontaneous admiration. They are his intrepidity, on the negative side, and his daring, on the positive. The deep, illimitable Abyss, the perils of which he speaks so assuredly about to his followers , does not daunt him. With rare courage and impetuous speed, he sets out alone into the unknown. Never once does he lose heart as he battles his way through the fierce impact of the atoms on him and around him. Milton enhances the grandeur of the struggle by the similies he employs on the occasion. Equally dauntless and undismayed is Satan in the presence of that grisly terror, Death. He could not understand what the Shape was as it came striding heavily and menacingly towards him. Confronted by Sin and Death, when he realises that his swaggwer may lead him to abandon his addresses her as ‘dear daughter’ and him as ‘fair son’,-the very Shapes, whom he has a moment ago despised and called out in vilest terms. Perhaps it is the memory of this meeting that makes him more courteous in his address of the Anarch, Chaos. Time is fleeting; he is all agog top reach the Material Universe. He has been caught in the welter of the warring elements and he is ignorant how farther he is yet to travel. Not to waste words, then, he is brief and courteous with the ruler of the Abyss. His apprenticeship to hypocrisy, here stands him in good stead later when he reaches the universe of man. His degradation has only commenced; it is to be completed later. He hurled words of high disdain on his head, and when he was answered too insolently, “incensed with indignation”, he burned like a comet that fires the length of Ophiuchus huge in the Arctic sky. Intrepid courage, such as this, is bound to win admiration for it-self. The whole episode deserves the eulogy that Sir Walter Raleigh has expended on it. But of, Satan is of absorbing interest not by virtue of his matchless courage alone. His inordinate ambition, his self-aggrandisement, his love of ostentation, his very power for evil and all that is embraced by that term-all these, too, have been rendered attractive by the poetic genius of Milton. Yet the secret of his charm is only in part due to his poetic timbre; the other part of it lies in the reader’s own psychological reaction to his character. All the world loves an exhibition of power, whatever be its nature. The strong whether virtuous or wicked, have the power to attract and to charm. Satan is the very embodiment of a volcanic energy which sweeps everything before it. He is “the image and type of those great and selfish conquerors whose pride it was to draw the admiring world after them; and whom Milton detested more than any other man.” The Bible provides Milton with something more than narrative material; his illustrative material, the content of his epic similies and other comparisons, is often taken from the scriptures. For example, when the speaks of the vast numbers of fallen angels, he compares them to the army with which Pharaoh pursued the Israelities to the shores of the Red Sea (I. 306-13), a passage which also illustrates Milton’s relish for the sound values is shown by his choice of the alternative form ‘Alcides’ for ‘Hercules’ ‘Herakles’.

There are, however, some differences in Milton’s use of his two main bodies of source material, slight though these are in comparison to the similarities. Milton was deeply learned in both, but whereas Old Testament material predominates in Book I in the much longer list of heathen idols and the greater number of scriptural authority. Milton relies almost exclusively on classical references even in his epic similes.

This must therefore be our conclusion. In Books I and II of Paradise Lost, Milton makes extensive and almost equal use of biblical and classical references reinforce or supplement each other in both narrative and illustration, and nowhere in this work is the conflict to be found between the two which unhappily occurs elsewhere, though Milton leaves us in no doubt that for him it is the bible which has the advantage of being divinely inspired. To Milton and many of his contemporaries, using the Bible as a literary source was a matter of grave concern: could the divinely inspired word of God be altered to the slightest extent in the interest of art? Milton decided that it could, although he considered the Bible, individually interpreted, to be far greater authority than any organized Church. Certainly, he considered the Old Testament to be much superior to the literature of ancient Greece, not only in its content, but also in its form: this he states clearly both in the Reason of Church Government (Bohn, Vol. 2, p 479) and in Paradise Regained IV. 331-50. in Paradise Lost, I and II, however, there is no direct conflict between these two major sources of literary inspiration, the biblical and classical. Thus Milton uses his biblical and classical material for two identical purposes: the fallen angels become both the heathen idols of the Old Testament and the pagan deities of classical mythology; and the resounding proper names of Milton’s epic similies are taken mainly from these two sources-when he wants size, he thinks of Levathian or these two sources- when he wants size, he thinks of Levathian or Briareus and Typhon, when quantity, Pharaoh’s armies, the leaves of Vallambrosa, or the barbarian hordes invading the Roman Empire. Both sources, too, can be drawn on for discussion of themes less obvious than the principle ones: the New Testament for the nature of the Holy Spirit whom Milton invokes in I.17; the colours of classical rhetoric for the variations in tone in the speeches of Book II, and Latinised syntax and vocabulary of the whole work. Urania, the mighty mother, was not by the side of Adonais when he died. She was in a sleep-like trance of extreme joy in her Paradise, listening to the melodious poetry of Adonais sung by one of her attending Echoes. Adonais was the youngest of the sons of Urania. He was a tender, lovely youth-her last hope; he was cut off just when he was showing signs of doing something much greater than he did. Adonais, however will not wake any more. In the place where his dead body lies-not yet covered under earth-the shadow of Death seems to spread itself. Corruption wants to make her way into the grave, but dare not touch the dead body but of pity till the darkness of the grave closes over it. Another luminious Dream kissed his cold mouth, the mouth from which she used to draw her strength. The Dream instead of drawing life from his lips now died because of contact with it, only lightning up the body for a moment. England wailed for Adonais more woefully than the nightingale mourning her dead mate and the eagle crying piteously over her empty nest. May the unknown critic who caused the death of Adonais suffer the curse inflicted on Cain! Urania rose like an autumnal night following a windy autumnal day. Wrapped in sorrow and fear, she made her way to the side of the dead Adonais. Spring season has become so wild with grief that it sheds all its buds. Since Adonais was gone, spring did not care to wake up Nature’s beauty. Narcissus, Hyacinth and other flowers stood pale and withered for grief. Kubla Khan cannot be dismissed as an incoherent opium dream (i.e. as mere incoherence). It is a meaningful poem. In the second part the poet speaks in his own person. He has a vision of an Abyssinian maid playing on her dulcimer and singing. Of Mount Abora. Mount Abora is Mount Amara and Mount Amara is a fabled paradise. “So the Abyssinian maid is singing”, as Graham Hough says, “of a paradiseal landscape very much like that of the opening lines- singing in fact of the same cluster of ideas under a different name and guise.” If the poet can relieve her song in his imagination, he himself can build the magic pleasure-dome as Kubla Khan has done. Thus in the second part of the poet makes us an attempt to realize the dream-to give it a concrete form. The second part does not hang independently of the first part. Both the parts are related, and they complement each other. J.B. Beer rightly says, “certain it is difficult to see how the poem could be carried on after the last stanza: the argument is there brought to an end with overwhelming finality.” The poem as it stands does present a meaning consistent both with itself and with that we know of Coleridge’s mind. Moreover, the images of the poem are so tightly drawn together and so closely interlocked that any addition will upset the balance. From the history of the composition of Kubla Khan it is obvious that the poem was left unfinished. Though the poem is a fragment, we hardly feel it is so. “We have a satisfying sense of completeness of the wheel having come full circle, of the magic of words and images having cast their plenary spell upon us. It is a dream conforming to the laws of dream-logic and carried to its full climax of suggestiveness; as much of a rounded and perfect whole as a vision is a capable of being.”(Dr. S.K. Banerjee & A.D. Mukherji). O’er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death.

Kubla Khan is a succession of images dressed in the colours of the rainbow and evocative of a world of mystery and enchantment. The images Coleridge uses in the poem are of opposing nature. The images of light and darkness, sunny dome and sunless sea or caves of ice. Paradise garden and hints of hell succeed one after another. The dome is the image of pleasure and the river that of life. The deep romantic chasm is the image of fear and mystery and the mighty fountain that of inexhaustible energy, now falling, now rising, but persisting ever. Then we have the homely images of ‘rebounding hail’ and ‘thresher’s flail’ both of which suggest the vigour of life. The image of ‘mazy motion’ suggests the spiritual complexities of life. The caverns measureless to man is the image that suggests the awesome mystery of human life, and the caves of ice finanal annihilation. To sum up, Kubla Khan is not mere incoherence or a fragment. In the second part the nature of imagery changes. The images are all related to poetic creation and inspiration¸ and they wear the hazy, remote semblance of symbolism. The damsel with a dulcimer is symbolical of poetic Muse who catches in her istument and reduces to order and harmony elemental sounds in their native dissonance and confusing medley. ‘Flashing eyes’ and ‘floating hair’ are the images of poetic frenzy, and ‘honey dew’ and ‘the milk of Paradise’ those of poetic inspiration. The images are mostly sensuous. The dome is not only an image of pleasure, but also an emblem of fulfillment and satisfaction. In the first part of the poem it is mentioned three times, as ‘a stately pleasure dome’ in line 2, ‘the dome of pleasure ‘in line 31 and “A sunny pleasure-dome’ in line 36. Each time the word ‘pleasure’ occurs with it. So too, the word ‘river’ is used three times in the first part and each time, without fail, it is “the sacred river.” The centre of the landscape in the first pat is the point at which the dome and the river join to the pleasure of our eyes..Here, without possibility of doubt, the poem presents the conjunction of pleasure and sacredness. The poem is divided into two parts. The first part (II.1-36) describes the magnificient pleasure-place which Kubla Khan orders to be built in Xanadu, place gifted with a paradisal landscape and full of bright gardens with meandering streams and blossoming incense-bearing trees, very ancient forests and spots overgrown with green mass of vegetation. There is also a hill with a deep mysterious chasm running down its slope. From this chasm water gushes out with such a great speed that huge pieces of rocks are scattered on all sides. It was a savage place, as holy and enchanted as the one frequented by a woman seduced and then deserted by a demon in human form. The sacred river Alph which is formed of the water bursting out of this chasm, winds five miles across the whole landscape and at last falls to a lifeless ocean with roaring sound. In the midst of the tumult of the river Kubla Khan can hear from far the voices of his ancestors foretelling war.

“Who was the sire of an immortal strain,

Blind, old, and lonely, when his country’s pride the priest, the slave, and the liberticide, Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite Of lust and blood. He went, unterrified, Into the gulf of death’ but his clear spirit Yet reigns o’er earth, the third among the sons of light. “ The river runs meandering in a mazy motion. The maze is, of course, a well-known figure suggesting uncertain and blind progress and also stands for the spiritual complexities of human life. After five miles of mazy progress the river reaches the ‘caverns measureless to man’. The ‘caverns measureless to man’ might suggest infinity and nothingness. The river sinks, with first more tumult (i.e., death-agony) , to ‘lifeless ocean’ which stands for eternal nothingness, death. The ‘ancestral voices’ suggest that dark compulsion that binds the race to its habitual conflicts. The ‘mingled measure’ suggests the blend and marriage of fundamental oppositions: life and death or creation and destruction. The ‘caves of ice’ may hint at the cool cavernous depths in the unconscious mind. Symbolism is the chief criterion of the poetic craftsmanship of Kubla Khan. G.Wilson Knight in his illuminating article Coleridge’s Divine Comedy has analysed the symbolism of the poem -

Both on a height, the sacred  river descends from a ‘ deep romantic  chasm’, a place ‘savage’, ‘holy’ and ‘enchanted’, associated with both a ‘waning moon’ and a ‘woman wailing for her demon lover’. All these taken together might have suggestive the mystic glamour of sex.

Kubla Khan reflects the intense subterranean energy of a mind which cannot rest in its endeavour to apprehend all experience and to reduce it one harmony. “It will always remain”, as J.B. Beer says, “possible to enjoy it as a stream of images and ignore the opportunity which it affords of exploring the intricacies of Coleridge’s visionary world.” That the poem is a whole, and not a fragment is borne out by the fact that the images are so tightly drawn together and so closely interlocked that any addition will upset the balance. ‘The ceaseless turmoil’ the earth-mother breathing in ‘fast thick pants, the fountain ‘forced’ out with ‘half –intermitted burst’, the fragments rebounding like hail, ‘the chaffy grain beneath the flail’, the ‘dancing rocks’-suggest the dynamic imaginary of birth and creation. The pleasure-dome dominates. But of, its setting is carefully drawn and very important. There is a ‘sacred’ river that runs into ‘cavern measureless to man’ and a ‘sunless sea’. That is, the river into an infinity of death. The area through which it flows has gardens, rills, ‘incense-bearing’ trees, ancient forests. This is not unlike Dante’s earthly paradise. The river here is a symbol of life. Humphry House too has explained its symbolic significance. The bounding energy of its source makes the fertility of the plain possible: it is the sacred given condition of human life. The river, observes Humphry, is an image of the non-human, holy, given condition. It is an imaginative statement of the abundant life in the universe, which begins and ends in a mystery touched with dread, but it is a statement of this life as the ground of ideal human activity. Paradise Lost is an epic; it belongs to that species of poetic composition which is described as “objective”, i.e. in which the poet least intrudes himself, and is content to tell the story of other persons. There is thus no room for the expression of the personality of the poet; yet the greatness of Paradise Lost is due to its intense subjectivity, It is the superb utterance of a soul centered itself, which draws upon its own rich resources in the construction and perfection of as complete a work of art, and as noble as Nature Dame itself. An examination of the circumstances of the composition of the poem will lead to this conclusion. Milton was ambitious from youth of making his country as renowned as Greece and Rome by the production of some notable literary monument. He dedicated himself to this self-appointed notable literary monument. He dedicated himself to this self- appointed task with all the fervor of a Nazarite of ancient Judea: and, deliberately, he set out to prepare himself for it with religious zeal. He believed that his work must be divinely inspired and should show the proper fruits of study. Like the Hebrew prophets of old, he led a life of abstemious virtue, even denying himself simple luxuries, and incessantly praying to the Eternal Spirit to touch and purify his lips with the hallowed fire of “all utterance and Knowledge.” With all the assiduity of Petrarch or of Goethe he devoted himself to self-preparation. “In wearisome labour and studious watchings,” he confesses, “I have tried out almost a whole youth.” “Labour and intense study,” he took to be his portion in life. He would know, not all, but “what was of use to know”, and form himself by assiduous culture. By 1642 he had found completed his equipment, and there remained for him the choice of the theme and form. Even these were settled by 1658, although he took a long time deliberating about them. Meanwhile events were moving fast around him in the political sphere, of the wheels of which he himself was a cog. He had now become totally blind, and was thrown more upon his own resources. Always independent of others, he now began to live more intensely within himself. His isolation was further aggravated with the Restoration. He was surrounded by enemies, and his very existence was in jeopardy. Though circumstances eased a little, the blind genius could not rid himself of the conviction of his danger. His only comfort at the time was the work for which he had been deliberately preparing himself; and prevented from expressing his indignation openly, he let loose his fury in the fable he was composing. The very theme of his epic- a revolt- offered a parallel to the conditions of his existence. To him civil war in Heaven was more than the Civil War he had himself gone through. It symbolized the tragedy of his own situation with peculiar force, and he brought to bear all learning he had painfully accumulated, all the energy, fire and fury of his own character on the composition of this great epic. Thus we have the poet living and breathing in ever line of what he has written, not only in those purely personal utterances with which he prefaces parts of the poem, but also in the very framework and body, and the characters and sentiments of the epic. The theme of Paradise Lost is founded upon the meager account of the creation of Paradise, and the fall of man as narrated in the Book of Genesis. Milton had built the mighty edifice of his epic upon this slender foundation. The literalism which his particular brand of Christianity fostered in him never allowed him to depart from this account, but he built round it such a wealth of detail from the learning with which he had stored his mind, that it astonishes us. This scaffolding, however, is no superfluity; it forms an integral part of the poem. The war in Heaven, the defeat of Satan and his crew, their rout through Chaos, are details which have been added to the account in Genesis; Milton owed the knowledge of them to several sources, Hebraic, Greek, Latin and Italian. But at, they seem to be quite necessary for the central theme, the temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden. Besides, Milton was faced with the difficulty of rendering the superhuman probable and credible; he had to use the ordinary language of human speech in describing supramundane activities of his angels and devils against the background of the mighty deed of the allusions. All this wealth of learning, which forms so essential, is a part of the poem shows what a scholar Milton was. But of, his learning is not mere pedantry. It has been sublimated by the fervor of his intellect, has lived in the habitual companionship of the great and the wise of past time. His delight was to sport in the wide regions of possibility; reality was a scene too narrow for his mind. He sent his faculties out upon discovery, into worlds where only imagination can travel, and delighted to form new modes of existence, and furnish sentiment and action to superior beings, to trace the counsels of Hell, or accompany the choirs of Heaven. The pleasure-dome as described in the poem may be fancied as the pleasure of a sexual union in which birth and death are the great contesting partners, with human existence as the life-stream, the blood-stream, of a mighty coition. Milton’s imagination possessed the power of visualizing vividly vast spaces and his art enabled him to present what it saw in pregnant and beautiful form. Such is the description of the frozen continent beyond the river Lethe in Hell or, of the empyreal Heaven seen the far distant verge of Chaos, extending wide, or finally of the pendent world, hanging by a golden chain. The characteristic of these pictures is that they are all clearly outlined, and are made vivid through the use of the metaphor of luminiosness. But of, they are all pictures of landscape, and they suggest either charm or hideousness. Rarely are there such clear descriptions of individuals. There is no glamour in his sketch either of the divinity or of his angels. But in, in suggesting pictures of monstrosities, like Sin and death, his imagination is most active. That Light whose smile kindles the Universe, That Beauty in which all things work and move, That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love Which through the web of being blindly wove By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. The vividness of the imagination has in Milton’s case something to do with his blindness. The clearness with which Milton divides space into Heaven, Chaos, Hell and the Material Universe, and the frequency with which the imagery of fluency occurs in the poem reveal, if there were no external evidence even, that the poet must have been blind when he composed his great work. Milton had become totally blind by 1652. A few years later his vision was totally dark. “In what”, asks Masson, “would the imaginations of things physical of such a person consist? Would they not consist in carving this medium into zones, divisions , and shapes, in painting phantasmagorias, on it or in it, in summoning up within it or projecting into it combinations of such recollections of the once visible world as remained strongest and dearest in the memory? But are there not certain classes of images, certain kinds of visual recollection that would be easier in such a state of blindness than others? The recollections of minute objects may grow dimmer and dimmer, but there would be a compensation in the superior vividness with which certain other sensations of sight, and in particular all luminous effects, all contrasts of light and darkness are remembered.” “Thou wert the morning star among the living Ere thy fair light had fled- Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving New splendor to the dead.” – Plato. The subject of the Second Book is the debate in Hell, the amusements of the devils, the episode of Sin and Death, Satan’s journey through Chaos and his approach to the New World. It shows vastness and Chaos and his approach to the New World. It shows vastness and grandeur of conception beyond the reach of ordinary human fancy. The ability to endow such mighty characters as Moloch, Belial, Mammon, Beelzebub and Satan with sentiments proper to their superhuman nature, the originality to invent games and pastimes for the devils in Hell, the capacity to create such formidable Shapes as Sin and Death, and the power to fill the void illimitable with jarring atoms- these necessarily reveal the active and fervid imagination of the poet. In the words of Samuel Johnson, Milton had accustomed his imagination to unrestrained indulgence, and his conceptions therefore were extensive. The characteristic quality of typed poem was sublimity. But at, it is in his delineation of Satan that Milton has revealed himself most. He found Satan’s situation as a political rebel corresponding with his own, and in the absence of any source from which he could draw his lineaments he endowed him with characteristics which were his own and those of the party to which he belonged. Not that he was in sympathy with the character, as some critics of the poet have argued- Milton could never be in sympathy with a rebel against God; but intuitively, and, as Denis Saurat has expressed it, in revene on himself, in his sense of isolation, in his lofty disdain o his crew. The pride and indomitable courage of the revolted archangel rekindled the emotion of the interest hours of his own life. Satan’s reserved and self-contained nature, brooding over his own ideas, not easily admitting into his mind of ideas, of others- these were also the characteristics of Milton’s nature. Milton felt with Satan that he had fallen upon evil days, and that he was compassed round with dangers and solitude. He had the same “indurated egoism “as the fallen archangel, and he was as unrepentant in his obstinacy as the other. Like Satan again, he was fond of exploring the unknown on the wings of his imagination, and as daring in his flights; and like Satan Milton had a contempt for the people-“a herd confus’d , a miscellaneous rabble, who extol things vulgar.” Milton has thus projected himself most into the character of Satan, especially in the first two books, so that we can draw a clear sketch of the character of the poet from merely studying him. The words of Lord Tennyson has fixed for all time the characteristic achievement of Milton. His forte lay in lifting a metre which had become vulgar and debased by ling usage on the stage to the heights of pure eloquence and harmony. He was helped in it by his long musical training. Music conditioned all his youth. His father taught him to sing tunably and to play upon the organ. He returned to it for solace in his blind old age. It is with the music of this instrument that our thoughts instinctively associate him. Paradise Lost then though epic and objective, is a poem into which Milton has put most to himself, his own pride and temperament. He so constantly returns to himself in the poem that he limits its objective value, but this very self-centeredness imparts to it a continuous emotion and eloquence and lyrical ardour. Milton’s absorbent personality is the central force of the poem.

“The redemption after all”, said Quiller- Couch, ‘ and  the last high vindication of this most magnificient poem are not to be sought in its vast conception or in its framing, grand but imperfect as Titanic work always has been and ever will be. To find them you must lean your ear closely to its angelic language, to its cadenced music. Once grant that we have risen-as Milton  commends us to rise above humankind and the clogging of human passion,- where will you find, but  in Paradise Lost, language  fit for seraphs, speaking in the quiet of dawn in sentry before the gates of Heaven? And the secret of it? I believe the grand secret to be very simple. I believe you may convince yourself where it lies by watching the hands of any good organist as he plays.”

It lies in the movement of the verse “the exquisitely modulated slide.” Milton builds his “lofty rhyme”, no doubt, upon the iambic decasyllabled blank verse line already popular on the stage, but his unit is not so much the line as the ‘period’ or the paragraph. There is considerable movement within the paragraph and the line to suggest the flute notes and the full swell of the pipes, which form so essential a feature of organ-music. The movement or rhythm rises from the clear flute-note at the beginning, to a grand swelling burst, or diapason open and thundering in the middle, till it ends in a crush or shiver. The best way to realise all this is to read a ‘period’ aloud, avoiding any temptation to chant it, and paying special heed to the last line. Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst As it has ever done, with change and motion, From the great morning of the world when first God dawned on Chaos; in its stream immersed, The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light; All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst; Diffuse themselves; and spend in love's delight The beauty and the joy of their renewed might. Milton achieves this movement by making free and bold use of all the variations practiced before his time both within the line and the ‘period’. That which imparts fluidity to the verse within the ‘period’ is the skilful use he makes of the ‘caesura’, or the break in the middle of a metrical foot, rarely are the lines end-stopped, i.e, rarely does the sense stop with the end of the line, but it runs on from line to line, and when pauses are necessary, they are introduced within the line itself, not at the end of it. With some poets, and even with Shakespeare, these pauses in the intermediate parts of a ‘period’ occur regularly at the end of the second or the third foot in the line, but Milton observes no such rule. Skillfully he adjusts them, so that if one line the break occurs at the end of the second foot, in the next it may occur at the end of the first, third , or the fourth foot, and so forth with the lines that follow. Nay, he delights in breaking up the foot itself, so that the pauses occur at the end of the first, or third, or fifth, or the seventh, or the ninth syllable in consecutive lines. These breaks or pauses impart the necessary volumes to the utterance. “It is because the sense is suspended through line after line, and because Milton takes pain to avoid coincidence of the rhetorical pauses with the line-end that we have the continuity of rhythm which is so characteristic a feature of his blank verse.” Of such syntactical peculiarities the grammarian will note the inversion of the natural order of words and phrases, especially the placing of a word between two others which depend upon it, or on which it depends, such as a noun between two adjectives, or a verb between two nouns; the omission of words not necessary to the sense; parenthesis and apposition; the absolute clauses, etc. ‘In his later poetry’ wrote Raleigh, ‘there are no gliding connectives; no polysyllabic conjunctive clauses, which fill the mouth while the brain prepares itself for the next word of value; no otiose epithets , and very few that court neglect by their familiarity. His poetry is like the eloquence of the Lord Chancellor Bacon, as described by Ben Jonson: - “No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightly, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss.” ‘In effect he attains, therefore, ‘a carefully jeweled mosaic, ‘and melodious style. With the same freedom, and to achieve the same artistic and melodious effects, Milton introduces variations within the blank verse line. These variations are of two types. The ordinary line of blank verse used by Milton has ten syllables, with the stress regularly falling on the even number of syllables. This type of line is known as the iambic decasyllabled line. In the first place, he drops one or other of these stresses, or adds a syllable to the foot, and then the pace is quickened; the effect is one of ease and lightness. In the second place, he doubles the stress in the foot, or displaces it making the stress fall on the odd syllable, not on the even, and the pace is retarded; the effect, then, is one of strength and emphasis. Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain; Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale Heaven, and could nourish in the sun's domain Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain, Soaring and screaming round her empty nest, As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast, And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest! Thus Milton avoids the monotony of the regular decasyllabic blank verse by these variations in stress. These impart greater rhythm to the line, and when line upon line follows in this fluid manner, with the pauses so adjusted as rarely to fall at the end of the line, the effect on the ear is of the ‘pealing organ.” Go thou to Rome,-at once the Paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness; And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress The bones of Desolation's nakedness Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead Thy footsteps to a slope of green access Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread; But of, in his choice of words, Milton kept not only the rhythmical necessity in view, he was also careful about its place in order of thought. He never sacrificed the one to the other. His triumph consists in the undisturbed precision of his thought throughout, and despite the complex demands of the rhythm. Each word, like a stone in a cathedral arch, has its place and duty, each seems chosen as if for no purpose other than to advance his meaning, to bear its portion of the weight of a vast structure, yet each, viewed from the other side, seems only chosen to play its part in the musical scheme. The pattern of the thought brooks no interference from that of the rhythm, nor that of the rhythm from the pattern of the thought. Milton was greatly aided in adjusting his musical stresses by the very variety of words in the language he used. English has many powerful monosyllabic words, both extended and abrupt (like strength and rang), which check the run of the line as by a curb. It has monosyllables of another kind (words like mourn and far) on which the voice lingers more gently and which it prolongs. It has polysyllables that carry on the breath and the sense together. It possesses also in its numerous enclitics, its idioms compounded or muted half-pronounced sounds that are hardly adverbs or prepositions, but rather small servants to the main words, an inexhaustible source for filling the crevices of the metre. English has within itself material for a multiple effect as great as any that language can proclaim. And yet with this language, as with any other, only the masters of the first rank can achieve that consistent and living variety in unity for which the universe is our model. (H. Belloc) Milton was thus very careful in the choice of his words, and where the Saxon word was unsuited he used the Latin derivative. These words of Latin origin were already familiar in the language, but with vague connotations. But of, whenever Milton used them, he used them precisely, in their original signification. Thus are his usages of “afflict” in the sense of “crush” (L.86) , “globe” in the sense of “compact body”, (L.52), “intend” in the sense of “attend to”, (L.456), “laboring” in the sense of “eclipsed”,(L.665) etc. sometimes, as in “horrent” (bristling) and “torrent” (rushing) Milton was the first to introduce them. But of, the proportion of these words to the Saxon element in his diction is very little. In using these words of Latin derivation, Milton made them yield both their original significance and the more familiar but vaguer sense which they had acquired in English air. Thus is the use of “afflict” or “intend” cited above, also “incensed” as descriptive of Satan’s appearance. Milton carried this practice even into the Saxon element of language. Thus the word “uncouth” is used in the double-barrelled sense of “unknown” and “horrible”, in the line “his uncouth way.” Another means which he adopts to make his words both melodious and logical is to use one part of speech for another, such as a verb for the noun, as ‘consult’ for ‘consultation’, the adjectival form for the adverb or the noun, as ‘horrible in ‘grinned horrible’, for ‘horribly’; ‘obscure’ in ‘palpable obscure’ for ‘obscurity’: ‘abrupt’ in ‘the vast abrupt’ for ‘abruptness.’ And so, “in the first place, the very physical scheme and conception of the poem as a whole seems a kind of revenge against blindness. It is a compulsion of the very conditions of blindness to aid in the formation of a visual phantasmagory of transcendent vastness and yet perfect exactness. That roof of a boundless Empyrean above all, beaming with indwelling light; that Chaos underneath this, of immeasurable opaque blackness; hung in this blackness by a touch from the Empyrean, the created Universe, conceived as a sphere of soft blue ether brilliant with luminaries; separated thence by an intervening belt of Chaos, and marked as a kind of Antarctic zone of universal space, a lurid or dull-red Hell: in all this we have the poet marking districts to remain in their native opaque, rescuing others into various contrasts of light. In the filling-up, in the imagination of what goes on within any one of the districts into which space is marked out, or by way of the intercourse of districts with one another, we may trace the same influence. Much of the action and incident consists of the congregation of angelic beings in bands beyond the Universe of Men, or in their motions singly towards the Universe, descrying it from afar, or in their wingings to and fro within the Universe from luminary to luminary. Now in all these portions of the poem the mere contrasts of darkness with light goes very far. When Satan, already half-way through Chaos in his quest of the New Universe, ceases his temporary halt at the pavilion of Night, and, having received direction there, rises with fresh alacrity for his further ascent, the recommencement of his motion is described in the lines that he sprang upward ‘like a pyramid of fire’. Thus we see the fond familiarity of the blind poet with the element of light in contrast with darkness, and an endless inventiveness of mode, degree, and circumstance in his fancies of the element. In Paradise Lost brilliance is to a considerable extent, Milton’s favourite synonym for beauty.” No more heart-breaking effect of weariness and eternity of effort could be produced in a single line: ‘the slight stress and pause needed after each word to render the full meaning produced, when the words are short as well as emphatic , a line of terrific weight and impact.’ It is the same need for melody that is responsible for his collocation of words (usually monosyllables) as well as names. The line, for example, “o’er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare”, is suggestive of the troublesome passage of Satan, while describing the roughness of the road taken by him. Similar is his description of the dolorous march of the fallen angels. In the arrangement and disposition of these picked words in the sentence Milton’s classical and scholarship aided him in achieving melodious effects. It is not true to say that he deliberately set out to alter the genius of English by imposing on it an alien syntax: for, at the time he was writing, English literary composition whether in verse or prose, was in a state of flux; it had not released itself from the bondage to an alien construction imposed on it since the Renaissance. Miton’s own classical beat of mind roamed at will in the peccadilloes of foreign idioms and syntax, and when they suited his own objective of melody, he used them with the sue hand of matter. Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; Oh! raise us up, return to us again; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Such also are the conjunctions of place-names, like Ternate and Tidore, Damiata and Mount Caius, Calabria and Trinacrion, Barca and Cyrene. Milton was the first to make poetic use of place-names. They are all taken from ancient history and geography, as well as more recent travel-books. Milton made a study of them with the help of maps. But at, even they seem to him at times too familiar, too little elevated and remote to furnish a resting-place for a song that intended “no middle flight”. He therefore transforms his proper names, such as Hercules into Alcides, both to make them more melodious, and to make them familiar to the ear. ‘Milton’s use of proper names is a measure of his poetic genius.’ It is his most characteristic gift to English letters. The sonnet was written during the same visit to London as inspired written in London, September, 1802 (“O Friend: I know not”) and probably also The world is too much with us. It was published in 1807. Wordsworth invokes Milton as the representative in 1807. Wordsworth invokes Milton as the representative of the lofty and austere ideals of conduct cherished by the noblest leaders of the Puritan party. The breath whose might I have invoked in song Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given; The massy earth and sphered skies are riven! I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. But of, Milton’s purpose in thus exercising great care both in the choice of his diction and his use of an alien syntax, is not merely harmonic. It is to produce the necessary suggestion of sublimity to suit the lofty nature of his theme. His preference of the less familiar Latin derivative to the Saxon word, his more frequent use of a foreign syntax, and his deliberate attempt at a condensed style remove his style from the converse of daily speech and impart to it a certain stateliness and dignity, which may be truly called sublime. Milton surprisingly able to entrance this effect by his descriptions. The figures of speech that Milton employs are to the same end: they serve either to enhance the melody or to add to the sublimity. Of the former type is his use of onomatopoeia, the sound being adjusted to the sense. The most famous example in the poem is the description of the opening of Hell-gates. Descriptions are generally of a concrete nature, but it would be ludicrous to bring the realms of Heaven and Chaos within the concrete and tangible sphere of reality. Milton by a judicious conjunction of concrete and abstract terms is able to suggest just that air of vagueness and substantiality, of unreality and reality, with which we usually associate these objects. He uses abstract terms magnificiently, but almost always with a reference to concrete realities, not as the names of separate entities. By the substitution of abstract nouns for concrete he achieves a wonderful effect of majesty. He doesnot name, for instance, the particular form of wind instrument that the heralds blew in Hell: - “Four speedy cherubim put to their mouths the sounding alchemy.” He avoids defining his creatures by names that lend themselves to definite picture: of Death he says- “So spake the grisly Terror.” The same vagueness is habitually studied by Milton in such phrases as “the vast abrupt”, “the palpable obscure”, “the void immense”, “the wasteful deep”, where, by the use of an adjective in place of a substantive the danger of a definite and inadequate conception is avoided. Milton therefore describes the concrete, the specific, the individual, using general and abstract terms for the sake of the dignity and scope that they lend. While bringing out the defects of the people of the time of Wordsworth, the sonnet throws light on the essential features of the character of Milton also. The poet deals more with Milton the man than Milton the poet. Milton was an ardent fighter for freedom in all spheres. He insisted on a high standard of purity in all walks of life. Not content with preaching a high standard, he lived a life of purity. Hence, Wordsworth is perfectly right when he remarks that his soul was like a star that dwelt apart. Further, though he played a part in high circles in the course of the Civil War between the Parliament and King Charles I, he was essentially humble and did not consider and duty too low for him. This is the virtue that is admired most by Wordsworth. Hence his conclusion that there was no man better fitted for the task of raising the selfish people of the nineteenth century and giving them manners, freedom, virtue, and power , than Milton. Milton is able to suggest his effects by the frequent use of the consonant ‘r’. He is said to have rolled his ‘r’s so as to give a sound much like a dog’s snarl. The notion of Death’s relentless disregard of persons is well brought out by the ‘r’s employed in the description of Death: “Death grinned horribly a ghastly smile”. According to Verity, shuddering is suggesting by the ‘r’s in “the parching air burns fore.” The second feature of the Miltonic simile is that it is homologous, i.e., there is perfect correspondence between each detail of the object and what is compared with. ‘Even when Milton digresses in his similes he doesnot do so, as Homer and other poets do, for the sole reason of drawing a diverting picture. There is always some relevant suggestion to be found if one thinks of all the associations. It is, then, in the completeness of its correspondence with the object that Miltonic simile is most unique and best demonstrates the control which he exercised over his artistic imagination.’ Another effect of the similes used by Milton is that they supply the “human interest”, the want of which is “always felt”-as by Jonson. Besides they bear testimony to the learning which he made the servant of his imagination. On the whole, they seem ‘to illustrate for us the saying of Longinus that “the sublime is a certain excellence and perfection of language.” Here, one might almost say, we may make acquaintance with the whole art of poetry, here is a liberal education for those who seek it. Of the figures that aid sublimity chief mention must be made of personification. It is a figure difficult to handle, and generally fails in effect through falling into one of two extremes. Either the quality, or the person, is forgotten. But of, with Milton the vastness and vagueness of the abstract is combined with the precise and definite conception of a person. Such are the figures of Sin and Death.

Next is the simile of the warring atoms being compared with the sands of the deserts of Africa. These atoms in the realm of Chaos are like the sand in the desert, not only because they are upborne by the surge of the elements in Chaos, like the sands rising with the winds that blow them. A third point of comparison is that the ‘embryon atoms’ are as weighty in their destructive force, as the sands are which load the wind and carry destruction with them wherever they are blown about. A third simile, which we may consider here, is the description of the rejoicings of the rebel angels in their matchless chief. It is a long drawn simile and the points of comparison are not at first apparent. But in, careful thinking will reveal that every part of the picture corresponds to the scene in Hell. The melancholy and despair which had seized the rebel angels in Hell is compared with the luring sky when dark clouds oppress it. Satan’s cheerful acceptance of the adventure into the realm of Chaos is compared with the bright rays of the evening sun. Satan, who is immediately to venture out into the unknown, leaving his comrades behind him is compared with the sun which is departing from the cloud. And the cheer that overspread the gloomy faces of the assembly, and the murmur of joy they gave vent to, are compared with the happiness that spreads over the face of nature, both animate and inanimate, and the songs and cries they indulge in. thus the simile is completely homologous.

                 “ So spake the Sovereign Voice, and clouds began

To darken all the hill, and smoke to roll In dusky wreaths, reluctant flames, the sign At the end of the first book Satan had reminded the devils of a creation about to take place, and announced his intention to investigate it. Satan sits exalted on a throne of royal dignity, like any Eastern potentate. He has been raised to that bad eminence by his unconquerable will, superior courage and imposing stature. Nevertheless he does not realize that it is through the sufferance of great Providence that he has lifted to such a height from despair. Hence he aspires to get higher and wage war with heaven he seeks counsel for a fresh conquest of Heaven. Then in tones of supreme self-complacency he addresses his hosts. Of wrath awaked; nor with less dread the loud Ethereal trumpet from on high 'gan blow: At which command the Powers militant, That stood for Heaven, in mighty quadrate joined Of union irresistible, moved on..” The analysis of some of the similes in our poem will best illustrate these features. First, the simile of Satan being compared to a comet “that fires the length of Ophiuchus huge.” ‘Satan is like the comet in fiery radiance, in enormousness, in the fact that both are ominous of impending calamity. But of, there is still more. Satan is a serpent- “Ophiuchus” means “holder of serpents”; hence the comet is appropriately said to fire the length of this particular constellation. Furthermore Satan is always associated with the quarters of the North, for which reason Milton puts Ophiuchus in the arctic sky, though only with astronomical freedom.’

“In silence their bright legions, to the sound

Of instrumental harmony, that breathed Heroic ardor to adventurous deeds Under their God-like leaders, in the cause Of God and his Messiah.” Belial, ‘at the other pole of temperament and thought’, personifying Lust and Slothful Ease, replies that a reason for war, grounded on despair, such as Moloch’s is of itself a reason against war. There is no room for revenge. God is unconquerable: and to be annihilated (Moloch’s hope in case of a second defeat), is not desired. Belial has sympathy with intellect, even in God. Nor is the rest of his speech less full of the contempt of the highly cultivated intelligence for the brute bluster of Moloch. “What worse, they say, than this Hell. Is this quiet council of ours worse than being chained on the burning lake? We might be tenfold more wretched did God choose it. Therefore I give my voice for peace. Who will say it is vile to live in peace? It is not vile to suffer. We risked all and the law is just which says, suffer now. I laugh at those who are bold with the sword, and not brave to bear the doom they risked. And if we suffer quietly, our foe may remit. His anger, our pain lessen, or we become inured to it, or time bring better chance.”- This is the image of intellectual culture without goodness, made soft by sin, in a nation decayed by luxury, and enslaved. [S.A. Brooke] All Hell applauds the speech of Mammon. Then Beelzebub rises, and in him Milton draws the ‘sublime picture of a great minister touched with a gleam of far-off beauty from another world than Hell,’ and the attention given to him is ‘as still as night or summer’s noontide air.’ he upbraids them for their want of spirit, and reminds them that they are still God’s prisoners. “Why speak of growing empires”, he asks, “why of peace or war? God will rule Hell as Heaven. Hell is His empire not ours. Peace will not be given, nor can we return it. War has been tried, and we are foiled. But of, we can study a less dangerous enterprise which will surpass common revenge. There is a new world, and indwellers in it, in whom God takes pleasure. We may spoil His pleasure by ruining His creation.” He thus points out the possibility of revenge in destroying the new creation, or atleast in possessing it themselves and causing the fall of man. Beelzebub’s speech unites those who wish for war and peace. He is loudly applauded. His counsel thus receiving favour, he next proceeds to remind them of the fearful difficulties of the journey across Chaos, and invites volunteers. The brief introduction to the debate reveals Satan as ‘more proud in his assumed humility than his loudest boasting; and Milton’s object is to deepen our sense of his pride and isolation.’ Satan makes revenge the keynote of the council. His first word is encouragement. Though fallen, they need not despair. They have such immoral vigour in them that no deep can hold them. Far from being worse for the fall they can use their very adversity to rise “more glorious and more dread,” and “trust themselves to fear no second fate.” Let them have confidence in him, their leader. Moloch, the personification of Hatred, declares of war, pointing out that they have nothing to fear from worse punishment, and that ascent from Hell is natural to them. His speech is the ‘image of brute force in its despair, in its blind anger, in its hatred of pain and its weakness to endure it.’ His next words are a consciousness of his worth, a supreme self satisfaction that he is their natural leader. Just right and fixed laws of Heaven have created him their chief. Next their own free choice, supplemented by his own intrinsic merits in both counsel and fight, have contributed to his greatness and security. Nevertheless by none of these qualifications has he been so firmly established in his secure throne, as by the fall they have all shared in common. A more excited state, or loftier position, in Heaven, would have brought with it the envy of others, who have not been so fortunate to get such a status; but in Hell the most exalted position, because of its nearness to danger is the least envied by others. None will covet a-loftier place for himself in Hell, since the higher he climbs, the nearer he is to the Thunderer’s aim, and thus he would expose himself to greater danger. Thus there is no room in Hell for any jealousy or envy, and his position therefore is undisputed. Mammon, personifying Love of Wealth, falls in with Belial’s suggestion of peace, but advises action, not sloth, the settlement of a prosperous empire in Hell. “War means”, says he, “either to disenthrone God, or to regain our place. The first is impossible, the second unacceptable. Suppose, He gave us back our place, could we serve Him, spend and eternity in servile worship of one we hate? Let us seek our good from ourselves, build a free empire here, and win use out of ill-fortune, and ease out of pain. Our world is dark, but we have skill to make it magnificent: and, by length of time, our torments may become our elements native to us, and be no longer pain. Dismiss all thought of war.”- This is the image of the empire of godless utility and wealth, of that world which says, Man shall live by bread alone.-[S.A. Brooke]. The Council ended, the fallen angels occupy themselves in diverse ways, while Satan hurries on his quest to the new world. ‘Of a true Hell there is nothing here. The amusements described here are not natural to that dark dwelling. The Homeric games, the philosophical discourse on retired hills, the music and heroic song in the silent valley, the “bold adventure to discover wide that dismal world”, take our thoughts away from Hell. Save in the first circle (beyond the river Lethe), we do not meet such pictures in Dante’s actual Inferno. There is no true horror or pain in Milton’s Hell. He never saw the damned.’ [S.A. Brooke]

None dares to take up the offer. Satan, thereupon, as becomes his position as leader, undertakes the quest. In this way he gratifies his desire to get glory for himself.
‘He’ has to struggle against the atoms which threaten to crush him, but at last he sees the light of Heaven by which he picks his way slowly to the outer hard crust of the new-created world.

Sin and Death are appeased, and they open the gates of Hell, whence Satan emerges into Chaos. Satan wings his way through the warning elements in Chaos. The elements of Nature in their embryonic form strive for mastery here. He reaches the throne of Chaos with great difficulty, and through guile and fair promise, learns from him about the creation of the new world. Since the way thither is not distant, Satan hurries onward. The Second Book of Paradise Lost is one of the highest triumphs of Milton’s imaginative art. The sad, silent, solitary and blind poet saw more in his blindness than it is possible for any man to see with his healthy eyes. God closed his physical eyes, but made his imaginative vision so clear and powerful that it was more than a compensation for his loss. The wonderful imaginative richness which is the chief distinction of Paradise Lost is nowhere so remarkable as in this book. The great ambition of the poet leads him to conceive and describe things, events, scenes and persons which transcends human knowledge and experience; and so amidst those superhuman beings and their extra mundane activities the only guide of the poet was his imagination. This wonderfully fertile imagination of the poet is the most active in the Second Book.

 Porter:

“In conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and giving him the lie, leaves him.”’ Satan finds two shapes at the gate of Hell, one of whom disputes his passage, shaking a dart. Both, undaunted, fall to words, and would have fought, but the other Shape intervenes. Addressing Satan as “father” and the other as “son”, she adjures them to abstain from fighting. Satan betraying his surprise at this address, she reminds him of a time in Heaven, when she sprang from his head, was called Sin, and became by him the mother of Death, the other Shape, after the fall from heaven. Satan tells them the object of his journey, which will benefit them both. [G.C. Irwin] He tells them that he has come there really on a quest to find out ways and means by which to set them as well as the other fallen angels free from Hell. For their sake he has undertaken to venture alone through the deeps of Hell, and Chaos afterwards. He goes in quest of a place which has been foretold, should be created, and which by other signs and events that have happened since, may have been created by then. It is to be in the outskirts of Heaven, and a new race would have inhabited it probably to fill the void created by their fall from Heaven. But of, it would be outside Heaven lest those upstart creatures should again create trouble in it. Satan is anxious to find out these things for himself, and when his quest ends , he would return and take them back to this new anode, to move about freely and invisibly in the air, and they can satiate their un appeasable hunger there, for everyone in the new world shall be the victim. The Second Book may be divided into two equal halves. The first half describes the debates of the infernal council, and the second half gives us pictures of Hell and Chaos, Satan’s passage through them and his encounter with sin and death at the Hell-gates. We may call the first part natural and realistic and the second part supernatural and imaginative. In the first part we are on firm ground and feel ourselves to be in the British House of Commons ; but in the second part the ground is taken from under our feet and we lose ourselves in horrors, monstrosities and perplexities. What a splendid wealth of Parliamentary logic and eloquence we find in the first part! We are made to feel that we are all in the seventeenth century British House of Commons where the great public leaders are devising ways and means to destroy the Stuart tyranny. The revolutionary spirit of the poet himself is seated “high on a throne of royal state” in the person of the proud and ambitious Arch rebel. Moloch’s brute bluster Belial’s effeminate intellectualism, Mammon’s sordid materialism, Beelzebub’s wise statesmanship are all pictures from real life. The strength and weakness, wisdom and eloquence, pride and prejudice that are displayed in the infernal council are so perfectly human that we forgot for the time being that is a demon world. Porter: ‘ [Knock] Knock, knock. Knock. Who’s there in th’ other devil’s name? [Knock] The second half of the book is a great achievement of Milton’s poetical genius. The descriptions of Hell and Chaos, Satan’s flight through the hoary deep and his encounter with Sin and Death are unique things in the history of the world’s literature. Stopford Brooke , referring to the various diversions of the fallen angels in Hell, wrongly says, ~ “There is no true horror or pain in Milton’s Hell” That great critic, misled by the vivid personal narrative of Dante, fails to do adequate justice to the dim intimations of Milton. Not that there is any absence of pain and suffering in Milton’s hell, but that the infernal angels, unlike the poor human victims of Dante’s hell, struggle heroically against all adverse circumstances. His hell is a universe of death, a dark and dreadful region of unutterable woes. The howling of hailstorms, yelling of the condemned, fiery and icy torments and above all” gorgons and hydras, and chimeras dire” make that vast dolorous Antarctic region a concentrated essence of pains and horrors. Satan’s meeting with Sin and Death at Hell-gates is finely conceived. Though Addison and Johnson object to this intermixture of story and allegory, we find nothing wrong here. The great artist has so deftly interwoven this allegory into the fabric of history that we are scarcely conscious of any impropriety; further, who would lose such a fine episode simply on such a technical ground? The grim phantom of Death, half substance, half shadow, is unlike anything we find in literature. The picture of Chaos which Masson aptly calls “a sheer inconceivability” is a triumph of Milton’s poetic art. It is an immense waste of matter full of accumulated horrors and perplexities. It is the very wild stuff of which the ordered universe was made Milton’s Chaos simply overwhelms us with a sense of immensity and profundity. In the second half of the book the poet concentrates all his force on the solitary and dauntless figure of Satan. Against the horrors of Hell and the confusion of Chaos his masterful and heroic personality stands out like a huge and unassailable tower. Death cannot daunt him. Hell cannot horrify him; Chaos cannot confuse him. Nothing can stand in the way of this firm, fierce and fearless adversary of God and man. What a horrible picture is this! Hell trembles at his mighty strides. The description of his birth is also horrible. Conceived unnaturally he was born in an equally unnatural manner. He violently came out by ripping the womb of his mother who was so moved with fear and pain at this prodigious birth that her lower part was strangely transformed into the tail of a snake. Soon after this violent birth, the hideous phantom chased his mother by brandishing his fatal dart. There is the epic necessity that the important epic character should be sublime and that we should be interested in them but absolute evil is mean, and evokes no pleasure. Satan is, therefore, made a mixed character, with evil passions in which good still lingers. In the beginning Satan is selfish but with abrupt touches of unselfishness. He is proud, but his pride is for others as well as for himself. Though he is full of envy and malice, often he hates these passions in himself, He destroys but it is with difficulty he overcomes his pity for those he destroys. He brings war into Heaven, and despises Heaven, yet he loves its beauty. He is God’s enemy. Yet he allows God’s justice. He avenges himself, yet revenge is bitter. He ruins beauty but he regrets its loss in himself and admires it in others. Thus, we find that Satan is a mixed character in which there is good but evil pre-dominates and eventually the evil master the good. Milton’s inner soul vibrated to those powerful expressions of republican fervor that he puts on the lips of Satan. In the character of Satan, Milton has expressed his own pride, invisible temper, love for liberty, defiance of authority and heroic energy. Of good and evil much they argued then, Of happiness and final misery, Passion and apathy, and glory and shame: Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy. The strength of the portraiture of Satan is due to the fact that the poet is expressing himself through Satan. While portraying this character Milton projects himself into Satan and expresses his own indomitable personality through him. Milton himself was proud, and had stood against the tyranny of the king, and though his party had been defeated, he remained as courageous and defiant in the teeth of adversity as Satan. It is because Milton expressed his own feelings through Satan, that the portraiture of Satan’s character is so intense and powerful. Though Milton set out to justify the ways of God to man, yet, in spite of himself, he endowed Satan with great qualities, simply because Satan like himself, had opposed the ‘tyranny’ of the King of Heaven. Hence Blake remarked: “Milton was the Devil’s party without knowing it.” Milton became conscious of what he was doing as the poem proceeded. The character of Satan, with its greatness and grandeur, was militating against his avowed theme. Hence Milton restrained himself and showed the real character of Satan, the Arch devil. In the later books Satan degenerates into a cunning spy, imposter, and villain. But of, the figures of speech most usually associated with his name, and by which he takes his place alongside Homer and Virgil, is the simile. In the first place, he uses it chiefly to attain that remoteness and loftiness which his theme requires. ‘Almost all his figures and comparisons illustrate concrete objects by concrete objects, and occurrences in time by other occurrences later in time. His figures may be called historic parallels, whereby the names and incidents of human history are made to elucidate and ennoble the less familiar names and incidents of his prehistoric theme. But at, he prefers to maintain dignity and distance by choosing comparisons from ancient history and mythology, or from those great things in Nature which repel intimacy-the sun, the moon, the sea, planets in opposition, a shooting star, an evening mist, the gryphon pursuing the Arimaspian, the madness of Alcides in Oeta, and a hundred more reminiscences of the ancient world.’ Into the burning lake their baleful streams, Abhorred Styx, Milton’s Death is one of his admirable poetic achievements. It is a shapeless shape, a strange compromise between the shadow and the substance. It is a disembodied essence of all horrors, a shadowy substance, or a substantial shadow. Though Milton borrowed ideas from Spenser and other earlier poets his Death is far from being a mere imitation. By a few masterly touches of horrible magnificence he has succeeded in creating a deathless picture of Death which will never be forgotten by any lover of English poetry. With a shadowy crown on his shadowy head and a shadowy dart in his shadowy hand stands the grim King of terrors to oppose Satan. This fierce goblin is fearless and relentless and is rendered immeasurably repulsive by this unnatural lust and eternal hunger. When Satan calls him ‘hell-bore’ and ‘disdainfully asks him to clear out of his way,’ he with a grim retort calls him “hell-doomed” and thunders out. Might yield them easier habitation, bend Four ways their flying march, along the banks Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge He opposes Satan not because he is very faithful in his duty, but because it his pleasure to fight and destroy. He has not the intelligence of his mother and does not know that in fighting Satan he is going to serve God, his enemy. When Satan holds before the evil mother and her evil son a good prospect of ease and feast on earth, the hungry Death laughs with a horrible grin and gets reconciled to his father. He is the very essence of horror, vagueness and repulsion. This terrible goblin as depicted by Milton makes our blood freeze in our veins. He is a blunt, blustering, shadowy monster bent on destruction and owing allegiance to none. Devoid of the light of intelligence the blind brute only bestows uproariously. His shouts and movements, grisly appearance, bloodshot eyes, grinning teeth and brandishing dart make even Hell shake with fear. He is the undisputed monarch of the infernal pit. When Satan challenges him he fearlessly retorts. The repulsive goblin-son of the Devil and Sin is true to his progenitors. As his father held his own daughter in lustful embrace so he committed rape on his own mother. He is all passion, and is constantly swayed by anger, hunger and lust. Sometimes he pursues his mother with a lustful desire, and sometimes wants to devour her up. In brief he is the very essence of all conceivable monstrosities and a splendid triumph of Milton’s powerful poetic imagination. As when, to warn proud cities, war appears Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush To battle in the clouds; The only prose which has escaped from the ‘dust and heat’ of controversy is Areopagitica, called after Areopagus, the hill of Ares where the Athenian parliament met. This speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing to the Parliament of England is couched in the form of a classical oration, beginning with a quotation from Euripides: ‘This is true liberty, when far-born men,/Having to advise the public, may speak free…’ Areopagitica, however, defends not free speech but a free press. It asks Parliament to stop the pre-publication ‘licensing’ of books, a practice begun by Henry VIII, abolished in 1641, but reimposed in 1643. A particular kind of liberty was one of Milton’s ideals, and his speech has noble sentences: “as good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself , kills the image of God , as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book in the precious life blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.” Thence more at ease their minds, and somewhat raised By false presumptuous hope, the ranged Powers Disband; At the Civil War, Milton turned from poetry to reforming prose, and toughened his argumentative powers. In his late poetry he dallied less with the ‘false surmise ‘of the classical poems which had charmed his youth and formed his style. Instead, he mythologized himself. After the Restoration and amnesty, he presents himself as ‘In darkness and in dangers compassed round,/ And solitude; yet not alone,’ for he was visited by the Heavenly Muse. This is from the Invocation to Paradise Lost, Book VII. The Invocations to Books I, III and IX put epic to plangent personal use, creating a myth of the afflicted poet as a blind seer, or as a nightingale, who ‘in shadiest covert hid,/ Tunes her nocturnal note.’ Leads him perplexed, where he may likeliest find Truce to his restless thoughts, and entertain The irksome hours, till his great chief return. Satan’s address to the Sun, written in 1642, appeared in Paradise Lost in 1667. The brief epic Paradise Regained and the tragedy Samson Agonistes followed in 1671. In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wandering mazes lost. Paradise Lost follows the Renaissance idea that poetry should set an attractive pattern of heroic virtue. Holding a humanist belief in reason and in the didactic role of the word, Milton turned argument back into poetry. In the European conversation of Renaissance, his was the last word. As well as relating the Fall, he attempted a more difficult task: ‘to justify the ways of God to men.’ he would retell the story of ‘Man’s first disobedience’ so as to show the justice of Providence. The result is, in its art, power and scope, the greatest of English poems. Dr. Johnson, no lover of Milton’s religion, politics or personality, concluded his Life thus: ‘His great works were performed under discountenance, and in blindness, but difficulties vanished at his touch; he was born of whatever is arduous; and his work is not the greatest of heroic poems, only because it is not the first.’ Paradise Lost is a work of grandeur and energy, and of intricate design. It includes in its sweep most of what was worth knowing of the universe and of history. The blind poet balanced details occurring six books apart. What if we find Some easier enterprise? There is a place (If ancient and prophetic fame in Heaven Err not), The beauty of the close does not end the discord of ‘where Lycid lies’, a deliberate false note. Such passionate question-and-answer is to mark all of Milton’s mature work. and, wandering, each his several way Pursues, as inclination or sad choice Milton’s early Protestant ideals now seem at odds with his sophisticated Italianate style. At court, Charles I patronized the baroque sculptor Bernini. This style, far from Puritan plainness, displays its art with the confidence of the Catholic Reformation. Milton wrote six sonnets in Italian, and English verse in an Italian way. The title Paradise Lost answers that of Tasso’s epic, Gerusalemme Conquisata (1592), ‘Jerusalem Won’: ‘God’s Englishmen’ were interested not in the old Christian reconquest of the earthly Jerusalem but in gaining the Heavenly Jerusalem. Milton embraced Renaissance and Reformation, Greek beauty and Hebrew truth. This embrace was strained in the 1630s as England’s cultural consensus came apart. In 1639 Milton abandoned a second year in Italy, returning from the place of Tasso’s patron in Naples to write prose in London. Although John Donne called Calvinist religion ‘plain, simple, sullen, young’, the first Puritan writer who was truly plain and simple was John Bunyan (1628-88). “How can I live without thee, how forgo Thy sweet converse and love so dearly joined, To live again in these wild woods forlorn?” He resolved ‘to be an interpreter and relater of the best and sagest things among mine own citizens throughout this island in the mother dialect.’

“Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore,

In thy large recompense, and shalt be good To all that wander in that perilous flood. Thus sang the uncouth swain…” The ‘heroic poem’ exemplified right conduct. There are several heroism: Adam and Eve, like the Son, show ‘the better fortitude/ Of patience and heroic martyrdom’ (IX.31-2) –not the individual heroism of Achilles or the imperial duty of Aeneas, nor yet the chivalry of the Italian romantic epics. The magnificence of Satan’s appearance and first speeches turns into envy and revenge. At the centre of the poem is an unglamorous human story, although ‘our first parents’ are ideal at first, as is their romantic love. “Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined So clear, as in no face with more delight. But O as to embrace me she inclined I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.” In IV, Eve says that Paradise without Adam would not be sweet. In IX, the Fall elaborates, the account in Genesis. Eve, choosing to garden alone, is deceived by the serpent’s clever arguments. She urges Adam to eat. ‘Not deceived’, he joins her out of love. Eve leads Adam to sin but also to repentance; blaming herself for the Fall, she proposes suicide. So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair That ever since in love’s embrace met, Adam the goodliest man of men since born His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve. Milton’s self-vindication turns Scripture and tragedy into autobiography. For example, Dalilah betraying Samson to the Philistines recalls the first Mrs. Milton. Finally the persecuted hero pulls down the temple, slaying all his foes at once: ‘the world o’erwhelming to revenge his sight’ (Marvell). The last chorus, both Greek and Christians begins: ‘All is best, though we oft doubt/ What the unsearchable dispose/ Of highest wisdom brings about.’ It ends: His servants he with new acquist Of true experience from this great event With peace and consolation hath dismissed, And calm of mind, all passion spent. He is now with heaven’s ‘sweet societies/That sing, and singing in their glory move, / And wipe the tears forever from his eyes.’ Revealed faith consoles, unlike nature’s myth. Yet the poetry of nature returns. The third speaker is Mammon in whom the inordinate love for sordid wealth has crushed all higher thoughts and honorable instincts. He is a master of seductive logic. War is meaningless, because it can neither dethrone God nor reestablish them in Heaven. If God, out of pity, gave them back their place in Heaven, it will be unacceptable to them. For with God on the throne of Heaven they cannot reasonably expect any seat of honour there. They will have to serve the tyrant of Heaven as his slaves. So it is better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heave. Let them stand on their own legs and build a free and Magnificent Empire in Hell itself with the treasure of gold and precious stones with which Hell abounds. Did first create your leader, next, free choice With what besides in council or in fight Hath been achieved of merit, yet this loss, Thus far at least recovered, hath much more Established in a safe, unenvied throne, Yielded with full consent. In the magnificent Pandemonium all the infernal Peers have gathered together with grave faces and anxious minds to debate on the course of action to be adopted under the circumstances. Satan, the president of the council, sits high up on a splendid throne, full of ambition and pride. His brief inaugural address expresses his pride under the garb of humility. He was first in Heaven and is now first in Hell also. He hopes that nobody should envy him his place which he has by their choice and which involves the largest share of danger and suffering. He then asks the advice of his friends. Having been thus invited Moloch is the first spirit to speak. He is fierce and fiery and the very personification of brute force and blind anger. He does not talk subtlety and diplomacy, but would pay God back in his own coin by invading Heaven. They are already at their worst, and so need not fear anything worse. After him stands Belial, a soft and sinful slave, who prizes ease and luxury more than freedom and honour. In his opinion a reason for war, grounded in despair, is of itself a reason against war. Revenge is impossible and God is unconquerable. Any foolish attempt at revenge will only exasperate him further and bring down greater punishment on their poor heads. The wild talk of annihilation is as meaningless as it is undesirable and will bring no remedy whatsoever. He does not agree with Moloch in thinking that they are already at the worst. So his voice is for peace. Suffering is not vile; so let them suffer and wait. In the meantime God may abate his anger, or their pain lessen, or time may bring a better chance.

	His proud imaginations thus displayed:
	 Powers and Dominions, Deities of Heaven,..

Meanwhile Satan flies towards the nine fold gates of Hell and on reaching the entrance finds there two dreadful and repulsive figures-one half-woman, half snake and other a mere dark phantom with a deadly dart in its hand. Satan challenges this hideous shadow which at once flies into full fury and attacks him. When the fight is imminent the female form rushes forward with a hideous cry and tells Satan a nauseating story. She is Sin, his daughter, and the grim shadow is his son by her and is called Death. So, they being father and son should not fight. The artful fiend now flatters them, tells them of his mission and promises to take them to the Earth. Both creatures, specially Death, are maddened with joy at the bright prospect and the huge gate is opened. The happier state In Heaven, which follows dignity, might draw Envy from each inferior; but who here…..? The royal throne is surrounded by a group of metaphysical and mystical monsters. Satan apologises for his encroachment and explains his mission to Chaos who, grieving over the recent curtailment of his ancient empire of God helps him with directions. Satan flies on and sees the welcome light of Heaven far off shooting into chaos and the starry universe suspended from Heaven by a golden chain and looking like a star by the full moon. 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, Satan comes out and finds himself on the brink of the deep and dreadful gulf of Chaos which is all confusion and all tumult. There the elementary qualities are fighting with one another for supremacy and the embryo atoms are in deadly conflict. The dauntless fiend plunges head long into the hideous confusion and struggles onward with head, hands, legs and wings, sometimes blown thousand of miles up and sometimes hurled thousands of miles down till he reaches the very throne of Chaos and ancient Night , the hoary Anarch and his consort. Here confusion is worse confounded and horrors are piled upon horrors. ‘’Will envy whom the highest place exposes Foremost to stand against the Thunderer's aim Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest share Of endless pain? ‘’ His speech is universally appreciated, when Beelzebub, a great and wise statesman with grave eyes and furrowed forehead stands up to speak. He ridicules those who advocate direct war, or indulge in thoughts of peace, or build vain empires in Hell. God is the lord of Heaven as well as of Hell. He is not going to allow them any peace or liberty of action in Hell. The policy of war has failed; so there is only one course left open for them- that of indirect revenge. Perhaps by this time the new World has been created. They would ruin its inhabitants whom God likes so much. But someone must volunteer to undertake the quest. As nobody dares come forward Satan boldly offers himself for the task and asks the infernal angels to await his return and beguile the time in any way they like. The council is dissolved, Satan departs, and the fallen spirits take to various diversions. Some indulge in physical feats, some in philosophical and theological discourses, some in music and songs, and some in bold adventures of discovery. The last party traverses the various gloomy regions of Hell. They see the four terrible infernal rivers, and the fifth, Lethe, rolling its slow waters at a great distance. Beyond this river they see a dark, dismal and dreadfully cold expanse of perpetual snow where the damned souls are periodically brought by the furies from the extreme heat of the hell-fire to be tormented by extreme cold. Milton’s Satan is endowed with heroic qualities. The outstanding trait of his character is courage. He may be wrong headed: but he has infinite courage in himself. As the poem, Paradise Lost begins, we find Satan in a hopeless situation. He and his companions have been hurled down into b the bottomless pit of Hell. He lies dazed and stunned in the Lake of liquid fire and so do his companions, the rebel angels. Heaven is lost to Satan and his companions, and they are doomed to live forever in the darkness of Hell. But of, this gloomy prospect of the future does not fill Satan with despondency robbing him of his power of action. When Beelzebub, his lieutenant, tells him that their situation is hopeless beyond redemption, he replies. Satan is determined not to be weak under any circumstances. If one retains his courage and strength of mind, he “can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” Even in Hell Satan discovers an advantage. High on a throne of royal state, which far Outshone the wealth or Ormus and of Ind, Or where the gorgeous east with richest hand Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, Satan exalted sat, by merit raised To that bad eminence; Satan alone occupies a prominent position in the narrative. According to the strict rules of dramatic art, Satan should be the villain of the piece. To a certain extent, Paradise Lost is symbolic of the never ending, conflict between good and evil in the life of man., and Satan is thus the type of universal evil and wickedness. In one sense, Satan is the most important character in the poem because it is from his agency that practically all the action of the narrative arises. The revolt which Satan stirs up in Heaven leads to the fall of the angels in the first place; the decision which he comes to, to tempt the newly created human pair, leads to further action in Paradise Lost. Such being the case, Milton had to necessarily bring Satan prominently before the reader more prominently indeed than any other character. So we might say that the theme or narrative which Milton selected for Paradise Lost depended for its action on the deeds of a wicked character, rather than a hero. The problem for Milton was the manner in which he was to present such an evil character. The sight of pure, and undisguised evil is never pleasant, and the acts of a wicked person cause feelings of disgust and repulsion to right-minded readers. So Milton would have risked losing the sympathy and interest of his readers had he presented Satan as an unattractive study in wickedness. It seems then, that Milton realized this danger and refrained from blackening the characters of Satan unduly. Not only so, but he depicts Satan as possessing many qualities which are good, noble and wholly admirable. It is this point which has made the character of Satan unique and has aroused so much discussion among critics. Celestial virtues rising will appear More glorious and more dread than from no fall, And trust themselves to fear no second fate. There can be no doubt that Satan is meant to be the villain. He is throughout called names like “arch-fiend”. “arch-enemy”, “apostate angel” “the adversary of God and man”, “the author of all ill”, “the spirit malign”,” the fraudulent imposter foul”, etc. His rebellion against God was due to Pride and his desire to continue the war of Envy, Revenge and love of Evil. He is crafty, - “the warie fiend”- and his plan to corrupt mankind is one of “covert guile”. He is cunning in his appeal to his followers which has only a “semblance of worth.” Satan embodies evil because he is the embodiment of disobedience to God. God allows him to work his “dark design” in order to give further scope, for divine goodness and to bring worse punishment on him. Satan has great anxiety for his followers. It is the trait of a great general of any army, to think of the welfare of his followers even before he think of his own safety. All great warriors and conquerors were able to inspire their followers with loyalty and devotion which make them ready to suffer and die for their leader. In return, the chief guard cherishes them as if they were all his own brothers or children. This feeling of chivalry overcomes Satan as he sees his unconscious friends lying in profound slumber all round him. He cannot forget that they had met this cruel fate because of their devotion to him. He cannot forget that they had met this cruel fate because of their devotion to him. He sees their self-sacrifice as heroic in its essence. So he, is represented as shedding tears of sympathy for them-Tears such as angels weep. This is pathetic fallacy since angels cannot weep at all. Satan flatters them on the concord they have thus easily attained, which would never have been possible in Heaven. Let them design therefore with one mind how best to regain their lost positions. Whether the best way should be open war, or secret deceit, let them determine, and he affords the opportunity now for others to speak. ‘These, then, here outlined slightly and imperfectly, are some of the most noteworthy features of Milton’s style. By the measured roll of this verse, and the artful distribution of stress and pause to avoid monotony and to lift the successive lines in a climax; by the deliberate and choice character of his diction , and his wealth of vaguely emotional epithets; by the intuition which taught him to use no figures that do not heighten the majesty, and no names that do not help the music of his poem; by the vivid outlines of the concrete imagination that he imposes on us for real, and the cloudy brilliance that he weaves for them out of all great historical memories, and all far-reaching abstract conceptions, he attained to a finished style of perhaps a more consistent and unflagging elevation that is to be found elsewhere in literature. There is nothing to put beside him. “His natural port,” says Johnson “is a gigantic loftiness.” And Landor: “After I have been reading the Paradise Lost, I can take up no other poet with satisfaction. I seem to have left the music of Handel for the music of the streets, or, at best, for drums and fifes.” The secret of the style is lost; and no poet, since Milton’s day, has recaptured the solemnity and beauty of the large utterance of Gabriel, or Belial, or Satan.’ (Masson) Even in defeat he will never dream of submission. The fierceness of the punishment inflicted on him is mitigated by the greater fierceness of his pride.

	..and, from despair

Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires…!

SELF SETTING, DEVELOPMENT, ON-CONTEXTS, EDITING, THOUGHTS AND MORE ALIKE, -WORDS AND SENTENCES FROM DR.S.SEN, WEB-LINKS OF THE ORIGINAL POEM AND IMAGES, BOOKS ON WORDSWORTH AND SHELLEY AND COLERIDGE’S POEM, A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE… RITUPARNA RAY CHAUDHURI.

https://www.academia.edu/9744639/A_Masterpiece_of_grotesque_horror-_Miltons_Paradise_Lost_Book_II_The_Way_I_Have_Liked_To_Evaluate

“….The second book is full of great ‘things’ (to use Saintsbury’s favourite phrase), the debate, Satan’s heroic choice of the phrase, Chaos, his encounter with Sin and Death: “on the other side Inces’t with indignation Satan stood Unterrifi’d, and like a Comet burn’d That fires the length of Ophiucus huge In th’ Artick sky, and from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war.”…. H.J.C. Grierson

19:03, 23 December 2014 (UTC)19:03, 23 December 2014 (UTC)19:03, 23 December 2014 (UTC)19:03, 23 December 2014 (UTC)19:03, 23 December 2014 (UTC)19:03, 23 December 2014 (UTC)Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri (talk)

MILTON, AND HIS PARADISE LOST-BOOK-II

JOHN MILTON’S PARADISE LOST (BOOK-II)

The violation of the normal English word-order and other elements in Milton’s epic blank-verse, which have upset some purists, are carefully and systematically employed in order to achieve different kinds of emotional pitch, to effect continuity and integration in the weaving of the epic design and all to sustain the poem as a poem and to keep it from disintegrating into isolated fragments of high rhetoric. David Daiches: The Use of Blank –Verse in Paradise Lost.

It is a well-known complaint among the readers of Paradise Lost, that they can hardly keep themselves from sympathizing, in some sort, with Satan, as the hero of the poem. The most probable account of which surely is, that the author himself partook largely of the haughty and vindictive republican spirit, which he has assigned to the character, and consequently, though perhaps unconsciously, drew the portrait with a peculiar zest. Josiah Conder: The Hero of Paradise Lost.

To Adam and Eve are given, during their innocence, such sentiments as innocence can generate and utter. Their love is pure benevolence and mutual veneration; their repasts are without luxury, and their diligence without toil. Their addresses to their Maker have little more than the voice of admiration and gratitude. Fruition left them nothing to ask, and Innocence left them nothing to fear. Johnson.

To read Paradise Lost with appreciation and understanding, those readers of the poem who have been deprived by twentieth century doubts and denials of the privilege of reading it with a faith comparable to its author’s must accept the story as they accept Homeric fable. Whether we believe in a family of gods on Olympus or not, we must accept them as agents in Homer’s story. Whether we believe as Milton does, or whether we do not, in the interference in the affairs of men of a personal God, his son, his angels and his enemies, we must accept them as agents in Milton’s story. John S. Diekhoff: Intimate Knowledge of the Bible Necessary for a Proper Understanding and Enjoyment of Paradise Lost.

Three poets in three distant ages born Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpassed, The next in majesty, in both the last. The force of nature could no farther go: To make a third she joined the former two.

John Dryden.

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it. William Blake

“would be quite surcharged with her own weight, And strangl’d with her waste fertility; Th’ earth cumber’d, and the wing’d air dark’t with plumes, The herds would over-multitude their Lords, The Sea o’refraught would swell…”

While the former (Shakespeare) darts himself forth, and passes into all forms of human character and passion, the one Proteus of the fire and the flood; the other attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own ideal. All things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of Milton; while Shakespeare becomes all things, yet for ever remaining himself. S.T. Coleridge

OF MAN’S FIRST DISOBEDIENCE, AND THE FRUIT OF THAT FORBIDDEN TREE, WHOSE MORTAL TASTE BROUGHT DEATH INTO THE WORLD, AND ALL OUR WOE, WITH LOSS OF EDEN, TILL ONE GREATER MAN RESTORE US, AND REGAIN THE BLISSFUL SEAT, SING HEAVENLY MUSE, THAT ON THE SECRET TOP OF OREB, OR OF SINAI, DIDST INSPIRE THAT SHEPHERD, WHO FIRST TAUGHT THE CHOSEN SEED, IN THE BEGINNING HOW THE HEAVENS AND EARTH ROSE OUT OF CHAOS:

Of smallest Magnitude close by the Moon.

“Since first this Subject for Heroic Song Pleas’d me long choosing, and beginning late; Not sedulous by Nature to indite Wars, hitherto the onely Argument Heroic deem’d, chief maistrie to dissect With long and tedious havoc fabl’d Knights In Battles feigned; the better fortitude Of Patience and Heroic Martyrdom Unsung.”

What surmounts the reach

Of human sense, I shall delineate so, By linking spiritual to corporeal forms As may express them best; though what if earth Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein Each to other like, more than on earth in thought…

High on a throne of royal state, which far Outshone the wealth or Ormus and of Ind, Or where the gorgeous east with richest hand Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, Satan exalted sat, by merit raised To that bad eminence; and, from despair Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue Vain war with Heaven; and, by success untaught, His proud imaginations thus displayed:

MY ANALYSIS

THE ARGUMENT

The consultation begun Satan debates whether another battle be to be hazarded for the recovery of Heaven: some advise it, others dissuade. A third proposal is preferred, mentioned before by Satan- to search the truth of that prophecy or tradition in Heaven concerning another world, and another kind of creature, equal, or not much inferior, to themselves, about this time to be created. Their doubt who shall be sent on this difficult search: Satan, their chief, undertakes alone the voyage; is honoured and applauded. The council thus ended, the rest betake them several ways and to several employments, as their inclinations lead them, to entertain the time till Satan return. He passes on his journey to Hell-gates; finds them shut, and who sat there to guard them; by whom at length they are opened and discover to him the great gulf between Hell and Heaven. With what difficulty he passes through, directed by Chaos, the Power of that place, to the sight of this new World which he sought.

The genius of the lamented person to whose memory I have dedicated these unworthy verses was not less delicate and fragile than it was beautiful ; and where cankerworms abound, what wonder of its young flower was blighted in the bud? The savage criticism on his Endymion, which appeared in the Quarterly Review, produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind; the agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgements from more candid critics of the true greatness of his powers were ineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted.

The circumstances of the closing scene of poor Keats’s life were not made known to me until the Elegy was ready for the press. I am given to understand that the criticism of Endymion was exasperated by the bitter sense of unrequited benefits; the poor fellow seems to have been hooted from the stage of life, no less by those on whom he had wasted the promise of his genius than those on whom he had lavished his fortune and his care. He was accompanied to Rome, and attended in his last illness, by Mr. Severn, a young artist of the highest premise, who, I have been informed, ‘almost risked his own life, and sacrificed every prospect to unwearied attendance upon his dying friend. ‘Had I known these circumstances before the completion of my poem, I should have been tempted to add my feeble tribute of applause to the more solid recompense which the virtuous man finds in the recollection of his own motives. Mr. Severn can dispense with a reward from ‘such stuff as dreams are made of.’ His conduct is a unextinguished spirit of his illustrious friend animate the creations of his pencil, and plead against oblivion for his name!
It is my intention to subjoin to the London edition of this poem a criticism upon the claims of its lamented object to be classed among the writers of the highest genius who have adorned our age. My known repugnance to the narrow principles of taste on which several of his earlier compositions were modeled prove at least that I am an impartial judge. I consider the fragment of Hyperion as second to nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years.

John Keats died at Rome of a consumption, in his twenty-fourth year on the ---of ---1821; and was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in the winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place. The very subject matter of the epic lends itself to the grand manner. The result is that Milton’s style and presentation touches now heights of sublimity. He leaves his mark throughout the epic with his grand style and remarkable use of blank verse.

 “Poison came, Bion, to thy mouth, that thus was

poison-stained. How did it come to the lips of one like thee and was not made sweet? And what mortal, was so cruel as to mix for thee the poison, or give it thee, while thou didst sing? Surely he is one who fled from music.” Moschus: Epitaphium Bionis It may be well said that these wretched men know not what they do. They scatter their insults and their slanders without heed as to whether the poisoned shaft lights on a heart made callous by many blows, or one like Keats’s composed of more penetratable stuff. One of their associates is, to my knowledge, a most base and unprincipled calumniator. As to Endymion, was it a poem, whatever might be its defects, to be treated contemptuously by those who had celebrated, with various degrees of complacency and panegyric, Paris, and Woman, and A Syrian Tale, and Mrs. Lefanu, and Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Howard Payne, and a long list of illustrious obscure? Are these the men who in their venal good nature presumed to draw a parallel between the Rev. Mr. Milman and Lord Byron? What gnat did they strain at here, after having swallowed all those camels? Against what woman taken in adultery dares the foremost of these literary prostitutes to cast his opprobrious stone? Miserable man! You, one of the meanest, have not wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God…Nor shall it be your excuse that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers, but used none.

  Book-II of Paradise Lost is easily Milton’s most outstanding writing in poetry. The epic poem contains high drama, crisp narrative, vivid description and striking character portrayal.
The conclave gives Milton the opportunity to come out with realistic portrayal of his characters. Satan sets the tone for the debate by asserting his position as the first among the fallen angels. In this debate Milton brings to bear his scholarship and study of oratory giving the participants majesty of eloquence both in its sweep and dimension. 
 The high water mark of Book-I is its heightened narration and description. Book II has high drama, sharp characterization and sustained descriptive and narrative qualities. The canvas is vast and Book II gets off the ground with a major conclave of fallen angels planning how to salvage their fall.

….Or if Sion Hill Delight thee more, and Siloa’s Brook that flow'd Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventurous songs The most notable thing in the portrayal of the leaders of the fallen angels is that they impress us with their indomitable courage and unflinching determination. Milton describes the might, wisdom and eloquence of the fallen angels with such sublime power that the defiance that they hurl towards the vault of Heaven seems for the moment something more than an empty boast. They actually effect one great conquest in Hell: the victory of unconquerable will over adversity. The fallen angels respond nobly to call of their great leader and rouse themselves with matchless fortitude from their physical and mental prostration. Such an undaunted struggle against the force of adverse circumstances cannot fail to attract the deepest sympathy. Natural tendency of human nature to sympathise with the weaker side often makes the reader of an epic poem feel more affection and admiration for the defeated adversary than the victorious hero. That with no middle flight intends to soar Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime As the leaders of the fallen angels deliver their harangues it becomes clear as its usual on such occasions that the views of the leader are going to prevail. Satan emerges from the conclave as the unquestioned leader. In a few deft and powerful touches Milton has given every leader a distinctive personality and an approach of his own. The debate gives the poet an opportunity to draw finely contoured beings. The participants are acutely differentiated so that their speeches stand neatly on platforms of party and principle. Each suggestion put forward by the leaders reveals the characteristic virtues of its advocate-courage in Moloch, clarity in Belial, self-reliance in Mammon’s plan for economic development and in Beelzebub an echo of Satan. Satan’s journey through Chaos has the makings of epic adventure. As he starts on his journey he raises the hopes of the fallen angels about a turn in their fortunes. Milton’s description of the fallen angels while their leader is away on an expedition to the new world is one of the grandest things in the whole epic. When their minds were lifted to some extent by the hopes mixed by Satan, they broke up their military formation and engaged themselves in various pursuits. Some of them spent their time on the plain, some uplifted on the wing sported in the air, and some entered into a race- like the Olympian or Parthian games. As armies rush to battle in the clouds so the fallen angels contended on the plain and in the air. Others with more fury began to rend up rocks and hills and swept through the air like a whirlwind. The strong point about Book Ii is its narrative which grips and sustains the reader’s interest till the very end. Though an epic, the call to action creates intense reader interest. The announcement about the creation of a new world and a new type of being called ‘man’ in it has all the interest and curiosity of science fiction. Satan throws the gauntlet before the assembled audience that the new world should be discovered and the creature called man should be lured to join the revolt against God. The significance of Book II lies in the use of superb epic similes, each a wonderful picture in itself. Moreover these similes are not merely decorative, they have undertones of meaning. Milton’s description of Chaos and Satin’s journey through it form one of the grandest and most original portions of the epic. The final passage of Book II describes how Satan passes through the gates of Hell and makes his way through Chaos through the newly created universe. Heaven, Earth and the underworld are traditional settings in epic poetry but Chaos, Milton’s fourth setting, has no precedent. Mason says about Milton’s description of Chaos that every part of this description of the deep of Chaos as seen upwards from Hell Gates is minutely studied and considered. Altogether it would be difficult to quote a passage from any poet so rich in purposely accumulated perplexities, learned and political, or in which such a care is taken and so successfully, to compel the mind to a rackingly intense conception of sheer inconceivability. In his description of Chaos, Milton suggests that it is not so much a place or something occupying space but a state of mind. There is nothing innately evil about this real. Evil is the perversion of order. Hell founded on the principle. Evil be thou my Good, is a parody of Heaven. Chaos on the contrary is a state of simple disorder. Milton’s style of writing has a sense of grandeur about it, a style that suits epic poetry giving both his thought and expression the highest sublimity. The two definitions of epic give us the elements, both of form and style of the epic: “a narrative poem, organic in structure, dealing with great actions and great characters in a style commensurate with the lordliness of its theme, which tends to idealise these characters and actions, and to sustain and embellish its subject by means of episode and amplification.” The epic in general, ancient and modern, may be described as “a dispassionate recital in dignified rhythmic narrative of a momentous theme or action fulfilled by heroic characters and supernatural agencies under the control of a sovereign destiny. The theme involves political or religious interest of a people or of a mankind. It commands the respect due to popular tradition or to traditional ideals. The poem awakens the sense of the mysterious: the awful, and the sublime; through perilous crisis it uplifts and calms the strife of frail humanity.” Hell seemed to burst with a wild tumult. Others milder in character took themselves to a silent valley and sang angel songs to the accompaniment of a harp. Others sat on a hill and carried on discourses. Some others explored the vast region of Chaos to see if they could discover a softer climate. It has been stated that Milton was only following classical convention in describing the occupations of the fallen angels. It must be accepted however that Milton’s aim in giving this description was not only to follow a classical convention but to give a significant place to this episode in the epic. The episode is full of striking imagery that captures the reader’s mind. Then there is Satan’s confrontation with Sin and Death- a description that reveals the characters of all three and is at the same time revolting. …thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread Dove-like satst brooding on the vast abyss And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark Certain passages in Book II have a positive moral appeal and without being moralistic, these passages convey the meaning sought to be conveyed. This is because Milton conveys his message discreetly and indirectly only when there is need to do so and when the reader’s moral strength needs to be strengthened. In Paradise Lost, we find all the familiar features of the epic such as war, single combats, perilous journeys, beautiful gardens, marvelous buildings, visions of the world and the future, expositions of the structure of the universe, and scenes in Heaven and in Hell. Yet all these are so transformed that their significance and even their aesthetic appeal are new. The reason is that Milton has grafted his epic manner on to subject which lies outside the main epic tradition. By taking his subject from the Bible he had to make the machinery of epic conform to a spirit and to a tradition far removed from Virgil. Before him the best literary epic had been predominately secular, he made it theological, and the change of approach meant a great change of temper and of atmosphere. The old themes are introduced in all their traditional dignity, but in Milton’s hands they take on a different significance and contribute to a different end. Book II, like Book I, has a number of epic similes. Indeed there are as many as ten similes of this kind here. In this kind of simile, a writer starts with a comparison between, say A and B; but the second member grows bigger and bigger until it eclipses the first, with the result that while the comparison is effectively made the first, with the result that while comparison is effectively made and the idea conveyed successfully, the attendant imagery seem to be even more important. Paradise Lost may properly be classed among the greatest epic poems, though its theme is neither mythical nor historical. The theme of Paradise Lost is biblical and religious. This poem is undoubtedly one of the highest efforts of the poetical genius; and in respect of majesty and sublimity, it is by no means inferior to any known epic poem, ancient or modern. It follows the Greek model of epic poetry. The central event of this epic poem is the fall of man. The subject is derived from the Old Testament; and it is astonishing how, from the few hints given in that scripture, Milton was able to raise so complete and regular a structure in his poem. Indeed there are as many as ten similes of this kind here. In this kind of simile, a writer starts with a comparison between, say A and B; but the second member grows bigger and bigger until it eclipses the first, with the result that while the comparison is effectively made the first, with the result that while comparison is effectively made and the idea conveyed successfully, the attendant imagery seem to be even more important. Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the heighth of this great argument I may assert eternal providence, And justify the ways of God to men. When the meeting of the fallen angels has come to an end, Satan’s supremacy is described to us in words which heighten our impression of his greatness in the midst of his infernal peers, he seems to be their mighty paramount; he seems to be alone the Antagonist of Heaven; he seems to be no less than Hell’s dread emperor with pomp supreme and God-like imitated state. Round him at this time are a cluster of fiery seraphim who carry their bright and horrendous weapons. Thus not only has Satan spoken in a tone of self aggrandisement. But his dignity and majesty have been emphasized by the author also. Of course, this does not mean that Satan is the true epic hero; but this that does mean that he has been endowed by Milton with a number of heroic traits. One important effect of such similes is to contribute to the grandeur of the poem and thus to heighten its epic character. For instance, the murmur of applause which comes from the fallen angels at the end of Mammon’s speech is compared to the sound of raging winds which have subsided. This simile leads us to imagine hollow rocks, a storm which has been blowing furiously over the ocean all night, a number of tired sailors who have kept watch all night, a boat which now lies anchored in a rocky bay. A little later, the sounds which are heard in a valley when the clouds have dissolved and the sun has begun to shine brightly once again. A characteristic of Milton’s literary style in Book II of Paradise Lost is the extensive use of the epic simile to convey to his readers the grandeur and the sweep of the epic poem. In this matter Milton has the benefit of his predecessors like Homer, Virgil, Spenser and others. Milton was influenced by them to such an extent that he often borrowed their similes. However, he comes out best as the user of the epic simile when he is original and his treatment of nature, myth and legend, travel and science and technical arts. And found no end in wandering mazes lost, Here again the comparison does not just end here, but develops into an elaborate and lovely Nature picture. In another comparison, we are made to visualize Satan burning like a comet in the sky. Another simile brings to our minds the fury of Hercules who, in his agony began to uproot the pine-trees of Thessaly and who flung his servant Liches into the ocean. In this way the epic similes or the long-tailed similes as they are also known, add to the interest of the narrative and enrich the poem. The first simile is seen in the murmur of applause which comes from the fallen angels at the end of Mammon’s speech. This is compared to the sound of dying winds after a storm, heard among the caves and rocks of the coast that still retain the sound of the wind because though the storm has ceased, the wind still continues murmuring among the rocks though elsewhere it seems to have died away. An elaborate nature picture has been drawn and this simile has drawn laudatory references from critics. An epic simile as used by Milton is as long comparison of an event, object or person with something essentially different. In the hands of Milton the epic simile becomes a means to produce the desired effect. The writer starts with a comparison say between A and B. as the comparison progresses, B becomes bigger than A until it completely eclipses the first. This kind of comparison is known as the epic simile, the long-tailed simile or the Homeric simile. Some critics have suggested that Milton makes use of the epic similes for their own sake and as a result they are not integral to the epic. This criticism may be discounted because the simile as used by Milton conspicuously heightens the grandeur of the poem. Nor would it be correct to state the similes are too highbrow or pedantic to go down well with the general reader. In the hands of Milton, the epic simile becomes a thing of pure joy. His art lies in choosing the right word and packing the maximum meaning in the minimum of words. Milton uses the simile to drive home a point through an elaborate manner of presentation. It at once makes the meaning clear through a vivid presentation. Milton makes use of a natural occurrence, a classical allusion, a historical or actual event as the basis for his similes. The means may be different in each case, but the end is the same-the simile contributes to the epic grandeur of the poem. In the next epic simile a comparison has been drawn between the athletic contest of fallen angels and the strange appearances of the Aurora Borealis in the sky which in the old days was supposed to portend wars and which to the fanciful mind has the appearance of the armies fighting in the sky. The simile reminds us of those strange sights which are sometimes seen in the sky and which are supposed to signify ill fortune to human beings. Milton here suggests by comparison the devilish activities of the fallen angels who are no longer angels but have become devils. There is another simile drawn from Greek mythology when due to an error committed by the wife of Hercules he met with a painful death. The purpose of the simile is to suggest that the angels are driven to feats of desperation born of the agonies of hell. Another celebrated simile compares Satan with outstretched wings to a fleet of the largest ships then known-the Indiamen. It is an elaborate picture that Milton has drawn and shows his love of exotic scenes and associations. Just as a fleet of ships would appear to a distant observer to be floating above the water and hanging in the clouds, so seemed Satan, as he fled in the far distance pushing forward to cross the bounds of Hell. It has been described as one of the most striking of Milton’s similes. In the second epic simile the sounds of the joys of the fallen angels are compared to the joyous sounds which are heard in a valley when the clouds have faded away and the sun shines brightly again. The joy felt by the fallen angels provides an occasion for Milton to bring before the reader’s mind a most pleasing scene of Nature. The simile is important because it marks a transition from the infernal debate of the fallen angels and suggests a renewal of hope among them. Satan has been compared to various objects. In confrontation with Death he is compared to a comet with its horrid tail portending national disasters and war. On another occasion the encounter between Satan and Death is compared to two black clouds hovering “front to front”. It is a nature picture showing nature red in tooth and claw. In the hands of Milton, the epic simile is not a trick of style but comes alive through a richness of comparison and an imaginative intensity of feeling. The next simile relates to the figure of Sin. The dogs which surround the figure of Sin at the waist are compared to the dogs which tormented the monster Scylla and then to the dogs which attend on Hecate, the queen of witches. Here the reference is to classical mythology. On a third occasion Satan flying through the air is compared to the monster Gryphon who is half-eagle and half-lion who chased the one-eyed man who had stolen the gold kept in the custody of the Gryphon. The comparison is brought out that Satan was travelling with the same expectancy as the Gryphon. As Milton depicts him there is something majestic about Satan as he sits high on a “throne of royal estate”, ready to make the first speech to the assembly of fallen angels gathered in the hall of Pandemonium. Satan rises to his full height as a leader as he by turn humours, cajoles and ultimately wins the confidence of the fallen angels. Satan may have been expelled from Heaven with his fallen angels but it has not affected his spirits. In fact he sees himself as the leader of the fallen angels. Yet he is careful enough not to make the other angels feel that he has usurped this position. As one used to the art of double speak he plays it both ways. He lauds the fallen angels for making him their leader of their own choice. In the same breath he talks of his leadership position almost as a matter of divine right and in accordance with the fixed laws of Heaven. In order to ensure that what he says goes down well with the fallen angels, he holds forth on the hazards of his leadership where he stands exposed to greater risks and dangers than all of them. As such he believes there will be no need for any of them to feel jealous of his position. Ostensibly he asks his followers to choose between an open war against God or action through “covert guile”. But of, Satan has already made up his mind about his strategy and is cleverly covering up his decision by giving it the appearance of a consensus. Mammon is the next speaker after Belial and he more or less underwrites whatever Belial has said. He rejects the concept of war against God and is in favour of maintaining the status after, the expulsion from Heaven. However, he does not subscribe to Belial’s idea that God in course of time will have mercy and withdraw the punishment imposed on them. He comes out with an original suggestion that having been consigned to Hell they should exploit the hidden treasures of the place like gems and gold and create in Hell a place, equal in magnificence to Heaven. His proposal draws a round of applause from the fallen angels. Belial who follows Moloch is not Milton’s favourite for Milton introduces him with the remark that his thoughts are low, that he understandably has no time for noble deeds. But of, Milton says he is the handsomest of the angels. The stand he takes is contrary to that of Satan and Moloch. Both “open war” and “covert guile” are anathema to him and he believes in making the best of a bad situation. For him total annihilation is much worse than eternal suffering. He argues that if they accept their present lot submissively, God may have pity on them and reduce their punishment. Even if this does not come about, they would in course of time get conditioned to their suffering in Hell and then it would not be as painful as it is now. Moloch is the first to speak after Satan. Milton profiles him in very impressive language. Described as the “sceptured king”, he is strongest and the fiercest spirit who had rebelled against God. Moloch is a militant and he stands for an open war. His stand is based in his belief that the fallen angels have nothing more to fear from God’s wrath, for the outcome can be only annihilation which would be preferable to their present state or some new state of existence and since no state of existence could be worse than the present state that would be an improvement. He is all in favour of an all out war against God using the very method which he has used to torture them. Like Satan he panders to the vanity of the fallen angels by saying that according to their nature, they must ascend and rise and not descend and fall. As Moloch speaks he dilutes his concept of total war to a type of guerilla warfare. None the less he swears by plan of revenge against God. Beelzebub who is the last speaker to address the conclave acts as the echo of Satan. He does not exactly fall in line with Satan’s call of an open war against God but at the same time he considers the peace policy of Belial and Mammon as one of appeasement. He is all for taking revenge against God and supports Satan’s idea of action in the new world to turn the newly created race of man against God. Milton portrays Beelzebub in glowing colours. He occupies a high seat next only to Satan. He radiates wisdom in his outlook and compels attention in his address. Since there are no volunteers Satan takes the floor again to tell them that he fully understood the reasons for their reluctance to undertake such a hazardous journey. As their leader, he adds, it is his duty to undertake the journey for his position draws not only laurels but also dangers. He ends up by stating that they should do all they can to make their present condition tolerable for as long as they have to stay there. He uses the devices worked out by Satan to win over the fallen angels. He addresses them as “Thrones and Imperial Powers, offspring of Heaven” and congratulates the angels for supporting his proposal of an invasion of the new world. He calls for volunteers to undertake the journey to the new world stating at the same time that it is fraught with the gravest of dangers. How subtly to detain thee I devise; Inviting thee to hear while I relate; Chaos is shown as having complained that at first Hell stretching far and wide was carved out of his dominion, that is God created Hell out of space formerly occupied by Chaos. Thus Chaos loses a certain proportion of space when God created a new place called Hell. Thus the division of space was between Empyrean, Chaos and Hell. Chaos suffered a further loss when the new world with its planetary spheres was created. Soon after his address Satan terminates the meeting fearful that there may be a volunteer for the trip and that would endanger his position. The word Chaos denotes a formless void or a great deep of primordial matter. There is no real bottom of Chaos and this means that it had no fixed dimension or boundaries. All above was Empyrean, all below was Chaos. Chaos is made up of four elements which are the four possible combinations of the four principles, hot cold, moist and dry which Chaos form chance combinations. Chaos is an ambiguous world and its moral quality is no exception. Chaos has no power to resist evil and not being a part of the creation it exhibits a curious affinity with the evil which conquers it, an affinity symbolized by Satan’s pact with Chaos. And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou know'st ; Milton holds that nothing once created can be annihilated by the next chance. It will be seen there is no positive vocabulary for the description of Chaos. Milton produces his effect by negatives; without bound or dimension where there is no length or breadth, no time or place neither earth, air, fire or water. Satan’s journey through Chaos heightens not only the formless nature of Chaos but the very hazardous nature of the journey he undertakes, no doubt projecting Satan’s own courage, in going through with such a mission. Satan’s journey through Chaos requires all the courage and strength even of Satan. He finds himself for a time falling through what was later to be called airpocket only to be carried aloft again by a tumultuous cloud. His ears are assailed on all sides by stunning noise. He has no idea what direction to take until he finds the throne of Chaos and Satan’s chance meeting with him distracts from the sense of loneliness that marks the rest of the journey through a realm held in a sway by the monarch Chaos and his eldest child, Night. Satan’s meeting with the ruler of this realm is significant. Like Satan Chaos also sits on a throne and his other name is ‘Anarch’. Like Satan he too can be described as a prince of darkness. He shares the throne with Night, the first of all created things. Other denizens of Chaos are tumult, confusion, rumour and discord, making a complete mix of disorder and desolation that Chaos is. There is complete disorder in Chaos with the elements fighting against one another for mastery. The elements press the embryonic atoms in their service. The atoms are divided in their loyalties. No sooner does an element win a victory than another civil war begins. Chaos the monarch is himself the judge to give his decision as to which of the elements is the winner at a particular moment. But of, Chaos being itself the personification of confusion gives controversial decisions, thus making the civil war an even more confused affair. Next to Chaos the highest judge is Chance which determines the fate of everything. The confusion and conflict in Chaos can only end if God decided to create more worlds. Only then would harmony replace the confused fighting and disorder prevailing in Chaos. Milton falls back on myths and legends to chart out Satan’s journey through Chaos. Similar journeys have earlier been undertaken by Ulysses and Jason mainly as sea voyages. That is why we find so many allusions to the sea in Satan’s voyage. To give him a greater dimension, Milton makes him fly through the air also, but as he hears his destination, he is very much like a weary seaborne traveler reaching his destination. Chaos is agreeable to immediately come to a working arrangement with Satan. He informs him that the new world hangs from Heaven by a golden chain and he does not have to travel very much to reach it. Chaos is indeed happy if Satan’s succeeds in his mission of winning over the new world and thus taking his revenge on God. Seeing this conglomerate in Chaos, Satan shows his caliber in not buckling down to them. At the same time, he throws a bait to these as he seeks their cooperation to find his way to the new world created for man by God out of carving out a part of the empire of chaos. The bait he offers Chaos is attractive enough. If chaos helps him find his way to the newly created world he will find ways of restoring to Chaos, the part of the empire that was taken away by God to create the new world. Chaos is integral to the epic power and its significance lies in that it becomes an ally of Satan only because they share a common hatred for God. It gives Milton an opportunity to use his powerful imagination and description in giving us the firm contours of this formless shape. From Milton’s description of the ruler of Chaos the reader gets the impression that he is opportunistic enough to let others battle for him while he gives himself importance in proclaiming that he resides on the frontier of Chaos so as to be in a better position to defend his empire against encroachments. Chaos like Hell is a state of mind and Milton has a purpose in delineating it. While Hell has been depicted as a place of torment and torture, Chaos is far removed from Hell and has been presented by Milton duly as a realm of disorder. In fact Milton offers some consolation by stating that God carved out a territory from Chaos to create his new world for Man. Hell as described in Book I was a place of torture. Though a flaming inferno there was in it just as much -light as to make the darkness visible. The light also served to show the other regions of? Hell, the regions of sorrow where a flood of fire raged fed by the ever burning sulphur that was never exhausted. This was the Hell created by God after the revolt of the angels in preparation for their inevitable defeat. By indicating that Hell is both a state of mind and a place Milton gives his conception a double dimension in accordance with prevailing religious beliefs. He meets the religious requirements of those who believe that Hell is an abode of damned souls along with the fallen angels. For those who accept that Hell is a state of mind Milton gives the place a symbolic or allegorical significance. Hell for this school of thought exists in this very life and not the next life. When a sinner commits sin and has the remorse of guilt on his conscience, he is already in Hell. The mental torture that the sinner goes through is symbolized by the everlasting flames of Hell. The fallen angels themselves symbolically represent the sinners of this earth with one difference that while the sinners can repent for their sins, the fallen angels are unrepentant. In Book II Milton strengthens his description because Hell is an inseparable party of the format of the epic poem. In keeping with his own environment, Milton depicts Hell in the grimmest of colours. It is the universe of death because those angels who rejected God must experience a living death even as God is a source of life for those angels who were loyal to him. When the fallen angels enter Hell and discuss it as a place of evil for the first time they come face to face with the plight of their position in Hell. This realization becomes worse with the knowledge that this state of suffering will last for ever. While Milton conceived the story of Paradise Lost from, the Bible, Hell had to remain an integral part of his scheme. For his description of Hell Milton had to rely upon two sources, the Bible itself and classical mythology. In both he found the description adequate. In Book II of Paradise Lost he has enriched this with the strength of his imagination. The outcome is that hell becomes the fit dwelling place for all those monstrous and abhorrent sinners who are considered more monstrous than the Hydras and the Chimeras of classical mythology. By placing in it all conceivable instruments of torture Milton has fallen in line with religious thinking on the idea of hell because it fitted in admirably with his conceit of the situation. That is why both sin and death have been placed in this abode because Milton thought it proper that these figures with their horrific and frightening shapes had to find their proper place in the configuration of Hell. Both of them have a role to play in sending people to Hell and this accords well with Milton’s views on the subject. Milton’s depiction of Hell gives life to the view that Hell is a state of mind as well as a place by his accurate juxtaposition of the mind to the place. The freedom with which the poetry moves from the exterior to the inner landscape obliges us to give each word in it a continuous extension of the significance. Other poets have elaborated conventionally on the torments of Hell but not everyone has been able to give their description an inner as well as architectural meaning. The thirst I had of knowledge, and vouchsafed This friendly condescension to relate Things, else by me unsearchable; now heard With wonder, but delight, and, as is due, With glory attributed to the high Creator. There is also a river called Lethe, a river of forgetfulness, and beyond it is frozen continent torn by storms of whirlwind and hailstone. The continent contains a gulf and a marsh and serbonis which has swallowed up whole armies who tried to cross it. In the continent the damned souls feel at once the intense cold and the scorning heat. Milton gives a purpose in placing the river Lethe in the contours of Hell. The damned souls have to cross the river by a boat. Though drinking the waters cause one to forget all pain and suffering, the damned souls cannot drink the water because it moves away from them when they try to drink it. A monster called Medusa is another deterrent to the damned souls if they try to drink the waters. Milton has introduced four rivers flowing through Hell and discharging their waters into the burning lake. There is a river called Styx which is the river of bitter hatred. There is Acheron, the river of woe the waters of which are black and deep. There is Cocytus, a river for wailing and lamentation and there is Phlegethon, the waves of which are made of flames of fire. In describing the horrors of Hell, Milton puts apt descriptions in the mouths of various speakers. Moloch refers to Hell as ‘this dark opprobrious den of shame’ and ‘the prison of God’s tyranny’. Belial speaks of the eternal woe which the fallen angels have to experience. In another place he speaks of the ‘rim fires’ which are burning in Hell. There is another graphic description of the cataracts of fire which the firmament of Hell can spout forth. Mammon is shown as wondering what he can get out of Hell specially from the diamonds and gold which he believes lie buried in the soil of Hell. Like other speakers both Beelzebub and Satan are obsessed by the flames of Hell. Beelzebub describes them as corrosive fire and Satan refers to Hell as a ‘huge convex of fire’. In drawing the geography of Hell Milton has departed from previous allusions on the subject. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Hell is situated in the centre of the earth but Milton has located it in the lowest regions of Chaos. Milton tells us as much when he brings out in Satan’s talks with the Anarch that Hell was originally a part of Chaos and was carved out by God after the revolt of the angels to be their dwelling place fitted with all the instruments of torture. In Milton’s concept Hell is situated below Heaven, a fact which is confirmed with many references to the rebellious angels who descended from Heaven after their revolt. The disobedience of man is brought about through Satan; as an indirect agent: he seduces man in revenge for the punishment inflicted on him and his crew for their disobedience to God. Therefore, the action of the poem takes place not in one spot, but in three different places separated by infinity of distances: the Material Universe, Hell and Heaven, and between all of them lies Chaos. The vast comprehension of the story, both in space and in time leading up to the point of Man’s first disobedience makes Paradise Lost unique among epics, and entitles Milton to speak of it as involving “things yet unattempted in prose and rhyme.” Milton was confronted with the problem of rendering all this incomprehensible infinity plausible and credible, and he did it by presenting it symbolically in terms of human experience. The poet himself is careful to stress the point that he has been obliged to place the spiritual on the material plane, and that his pictures are purely symbolical, not literal, since human language must be employed to describe what is beyond human understanding. Once he has thus excused and explained himself, he is quite clear in his mind as to the divisions of Infinite Space. He proceeds about his business with mathematical precision even. His pictures therefore are well-defined. Book II gives the fullest picture of the deep of Chaos the “lower” part of Infinitude, but in words which are at best symbolical. Its appearance is struck off in about half-a dozen lines of the most beautiful poetry. It is ‘a huge, limitless ocean, abyss or quagmire, of universal darkness and lifelessness, wherein are jumbled in blustering confusion the elements of all matter, or rather the crude embryons of all the elements ere as, yet they are distinguishable. Therefore is no light there, not properly Earth, Water, Air, or Fire, but only a vast pulp or welter of unformed matter, in which all these lie tempestuously intermixed.’

Satan’s experience does not belie his fears. He is environed round on all sides with these fighting elements. He is harder “beset than when Argo passed through Bosporus, betwixt the jostling rocks, or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned Charybdis, and by other whirlpool steered.”

It is the hoariest in Infinite Time, having existed coeval with Heaven. From it other worlds have come into being- first Hell, later the Material Universe. Thus it is the womb of Nature and, when these worlds shall again be destroyed, her grave as well. Being illimitable and unbottomed, the way through it is described as long and hard. The turbulence of the elements in their embryonic state is so fierce that there is the danger of an object being crushed and reduced to its atoms, if caught in their welter. Satan fears as much when he describes the difficulties of the adventure in the assembly. It is possible to distinguish, though symbolically, some of the regions of this vast abrupt from the description that Milton gives of Satan’s voyage through it. The resistance of this nameless consistency is felt less by Satan in the first stage of his adventure, when he seems carried upward effortlessly, as in a cloud-chair, buoyed up by the surging smoke from the furnace mouth of Hell. But of, soon he comes upon a region which appears to be a complete vacuity, for “all unawares, fluttering his pennons vain, plumb-down he drops ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour had been falling,” were it not for an unexpected accident. In this region where Chance rules as governor, he alights upon a “tumultuous cloud”, charged with fire and saltpeter and signed by it, he is shot upward till another accident drops him in a boggy Syrtis, where the flame which seemed to consume him is quenched. Thence it is neither sea, nor good dry land, but bog and cliff, an atmosphere which is at once “strait, rough, dense or rare”, and Satan is obliged to use all his limbs to keep himself adrift. Here are the frontiers of Chaos, but they are yet so far removed from Heaven that it is darkness all round. The last lap of Satan’s journey has yet to be passed through the warring elements, before the extremity verging on Heaven is reached. In this farthest verge, dimly lit by Heaven’s brightness, Chaos has retired, ‘as from her outmost words, a broken foe, with tumult less, and with less hostile din.” Resistance here is very little, and Satan can waft himself as it were on calmer wave in dubious light till he reaches the outermost shell of the Material Universe. Milton divides Infinite Space roughly into two regions, the “upper” being a region of light, Heaven or Empyrean, and the “lower” being a region of darkness, Chaos. The impression we get of Heaven from Book II is that it is “undetermined square or round, with opal towers and battlements adorned, of living sapphire.” It is the bright and boundless region of Light, Freedom, Happiness, and Glory, which the fallen angels regret having lost altogether. It is fortified by impregnable walls, which are closely guarded by ever-wakeful sentries; yet the sacred influence of its light diffuses on the verge of Chaos, so that Satan arriving here in his flight to the world finds it more easy to traverse. In the midst of this region the Deity, though omnipresent, has His immediate and visible dwelling. ‘He is surrounded by a vast population of beings, “the Angels” or the “Sons of God”, who draw near to His throne in worship, derive thence their nurture and their delight, and yet live dispersed through all the ranges and recesses of the region, leading severally their mighty lives and performing the behests of God, but organized into companies, orders, and hierarchies. But of, Heaven at large, or portions of it, are figured as tracts of a celestial Earth, with plain, hill, and valley, wherein the myriads of the Sons of God expatiate, in their two orders of Seraphim and Cherubim, and in their descending ranks as Archangels or Chiefs, Princes of various degrees, and individual Intelligences.’ Such is the stupendous picture that Milton gives us of this hoary deep. Heaven and Chaos divided the Infinite of Space between them at the beginning of time: but soon a need arose for the creation of more worlds. Chaos, the Anarch himself, refers with regret to it, when he speaks of God having made inroads into his domain, and first scooped off a space called Hell, and later “another world hung o’er my realm, linked in a golden chain to that side of Heaven from whence Satan and his legions fell.” The atoms being in a perpetual state of war, their collisions fill the atmosphere with loud noises. Satan’s ears are pealed “with noises loud and ruinous”, more clamorous than those made by the battering engines of Bellona bent on raising a city, or by the Earth when she is torn from her axle by the fall of Heaven. As he approaches the throne of Chaos his ears are assailed by “a universal hubbub wild of stunning souring and voices all confused.” These noises become still only in the confines of Heaven. Hell is pictured as a region shut in by a “convex of fire” and barred by thrice three-folded gates, guarded by two Shapes- Sin and Death. The gates are described in some detail. Three folds are of brass, three of iron, and three of adamantine rock. They are impaled with circling fire and protected by a portcullis which none but Sin could draw up. The gates are fastened by bolts and bars and secured by a lock of a very intricate pattern. Sin has to turn all the intricate wards with her key, and then “on a sudden open fly, with impetuous recoil and jarring sound the infernal doors, and on their hinges grate harsh thunder that the lowest bottom of Erebus shook.” The wide –open gates can give passage to a whole bannered host with its extended wings, horse and chariots ranked in loose array. Out of the mouth of Hell, as from a furnace belch forth, “redounding smoke and ruddy flame.” The ruler of this Infinite Abyss is Chaos. ‘Though the presence of God is there potentially too, it is still, as it were, actually retracted thence, as from a realm unorganized and left to Night and Anarchy; nor do any of the angels wing down into its repulsive obscurities. The crystal floor or wall of Heaven divides them from it; underneath which, and unvisited of light, save what may glimmer through upon its nearer strata, it howls and rages and staggers eternally.’ Of the other world, the Material Universe, there is not much of a description in Book II. The rumour of its creation was long current in Heaven, before it actually came into existence. The moment of its creation arrived when a void was created in Heaven by the fall of Satan and his crew. God then sent His Son forth, and with his golden compasses, he centered one point of them where he stood and turned the other through the obscure profundity around (VII-224-231) (. Thus were marked out, or cut out through the body of Chaos, the limits of the new Universe of Man,-the Starry Universe which to us seems measureless, and the same as infinity itself, but which is really only a beautiful azure sphere or drop, insulated in Chaos, and hung at its topmost point or zenith from the Empyrean. Chaos mentions it as hung by a golden chain from that side of Heaven whence Satan and his legions fell. Hell is described in the book as stretching far and wide beneath Chaos. It is a kind of Antarctic region, distinct from the body of Chaos proper. It is a vast region of fire, sulphurous lake, plain and mountain, and of all forms of fiery and icy torment. In the midst is the bottomless lake of fire on which Satan and his crew were hurled down on their fall. Into it pour the four rivers- “Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate; Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep; Cocytus, named of lamentations loud heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon, whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.” Around the lake a vast space of dry land extends, formed of solid fire, with mountains, fens and bogs, full of mineral wealth. On one of these hills Pandemonium has been built entire, which rose out of it, when formed, like an exhalation. The City of Hell is afterwards built round Pandemonium on this dry ground of fire, and the country round the city is broken with rock, and valley, and hill, and plain. Further on, in another concentric band, we catch a glimpse of a desert land, “a frozen continent”, beat with perpetual storms of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems of ancient pile.” The damned are brought hither by a “harpy-footed Furies,” and they are make to feel “by turns the bitter change of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce, from beds of raging fire to starve in ice their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine immovable infixed, and frozen round, periods of time, thence hurried back to fire.” Lethe, the river of oblivion, flows round this region, and rolls eternally her watery labyrinth. The damned, on their way to and from the region of solid and liquid fire and this icy desert, have to cross this sound, and, parched and fry as their throats are, the moment they stoop to drink of its waters, they roll back from their lips. Medusa and Gorgonian terror guards the ford, and prevents the sufferers from allaying their thrust. The contours of this region are thus defined by Milton-“dark and dreary vale”, “region dolorous”, “frozen and fiery Alp”, “rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death”. The new universe does not consist merely of the Earth, but the entire firmament of planets, stars, etc. in mapping it, Milton adopts the unscientific conception of the universe then current, which had been propounded by the Greek astronomer, Ptolemy, in the second century A.D., and later expanded by Alphonso X king of Castile in the thirteenth century. According to this teaching the Earth was fixed in the centre of the Universe. It was also the centre of a system of concentric Spheres, not solid, but of transparent space , each of which carried with it one of the seven planets, in the following order-the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Beyond these seven Spheres was an eighth Sphere, containing the Firmament of the fixed Stars. The Crystalline Sphere was a ninth Sphere that was invented to account for the very slow “precision of the equinoxes”, one revolution of which occupied over 25,000 years; and beyond this was the last and tenth Sphere, the only one that was material, being absolutely opaque and impenetrable. This outer shell was called the Primum Mobile, the first moved, because it was believed to be the first created Sphere to be set in motion. Milton’s daring conception is yet further revealed in linking the Material Universe with Hell. Satan had to wing his way through the abortive gulf and run through many risks in doing so. But of, to facilitate the passage to and fro of the human race, on the one hand, and the devils, on the other, a bridge was built across Chaos between Hell and the Material Universe by Sin and Death soon after Man’s fall. It is “of wondrous length,” writes Milton, “from Hell continued, reaching the utmost orb, of this frail world.” There prevailed at the time, indeed, a more accurate conception of the Material Universe, which was formulated by Copernicus, a Polish monk and astronomer of the fifteenth century. It taught that Earth and the other planets revolve about the Sun. Milton was familiar with it also, through his acquaintance with Galileo. But of, in mapping his universe in Paradise Lost, he preferred the Ptolemaic to the Copernican system, because it was more generally known and universally adopted. ‘Yet as to the proportions of this world to the total map Milton dares to be exact. The distance from its nadir or lowest point to the upper boss of hell is exactly equal to its own radius; or in other words, the distance of Hell- gate from Heaven-gate is exactly three radii of the Human or Material Universe.’ Satan once again impresses us as being fit to be an epic hero. At the very outset in Book II, he is described as being seated on a “throne of royal state” in the midst of great splendor. We are told that from his despair he has been “uplifted beyond hope” and that now he is aspiring to rise even higher. He is insatiate to pursue his war against Heaven even though his war is doomed to fail. He tells his comrades that he has not given up Heaven as lost; and he gives them as assurance that they would rise again to Heaven and would, in fact appear to be more glorious and more awful than if they had not suffered and fall. In his second speech Satan again impresses us greatly, this time by offering to undertake a hazardous journey in search of the new world created by God. While none of the other fallen angels comes forward to undertake this arduous and dangerous task. Satan is ready to go. He speaks of the royal powers and the royal privileges which he enjoys as their leader and he therefore believes that it is his duty to undertake the task and that has been proposed. This certainly raises him in our estimation. He is not even prepared to take a companion with him: “This enterprise none shall partake with me.” And how would the Ptolemaic theory stand? In the light of this knowledge how much more absurd it would be that their Stellar Firmament with its immeasurable radius of over 100, 000 light-year “turns about once every twice twelve hours.” And if they found it difficult to believe this of the “great round Earthly Ball,” how would they taken to the discovery that the planet Jupiter, over 1300 times as large, turns round in ten hours? Milton’s cosmography is not entirely imaginary. ‘For the material data which he found necessary to his representation he restored to all manner of sources and to his own invention, employing Scriptural suggestions wherever possible and taking pains to add nothing which would be directly contrary to Holy Writ. It is not to be thought that he offered such details as the causeway from Hell to Earth, the chain by which the visible universe depended from Heaven, or the spheres themselves which encircled the earth and carried the planets and fixed stars, as obligatory to the understanding. They were simply imaginative representations which might or might not correspond to actuality. Sometimes he is deliberately vague, as when he says that Heaven is “undetermined square or round.” Often his concrete detail or measurement is useful only for the moment and defies adoption into the general scheme, as where he says that the distance from Hell to Heaven was three times the distance from the centre of the earth to the pole of the uttermost encircling sphere.’ For these reasons it is misleading to consider the plan of Milton’s Infinite Space as one of his deliberate convictions. One wonders how he would have arranged his ideas in the light of modern discoveries. Distances in the Universe (according to these discoveries), are so enormous that the mile must be discarded entirely as the unit of distance, its place being taken by the light-year, i.e., the distance through which a ray of light, travelling at 186,000 miles a second, is propagated in a year. Yet for star systems and nebulae have been discovered by the camera at the inconceivable distance of 100,000light-years, and there are others still beyond, supposed by some astronomers to be separate universe, but still within the limits of the material creation. What would Milton have bought had he known this? Would not Raphael’s words to Adam (VIII, 110-114) have taken on a new meaning? Both Sin and death are conceived and presented with propriety. Sin which is delectable in commission and hideous in its effect t, is aptly pictured as a woman fair from the waist upward but foul downward, ending her body “in many a scaly fold, voluminous and vast, a serpent armed with mortal sting.” Around her middle cluster a pack of hounds which never cease their barking. They are her offspring, and when disturbed they kennel in her womb, still continuing their howls within her body. They are described as horrid in appearance, and worse than those that afflicted Scylla, or which accompanied the night- hag, when she came riding through the air to dance with the Lapland witches. They feed on her bowls, and are a constant vexation to her. The description of the appearance of Sin reads like a visible embodiment of these words of William Dyer, a contemporary of Milton: “There is more bitterness in sin’s ending that there edger was sweetness in its acting- If you see nothing but good in its commission, you will suffer only woe in its conclusion.” Whereas in Hell-hounds that afflict her within and without, her own offspring, we see the symbolical presentation of the consequences of sin. These are some of the stunning discoveries made by modern astronomy even of that Material Universe, which Milton planned with such perfect simplicity. If these take our breath away, then what must be those undiscovered bourns, Heaven, Chaos and Hell, about which modern science is yet skeptical? Milton’s scheme looks insignificant and incoherent before all this knowledge. Yet what a staggering and stupendous conception he has given it all! The imagination is properly impressed by the infiniteness of the conception, and, with Theseus, in Shakespeare’s play, we are prepared to sympathise with him, and to regard “the best in this kind” to be no more than a shadow, “and the worst no worse, if imagination amend them.” Into a poem which deals very largely with supernatural agents, Milton introduces two shapes, the sinister figure of Sin and the grim and horrid monster, Death, who meets Satan at Hell-gate, and prevents his egress. The adequacy of their portraiture has been praised, but their consistency as allegorical personages has been questioned. Stopford A. Brooke, for example, writes thus: “Death’s image has claimed admiration and justly; but if the lines, which leave him indefinite, yet ‘terrible as Hell’, are sublime, the rest of the allegory of him and of Sin is so definite, so conscious of allegory, that it loses sublimity.” Addison was the first critic to draw attention to the inconsistency of the representation. While admitting that it is a “very beautiful and well-invented allegory,” he added, “I cannot but think that persons of such a chimerical existence are proper actors in an epic poem; therefore, there is not the measure of probability annexed b to them which is requisite in writings of this kind.” Finally, Johnson regarded the allegory as ‘unskilful’’ and complained that it is broken when “Sin and Death stop the journey of Satan, a journey described as real, and when Death offers him battle.” “That Sin and Death should have shown the way”, he continued,” to Hell, might have been allowed: but they cannot facilitate the passage by building a bridge, because the difficulty of Satan’s passage is described as real and sensible. And the bridge ought to be only figurative.” A careful analysis will show that Milton has secured consistency of portraiture, though in the allegorical significance that we read into it, the sublimity of the episode is a little detracted. Death, the grisly horror, which all of us dread, but which cannot be imagined by us in any form, is properly presented as a shape that is shapeless. The vagueness with which it is invested is in perfect keeping with our own conception of it. “Black it stood as Night, Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, and shook a fearful dart.” Coleridge has well remarked: “The grandest effects of poetry are where the imagination is called forth to produce, not a distinct form, but a strong working of the mind, still offering what is still repelled, and again creating what is again rejected: the result being what the poet wishes to impress, viz., the sublime feeling of the imaginable for the mere images.” Such a stupendous feat of the imagination is this animation of what man dreads most instinctively. The allegory, here, does not consist in the mere personification of an abstraction, but in its relation to Sin. We read in the Bible that the wages of sin is death, and Milton had made Death the offspring of Sin, just as he had made Sin the offspring of evil thought and the consort of the devil. Interrupting the mortal combat of Satan with Death, which would have ended either or both, Sin relates her history. To Satan who has forgotten her, she recounts how she rose from the left side of his head, like Juno, on a day in Heaven, when he was complotting rebellion against God. But of, Milton does not stop with rendering in visual form what merely passes in the mind. He shows also how we become reconciled to sin and finally hardened in it. “Amazement” seized all the heavenly host, she says continuing her narrative to Satan they reconciled in fear, and called her Sin, and held her for a portentous sign. But of, when she had grown familiar, she pleased “the most averse” among them, “and with attractive graces won thee chiefly , who full oft thyself in me thy perfect image viewing becam’st enamoured; and such joy thou took’st with me in secret, that my womb conceived.” The allurements of sin are here well bodied forth, and the whole passage reads like an artist’s picture of the text: “Sin is first pleasing, then it grows easy, then delightful, then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed.” The association with and the commission of sin lead inevitably in the end to hideous death; and so the offspring of Sin in the poem is the grim monster, Death. The final ruin, with all its throes and travail, is befittingly, presented in the picture o Sin’s confinement. Milton completes the picture of Sin and Death by remarking further that just as sin ends in violent death, so death is passionately fond of sinners. Hence he makes Death, as soon as he emerges from the womb of Sin fall lustfully in love with her, and become the father of all that brood of hounds, the affliction of sin, we have noticed above. The poet seals their permanent union in the words he places on the lips of Sin, that Death would have destroyed her. Death shall cease when Sin becomes extinct. The destruction of the one involves the ruin of the other. Milton thus a perfect picture of the origin of sin in the mind of man, his being hardened in it, the evil consequences that follow, and the violent end to which it finally leads him. The adequacy of the portraiture and its vividness cannot be doubted. But of, while genesis of sin is sublime enough, its later history is full of such gruesome details that it tends to detract from loftiness. It cannot but be otherwise, since there is nothing elevated in the consanguinity of Sin and death. The representation, however, is hideous enough and impressive.

The characters of sin and death are thus firmly drawn, once their reality is granted, all their deeds become plausible; there is nothing inconsistent in them, as Dr. Johnson contended. It is but natural that Death, the shadowy giant, should bar Satan’s way, and offer to fight him, for death makes no distinction between saint and sinner. Sin does well to remind Satan that Death’s dart is mortal, that he is unconquerable except by him “who rules above”. Neither is it strange that Sin should be the first to fall a victim to Satan’s temptation. He offers to bring her to the place “where thou and Death shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen wing silently the buxom air, embalmed with odours,” and she jumps at the offer, while death, the gourmand, smacks his greedy lips in joyous anticipation of the goodly feast he shall soon have. Sin hastens to open the three-folded gates; the portcullis slides to her touch, her key swiftly turns  the intricate wards, and every belt and bar of massy iron  or solid rock unfasten with ease. There is no inconsistency either in these persons quickly spanning the distance from Chaos to the Earth by a bridge, for they are eager to get into the new habitation. Thus Milton’s presentation of these two characters doesnot impinge rudely upon our credulity.  On the other hand, they are satisfying portraits of the two deadly evils of this world.

He takes the fallen angels on an ego trip when he tells them that Hell will not be able to contain them because of their angelic nature. At the same time pandering to their vanity he tells them that after rising to Heaven again, they will never have to fear a second fall. And he establishes his supremacy over them by asserting that he has risen to his high position not only through his own merit but also because he deserved this position according to “the fixed laws of Heaven.” In order not to rub the fallen angels on the wrong side he at the same time tells them that they have elected him as their leader of their own, “free choice”. Milton makes use of Beelzebub to bring out some of the more repulsive facets of Satan’s character. Beelzebub rejects Moloch’s idea of an open war and goes all out in support of a plan aimed at confounding the race of mankind in one root and at mingling and involving Earth with Hell to spite the great creator. To highlight Satan’s craftiness Milton tells us that such a wicked plan could only emanate from “the author of all ill.” By making Beelzebub come forward with the proposal, Satan wants some devilishness of the scheme to rub on Beelzebub’s shoulders so that Satan can comparatively shine in a better light. Every word that Satan utters is loaded with meaning. “O Progeny of Heaven” he calls the fallen angels in his second address to them hoping against hope that their expulsion from Heaven will not make a dent on them. He can almost congratulate himself on the success he has achieved for the fallen angels bow to him “with awful reverence” and extol him “equal to the highest in Heaven”. Another aspect of his character is brought out in his dealings with Sin and Death. At first Satan tried his bluff and bluster on Death but when he realized that death was not unbearable, he pragmatically came to terms with them. He tactfully solicits the help of Chaos to carry him to the new world where he hopes to plan his revenge on god. In depicting Satan’s character, Milton has deliberately not indicated whether the logical flaws in Satan’s opening speech are the result of a conscious effort to soothe his followers or due to a genuine self delusion. According to one critic, the utterances of Moloch, Belial, Mammon and Beelzebub represent not merely individual contributions to a debate but also a train of thoughts which passes through the mind of Satan. Macallum shows up the inconsistencies in Satan’s speech and the change it reveals in his character. There is a contrast and a touch of duplicity between what Satan says when he is alone with his second in command, Beelzebub, and what he says when he is speaking in public. Milton brings this out in a very subtle manner showing clearly Satan’s power of double think. At one moment the leader of the fallen angels is convinced that his fallen angels are invincible while at the same time he accepts that constant vigilance is necessary to prevent its overthrow. Another example of his double think is seen in the ability of the fallen angels to strike back at God. His confident words to his fallen angels have a veneer of deception. Quite often one gets the feeling that Satan becomes a victim of his own propaganda and it is difficult to tell whether he is speaking out of conviction or he becomes a victim of his deceit. Milton’s portrayal of Satan is in conformity with the progress of the action ion the epic. In the early scenes of Book II Satan is portrayed as a defiant leader shedding his charisma on the fallen angels. As the epic advances, a gradual change overtakes Satan as he begins his downward slide from the moments of high grandeur of the early scenes. As Satan is caught in the work of his own self-destruction, the effects of his fall becomes evident as the epic moves to its inevitable conclusion. “Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue Vain war with Heaven; and, by success untaught, ‘’

                          Many eminent critics of the twentieth century have explained the hollowness of the romantic attitude towards the character of Satan that was held in the nineteenth century.

Milton has endowed Satan with all the traits of double think and double speak. In fact this comes so naturally to Satan that one could look upon him as faithful representative of the politicians of our own day. He is cast in this mould and his very first utterance as he opens the debate is typical of him. He addresses the fallen angels as ‘powers and dominions’, ‘deities of Heaven’. The address is typical of his egoism. He panders to the vanity of the fallen angels by addressing them with the same attributes that they once possessed. He is clever enough to adopt this posture to stress the fact that there has been no change in their status even though they have been expelled from Heaven. Similarly, when Satan goes on to argue that Hell will be unable to hold them because of their angelic nature, the assumption is that they remain heavenly although expelled from Heaven, which seems somewhat unrealistic. When he continues with the comment that when they do rise, they will be more glorious than if they had fallen one notices that Satan is confusing military glory with the true glory of Heaven. It has been pointed out very clearly that the speech of Satan is full of inconsistencies and his character has undergone a major change, change for the worse. Alan Rudrum has analysed Satan’s opening speech in Book II: “The debate is opened by Satan, seated as Chairman ‘high on a throne of royal state’. The tone and substance of his speech is foreshadowed in the very first line, in which he addresses his colleagues as ‘powers and dominions’ deities of Heaven.’ This in itself contains no direct statement, but the implication is that no radical change has occurred as a result of their rebellion and defeat at the hands of God. It is as futile as if a number of demoted officers were to agree that among themselves they should keep up the pretence of retaining their former rank, a comforting gesture but ultimately pointless because they are out of touch with reality.” We cannot rebel against a government and at the same time derive our position among our followers from the dignity we once held within it. Satan seems on surer ground in pointing out that no one will envy him his leadership in Hell because leadership there involves pre-eminence in suffering, but note the argument he develops from this. He says that as no one in Hell will envy him his position, there will be unity and strength among the fallen angels, and they will therefore, be more likely to succeed in claiming their ‘just’ inheritance than if their initial rebellion had been successful. From this it seems natural for him to go on to reassert his position of leadership among the fallen angels, and we certainly concede that he is audacious when we hear him deriving his leadership from the ‘fixed laws against which he had rebelled. It is difficult to decide whether the logical flaws in Satan’s opening speech are the result of a conscious attempt to deceive his followers or due to genuine self-delusion. At all events, Satan’s recklessness, and his apparent inability to face facts are carried over into Moloch’s speech, which immediately follows. One critic has usefully suggested that the utterance of Moloch, Belial, Mammon and Beelzebub represent not merely individual contributions to a debate, but also a train of thought which passes through the mind of Satan. Between them they canvass all possibilities but repentance, and the conclusion they arrive at, given their initial assumptions, is the only feasible one. Revenge, on some terms, they must have and as they cannot hurt God directly they will injure man instead. Quite apart from the fact that there is no evidence that their initial failure was due to dissensions within the ranks, this is simply ‘double think’- unless we concede that God has treated them unfairly, had displaced them from a ‘just inheritance’, unless in fact we can see ground for agreeing that their rebellion had been justified. Probably Satan’s speech should be read as a ‘morale booster’ and the true hopelessness of the matter can be gauged from its inaccuracy as an analysis of the situation. It will emerge later that Satan has a different idea in mind, but for the moment he wants his followed to discuss their reascent to Heaven, and invites their opinions as to whether open war or covert guile, will best bring this about. Satan has already chalked the mode of revenge he will adopt in his war against God but he wants to make the fallen angels believe that he is being guided by them in charting out their future course of action. Very adroitly he says,” who can advise may speak” as he invites their opinions to wage open war or convert guile to bring about the objectives. He doesnot utter an unnecessary word but he ensures that what he says goes home. Like one born to leadership he is quick to point out that no one will envy him his leadership he is quick to point out that no one will envy him his leadership in Hell because he would be exposed to much greater suffering from God than any one of them. On the other hand, they had their just inheritance to achieve if they adopted the right means. Macallum has drawn our attention to the inconsistencies in Satan’s speech in Book II and the change it reveals in his character. The contrast between what Satan says when he is alone with his second in command, Beelzebub, and what he says when he is speaking in public draws attention to this duplicity. He is, after all, the father of lies. Milton’s treatment of satanic description is extremely subtle and deserves careful attention. Satan possesses the capacity that George Orwell, in his study of totalitarianism in 1984 described as the power of ‘double think’- the power of entertaining two contradictory opinions at the same time. For example, the ideal member of the ruling class is convinced in part of his mind that his party is invincible and omniscient, while with another part of his mind he recognizes that constant vigilance is necessary to prevent its overthrow. In a similar manner Satan both does and doesnot believe in the ability of his army to strike back against God. His encouraging words to his troops are half deception. Like many dictators he shows a tendency to believe his own propaganda and it is impossible to distinguish clearly at any given moment between his real convictions and the sophistry by which he controls his followers. In cutting himself off from God, Satan has rejected the sources of reason and consequently he loses his grip on reality.

Although he still has a few moments of grandeur left, the general progress of his development is downward. Milton shows us Satan’s admirable qualities first, then explores the manner in which his denial of God’s perverts his virtues and turns his power into weakness.

A further word has to be said on the paradoxical view that Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost. This appears true only if we accept the traditional epic idea of the hero as a great warrior and leader. But of, Milton as he stresses everywhere in the poem, had a very different idea of the heroic. The hero as martyr, who suffers patiently and refuses to the death to renounce hi God, is the central idea of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes as well as of Paradise Lost. His idea of the heroic, along with his own heroic temper, is what puts Milton among the great poets of the world. Undoubtedly Milton found inspiration for the figures of Sin and Death in a biblical passage: “Thus when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished, bringeth forth dead”. From this cryptic statement Milton has visualized and etched the allegorical figures of Sin and death. Both are drawn with a wealth of detail. Sin is part woman, part serpent while Death a shadowy monarch who wields a dreadful dart, is made brightening by reason of his lack of clear and solid shape. Milton has painted both of them with lurid colours, specially their origin. Sin and Death are no mere decorative pieces in this epic poem. Through their presence and their allegory the poet drives home the point that evil turns back on itself endlessly repeating the same sterile and self-destructive acts. He adds a further significance to their characters by his description. Death is shown to be something awful and mysterious. He doesnot depict any details but leaves the readers with a vague terrifying impression of a misty, shadowy but nevertheless a majestic presence. And grace that won who saw to wish her stay, Rose, and went forth among her fruits and flowers, To visit how they prospered, bud and bloom, Her nursery; they at her coming sprung, And, touched by her fair tendance, gladlier grew. This is the best example of what Macaulay calls “the dim intimations of Milton”. He begins by calling Death a shape, then he qualifies this by saying that it had no shape- a shapeless shape. Then he adds that this shapeless shape could not be called a substance or shadow. He doesnot speak of his head or his crown but what seemed his head had on-the likeness of a kingly crown. The impact of the description is black and menacing and becomes the more sinister because it just a shadow. The portrait drawn by Milton of sin is ugliness personified. The poet has used the female form to represent Sin and one can rightly call it Milton’s masterpiece of filth. Sin describes how she sprang fully grown from the brow of Satan at the moment of his rebellion in Heaven. Satan has an incestuous relationship with her. She is mistress as well as daughter and from this union is born death, so aptly labeled by Milton as “this odious offspring”. The incestuous relationship continues with Death becoming the lover of his parent. His progeny are the yelling monsters that continuously torment their mother. Alterbury in a letter to Pope challenged to show in Homer anything equal to the allegory of Sin and Death. On the other hand Johnson believes that “this unskillful allegory appears to me one of the greatest faults of the poem.” Hanford describes the episodes as loathsome but believes it has a purpose by making us aware of the real ugliness of Sin and Death. Macaffery suggests that Sin and Death inhabit a necessary borderline between myth and allegory, “between a world where physical and spiritual forces are identical and a world where spiritual force is merely indicated by physical.” Summer is happy about the characterisation specially as it places Satan in perspective and establishes the necessary relation in the epic between the comic, the heroic and the tragic. But well thou comest Before thy fellows, ambitious to win From me some plume, that thy success may show Destruction to the rest: Satan’s heroism, like his outward luster, grows less dazzling as the action proceeds: the general is not as impressive a figure as the defiant individualistic of the first scene. Milton doesnot treat Satan as a static figure; on the contrary Satan is constantly changing because he is caught in a process of self destruction. The effects of his fall are made increasingly evident in the course of the action. Milton cleverly weaves a web of intrigue between Sin, Death and Satan when they confront each other at the gates of Hell. As Sin sees a confrontation between Satan Death building up, she intervenes to stop the clash. She then discloses the relationship between Satan and Death and impresses on both the futility of their mutual antagonisms. Sin counts on Satan to tackle her to a new world of bliss and pleasure in his company and with this hope she opens the gates of Hell to let Satan go out. In assessing the part of Sin and Death in the poem we have to accept that they are integral to the poem. By depicting them in the most grotesque of forms Milton tries to project the moral purpose of the whole episode. By placing them in Hell he suggests that they rightly belong there. The double incest shown between father and daughter and son and mother makes Sin and Death all the more horrifying and repulsive. Such an impact could only be conveyed through an allegory and Milton has done just that. It must be remembered that Paradise Lost even if is close to the truth, is not literally true and is at the most a symbolic poem. Milton’s portrayal of Sin and Death has led to sharp differences among his critics. One set of critics has led to sharp differences among his critics. One set of critics led by Addison is of the view that though the allegorical descriptions are arresting enough, the two figures look out of place in the epic. He raises doubts whether persons of such chimerical existence are proper actors in an epic poem. By throwing magic herbs into the sea where Circe was bathing, the witch transformed Scylla’s body from the waist down into a mass of barking dogs.

It is through symbolism that Milton wishes to convey the horror of the encounter between Satan and Sin and Death. Hell has become the abode of the fallen angels. The introduction of Sin and Death and their encounter with Satan at the gates of Hell carries the epic forward. The figure of Sin, half-woman and half-serpent with a number of barking dogs at her waist and creeping into her womb whenever they like has predecessors in Elizabethan poetry. Milton also had another model before him. This was Spenser’s description of Error- half a horrible serpent and half a woman’s shape. Similarly Milton was beholden for his description of Death to similar earlier descriptions. However, the difference is that Milton’s description evokes terror and alarm by his description of a shadowy nothing. But of, Milton does transcend the indistinct image when he describes it as brandishing a dreadful dart just as the serpent in the lower half of Sin is described as being armed with a deadly sting. Milton’s model for Sin was the sea nymph Scylla after her transformation by the witch Circe. His next argument is that of a military strategist. As a debater, he forestalls the objection that ascent to the Empyrean on their ruinous expedition, may be difficult. But for, no! if they bethink them how their descent had been difficult when they fell, they can naturally infer that ascent is their proper motion. Let them not doubt, therefore, their ability to soar back to Heaven. The Council in Hell has correctly been described as a superhuman parliamentary debate, as majestic in eloquence as it is momentous in the consequences involved. Milton brings to bear upon the account a lifelong study of statesmanship and oratory in the leaders of the Revolution. His council is a magnified image of those human deliberations on which the fates of nations hang. Besides, Milton brought to his task his own mastery in the art of dialectic which dates from his Cambridge days, when his degree depended on his ability to argue both sides of a question. Satan has called his council to consider how best they may revenge themselves on the Almighty, whether by open war or convert guile. But of, Satan does not only propound the question; it is his will that dominates secretly the assembly. ‘Individuals may voice their convictions and display their passions, each with a type of eloquence appropriate to his personal character and temper, but the ultimately policy is predetermined.’ Four of the chiefs express their views, each in his own characteristic manner, but it is the last, Beelzebub, who unfolds the master’s mind. His final argument shows that contempt of danger which would enable a commander to lead his forces to victory. He doesnot allow the fear of worse consequences to daunt him from his war path. What can be worse than their present anguish? he asks. The worst can only be annihilation, and that were “happier far than miserable to have eternal being.” But at, can they ever cease to be? He has heard it said in some quarters that their substance is eternal, and if thus there is no fear of annihilation, there can be no fear too of a worse state than the present, since “we are at worst on this side nothing.” Their present strength then is equal to wage war Heaven; let them rise, therefore, and if they do not gain a victory, they shall have the satisfaction at least of revenge. Moloch, the belligerent type, the personification of pure and unalloyed hatred of the Almighty, is of the die-hard cast. Deeming himself equal in strength with the almighty, and indifferent even to his existence if he should be regarded less, he advises open war, with all the bluntness and outspokenness of a Colonel. Unskilled in tricks himself, he is impatient with those who those who would sit and contrieve in Hell’s dungeon, suffering all the pangs which God’s tyranny can inflict on them. Theirs is the courage to do, he tells them, and therefore let them arm themselves, even with hell flames and tortures, the weapons of destruction invented by their enemy, and point them against himself. Let the noise of his thunder be met by the noise of infernal thunder; his lightning be opposed with black fire from Hell, and His very throne be surrounded by hell-fire and sulphurous flames. Thus in the hectic fury of his vindictive hate, he draws a picture of the destruction upon which he is bent. Moloch’s speech is impetuous and fiery, and well may it have been the utterance of an Ironside commander in the councils of Oliver Cromwell. It may be worthwhile to observe,” wrote Addison, “that Milton has represented this violent impetuous spirit, who is hurried on by such precipitate passions, as the first that rises in the assembly to give his opinion upon their present posture of affairs. Accordingly he declares himself abrupt for war, and appears incensed at his companions for losing so much time as to deliberate upon it. All his sentiments are rash, audacious, and desperate such as that of arming themselves with tortures and turning their punishments upon Him who in inflicted them. His preferring annihilation to shame or misery is also highly suitable to his character, as the comfort he draws from their disturbing the peace of Heaven, that if it be not victory is revenge, is a sentiment truly diabolical, and becoming the bitterness of this implacable spirit.”

 Belial’s arguments partake of his nature. Gifted with a smooth tongue that “could make the worse appear the better reason,” he delivers a backhanded blow at Moloch. He tells the assembly that he would himself be much for open war, if what has been urged the main reason for it, itself doesnot dissuade him most. They have been told that even if they cannot be victorious, their vindictiveness yet can be satisfied.  But of, he asks, what vengeance can possibly be? The towers of Heaven are impregnable, being constantly guarded by armed angels. There is no hope of intimidating them either, for quite dauntlessly they scout far into the regions of Chaos. Or, were it possible for them to approach  Heaven, batter its strong walls, and force their resistless way in, and with Hell-flames and black fire attempt to obscure the glory of “Heaven’s purest light,” still God’s mould  being of ethereal substance, it can never be stained, and by own special virtues it will expel all baser fire and contamination. Thus, what can be left for the rebellious angels except blank despair? Revenge, therefore, is out of the question.

Belial, the next to rise after Moloch, is in every respect his antithesis. While Moloch is essentially a spirit of action, Belial is chiefly a spirit of inactivity. While Moloch has a contempt of travail and danger, Belial can hardly think of them without a tremor passing through his frame, for he is essentially slothful and sensual. While Moloch’s mind is wholly refractory and bellicose, Belial’s is sometimes speculative full of those “thoughts that wander through eternity.” Finally while Moloch is curt and plain-spoken, Belial is specious and artful. Moloch is the aggressive militarist, Belial the meek pacifist. Mammon’s speech reminds one of the pioneers and gold diggers who set out of England in the seventeenth century to distant lands and helped incidentally to fling wide the Empire of their country. His plea is the typical gold-digger’s plea; his dream is to make an El Dorado of Hell. Doubtless there must have been money-grabbers in the Long Parliament, who helped Charles I to raise his ship-money, and other obnoxious taxes. Mammon must have been drawn from one of them. There are financiers and stock-brokers today who could vie with Mammon in speculation. They are of true descent. His next argument exposes the fallacy in the hope of annihilation which Moloch had held out as a cure in their present distress. Quite pleasant- humouredly, Belial ridicules the notion, for no one, however great his then suffering may be, would ever like to be deprived of his intellectual state, with all those thoughts that wander through eternity, and wish to be swallowed up and lost in obscure extinction. Even if such an undesirable state is devoutly to be wished for, by any freak of imagination, it is doubtful whether God can give it to them, or even if He can, whether He would. For, in the first place, being immortal angels, whether God can extinguish them totally is uncertain, but, for his part, he is more than certain that he would never destroy them. When he first routed them and drove them into Hell, he consigned them to eternal suffering. Sure he will not deflect from His purpose and give them the annihilation which they so eagerly for. The third argument of Belial is a further refutation of Moloch. He had said that their sufferings were already the worst and they had nothing more to fear, if annihilation were impossible. But of, is it true that what they are going through is the worst? Let them examine their present condition. They have been permitted to rise from the lake of burning fire; they have recovered from their stupor, they have built Pandemonium, and they are now sitting in deliberate council. This, surely, is not the worst than can happen to them. They may have been worse than what they are now, if they had lain, for instance, chained to the lake of liquid fire, or, if worse tortures had been inflicted on them. That would have been the worst, and they may reasonably dread them yet. Having thus quashed his adversary’s arguments, Belial next proceeds to formulate his plan. His answers to Moloch show a true understanding of the current state of affairs, though they have all been inspired by his love of slothful ease, his passion for existence, and his cowardly fear of direr consequences. His plan too, partakes of the same characteristics of his nature. A war on Heaven can have only one of two objects-either to unseat God from His throne, or to regain their lost possessions. The first is a very remote possibility, and is never likely to happen, unless irrevocable Fate should give up its sway to fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the strife. If Heaven’s king cannot be unseated, it is vain to hope for the reconquest of their possessions; for without subduing Heaven’s king what authority can the fallen angels exercise over Him? But of, here Mammon anticipates another alternative. If they submit (some may argue) and agree to be obedient and loyal, God may publish grace and pardon them all. But of, Mammon would not entertain the idea for a moment. How can they be ever so base as to stand humbly in His presence, render implicit obedience to His commandments, and sing under compulsion songs and hymns in His praise, who has recently been their enemy, and who has lorded it over them in the fashion they are now groaning under? This is all that they can expect in Heaven, and by no amount of sophistry, can that irksome task be called delightful. Let them reflect on the magnitude of this irksomeness when they have to submit vilely to this laudation of One whom they hate all though eternity. So Mammon would not advise them to continue their vassalage in Heaven, howsoever obtained. Rather, let them seek their good in Hell itself; let them make the best use of their advantages, free and accountable to none, preferring sturdy independence to slavish yoke in Heaven. And if therein they learn by patient labour and hard endurance to create great things out of small, to convert hurtful things into useful, and turn adverse circumstances into prosperous, then their greatness would be more conspicuous. Perhaps they fear the darkness of Hell: and here Mammon’s answer to the objection is specious. Very often, he says, Heaven’s king has been founds to have obscured Himself in thick and dark clouds, from which He gathered His thunderbolts to scourge His enemies with. “As He our darkness, cannot we His light imitate when we please?” is his argument. That argument disposed of, Mammon turns to his constructive plan. In the First Book of Paradise Lost we have been told that even while in Heaven, instead of Mammon’s gaze being occupied with the vision Beatific, he had bent his looks downward admiring the golden floor. No wonder then that his thoughts now fly to the rich mineral wealth in Hell, proof of which had already been given, when Pandemonium was built. He now reminds them about the manifold riches of the place and their own mining and architectural skill. They can build an empire here, which shall be the envy of Heaven. Besides, as Belial has suggested, there is every likelihood of their being acclimatised in course of time to their surroundings. “Our temper may change into their temper.” So taking everything into consideration, it is much better to settle down in peace in Hell, and devise schemes and measures for the improvement of their lot than plot open or covert war in vain. Mammon follows next, and true to his name he is acquisitive more than aggressive. He is the type of the rapacious Imperialist, in the days when Imperialism was yet in its infancy in England. He begins by answering both Moloch and Belial; he is inclined to agree more with the latter than the former, and finally builds his future plan on Belial’s suggestion. Thus the great debate ends, and Milton carefully distinguishes between the types of statesmanship presented by Moloch, Belial, Mammon and Beelzebub. The first is militant and aggressive, the second suave and submissive, the third smug and acquisitive, while the last is resourceful and subtle. Milton must have had prototypes of them in actual life, both among the Royalists and the Puritans, and he has made admirable use of his first hand knowledge of parliamentary debates, as well as his study in classical oratory and his skill in his own University exercises in the speeches he has assigned to them. Addison’s note on this character is instructive. “Beelzebub,” he wrote, “who is reckoned the second in dignity that fell, and is, the First Book, the second that awakens out of the trance, and confers with Satan upon the situation of their affairs, maintains his rank in the Second Book as well. There is a wonderful majesty described in his rising up to speak. He acts as a kind of moderator between the two opposing parties, and proposes a third undertaking which the whole assembly gives in to. The motion he makes of detaching one of their body in search of a new world is grounded upon a project devised by Satan, and curiously proposed by him in the First Book, the project upon which the whole poem turns; as also that the prince of the fallen angels was the only proper person to give it birth, and that the next to him in dignity was the fittest to second and support it.” War, then, open, or secret, is wholly out of picture: for the Almighty is equally wise to frustrate their secret plans as He is strong to defeat their open designs. But at, neither does Belial insinuate that they shall acquiesce in their present slavish condition. He only wishes to suggest that this is much better than bringing disasters upon themselves by an open or secret war. Further there are a number of considerations which should weigh with them in agreeing with their lot. First, it is Fate (the argument of weakling) that has ordained that they should live in Hell. If they had been wise, they could have foreseen this before they broke out in open rebellion against the Almighty. It is ridiculous that those who had dared to defy Fate then, should now show fear in suffering the inevitable consequences. To abide in Hell is their doom. But of, their punishment may be reduced by their patient sufferance. This is the second consideration. In time their conduct “may much remit His anger”, and, perhaps, thus far removed, finding them to be inoffensive, and satisfied that He has punished enough, He may slacken the rage of His fury. A third consideration is that their own purer essence may either overcome their torments. Or by long endurance and custom they may get used to them, and not feel their scourge. Finally, there is the hope of what the never-ending flight of future days may bring the chance of a better life than the present which though not happy, is far from being the worst that can be endured. His counsel, therefore, is for meek acquiescence in their presence lot. Belial, the glib talker, the smooth- tongued trimmer, presents the type of conservative statesmanship, which is cultured, self sufficient, and shows a love of all the good things of life. He is the type which Shakespeare has drawn in the courtier with his parmaceti, or some scented salve or other, who meets the fiery Hotspur on the battlefield. His is the religion of ‘cultivated inaction, making its believer refuse to lend a hand at uprooting the define evils on all sides of us, and filling him with antipathy against the reforms and reformers which try to extirpate them’. Perhaps Milton has drawn the character from the many cavaliers who thronged the court of Charles I or Charles II. His speech falls into four parts. In the first he ridicules Mammon’s suggestion; in the second he answers Belial and Moloch’s pleas: in the third he makes his own proposal, and finding it generally approved, in the final part, he plans its practical operation. As for the proposition of war, there would not be any need for them to invade Heaven’s walls and force their way in for those walls are in no fear of assault or siege. Then why should they not seek some easier means of wrecking their vengeance on God? Then turning to the proposition for peace, he reminds his audience that no terms of peace have either been offered or sought. As far he can see no peace would be given to them: instead severe custody, stripes and bitter punishment only. In the same way they cannot return any honourable terms of peace themselves to Heaven; instead, enmity and hatred as they lie in their power, and schemes which would not allow their Torturer to rejoice in what He has inflicted upon His enemies. Mammon’s speech, as may be expected, wins the approval of the assembly. ‘Public opinion seems to be dangerously drifting in a direction contrary to the intention of Satan, when Beelzebub , the type of subservient politician, as responsive to the purpose of his master as badness could desire, rise clad in the aspect of impressive statesmanship to stem the tide.’ First, to stem the tide of the murmur of approval which had greeted Mammon, Beelzebub makes capital out of it by turning it into pointed ridicule. He asks the angels whether they desire to be addressed as the “off-spring of Heaven” or, merely as the “Princes of Hell”, for what should he infer from their applause of Mammon’s speech? It indicates their longing to continue in Hell and build an Empire in emulation of Heaven. A likely thing indeed, he comments sarcastically, for, he wonders whether they are not dreaming, having completely forgotten that Hell has not been intended as a place of security for them to plot against Him. No! The Almighty has intended them to dwell in it in strictest bondage as His chosen victims. Of this there can be no doubt: for whatever they may do, God will reign supreme both in Heaven and in Hell, and never allow any diminution of His authority anywhere. But at, while He rules His own angels in Heaven mildly and benevolently, He will rule them in Hell with an iron hand. Therefore no good can ever come out of their schemes of war and peace. Their last revolt has settled their fate, which they should remain out of Heaven. Having thus disposed of the arguments of Mammon, Belial and Moloch, Beelzebub introduces into the discussion a new fact, craftily held back till the progress of the debate demanded it. The assembly’s approval of Mammon’s plan clearly showed that they were for peace and no war. On this foundation of peace, and the hope of a different prosperity, Beelzebub builds his plan.

With subtle craft he reminds them of a rumour current in Heaven, when they had been its denizens, of a new place about to be created-  the happy seat of a new race called Man, who though less in splendor than the angels, would be more favoured of God. That the rumour is not unfounded is certain, for they will recollect how God promised it as His will, and confirmed it by “an oath that shook Heaven’s whole circumference.” They should now turn their thoughts to this new world and to its inhabitant. They should discover his nature, his strength and his weakness, and consider how best he may be seduced and tempted to break from his allegiance to God. Though Heaven may be guarded well, and, therefore, in-accessible, that new world may have been left to the defence of its new race. Thither they shall go, and find out means of destroying him, and driving him from his habitation, as they unavailing, they can atleast seduce him and make him break his faith with God. “This would surpass common revenge, and interrupt God’s joy in our confusion, and our joy uprise in His disturbance.”

For God may repent what he has done, and abolish His own works. This is Beelzebub’s plan, and it is for them to accept or reject it. He tactfully pauses for their response. The most interesting character in the first two books of Paradise Lost, and one who most engages our attention, is Satan. He appears as ‘a great and sublime figure, the heroic antagonist of God, the great fiend who, in spite of the hopelessness of conflict with that power “whom thunder hath made greater,” continues to fascinate us and compel our admiration.’ The technical form which Milton cast his theme required that he should present his characters on a lofty scale. Besides Satan was an Archangel, who, at the commencement of the poem, had only recently transgressed, and whose “form had not yet lost all her original brightness; he had still left in him all those supramundane virtues of a “fixed mind”, an “unconquerable will”, and a “courage never to submit or yield”. Milton was obliged to lay on these heroic qualities rather thickly in order to distinguish his antagonist from the “puny race of mankind.” Yet there haven critics who, carried away by the weight and emphasis attached to these qualities, have regarded Satan as the hero of the poem. Some have even pretended to see a certain political affinity between Satan and Milton. A more recent critic, Denis Saurat, set out to prove elaborately how Satan and Milton were personal enemies and how the poet took a keen delight in visiting acrimonious vengeance upon his foe. Nay, Milton, according to this critic, “had Satan in him and wanted to drive him out. He had felt passion, pride and sensuality. The deep pleasure he takes in his creation of Satan is the joy…peculiar to the artist… hence the strange monster Satan. Whereas inferior artists build their monsters artificially, Milton takes his, living and warm with his own life, out of himself.” But at, these criticisms hit beside the mark. Satan’s heroism may lie in his daring and his dauntlessness, in his willingness to undertake perilous risks and his readiness to go through them; but the motive behind them all is personal ambition, in the gratification of which he displays qualities which are far from heroic- a subtle and crafty mind, and a specious and hypocritical behaviour. Beelzebub had been merely the willing tool to put forth the plan: he had been content to be his Master’s Voice. The assembly, whether they recognized it as the plan of the master or not, agree to it unanimously. Beelzebub mightily pleased congratulates them on the wisdom of their choice, and commends its virtue further. It would lift them up from Hell, he continues, and place them much nearer their ancient seat of happiness, perhaps in the very vicinity of Heaven and within the circle of its golden light. Thus much conciliation for Belial and Mammon! And being in such close vicinity to Heaven, with timely excursions, they may even get access into Heaven, without hazarding a war. So much palliation for Moloch! But of, they should decide first whom they shall send on this dangerous expedition, for full of dangers it show. Their leader must be sufficiently brave to ransack the infinite the new world. Mere strength alone would not suffice, though it is highly the spies and sentries of Heaven. He would have need of all his resourcefulness. Let the assembly choose such a spirit. Needless to say that none was either proposed or volunteered. Satan alone came forward “whom now transcendent glory raised above his fellows,” and he undertook the heroic adventure. The physical sports they engaged in, whether on the plain or in the air, were like the Olympian or Pythian games of the Greeks. Some rode their fiery steeds, or engaged in chariot races, being very careful to narrow their circuit closer and closer so that they might traverse the least distance, and at the same time very cautious not to touch the stone barriers lest they should be dashed against them to pieces. A few occupied themselves in military drill and feats of war. In this they resembled the aery champions whom superstition imagined to appear in the clouds in the van of their armies, and with feats of arms cause the entire welkin to burn from either end of heaven. Another band, wild with hellish rage at their acute sufferings, tore up rocks and hills, and hurled them down in great fury, or rode the air in as whirlwind. In this they resembled the great Hercules, who returning victorious from Aechalia, was roused to the bitterest rage by his wife, and in his agony tore up the Thessalian pines, and hurled Lichas himself into the Euboic Sea. The milder and the more cultured among the angels disported themselves differently. Some among them gathered in a silent valley and turned troubadours. They sang of their heroic deeds in “notes angelical to many a harp.” Their songs were not unmixed with their complaints, that destiny have subjected them to become the slaves of Force or Chance. The subject matter of those songs was no doubt biased, but their harmony was divine. It suspended Hell, and ravished all the listening multitude. Another group sat on a retired hill, and discussed sweetly on subjects of great import and dignity, such as Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, Fixed Fate, and absolutely Foreknowledge. They initiated the chief subjects of speculation and anticipated the main trends of all secular philosophy. But of, in their attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable, they lost themselves in strange mazes of reasoning and discourse. They argued at length on the abstract doctrines of good and evil, of happiness and misery, of passion and apathy, and of glory and shame. It was all vain wisdom and false philosophy; still it had power to charm them all out of their pain and distract them from their misery. Milton is careful at this stage to point out the plan was not out of Beelzebub’s invention, for whence but from “the author of all ill”, could a plan so diabolic and so fraught with mischief for the human race issue. Porter: “Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes: it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him and disheartens him, makes him stand to and not stand to.”” The fallen angels in Hell after the departure of Satan on his heroic adventure of the discovery of the new world and the seduction of its sole inhabitant amused themselves in a variety of ways. In describing their diversions, Milton draws freely from the epic recreations of classical heroes as they are described both by Homer and Virgil. The lower sort of angels indulged in physical sports, the higher in song and poetry, the noblest of all in philosophical discourse. The adventurous were bent on exploration and discovery. As always, their doings are patterns and types of the varied activities of men. Another set of rebellious angels interested themselves in exploration. In bold and adventurous march they tried to discover whether any part of that dismal habitation was more endurable than the burning lake, or the plain of solid fire. They discovered the sources of the Styx, Acheron, Phlegethon and Cocytus, the four rivers of Hell, which poured waters into the lake of fire. They also discovered the river Lethe, which flowed far away from them, and the region it bounded , the frozen continent, to which the demand were brought periodically to undergo its icy torment. Thus, all the endeavours of the fallen angels to find some easier habitation than their present abode proved abortive. In despair, mingled with great fear, they traversed through many a dark valley and fiery mountain, ‘caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens and shades of death’. The places they passed through seemed veritable places of death. Nothing flourished in them, everything died, and nature lived there only in monstrous and uncouth and ugly shapes which were more abominable, inexpressible, and worse than the gorgons, the hydras and the chimaeras about which fables have spoken in the most terrible terms and figures. Among all the fallen angels, Satan is the supreme egoist, giving the “I” undue supremacy in his thoughts. From first to last his chief concern is himself, how best he may thrive and exalt himself. He has a lust for power, which makes him seek pre-eminence not only among the angels, but presumptuously claim parity with God. He must be great whether he is in Heaven or in Hell. Punished for his presumption in Heaven, and hurled down to Hell, he arrogates to himself the leadership of his community on the principle that it is “better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” Or, as Masson puts it, “Having a third of the Angels away with him in some dark, howling region, where he might rule over them alone, seems infinitely preferable to his puny sovereignty of an Archangel in the world of gold and emerald.” Hence, whenever he refers to his eminence, there is a noticeable pride bordering on vain-glory, which ill becomes the mouth of any genuine leaders of men. In his opening address of the conclave in Hell, for example, there is tone of self-granulation. But of, he is not content to be merely the king of Hell. Untaught by experience, he “aspires beyond thus high”. He is equally jealous in defending his position against any rival; he exaggerates the defending his position against any rival; he exaggerates the risks of the exalted state he occupies to those who have but recently tasted the bitterness of God’s wrath. Thus it is place and power that he loves most not for the benefits they may confer on others, but solely that he may be foremost. Thus did the fallen angels disport themselves; each as his nature and inclination led him. But at, their amusements were on a much more colossal scale than human words can express. Milton leaves it all to be filled in by our imagination. Milton does not leave the reader in any doubt on the matter. He introduces Satan in all the ostentation of his power. The similies by which he refers to his appearance on his throne liken him to any absolute monarch of the Orient. Later, again, when Satan interferes in the debate, volunteering his service in the perilous expedition to the new World, he is described as having been raised to transcendent glory above his fellows, and speaking with “monarchal pride”. There is a passage, indeed, in his speech, which seems to exonerate him, and present him in the light of the selfless leader of his host. But of, examined in its context, it merely proves his anxiety to secure all the glory to himself. None shall share the honours of the enterprise with him. Being their imperial monarch, it is his duty to risk himself in their behalf. He would be unworthy of his high place, if he merely content to rule them in peace; he must share the hazards of his office as he does its glory. His duty becomes greater by virtue of the higher eminence he enjoys. Thus speciously he thrusts his absolute will upon his subjects, and without giving them further opportunity to speak, he dismisses them. Milton sets this scene in Hell in direct apposition with another in heaven where God Almighty announces his foreknowledge of the Fall of Man, and proclaims that he shall be saved if one among them will “pay the rigid satisfaction, death for death.” “Which of ye,” He asks, “will be mortal to redeem Man’s mortal crime?” None volunteers, and “silence was in Heaven.” But of, the Son of God comes forward finally, and undertakes the atonement for Man. His is not the tone of self-assertion that Satan’s is, but meek and gracious. And the behavior of either at the conclusion of their speeches is a further contrast. “Thus saying, rose the Monarch (Satan), and prevented all reply; Prudent lest, from his resolution, others among the chief might offer now.” This is superciliousness excelsior, the conduct of a hypersensitive absolutism. On the other hand, “His (Christ’s) words here ended, but his meek aspect Silent yet spake, and breth’d immortal love to mortal men, above which only shone Filial obedience.” This is absolute detachment from self, perfect devotion to a public cause. The same contrast is still further emphasized in the reaction of the audience to the two speeches. “Admiration seized all Heaven”, but the crew of Satan “bend towards him with awful reverence prone, and as a god extol him equal to the Highest Heaven.” Satan need not have taken the trouble of shutting out all further discussion about the enterprise , for not one of these devils dared to oppose him; ‘they dreaded not more the adventure than his forbidding.’ They had been cowed into such meek and abject submission. Satan tyrannous hold upon his subjects in nowhere else so much emphasized. Like the tyrant that he is, yet eager to preserve the formality and appearance of a republic in his government, he imposes his will upon his subjects in a very subtle manner. He has his own tool in Beelzebub, and having summoned the assembly and desired them to deliberate on the revenge they have taken on God, he uses Beelzebub to propose his plan. Milton makes it plain that the enterprise of seducing man did not originate with Beelzebub, but with Satan; and if the latter did not propose it himself, it was only his eagerness to appear that he was guided in all his actions by the will of his subjects. All the evidence so far examined thus makes it perfectly clear that Satan was an archangel ruined, greedy for power and jealous to preserve what he had acquired, ambitious of more, ostentatious, self-willed and tyrannical. This is first impression that Milton is careful to produce at the opening of his Second Book. To confound the race Of mankind in one root, and Earth with Hell To mingle and involve, done all to spite The greater Creator. The Old Testament provides Milton with a considerable part of his narrative material in Book I. He believed that the fallen angels lost the names they had borne in heaven before their fall and had taken the names of heathen idols, by which names they were worshipped by the tribes with whom the Hebrews came into contact, like the Ammonites, the Moabites and the Philistines. These gods parade in epic style in Book I. 381-505, and two of the most important, the first and the last, Moloch and Belial, appear again as principal speakers in the great debate in Book II. The next trait that we note in him is his passion for restless activity. In his very nature, says Mason, Satan was the most active of God’s archangels: ever doing some great thing, ever thirsting for some greater thing to do. Hence “uplifted high from despair” he schemes and plans, and resolves on the expedition which Beelzebub outlines in the poem. He has discussed it thoroughly with his bosom- companion, and having decided to venture on it, in spite of its dangers, he orders the building of Pandemonium, summons all the angel orders into it, and sits in council over them. Eager to carry out the plan himself, he first makes Beelzebub stress on the nature of the perils, then he himself proceeds to enlarge on them, and thus succeeds in getting himself approved as the prosperous spirit to venture on it. And no sooner does he dissolve the council, than he puts on swiftest wings, and he is gone. But of, all his activity is vindictive. It is to work out malice on God. His mission is to destroy what God has brought into being. He “represents cosmical negativity incarnate”. Hence he promises Sin and Death to glut their maw immeasurably by seducing the race of mankind, and to Chaos, the Anarch, he holds out the hope of reducing Earth “to her original darkness and your sway, and once more erect the standard there of ancient Night.” His is a destructive genius, maliciously bent on ruining God’s fair creation, merely to gratify his spite. “Yours be the advantage all, mine the revenge!” expresses with force of an epigram this trait of his character. Malice prepense against the Almighty leads him to be unscrupulous in this means and methods. Milton has made him propound the grand principle of his existence in Book-I..but he had reaped bitterly the fruits of an open revolt; therefore, in this book, he plans “covet guile”, and to achieve this end he studiously cultivates the arts of hypocrisy in overcoming all intermediate obstacles. Disdainful as he is of rout whose ruin he has brought about, he flatters and cajoles them into approving him for their leader in the enterprise. Despising as he does their weaker intelligence and their love of ease, he extols the harmony they have achieved amongst themselves, and bids them be merry the while he is absent from Hell. While these qualities are scarcely worthy of sympathy yet there are certain other traits in him which evoke our spontaneous admiration. They are his intrepidity, on the negative side, and his daring, on the positive. The deep, illimitable Abyss, the perils of which he speaks so assuredly about to his followers , does not daunt him. With rare courage and impetuous speed, he sets out alone into the unknown. Never once does he lose heart as he battles his way through the fierce impact of the atoms on him and around him. Milton enhances the grandeur of the struggle by the similies he employs on the occasion. Equally dauntless and undismayed is Satan in the presence of that grisly terror, Death. He could not understand what the Shape was as it came striding heavily and menacingly towards him. Confronted by Sin and Death, when he realises that his swaggwer may lead him to abandon his addresses her as ‘dear daughter’ and him as ‘fair son’,-the very Shapes, whom he has a moment ago despised and called out in vilest terms. Perhaps it is the memory of this meeting that makes him more courteous in his address of the Anarch, Chaos. Time is fleeting; he is all agog top reach the Material Universe. He has been caught in the welter of the warring elements and he is ignorant how farther he is yet to travel. Not to waste words, then, he is brief and courteous with the ruler of the Abyss. His apprenticeship to hypocrisy, here stands him in good stead later when he reaches the universe of man. His degradation has only commenced; it is to be completed later. He hurled words of high disdain on his head, and when he was answered too insolently, “incensed with indignation”, he burned like a comet that fires the length of Ophiuchus huge in the Arctic sky. Intrepid courage, such as this, is bound to win admiration for it-self. The whole episode deserves the eulogy that Sir Walter Raleigh has expended on it. But of, Satan is of absorbing interest not by virtue of his matchless courage alone. His inordinate ambition, his self-aggrandisement, his love of ostentation, his very power for evil and all that is embraced by that term-all these, too, have been rendered attractive by the poetic genius of Milton. Yet the secret of his charm is only in part due to his poetic timbre; the other part of it lies in the reader’s own psychological reaction to his character. All the world loves an exhibition of power, whatever be its nature. The strong whether virtuous or wicked, have the power to attract and to charm. Satan is the very embodiment of a volcanic energy which sweeps everything before it. He is “the image and type of those great and selfish conquerors whose pride it was to draw the admiring world after them; and whom Milton detested more than any other man.” The Bible provides Milton with something more than narrative material; his illustrative material, the content of his epic similies and other comparisons, is often taken from the scriptures. For example, when the speaks of the vast numbers of fallen angels, he compares them to the army with which Pharaoh pursued the Israelities to the shores of the Red Sea (I. 306-13), a passage which also illustrates Milton’s relish for the sound values is shown by his choice of the alternative form ‘Alcides’ for ‘Hercules’ ‘Herakles’.

There are, however, some differences in Milton’s use of his two main bodies of source material, slight though these are in comparison to the similarities. Milton was deeply learned in both, but whereas Old Testament material predominates in Book I in the much longer list of heathen idols and the greater number of scriptural authority. Milton relies almost exclusively on classical references even in his epic similes.

This must therefore be our conclusion. In Books I and II of Paradise Lost, Milton makes extensive and almost equal use of biblical and classical references reinforce or supplement each other in both narrative and illustration, and nowhere in this work is the conflict to be found between the two which unhappily occurs elsewhere, though Milton leaves us in no doubt that for him it is the bible which has the advantage of being divinely inspired. To Milton and many of his contemporaries, using the Bible as a literary source was a matter of grave concern: could the divinely inspired word of God be altered to the slightest extent in the interest of art? Milton decided that it could, although he considered the Bible, individually interpreted, to be far greater authority than any organized Church. Certainly, he considered the Old Testament to be much superior to the literature of ancient Greece, not only in its content, but also in its form: this he states clearly both in the Reason of Church Government (Bohn, Vol. 2, p 479) and in Paradise Regained IV. 331-50. in Paradise Lost, I and II, however, there is no direct conflict between these two major sources of literary inspiration, the biblical and classical. Thus Milton uses his biblical and classical material for two identical purposes: the fallen angels become both the heathen idols of the Old Testament and the pagan deities of classical mythology; and the resounding proper names of Milton’s epic similies are taken mainly from these two sources-when he wants size, he thinks of Levathian or these two sources- when he wants size, he thinks of Levathian or Briareus and Typhon, when quantity, Pharaoh’s armies, the leaves of Vallambrosa, or the barbarian hordes invading the Roman Empire. Both sources, too, can be drawn on for discussion of themes less obvious than the principle ones: the New Testament for the nature of the Holy Spirit whom Milton invokes in I.17; the colours of classical rhetoric for the variations in tone in the speeches of Book II, and Latinised syntax and vocabulary of the whole work. Urania, the mighty mother, was not by the side of Adonais when he died. She was in a sleep-like trance of extreme joy in her Paradise, listening to the melodious poetry of Adonais sung by one of her attending Echoes. Adonais was the youngest of the sons of Urania. He was a tender, lovely youth-her last hope; he was cut off just when he was showing signs of doing something much greater than he did. Adonais, however will not wake any more. In the place where his dead body lies-not yet covered under earth-the shadow of Death seems to spread itself. Corruption wants to make her way into the grave, but dare not touch the dead body but of pity till the darkness of the grave closes over it. Another luminious Dream kissed his cold mouth, the mouth from which she used to draw her strength. The Dream instead of drawing life from his lips now died because of contact with it, only lightning up the body for a moment. England wailed for Adonais more woefully than the nightingale mourning her dead mate and the eagle crying piteously over her empty nest. May the unknown critic who caused the death of Adonais suffer the curse inflicted on Cain! Urania rose like an autumnal night following a windy autumnal day. Wrapped in sorrow and fear, she made her way to the side of the dead Adonais. Spring season has become so wild with grief that it sheds all its buds. Since Adonais was gone, spring did not care to wake up Nature’s beauty. Narcissus, Hyacinth and other flowers stood pale and withered for grief. Kubla Khan cannot be dismissed as an incoherent opium dream (i.e. as mere incoherence). It is a meaningful poem. In the second part the poet speaks in his own person. He has a vision of an Abyssinian maid playing on her dulcimer and singing. Of Mount Abora. Mount Abora is Mount Amara and Mount Amara is a fabled paradise. “So the Abyssinian maid is singing”, as Graham Hough says, “of a paradiseal landscape very much like that of the opening lines- singing in fact of the same cluster of ideas under a different name and guise.” If the poet can relieve her song in his imagination, he himself can build the magic pleasure-dome as Kubla Khan has done. Thus in the second part of the poet makes us an attempt to realize the dream-to give it a concrete form. The second part does not hang independently of the first part. Both the parts are related, and they complement each other. J.B. Beer rightly says, “certain it is difficult to see how the poem could be carried on after the last stanza: the argument is there brought to an end with overwhelming finality.” The poem as it stands does present a meaning consistent both with itself and with that we know of Coleridge’s mind. Moreover, the images of the poem are so tightly drawn together and so closely interlocked that any addition will upset the balance. From the history of the composition of Kubla Khan it is obvious that the poem was left unfinished. Though the poem is a fragment, we hardly feel it is so. “We have a satisfying sense of completeness of the wheel having come full circle, of the magic of words and images having cast their plenary spell upon us. It is a dream conforming to the laws of dream-logic and carried to its full climax of suggestiveness; as much of a rounded and perfect whole as a vision is a capable of being.”(Dr. S.K. Banerjee & A.D. Mukherji). O’er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death.

Kubla Khan is a succession of images dressed in the colours of the rainbow and evocative of a world of mystery and enchantment. The images Coleridge uses in the poem are of opposing nature. The images of light and darkness, sunny dome and sunless sea or caves of ice. Paradise garden and hints of hell succeed one after another. The dome is the image of pleasure and the river that of life. The deep romantic chasm is the image of fear and mystery and the mighty fountain that of inexhaustible energy, now falling, now rising, but persisting ever. Then we have the homely images of ‘rebounding hail’ and ‘thresher’s flail’ both of which suggest the vigour of life. The image of ‘mazy motion’ suggests the spiritual complexities of life. The caverns measureless to man is the image that suggests the awesome mystery of human life, and the caves of ice finanal annihilation. To sum up, Kubla Khan is not mere incoherence or a fragment. In the second part the nature of imagery changes. The images are all related to poetic creation and inspiration¸ and they wear the hazy, remote semblance of symbolism. The damsel with a dulcimer is symbolical of poetic Muse who catches in her istument and reduces to order and harmony elemental sounds in their native dissonance and confusing medley. ‘Flashing eyes’ and ‘floating hair’ are the images of poetic frenzy, and ‘honey dew’ and ‘the milk of Paradise’ those of poetic inspiration. The images are mostly sensuous. The dome is not only an image of pleasure, but also an emblem of fulfillment and satisfaction. In the first part of the poem it is mentioned three times, as ‘a stately pleasure dome’ in line 2, ‘the dome of pleasure ‘in line 31 and “A sunny pleasure-dome’ in line 36. Each time the word ‘pleasure’ occurs with it. So too, the word ‘river’ is used three times in the first part and each time, without fail, it is “the sacred river.” The centre of the landscape in the first pat is the point at which the dome and the river join to the pleasure of our eyes..Here, without possibility of doubt, the poem presents the conjunction of pleasure and sacredness. The poem is divided into two parts. The first part (II.1-36) describes the magnificient pleasure-place which Kubla Khan orders to be built in Xanadu, place gifted with a paradisal landscape and full of bright gardens with meandering streams and blossoming incense-bearing trees, very ancient forests and spots overgrown with green mass of vegetation. There is also a hill with a deep mysterious chasm running down its slope. From this chasm water gushes out with such a great speed that huge pieces of rocks are scattered on all sides. It was a savage place, as holy and enchanted as the one frequented by a woman seduced and then deserted by a demon in human form. The sacred river Alph which is formed of the water bursting out of this chasm, winds five miles across the whole landscape and at last falls to a lifeless ocean with roaring sound. In the midst of the tumult of the river Kubla Khan can hear from far the voices of his ancestors foretelling war.

“Who was the sire of an immortal strain,

Blind, old, and lonely, when his country’s pride the priest, the slave, and the liberticide, Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite Of lust and blood. He went, unterrified, Into the gulf of death’ but his clear spirit Yet reigns o’er earth, the third among the sons of light. “ The river runs meandering in a mazy motion. The maze is, of course, a well-known figure suggesting uncertain and blind progress and also stands for the spiritual complexities of human life. After five miles of mazy progress the river reaches the ‘caverns measureless to man’. The ‘caverns measureless to man’ might suggest infinity and nothingness. The river sinks, with first more tumult (i.e., death-agony) , to ‘lifeless ocean’ which stands for eternal nothingness, death. The ‘ancestral voices’ suggest that dark compulsion that binds the race to its habitual conflicts. The ‘mingled measure’ suggests the blend and marriage of fundamental oppositions: life and death or creation and destruction. The ‘caves of ice’ may hint at the cool cavernous depths in the unconscious mind. Symbolism is the chief criterion of the poetic craftsmanship of Kubla Khan. G.Wilson Knight in his illuminating article Coleridge’s Divine Comedy has analysed the symbolism of the poem -

Both on a height, the sacred  river descends from a ‘ deep romantic  chasm’, a place ‘savage’, ‘holy’ and ‘enchanted’, associated with both a ‘waning moon’ and a ‘woman wailing for her demon lover’. All these taken together might have suggestive the mystic glamour of sex.

Kubla Khan reflects the intense subterranean energy of a mind which cannot rest in its endeavour to apprehend all experience and to reduce it one harmony. “It will always remain”, as J.B. Beer says, “possible to enjoy it as a stream of images and ignore the opportunity which it affords of exploring the intricacies of Coleridge’s visionary world.” That the poem is a whole, and not a fragment is borne out by the fact that the images are so tightly drawn together and so closely interlocked that any addition will upset the balance. ‘The ceaseless turmoil’ the earth-mother breathing in ‘fast thick pants, the fountain ‘forced’ out with ‘half –intermitted burst’, the fragments rebounding like hail, ‘the chaffy grain beneath the flail’, the ‘dancing rocks’-suggest the dynamic imaginary of birth and creation. The pleasure-dome dominates. But of, its setting is carefully drawn and very important. There is a ‘sacred’ river that runs into ‘cavern measureless to man’ and a ‘sunless sea’. That is, the river into an infinity of death. The area through which it flows has gardens, rills, ‘incense-bearing’ trees, ancient forests. This is not unlike Dante’s earthly paradise. The river here is a symbol of life. Humphry House too has explained its symbolic significance. The bounding energy of its source makes the fertility of the plain possible: it is the sacred given condition of human life. The river, observes Humphry, is an image of the non-human, holy, given condition. It is an imaginative statement of the abundant life in the universe, which begins and ends in a mystery touched with dread, but it is a statement of this life as the ground of ideal human activity. Paradise Lost is an epic; it belongs to that species of poetic composition which is described as “objective”, i.e. in which the poet least intrudes himself, and is content to tell the story of other persons. There is thus no room for the expression of the personality of the poet; yet the greatness of Paradise Lost is due to its intense subjectivity, It is the superb utterance of a soul centered itself, which draws upon its own rich resources in the construction and perfection of as complete a work of art, and as noble as Nature Dame itself. An examination of the circumstances of the composition of the poem will lead to this conclusion. Milton was ambitious from youth of making his country as renowned as Greece and Rome by the production of some notable literary monument. He dedicated himself to this self-appointed notable literary monument. He dedicated himself to this self- appointed task with all the fervor of a Nazarite of ancient Judea: and, deliberately, he set out to prepare himself for it with religious zeal. He believed that his work must be divinely inspired and should show the proper fruits of study. Like the Hebrew prophets of old, he led a life of abstemious virtue, even denying himself simple luxuries, and incessantly praying to the Eternal Spirit to touch and purify his lips with the hallowed fire of “all utterance and Knowledge.” With all the assiduity of Petrarch or of Goethe he devoted himself to self-preparation. “In wearisome labour and studious watchings,” he confesses, “I have tried out almost a whole youth.” “Labour and intense study,” he took to be his portion in life. He would know, not all, but “what was of use to know”, and form himself by assiduous culture. By 1642 he had found completed his equipment, and there remained for him the choice of the theme and form. Even these were settled by 1658, although he took a long time deliberating about them. Meanwhile events were moving fast around him in the political sphere, of the wheels of which he himself was a cog. He had now become totally blind, and was thrown more upon his own resources. Always independent of others, he now began to live more intensely within himself. His isolation was further aggravated with the Restoration. He was surrounded by enemies, and his very existence was in jeopardy. Though circumstances eased a little, the blind genius could not rid himself of the conviction of his danger. His only comfort at the time was the work for which he had been deliberately preparing himself; and prevented from expressing his indignation openly, he let loose his fury in the fable he was composing. The very theme of his epic- a revolt- offered a parallel to the conditions of his existence. To him civil war in Heaven was more than the Civil War he had himself gone through. It symbolized the tragedy of his own situation with peculiar force, and he brought to bear all learning he had painfully accumulated, all the energy, fire and fury of his own character on the composition of this great epic. Thus we have the poet living and breathing in ever line of what he has written, not only in those purely personal utterances with which he prefaces parts of the poem, but also in the very framework and body, and the characters and sentiments of the epic. The theme of Paradise Lost is founded upon the meager account of the creation of Paradise, and the fall of man as narrated in the Book of Genesis. Milton had built the mighty edifice of his epic upon this slender foundation. The literalism which his particular brand of Christianity fostered in him never allowed him to depart from this account, but he built round it such a wealth of detail from the learning with which he had stored his mind, that it astonishes us. This scaffolding, however, is no superfluity; it forms an integral part of the poem. The war in Heaven, the defeat of Satan and his crew, their rout through Chaos, are details which have been added to the account in Genesis; Milton owed the knowledge of them to several sources, Hebraic, Greek, Latin and Italian. But at, they seem to be quite necessary for the central theme, the temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden. Besides, Milton was faced with the difficulty of rendering the superhuman probable and credible; he had to use the ordinary language of human speech in describing supramundane activities of his angels and devils against the background of the mighty deed of the allusions. All this wealth of learning, which forms so essential, is a part of the poem shows what a scholar Milton was. But of, his learning is not mere pedantry. It has been sublimated by the fervor of his intellect, has lived in the habitual companionship of the great and the wise of past time. His delight was to sport in the wide regions of possibility; reality was a scene too narrow for his mind. He sent his faculties out upon discovery, into worlds where only imagination can travel, and delighted to form new modes of existence, and furnish sentiment and action to superior beings, to trace the counsels of Hell, or accompany the choirs of Heaven. The pleasure-dome as described in the poem may be fancied as the pleasure of a sexual union in which birth and death are the great contesting partners, with human existence as the life-stream, the blood-stream, of a mighty coition. Milton’s imagination possessed the power of visualizing vividly vast spaces and his art enabled him to present what it saw in pregnant and beautiful form. Such is the description of the frozen continent beyond the river Lethe in Hell or, of the empyreal Heaven seen the far distant verge of Chaos, extending wide, or finally of the pendent world, hanging by a golden chain. The characteristic of these pictures is that they are all clearly outlined, and are made vivid through the use of the metaphor of luminiosness. But of, they are all pictures of landscape, and they suggest either charm or hideousness. Rarely are there such clear descriptions of individuals. There is no glamour in his sketch either of the divinity or of his angels. But in, in suggesting pictures of monstrosities, like Sin and death, his imagination is most active. That Light whose smile kindles the Universe, That Beauty in which all things work and move, That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love Which through the web of being blindly wove By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. The vividness of the imagination has in Milton’s case something to do with his blindness. The clearness with which Milton divides space into Heaven, Chaos, Hell and the Material Universe, and the frequency with which the imagery of fluency occurs in the poem reveal, if there were no external evidence even, that the poet must have been blind when he composed his great work. Milton had become totally blind by 1652. A few years later his vision was totally dark. “In what”, asks Masson, “would the imaginations of things physical of such a person consist? Would they not consist in carving this medium into zones, divisions , and shapes, in painting phantasmagorias, on it or in it, in summoning up within it or projecting into it combinations of such recollections of the once visible world as remained strongest and dearest in the memory? But are there not certain classes of images, certain kinds of visual recollection that would be easier in such a state of blindness than others? The recollections of minute objects may grow dimmer and dimmer, but there would be a compensation in the superior vividness with which certain other sensations of sight, and in particular all luminous effects, all contrasts of light and darkness are remembered.” “Thou wert the morning star among the living Ere thy fair light had fled- Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving New splendor to the dead.” – Plato. The subject of the Second Book is the debate in Hell, the amusements of the devils, the episode of Sin and Death, Satan’s journey through Chaos and his approach to the New World. It shows vastness and Chaos and his approach to the New World. It shows vastness and grandeur of conception beyond the reach of ordinary human fancy. The ability to endow such mighty characters as Moloch, Belial, Mammon, Beelzebub and Satan with sentiments proper to their superhuman nature, the originality to invent games and pastimes for the devils in Hell, the capacity to create such formidable Shapes as Sin and Death, and the power to fill the void illimitable with jarring atoms- these necessarily reveal the active and fervid imagination of the poet. In the words of Samuel Johnson, Milton had accustomed his imagination to unrestrained indulgence, and his conceptions therefore were extensive. The characteristic quality of typed poem was sublimity. But at, it is in his delineation of Satan that Milton has revealed himself most. He found Satan’s situation as a political rebel corresponding with his own, and in the absence of any source from which he could draw his lineaments he endowed him with characteristics which were his own and those of the party to which he belonged. Not that he was in sympathy with the character, as some critics of the poet have argued- Milton could never be in sympathy with a rebel against God; but intuitively, and, as Denis Saurat has expressed it, in revene on himself, in his sense of isolation, in his lofty disdain o his crew. The pride and indomitable courage of the revolted archangel rekindled the emotion of the interest hours of his own life. Satan’s reserved and self-contained nature, brooding over his own ideas, not easily admitting into his mind of ideas, of others- these were also the characteristics of Milton’s nature. Milton felt with Satan that he had fallen upon evil days, and that he was compassed round with dangers and solitude. He had the same “indurated egoism “as the fallen archangel, and he was as unrepentant in his obstinacy as the other. Like Satan again, he was fond of exploring the unknown on the wings of his imagination, and as daring in his flights; and like Satan Milton had a contempt for the people-“a herd confus’d , a miscellaneous rabble, who extol things vulgar.” Milton has thus projected himself most into the character of Satan, especially in the first two books, so that we can draw a clear sketch of the character of the poet from merely studying him. The words of Lord Tennyson has fixed for all time the characteristic achievement of Milton. His forte lay in lifting a metre which had become vulgar and debased by ling usage on the stage to the heights of pure eloquence and harmony. He was helped in it by his long musical training. Music conditioned all his youth. His father taught him to sing tunably and to play upon the organ. He returned to it for solace in his blind old age. It is with the music of this instrument that our thoughts instinctively associate him. Paradise Lost then though epic and objective, is a poem into which Milton has put most to himself, his own pride and temperament. He so constantly returns to himself in the poem that he limits its objective value, but this very self-centeredness imparts to it a continuous emotion and eloquence and lyrical ardour. Milton’s absorbent personality is the central force of the poem.

“The redemption after all”, said Quiller- Couch, ‘ and  the last high vindication of this most magnificient poem are not to be sought in its vast conception or in its framing, grand but imperfect as Titanic work always has been and ever will be. To find them you must lean your ear closely to its angelic language, to its cadenced music. Once grant that we have risen-as Milton  commends us to rise above humankind and the clogging of human passion,- where will you find, but  in Paradise Lost, language  fit for seraphs, speaking in the quiet of dawn in sentry before the gates of Heaven? And the secret of it? I believe the grand secret to be very simple. I believe you may convince yourself where it lies by watching the hands of any good organist as he plays.”

It lies in the movement of the verse “the exquisitely modulated slide.” Milton builds his “lofty rhyme”, no doubt, upon the iambic decasyllabled blank verse line already popular on the stage, but his unit is not so much the line as the ‘period’ or the paragraph. There is considerable movement within the paragraph and the line to suggest the flute notes and the full swell of the pipes, which form so essential a feature of organ-music. The movement or rhythm rises from the clear flute-note at the beginning, to a grand swelling burst, or diapason open and thundering in the middle, till it ends in a crush or shiver. The best way to realise all this is to read a ‘period’ aloud, avoiding any temptation to chant it, and paying special heed to the last line. Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst As it has ever done, with change and motion, From the great morning of the world when first God dawned on Chaos; in its stream immersed, The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light; All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst; Diffuse themselves; and spend in love's delight The beauty and the joy of their renewed might. Milton achieves this movement by making free and bold use of all the variations practiced before his time both within the line and the ‘period’. That which imparts fluidity to the verse within the ‘period’ is the skilful use he makes of the ‘caesura’, or the break in the middle of a metrical foot, rarely are the lines end-stopped, i.e, rarely does the sense stop with the end of the line, but it runs on from line to line, and when pauses are necessary, they are introduced within the line itself, not at the end of it. With some poets, and even with Shakespeare, these pauses in the intermediate parts of a ‘period’ occur regularly at the end of the second or the third foot in the line, but Milton observes no such rule. Skillfully he adjusts them, so that if one line the break occurs at the end of the second foot, in the next it may occur at the end of the first, third , or the fourth foot, and so forth with the lines that follow. Nay, he delights in breaking up the foot itself, so that the pauses occur at the end of the first, or third, or fifth, or the seventh, or the ninth syllable in consecutive lines. These breaks or pauses impart the necessary volumes to the utterance. “It is because the sense is suspended through line after line, and because Milton takes pain to avoid coincidence of the rhetorical pauses with the line-end that we have the continuity of rhythm which is so characteristic a feature of his blank verse.” Of such syntactical peculiarities the grammarian will note the inversion of the natural order of words and phrases, especially the placing of a word between two others which depend upon it, or on which it depends, such as a noun between two adjectives, or a verb between two nouns; the omission of words not necessary to the sense; parenthesis and apposition; the absolute clauses, etc. ‘In his later poetry’ wrote Raleigh, ‘there are no gliding connectives; no polysyllabic conjunctive clauses, which fill the mouth while the brain prepares itself for the next word of value; no otiose epithets , and very few that court neglect by their familiarity. His poetry is like the eloquence of the Lord Chancellor Bacon, as described by Ben Jonson: - “No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightly, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss.” ‘In effect he attains, therefore, ‘a carefully jeweled mosaic, ‘and melodious style. With the same freedom, and to achieve the same artistic and melodious effects, Milton introduces variations within the blank verse line. These variations are of two types. The ordinary line of blank verse used by Milton has ten syllables, with the stress regularly falling on the even number of syllables. This type of line is known as the iambic decasyllabled line. In the first place, he drops one or other of these stresses, or adds a syllable to the foot, and then the pace is quickened; the effect is one of ease and lightness. In the second place, he doubles the stress in the foot, or displaces it making the stress fall on the odd syllable, not on the even, and the pace is retarded; the effect, then, is one of strength and emphasis. Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain; Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale Heaven, and could nourish in the sun's domain Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain, Soaring and screaming round her empty nest, As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast, And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest! Thus Milton avoids the monotony of the regular decasyllabic blank verse by these variations in stress. These impart greater rhythm to the line, and when line upon line follows in this fluid manner, with the pauses so adjusted as rarely to fall at the end of the line, the effect on the ear is of the ‘pealing organ.” Go thou to Rome,-at once the Paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness; And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress The bones of Desolation's nakedness Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead Thy footsteps to a slope of green access Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread; But of, in his choice of words, Milton kept not only the rhythmical necessity in view, he was also careful about its place in order of thought. He never sacrificed the one to the other. His triumph consists in the undisturbed precision of his thought throughout, and despite the complex demands of the rhythm. Each word, like a stone in a cathedral arch, has its place and duty, each seems chosen as if for no purpose other than to advance his meaning, to bear its portion of the weight of a vast structure, yet each, viewed from the other side, seems only chosen to play its part in the musical scheme. The pattern of the thought brooks no interference from that of the rhythm, nor that of the rhythm from the pattern of the thought. Milton was greatly aided in adjusting his musical stresses by the very variety of words in the language he used. English has many powerful monosyllabic words, both extended and abrupt (like strength and rang), which check the run of the line as by a curb. It has monosyllables of another kind (words like mourn and far) on which the voice lingers more gently and which it prolongs. It has polysyllables that carry on the breath and the sense together. It possesses also in its numerous enclitics, its idioms compounded or muted half-pronounced sounds that are hardly adverbs or prepositions, but rather small servants to the main words, an inexhaustible source for filling the crevices of the metre. English has within itself material for a multiple effect as great as any that language can proclaim. And yet with this language, as with any other, only the masters of the first rank can achieve that consistent and living variety in unity for which the universe is our model. (H. Belloc) Milton was thus very careful in the choice of his words, and where the Saxon word was unsuited he used the Latin derivative. These words of Latin origin were already familiar in the language, but with vague connotations. But of, whenever Milton used them, he used them precisely, in their original signification. Thus are his usages of “afflict” in the sense of “crush” (L.86) , “globe” in the sense of “compact body”, (L.52), “intend” in the sense of “attend to”, (L.456), “laboring” in the sense of “eclipsed”,(L.665) etc. sometimes, as in “horrent” (bristling) and “torrent” (rushing) Milton was the first to introduce them. But of, the proportion of these words to the Saxon element in his diction is very little. In using these words of Latin derivation, Milton made them yield both their original significance and the more familiar but vaguer sense which they had acquired in English air. Thus is the use of “afflict” or “intend” cited above, also “incensed” as descriptive of Satan’s appearance. Milton carried this practice even into the Saxon element of language. Thus the word “uncouth” is used in the double-barrelled sense of “unknown” and “horrible”, in the line “his uncouth way.” Another means which he adopts to make his words both melodious and logical is to use one part of speech for another, such as a verb for the noun, as ‘consult’ for ‘consultation’, the adjectival form for the adverb or the noun, as ‘horrible in ‘grinned horrible’, for ‘horribly’; ‘obscure’ in ‘palpable obscure’ for ‘obscurity’: ‘abrupt’ in ‘the vast abrupt’ for ‘abruptness.’ And so, “in the first place, the very physical scheme and conception of the poem as a whole seems a kind of revenge against blindness. It is a compulsion of the very conditions of blindness to aid in the formation of a visual phantasmagory of transcendent vastness and yet perfect exactness. That roof of a boundless Empyrean above all, beaming with indwelling light; that Chaos underneath this, of immeasurable opaque blackness; hung in this blackness by a touch from the Empyrean, the created Universe, conceived as a sphere of soft blue ether brilliant with luminaries; separated thence by an intervening belt of Chaos, and marked as a kind of Antarctic zone of universal space, a lurid or dull-red Hell: in all this we have the poet marking districts to remain in their native opaque, rescuing others into various contrasts of light. In the filling-up, in the imagination of what goes on within any one of the districts into which space is marked out, or by way of the intercourse of districts with one another, we may trace the same influence. Much of the action and incident consists of the congregation of angelic beings in bands beyond the Universe of Men, or in their motions singly towards the Universe, descrying it from afar, or in their wingings to and fro within the Universe from luminary to luminary. Now in all these portions of the poem the mere contrasts of darkness with light goes very far. When Satan, already half-way through Chaos in his quest of the New Universe, ceases his temporary halt at the pavilion of Night, and, having received direction there, rises with fresh alacrity for his further ascent, the recommencement of his motion is described in the lines that he sprang upward ‘like a pyramid of fire’. Thus we see the fond familiarity of the blind poet with the element of light in contrast with darkness, and an endless inventiveness of mode, degree, and circumstance in his fancies of the element. In Paradise Lost brilliance is to a considerable extent, Milton’s favourite synonym for beauty.” No more heart-breaking effect of weariness and eternity of effort could be produced in a single line: ‘the slight stress and pause needed after each word to render the full meaning produced, when the words are short as well as emphatic , a line of terrific weight and impact.’ It is the same need for melody that is responsible for his collocation of words (usually monosyllables) as well as names. The line, for example, “o’er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare”, is suggestive of the troublesome passage of Satan, while describing the roughness of the road taken by him. Similar is his description of the dolorous march of the fallen angels. In the arrangement and disposition of these picked words in the sentence Milton’s classical and scholarship aided him in achieving melodious effects. It is not true to say that he deliberately set out to alter the genius of English by imposing on it an alien syntax: for, at the time he was writing, English literary composition whether in verse or prose, was in a state of flux; it had not released itself from the bondage to an alien construction imposed on it since the Renaissance. Miton’s own classical beat of mind roamed at will in the peccadilloes of foreign idioms and syntax, and when they suited his own objective of melody, he used them with the sue hand of matter. Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; Oh! raise us up, return to us again; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Such also are the conjunctions of place-names, like Ternate and Tidore, Damiata and Mount Caius, Calabria and Trinacrion, Barca and Cyrene. Milton was the first to make poetic use of place-names. They are all taken from ancient history and geography, as well as more recent travel-books. Milton made a study of them with the help of maps. But at, even they seem to him at times too familiar, too little elevated and remote to furnish a resting-place for a song that intended “no middle flight”. He therefore transforms his proper names, such as Hercules into Alcides, both to make them more melodious, and to make them familiar to the ear. ‘Milton’s use of proper names is a measure of his poetic genius.’ It is his most characteristic gift to English letters. The sonnet was written during the same visit to London as inspired written in London, September, 1802 (“O Friend: I know not”) and probably also The world is too much with us. It was published in 1807. Wordsworth invokes Milton as the representative in 1807. Wordsworth invokes Milton as the representative of the lofty and austere ideals of conduct cherished by the noblest leaders of the Puritan party. The breath whose might I have invoked in song Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given; The massy earth and sphered skies are riven! I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. But of, Milton’s purpose in thus exercising great care both in the choice of his diction and his use of an alien syntax, is not merely harmonic. It is to produce the necessary suggestion of sublimity to suit the lofty nature of his theme. His preference of the less familiar Latin derivative to the Saxon word, his more frequent use of a foreign syntax, and his deliberate attempt at a condensed style remove his style from the converse of daily speech and impart to it a certain stateliness and dignity, which may be truly called sublime. Milton surprisingly able to entrance this effect by his descriptions. The figures of speech that Milton employs are to the same end: they serve either to enhance the melody or to add to the sublimity. Of the former type is his use of onomatopoeia, the sound being adjusted to the sense. The most famous example in the poem is the description of the opening of Hell-gates. Descriptions are generally of a concrete nature, but it would be ludicrous to bring the realms of Heaven and Chaos within the concrete and tangible sphere of reality. Milton by a judicious conjunction of concrete and abstract terms is able to suggest just that air of vagueness and substantiality, of unreality and reality, with which we usually associate these objects. He uses abstract terms magnificiently, but almost always with a reference to concrete realities, not as the names of separate entities. By the substitution of abstract nouns for concrete he achieves a wonderful effect of majesty. He doesnot name, for instance, the particular form of wind instrument that the heralds blew in Hell: - “Four speedy cherubim put to their mouths the sounding alchemy.” He avoids defining his creatures by names that lend themselves to definite picture: of Death he says- “So spake the grisly Terror.” The same vagueness is habitually studied by Milton in such phrases as “the vast abrupt”, “the palpable obscure”, “the void immense”, “the wasteful deep”, where, by the use of an adjective in place of a substantive the danger of a definite and inadequate conception is avoided. Milton therefore describes the concrete, the specific, the individual, using general and abstract terms for the sake of the dignity and scope that they lend. While bringing out the defects of the people of the time of Wordsworth, the sonnet throws light on the essential features of the character of Milton also. The poet deals more with Milton the man than Milton the poet. Milton was an ardent fighter for freedom in all spheres. He insisted on a high standard of purity in all walks of life. Not content with preaching a high standard, he lived a life of purity. Hence, Wordsworth is perfectly right when he remarks that his soul was like a star that dwelt apart. Further, though he played a part in high circles in the course of the Civil War between the Parliament and King Charles I, he was essentially humble and did not consider and duty too low for him. This is the virtue that is admired most by Wordsworth. Hence his conclusion that there was no man better fitted for the task of raising the selfish people of the nineteenth century and giving them manners, freedom, virtue, and power , than Milton. Milton is able to suggest his effects by the frequent use of the consonant ‘r’. He is said to have rolled his ‘r’s so as to give a sound much like a dog’s snarl. The notion of Death’s relentless disregard of persons is well brought out by the ‘r’s employed in the description of Death: “Death grinned horribly a ghastly smile”. According to Verity, shuddering is suggesting by the ‘r’s in “the parching air burns fore.” The second feature of the Miltonic simile is that it is homologous, i.e., there is perfect correspondence between each detail of the object and what is compared with. ‘Even when Milton digresses in his similes he doesnot do so, as Homer and other poets do, for the sole reason of drawing a diverting picture. There is always some relevant suggestion to be found if one thinks of all the associations. It is, then, in the completeness of its correspondence with the object that Miltonic simile is most unique and best demonstrates the control which he exercised over his artistic imagination.’ Another effect of the similes used by Milton is that they supply the “human interest”, the want of which is “always felt”-as by Jonson. Besides they bear testimony to the learning which he made the servant of his imagination. On the whole, they seem ‘to illustrate for us the saying of Longinus that “the sublime is a certain excellence and perfection of language.” Here, one might almost say, we may make acquaintance with the whole art of poetry, here is a liberal education for those who seek it. Of the figures that aid sublimity chief mention must be made of personification. It is a figure difficult to handle, and generally fails in effect through falling into one of two extremes. Either the quality, or the person, is forgotten. But of, with Milton the vastness and vagueness of the abstract is combined with the precise and definite conception of a person. Such are the figures of Sin and Death.

Next is the simile of the warring atoms being compared with the sands of the deserts of Africa. These atoms in the realm of Chaos are like the sand in the desert, not only because they are upborne by the surge of the elements in Chaos, like the sands rising with the winds that blow them. A third point of comparison is that the ‘embryon atoms’ are as weighty in their destructive force, as the sands are which load the wind and carry destruction with them wherever they are blown about. A third simile, which we may consider here, is the description of the rejoicings of the rebel angels in their matchless chief. It is a long drawn simile and the points of comparison are not at first apparent. But in, careful thinking will reveal that every part of the picture corresponds to the scene in Hell. The melancholy and despair which had seized the rebel angels in Hell is compared with the luring sky when dark clouds oppress it. Satan’s cheerful acceptance of the adventure into the realm of Chaos is compared with the bright rays of the evening sun. Satan, who is immediately to venture out into the unknown, leaving his comrades behind him is compared with the sun which is departing from the cloud. And the cheer that overspread the gloomy faces of the assembly, and the murmur of joy they gave vent to, are compared with the happiness that spreads over the face of nature, both animate and inanimate, and the songs and cries they indulge in. thus the simile is completely homologous.

                 “ So spake the Sovereign Voice, and clouds began

To darken all the hill, and smoke to roll In dusky wreaths, reluctant flames, the sign At the end of the first book Satan had reminded the devils of a creation about to take place, and announced his intention to investigate it. Satan sits exalted on a throne of royal dignity, like any Eastern potentate. He has been raised to that bad eminence by his unconquerable will, superior courage and imposing stature. Nevertheless he does not realize that it is through the sufferance of great Providence that he has lifted to such a height from despair. Hence he aspires to get higher and wage war with heaven he seeks counsel for a fresh conquest of Heaven. Then in tones of supreme self-complacency he addresses his hosts. Of wrath awaked; nor with less dread the loud Ethereal trumpet from on high 'gan blow: At which command the Powers militant, That stood for Heaven, in mighty quadrate joined Of union irresistible, moved on..” The analysis of some of the similes in our poem will best illustrate these features. First, the simile of Satan being compared to a comet “that fires the length of Ophiuchus huge.” ‘Satan is like the comet in fiery radiance, in enormousness, in the fact that both are ominous of impending calamity. But of, there is still more. Satan is a serpent- “Ophiuchus” means “holder of serpents”; hence the comet is appropriately said to fire the length of this particular constellation. Furthermore Satan is always associated with the quarters of the North, for which reason Milton puts Ophiuchus in the arctic sky, though only with astronomical freedom.’

“In silence their bright legions, to the sound

Of instrumental harmony, that breathed Heroic ardor to adventurous deeds Under their God-like leaders, in the cause Of God and his Messiah.” Belial, ‘at the other pole of temperament and thought’, personifying Lust and Slothful Ease, replies that a reason for war, grounded on despair, such as Moloch’s is of itself a reason against war. There is no room for revenge. God is unconquerable: and to be annihilated (Moloch’s hope in case of a second defeat), is not desired. Belial has sympathy with intellect, even in God. Nor is the rest of his speech less full of the contempt of the highly cultivated intelligence for the brute bluster of Moloch. “What worse, they say, than this Hell. Is this quiet council of ours worse than being chained on the burning lake? We might be tenfold more wretched did God choose it. Therefore I give my voice for peace. Who will say it is vile to live in peace? It is not vile to suffer. We risked all and the law is just which says, suffer now. I laugh at those who are bold with the sword, and not brave to bear the doom they risked. And if we suffer quietly, our foe may remit. His anger, our pain lessen, or we become inured to it, or time bring better chance.”- This is the image of intellectual culture without goodness, made soft by sin, in a nation decayed by luxury, and enslaved. [S.A. Brooke] All Hell applauds the speech of Mammon. Then Beelzebub rises, and in him Milton draws the ‘sublime picture of a great minister touched with a gleam of far-off beauty from another world than Hell,’ and the attention given to him is ‘as still as night or summer’s noontide air.’ he upbraids them for their want of spirit, and reminds them that they are still God’s prisoners. “Why speak of growing empires”, he asks, “why of peace or war? God will rule Hell as Heaven. Hell is His empire not ours. Peace will not be given, nor can we return it. War has been tried, and we are foiled. But of, we can study a less dangerous enterprise which will surpass common revenge. There is a new world, and indwellers in it, in whom God takes pleasure. We may spoil His pleasure by ruining His creation.” He thus points out the possibility of revenge in destroying the new creation, or atleast in possessing it themselves and causing the fall of man. Beelzebub’s speech unites those who wish for war and peace. He is loudly applauded. His counsel thus receiving favour, he next proceeds to remind them of the fearful difficulties of the journey across Chaos, and invites volunteers. The brief introduction to the debate reveals Satan as ‘more proud in his assumed humility than his loudest boasting; and Milton’s object is to deepen our sense of his pride and isolation.’ Satan makes revenge the keynote of the council. His first word is encouragement. Though fallen, they need not despair. They have such immoral vigour in them that no deep can hold them. Far from being worse for the fall they can use their very adversity to rise “more glorious and more dread,” and “trust themselves to fear no second fate.” Let them have confidence in him, their leader. Moloch, the personification of Hatred, declares of war, pointing out that they have nothing to fear from worse punishment, and that ascent from Hell is natural to them. His speech is the ‘image of brute force in its despair, in its blind anger, in its hatred of pain and its weakness to endure it.’ His next words are a consciousness of his worth, a supreme self satisfaction that he is their natural leader. Just right and fixed laws of Heaven have created him their chief. Next their own free choice, supplemented by his own intrinsic merits in both counsel and fight, have contributed to his greatness and security. Nevertheless by none of these qualifications has he been so firmly established in his secure throne, as by the fall they have all shared in common. A more excited state, or loftier position, in Heaven, would have brought with it the envy of others, who have not been so fortunate to get such a status; but in Hell the most exalted position, because of its nearness to danger is the least envied by others. None will covet a-loftier place for himself in Hell, since the higher he climbs, the nearer he is to the Thunderer’s aim, and thus he would expose himself to greater danger. Thus there is no room in Hell for any jealousy or envy, and his position therefore is undisputed. Mammon, personifying Love of Wealth, falls in with Belial’s suggestion of peace, but advises action, not sloth, the settlement of a prosperous empire in Hell. “War means”, says he, “either to disenthrone God, or to regain our place. The first is impossible, the second unacceptable. Suppose, He gave us back our place, could we serve Him, spend and eternity in servile worship of one we hate? Let us seek our good from ourselves, build a free empire here, and win use out of ill-fortune, and ease out of pain. Our world is dark, but we have skill to make it magnificent: and, by length of time, our torments may become our elements native to us, and be no longer pain. Dismiss all thought of war.”- This is the image of the empire of godless utility and wealth, of that world which says, Man shall live by bread alone.-[S.A. Brooke]. The Council ended, the fallen angels occupy themselves in diverse ways, while Satan hurries on his quest to the new world. ‘Of a true Hell there is nothing here. The amusements described here are not natural to that dark dwelling. The Homeric games, the philosophical discourse on retired hills, the music and heroic song in the silent valley, the “bold adventure to discover wide that dismal world”, take our thoughts away from Hell. Save in the first circle (beyond the river Lethe), we do not meet such pictures in Dante’s actual Inferno. There is no true horror or pain in Milton’s Hell. He never saw the damned.’ [S.A. Brooke]

None dares to take up the offer. Satan, thereupon, as becomes his position as leader, undertakes the quest. In this way he gratifies his desire to get glory for himself.
‘He’ has to struggle against the atoms which threaten to crush him, but at last he sees the light of Heaven by which he picks his way slowly to the outer hard crust of the new-created world.

Sin and Death are appeased, and they open the gates of Hell, whence Satan emerges into Chaos. Satan wings his way through the warning elements in Chaos. The elements of Nature in their embryonic form strive for mastery here. He reaches the throne of Chaos with great difficulty, and through guile and fair promise, learns from him about the creation of the new world. Since the way thither is not distant, Satan hurries onward. The Second Book of Paradise Lost is one of the highest triumphs of Milton’s imaginative art. The sad, silent, solitary and blind poet saw more in his blindness than it is possible for any man to see with his healthy eyes. God closed his physical eyes, but made his imaginative vision so clear and powerful that it was more than a compensation for his loss. The wonderful imaginative richness which is the chief distinction of Paradise Lost is nowhere so remarkable as in this book. The great ambition of the poet leads him to conceive and describe things, events, scenes and persons which transcends human knowledge and experience; and so amidst those superhuman beings and their extra mundane activities the only guide of the poet was his imagination. This wonderfully fertile imagination of the poet is the most active in the Second Book.

 Porter:

“In conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and giving him the lie, leaves him.”’ Satan finds two shapes at the gate of Hell, one of whom disputes his passage, shaking a dart. Both, undaunted, fall to words, and would have fought, but the other Shape intervenes. Addressing Satan as “father” and the other as “son”, she adjures them to abstain from fighting. Satan betraying his surprise at this address, she reminds him of a time in Heaven, when she sprang from his head, was called Sin, and became by him the mother of Death, the other Shape, after the fall from heaven. Satan tells them the object of his journey, which will benefit them both. [G.C. Irwin] He tells them that he has come there really on a quest to find out ways and means by which to set them as well as the other fallen angels free from Hell. For their sake he has undertaken to venture alone through the deeps of Hell, and Chaos afterwards. He goes in quest of a place which has been foretold, should be created, and which by other signs and events that have happened since, may have been created by then. It is to be in the outskirts of Heaven, and a new race would have inhabited it probably to fill the void created by their fall from Heaven. But of, it would be outside Heaven lest those upstart creatures should again create trouble in it. Satan is anxious to find out these things for himself, and when his quest ends , he would return and take them back to this new anode, to move about freely and invisibly in the air, and they can satiate their un appeasable hunger there, for everyone in the new world shall be the victim. The Second Book may be divided into two equal halves. The first half describes the debates of the infernal council, and the second half gives us pictures of Hell and Chaos, Satan’s passage through them and his encounter with sin and death at the Hell-gates. We may call the first part natural and realistic and the second part supernatural and imaginative. In the first part we are on firm ground and feel ourselves to be in the British House of Commons ; but in the second part the ground is taken from under our feet and we lose ourselves in horrors, monstrosities and perplexities. What a splendid wealth of Parliamentary logic and eloquence we find in the first part! We are made to feel that we are all in the seventeenth century British House of Commons where the great public leaders are devising ways and means to destroy the Stuart tyranny. The revolutionary spirit of the poet himself is seated “high on a throne of royal state” in the person of the proud and ambitious Arch rebel. Moloch’s brute bluster Belial’s effeminate intellectualism, Mammon’s sordid materialism, Beelzebub’s wise statesmanship are all pictures from real life. The strength and weakness, wisdom and eloquence, pride and prejudice that are displayed in the infernal council are so perfectly human that we forgot for the time being that is a demon world. Porter: ‘ [Knock] Knock, knock. Knock. Who’s there in th’ other devil’s name? [Knock] The second half of the book is a great achievement of Milton’s poetical genius. The descriptions of Hell and Chaos, Satan’s flight through the hoary deep and his encounter with Sin and Death are unique things in the history of the world’s literature. Stopford Brooke , referring to the various diversions of the fallen angels in Hell, wrongly says, ~ “There is no true horror or pain in Milton’s Hell” That great critic, misled by the vivid personal narrative of Dante, fails to do adequate justice to the dim intimations of Milton. Not that there is any absence of pain and suffering in Milton’s hell, but that the infernal angels, unlike the poor human victims of Dante’s hell, struggle heroically against all adverse circumstances. His hell is a universe of death, a dark and dreadful region of unutterable woes. The howling of hailstorms, yelling of the condemned, fiery and icy torments and above all” gorgons and hydras, and chimeras dire” make that vast dolorous Antarctic region a concentrated essence of pains and horrors. Satan’s meeting with Sin and Death at Hell-gates is finely conceived. Though Addison and Johnson object to this intermixture of story and allegory, we find nothing wrong here. The great artist has so deftly interwoven this allegory into the fabric of history that we are scarcely conscious of any impropriety; further, who would lose such a fine episode simply on such a technical ground? The grim phantom of Death, half substance, half shadow, is unlike anything we find in literature. The picture of Chaos which Masson aptly calls “a sheer inconceivability” is a triumph of Milton’s poetic art. It is an immense waste of matter full of accumulated horrors and perplexities. It is the very wild stuff of which the ordered universe was made Milton’s Chaos simply overwhelms us with a sense of immensity and profundity. In the second half of the book the poet concentrates all his force on the solitary and dauntless figure of Satan. Against the horrors of Hell and the confusion of Chaos his masterful and heroic personality stands out like a huge and unassailable tower. Death cannot daunt him. Hell cannot horrify him; Chaos cannot confuse him. Nothing can stand in the way of this firm, fierce and fearless adversary of God and man. What a horrible picture is this! Hell trembles at his mighty strides. The description of his birth is also horrible. Conceived unnaturally he was born in an equally unnatural manner. He violently came out by ripping the womb of his mother who was so moved with fear and pain at this prodigious birth that her lower part was strangely transformed into the tail of a snake. Soon after this violent birth, the hideous phantom chased his mother by brandishing his fatal dart. There is the epic necessity that the important epic character should be sublime and that we should be interested in them but absolute evil is mean, and evokes no pleasure. Satan is, therefore, made a mixed character, with evil passions in which good still lingers. In the beginning Satan is selfish but with abrupt touches of unselfishness. He is proud, but his pride is for others as well as for himself. Though he is full of envy and malice, often he hates these passions in himself, He destroys but it is with difficulty he overcomes his pity for those he destroys. He brings war into Heaven, and despises Heaven, yet he loves its beauty. He is God’s enemy. Yet he allows God’s justice. He avenges himself, yet revenge is bitter. He ruins beauty but he regrets its loss in himself and admires it in others. Thus, we find that Satan is a mixed character in which there is good but evil pre-dominates and eventually the evil master the good. Milton’s inner soul vibrated to those powerful expressions of republican fervor that he puts on the lips of Satan. In the character of Satan, Milton has expressed his own pride, invisible temper, love for liberty, defiance of authority and heroic energy. Of good and evil much they argued then, Of happiness and final misery, Passion and apathy, and glory and shame: Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy. The strength of the portraiture of Satan is due to the fact that the poet is expressing himself through Satan. While portraying this character Milton projects himself into Satan and expresses his own indomitable personality through him. Milton himself was proud, and had stood against the tyranny of the king, and though his party had been defeated, he remained as courageous and defiant in the teeth of adversity as Satan. It is because Milton expressed his own feelings through Satan, that the portraiture of Satan’s character is so intense and powerful. Though Milton set out to justify the ways of God to man, yet, in spite of himself, he endowed Satan with great qualities, simply because Satan like himself, had opposed the ‘tyranny’ of the King of Heaven. Hence Blake remarked: “Milton was the Devil’s party without knowing it.” Milton became conscious of what he was doing as the poem proceeded. The character of Satan, with its greatness and grandeur, was militating against his avowed theme. Hence Milton restrained himself and showed the real character of Satan, the Arch devil. In the later books Satan degenerates into a cunning spy, imposter, and villain. But of, the figures of speech most usually associated with his name, and by which he takes his place alongside Homer and Virgil, is the simile. In the first place, he uses it chiefly to attain that remoteness and loftiness which his theme requires. ‘Almost all his figures and comparisons illustrate concrete objects by concrete objects, and occurrences in time by other occurrences later in time. His figures may be called historic parallels, whereby the names and incidents of human history are made to elucidate and ennoble the less familiar names and incidents of his prehistoric theme. But at, he prefers to maintain dignity and distance by choosing comparisons from ancient history and mythology, or from those great things in Nature which repel intimacy-the sun, the moon, the sea, planets in opposition, a shooting star, an evening mist, the gryphon pursuing the Arimaspian, the madness of Alcides in Oeta, and a hundred more reminiscences of the ancient world.’ Into the burning lake their baleful streams, Abhorred Styx, Milton’s Death is one of his admirable poetic achievements. It is a shapeless shape, a strange compromise between the shadow and the substance. It is a disembodied essence of all horrors, a shadowy substance, or a substantial shadow. Though Milton borrowed ideas from Spenser and other earlier poets his Death is far from being a mere imitation. By a few masterly touches of horrible magnificence he has succeeded in creating a deathless picture of Death which will never be forgotten by any lover of English poetry. With a shadowy crown on his shadowy head and a shadowy dart in his shadowy hand stands the grim King of terrors to oppose Satan. This fierce goblin is fearless and relentless and is rendered immeasurably repulsive by this unnatural lust and eternal hunger. When Satan calls him ‘hell-bore’ and ‘disdainfully asks him to clear out of his way,’ he with a grim retort calls him “hell-doomed” and thunders out. Might yield them easier habitation, bend Four ways their flying march, along the banks Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge He opposes Satan not because he is very faithful in his duty, but because it his pleasure to fight and destroy. He has not the intelligence of his mother and does not know that in fighting Satan he is going to serve God, his enemy. When Satan holds before the evil mother and her evil son a good prospect of ease and feast on earth, the hungry Death laughs with a horrible grin and gets reconciled to his father. He is the very essence of horror, vagueness and repulsion. This terrible goblin as depicted by Milton makes our blood freeze in our veins. He is a blunt, blustering, shadowy monster bent on destruction and owing allegiance to none. Devoid of the light of intelligence the blind brute only bestows uproariously. His shouts and movements, grisly appearance, bloodshot eyes, grinning teeth and brandishing dart make even Hell shake with fear. He is the undisputed monarch of the infernal pit. When Satan challenges him he fearlessly retorts. The repulsive goblin-son of the Devil and Sin is true to his progenitors. As his father held his own daughter in lustful embrace so he committed rape on his own mother. He is all passion, and is constantly swayed by anger, hunger and lust. Sometimes he pursues his mother with a lustful desire, and sometimes wants to devour her up. In brief he is the very essence of all conceivable monstrosities and a splendid triumph of Milton’s powerful poetic imagination. As when, to warn proud cities, war appears Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush To battle in the clouds; The only prose which has escaped from the ‘dust and heat’ of controversy is Areopagitica, called after Areopagus, the hill of Ares where the Athenian parliament met. This speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing to the Parliament of England is couched in the form of a classical oration, beginning with a quotation from Euripides: ‘This is true liberty, when far-born men,/Having to advise the public, may speak free…’ Areopagitica, however, defends not free speech but a free press. It asks Parliament to stop the pre-publication ‘licensing’ of books, a practice begun by Henry VIII, abolished in 1641, but reimposed in 1643. A particular kind of liberty was one of Milton’s ideals, and his speech has noble sentences: “as good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself , kills the image of God , as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book in the precious life blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.” Thence more at ease their minds, and somewhat raised By false presumptuous hope, the ranged Powers Disband; At the Civil War, Milton turned from poetry to reforming prose, and toughened his argumentative powers. In his late poetry he dallied less with the ‘false surmise ‘of the classical poems which had charmed his youth and formed his style. Instead, he mythologized himself. After the Restoration and amnesty, he presents himself as ‘In darkness and in dangers compassed round,/ And solitude; yet not alone,’ for he was visited by the Heavenly Muse. This is from the Invocation to Paradise Lost, Book VII. The Invocations to Books I, III and IX put epic to plangent personal use, creating a myth of the afflicted poet as a blind seer, or as a nightingale, who ‘in shadiest covert hid,/ Tunes her nocturnal note.’ Leads him perplexed, where he may likeliest find Truce to his restless thoughts, and entertain The irksome hours, till his great chief return. Satan’s address to the Sun, written in 1642, appeared in Paradise Lost in 1667. The brief epic Paradise Regained and the tragedy Samson Agonistes followed in 1671. In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wandering mazes lost. Paradise Lost follows the Renaissance idea that poetry should set an attractive pattern of heroic virtue. Holding a humanist belief in reason and in the didactic role of the word, Milton turned argument back into poetry. In the European conversation of Renaissance, his was the last word. As well as relating the Fall, he attempted a more difficult task: ‘to justify the ways of God to men.’ he would retell the story of ‘Man’s first disobedience’ so as to show the justice of Providence. The result is, in its art, power and scope, the greatest of English poems. Dr. Johnson, no lover of Milton’s religion, politics or personality, concluded his Life thus: ‘His great works were performed under discountenance, and in blindness, but difficulties vanished at his touch; he was born of whatever is arduous; and his work is not the greatest of heroic poems, only because it is not the first.’ Paradise Lost is a work of grandeur and energy, and of intricate design. It includes in its sweep most of what was worth knowing of the universe and of history. The blind poet balanced details occurring six books apart. What if we find Some easier enterprise? There is a place (If ancient and prophetic fame in Heaven Err not), The beauty of the close does not end the discord of ‘where Lycid lies’, a deliberate false note. Such passionate question-and-answer is to mark all of Milton’s mature work. and, wandering, each his several way Pursues, as inclination or sad choice Milton’s early Protestant ideals now seem at odds with his sophisticated Italianate style. At court, Charles I patronized the baroque sculptor Bernini. This style, far from Puritan plainness, displays its art with the confidence of the Catholic Reformation. Milton wrote six sonnets in Italian, and English verse in an Italian way. The title Paradise Lost answers that of Tasso’s epic, Gerusalemme Conquisata (1592), ‘Jerusalem Won’: ‘God’s Englishmen’ were interested not in the old Christian reconquest of the earthly Jerusalem but in gaining the Heavenly Jerusalem. Milton embraced Renaissance and Reformation, Greek beauty and Hebrew truth. This embrace was strained in the 1630s as England’s cultural consensus came apart. In 1639 Milton abandoned a second year in Italy, returning from the place of Tasso’s patron in Naples to write prose in London. Although John Donne called Calvinist religion ‘plain, simple, sullen, young’, the first Puritan writer who was truly plain and simple was John Bunyan (1628-88). “How can I live without thee, how forgo Thy sweet converse and love so dearly joined, To live again in these wild woods forlorn?” He resolved ‘to be an interpreter and relater of the best and sagest things among mine own citizens throughout this island in the mother dialect.’

“Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore,

In thy large recompense, and shalt be good To all that wander in that perilous flood. Thus sang the uncouth swain…” The ‘heroic poem’ exemplified right conduct. There are several heroism: Adam and Eve, like the Son, show ‘the better fortitude/ Of patience and heroic martyrdom’ (IX.31-2) –not the individual heroism of Achilles or the imperial duty of Aeneas, nor yet the chivalry of the Italian romantic epics. The magnificence of Satan’s appearance and first speeches turns into envy and revenge. At the centre of the poem is an unglamorous human story, although ‘our first parents’ are ideal at first, as is their romantic love. “Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined So clear, as in no face with more delight. But O as to embrace me she inclined I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.” In IV, Eve says that Paradise without Adam would not be sweet. In IX, the Fall elaborates, the account in Genesis. Eve, choosing to garden alone, is deceived by the serpent’s clever arguments. She urges Adam to eat. ‘Not deceived’, he joins her out of love. Eve leads Adam to sin but also to repentance; blaming herself for the Fall, she proposes suicide. So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair That ever since in love’s embrace met, Adam the goodliest man of men since born His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve. Milton’s self-vindication turns Scripture and tragedy into autobiography. For example, Dalilah betraying Samson to the Philistines recalls the first Mrs. Milton. Finally the persecuted hero pulls down the temple, slaying all his foes at once: ‘the world o’erwhelming to revenge his sight’ (Marvell). The last chorus, both Greek and Christians begins: ‘All is best, though we oft doubt/ What the unsearchable dispose/ Of highest wisdom brings about.’ It ends: His servants he with new acquist Of true experience from this great event With peace and consolation hath dismissed, And calm of mind, all passion spent. He is now with heaven’s ‘sweet societies/That sing, and singing in their glory move, / And wipe the tears forever from his eyes.’ Revealed faith consoles, unlike nature’s myth. Yet the poetry of nature returns. The third speaker is Mammon in whom the inordinate love for sordid wealth has crushed all higher thoughts and honorable instincts. He is a master of seductive logic. War is meaningless, because it can neither dethrone God nor reestablish them in Heaven. If God, out of pity, gave them back their place in Heaven, it will be unacceptable to them. For with God on the throne of Heaven they cannot reasonably expect any seat of honour there. They will have to serve the tyrant of Heaven as his slaves. So it is better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heave. Let them stand on their own legs and build a free and Magnificent Empire in Hell itself with the treasure of gold and precious stones with which Hell abounds. Did first create your leader, next, free choice With what besides in council or in fight Hath been achieved of merit, yet this loss, Thus far at least recovered, hath much more Established in a safe, unenvied throne, Yielded with full consent. In the magnificent Pandemonium all the infernal Peers have gathered together with grave faces and anxious minds to debate on the course of action to be adopted under the circumstances. Satan, the president of the council, sits high up on a splendid throne, full of ambition and pride. His brief inaugural address expresses his pride under the garb of humility. He was first in Heaven and is now first in Hell also. He hopes that nobody should envy him his place which he has by their choice and which involves the largest share of danger and suffering. He then asks the advice of his friends. Having been thus invited Moloch is the first spirit to speak. He is fierce and fiery and the very personification of brute force and blind anger. He does not talk subtlety and diplomacy, but would pay God back in his own coin by invading Heaven. They are already at their worst, and so need not fear anything worse. After him stands Belial, a soft and sinful slave, who prizes ease and luxury more than freedom and honour. In his opinion a reason for war, grounded in despair, is of itself a reason against war. Revenge is impossible and God is unconquerable. Any foolish attempt at revenge will only exasperate him further and bring down greater punishment on their poor heads. The wild talk of annihilation is as meaningless as it is undesirable and will bring no remedy whatsoever. He does not agree with Moloch in thinking that they are already at the worst. So his voice is for peace. Suffering is not vile; so let them suffer and wait. In the meantime God may abate his anger, or their pain lessen, or time may bring a better chance.

	His proud imaginations thus displayed:
	 Powers and Dominions, Deities of Heaven,..

Meanwhile Satan flies towards the nine fold gates of Hell and on reaching the entrance finds there two dreadful and repulsive figures-one half-woman, half snake and other a mere dark phantom with a deadly dart in its hand. Satan challenges this hideous shadow which at once flies into full fury and attacks him. When the fight is imminent the female form rushes forward with a hideous cry and tells Satan a nauseating story. She is Sin, his daughter, and the grim shadow is his son by her and is called Death. So, they being father and son should not fight. The artful fiend now flatters them, tells them of his mission and promises to take them to the Earth. Both creatures, specially Death, are maddened with joy at the bright prospect and the huge gate is opened. The happier state In Heaven, which follows dignity, might draw Envy from each inferior; but who here…..? The royal throne is surrounded by a group of metaphysical and mystical monsters. Satan apologises for his encroachment and explains his mission to Chaos who, grieving over the recent curtailment of his ancient empire of God helps him with directions. Satan flies on and sees the welcome light of Heaven far off shooting into chaos and the starry universe suspended from Heaven by a golden chain and looking like a star by the full moon. 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, Satan comes out and finds himself on the brink of the deep and dreadful gulf of Chaos which is all confusion and all tumult. There the elementary qualities are fighting with one another for supremacy and the embryo atoms are in deadly conflict. The dauntless fiend plunges head long into the hideous confusion and struggles onward with head, hands, legs and wings, sometimes blown thousand of miles up and sometimes hurled thousands of miles down till he reaches the very throne of Chaos and ancient Night , the hoary Anarch and his consort. Here confusion is worse confounded and horrors are piled upon horrors. ‘’Will envy whom the highest place exposes Foremost to stand against the Thunderer's aim Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest share Of endless pain? ‘’ His speech is universally appreciated, when Beelzebub, a great and wise statesman with grave eyes and furrowed forehead stands up to speak. He ridicules those who advocate direct war, or indulge in thoughts of peace, or build vain empires in Hell. God is the lord of Heaven as well as of Hell. He is not going to allow them any peace or liberty of action in Hell. The policy of war has failed; so there is only one course left open for them- that of indirect revenge. Perhaps by this time the new World has been created. They would ruin its inhabitants whom God likes so much. But someone must volunteer to undertake the quest. As nobody dares come forward Satan boldly offers himself for the task and asks the infernal angels to await his return and beguile the time in any way they like. The council is dissolved, Satan departs, and the fallen spirits take to various diversions. Some indulge in physical feats, some in philosophical and theological discourses, some in music and songs, and some in bold adventures of discovery. The last party traverses the various gloomy regions of Hell. They see the four terrible infernal rivers, and the fifth, Lethe, rolling its slow waters at a great distance. Beyond this river they see a dark, dismal and dreadfully cold expanse of perpetual snow where the damned souls are periodically brought by the furies from the extreme heat of the hell-fire to be tormented by extreme cold. Milton’s Satan is endowed with heroic qualities. The outstanding trait of his character is courage. He may be wrong headed: but he has infinite courage in himself. As the poem, Paradise Lost begins, we find Satan in a hopeless situation. He and his companions have been hurled down into b the bottomless pit of Hell. He lies dazed and stunned in the Lake of liquid fire and so do his companions, the rebel angels. Heaven is lost to Satan and his companions, and they are doomed to live forever in the darkness of Hell. But of, this gloomy prospect of the future does not fill Satan with despondency robbing him of his power of action. When Beelzebub, his lieutenant, tells him that their situation is hopeless beyond redemption, he replies. Satan is determined not to be weak under any circumstances. If one retains his courage and strength of mind, he “can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” Even in Hell Satan discovers an advantage. High on a throne of royal state, which far Outshone the wealth or Ormus and of Ind, Or where the gorgeous east with richest hand Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, Satan exalted sat, by merit raised To that bad eminence; Satan alone occupies a prominent position in the narrative. According to the strict rules of dramatic art, Satan should be the villain of the piece. To a certain extent, Paradise Lost is symbolic of the never ending, conflict between good and evil in the life of man., and Satan is thus the type of universal evil and wickedness. In one sense, Satan is the most important character in the poem because it is from his agency that practically all the action of the narrative arises. The revolt which Satan stirs up in Heaven leads to the fall of the angels in the first place; the decision which he comes to, to tempt the newly created human pair, leads to further action in Paradise Lost. Such being the case, Milton had to necessarily bring Satan prominently before the reader more prominently indeed than any other character. So we might say that the theme or narrative which Milton selected for Paradise Lost depended for its action on the deeds of a wicked character, rather than a hero. The problem for Milton was the manner in which he was to present such an evil character. The sight of pure, and undisguised evil is never pleasant, and the acts of a wicked person cause feelings of disgust and repulsion to right-minded readers. So Milton would have risked losing the sympathy and interest of his readers had he presented Satan as an unattractive study in wickedness. It seems then, that Milton realized this danger and refrained from blackening the characters of Satan unduly. Not only so, but he depicts Satan as possessing many qualities which are good, noble and wholly admirable. It is this point which has made the character of Satan unique and has aroused so much discussion among critics. Celestial virtues rising will appear More glorious and more dread than from no fall, And trust themselves to fear no second fate. There can be no doubt that Satan is meant to be the villain. He is throughout called names like “arch-fiend”. “arch-enemy”, “apostate angel” “the adversary of God and man”, “the author of all ill”, “the spirit malign”,” the fraudulent imposter foul”, etc. His rebellion against God was due to Pride and his desire to continue the war of Envy, Revenge and love of Evil. He is crafty, - “the warie fiend”- and his plan to corrupt mankind is one of “covert guile”. He is cunning in his appeal to his followers which has only a “semblance of worth.” Satan embodies evil because he is the embodiment of disobedience to God. God allows him to work his “dark design” in order to give further scope, for divine goodness and to bring worse punishment on him. Satan has great anxiety for his followers. It is the trait of a great general of any army, to think of the welfare of his followers even before he think of his own safety. All great warriors and conquerors were able to inspire their followers with loyalty and devotion which make them ready to suffer and die for their leader. In return, the chief guard cherishes them as if they were all his own brothers or children. This feeling of chivalry overcomes Satan as he sees his unconscious friends lying in profound slumber all round him. He cannot forget that they had met this cruel fate because of their devotion to him. He cannot forget that they had met this cruel fate because of their devotion to him. He sees their self-sacrifice as heroic in its essence. So he, is represented as shedding tears of sympathy for them-Tears such as angels weep. This is pathetic fallacy since angels cannot weep at all. Satan flatters them on the concord they have thus easily attained, which would never have been possible in Heaven. Let them design therefore with one mind how best to regain their lost positions. Whether the best way should be open war, or secret deceit, let them determine, and he affords the opportunity now for others to speak. ‘These, then, here outlined slightly and imperfectly, are some of the most noteworthy features of Milton’s style. By the measured roll of this verse, and the artful distribution of stress and pause to avoid monotony and to lift the successive lines in a climax; by the deliberate and choice character of his diction , and his wealth of vaguely emotional epithets; by the intuition which taught him to use no figures that do not heighten the majesty, and no names that do not help the music of his poem; by the vivid outlines of the concrete imagination that he imposes on us for real, and the cloudy brilliance that he weaves for them out of all great historical memories, and all far-reaching abstract conceptions, he attained to a finished style of perhaps a more consistent and unflagging elevation that is to be found elsewhere in literature. There is nothing to put beside him. “His natural port,” says Johnson “is a gigantic loftiness.” And Landor: “After I have been reading the Paradise Lost, I can take up no other poet with satisfaction. I seem to have left the music of Handel for the music of the streets, or, at best, for drums and fifes.” The secret of the style is lost; and no poet, since Milton’s day, has recaptured the solemnity and beauty of the large utterance of Gabriel, or Belial, or Satan.’ (Masson) Even in defeat he will never dream of submission. The fierceness of the punishment inflicted on him is mitigated by the greater fierceness of his pride.

	..and, from despair

Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires… !

SELF SETTING, DEVELOPMENT, ON-CONTEXTS, EDITING, THOUGHTS AND MORE ALIKE, -WORDS AND SENTENCES FROM DR.S.SEN, WEB-LINKS OF THE ORIGINAL POEM AND IMAGES, BOOKS ON WORDSWORTH AND SHELLEY AND COLERIDGE’S POEM, A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE… RITUPARNA RAY CHAUDHURI.

https://www.academia.edu/9744639/A_Masterpiece_of_grotesque_horror-_Miltons_Paradise_Lost_Book_II_The_Way_I_Have_Liked_To_Evaluate

“….The second book is full of great ‘things’ (to use Saintsbury’s favourite phrase), the debate, Satan’s heroic choice of the phrase, Chaos, his encounter with Sin and Death: “on the other side Inces’t with indignation Satan stood Unterrifi’d, and like a Comet burn’d That fires the length of Ophiucus huge In th’ Artick sky, and from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war.”…. H.J.C. Grierson

Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri (talk) 19:12, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WHAT MY VISION GOES:

MAY THAT I CAN BE WRONG- “IS IT QUALITY OF TEACHING” !…BUT OF, I CANNOT OR SHOULD NOT BLAME ALL AN INDIVIDUAL- Posted on May 31, 2015

An incomplete teaching!

Today some students of Class VIII, of a certain school came to me. They had asked me their English Language Teacher had taught them Auxiliaries. I said them to explain me the way they had learn-t from the teacher. Of the students, many of them soon directly started with exercises and, wherever they were finding as best they were putting the verbs. When I asked them on rules, they directly had thrown on me the fuss of Grammatical Rules to be remembered by them. The situation was quite, awkward to me.

It disturbed me.

Another experience I recently went through when students of Class VII could not have a perfect abode to learn on Verbs. Too I asked them, however what they had learn-t. They said the teacher had started directly only on exercises, so they could not follow of Transitive and Intransitive Verbs respectively. As further, I had informed on Teaching of the Language that the Chapter constitutes these verbs are half been incompatible to be gone through by majority of students, as the subject teacher said. So they exactly did not have minimum, of any knowledge how to find out exactly the verbs from a given sentence. Is that..to be expected from a Teacher?

The subtopics are endless!

I cannot judge myself to be made up with a fine texture. I had lot and lots of loops. But on, I am a good dreamer. I can dream best for the generation requesting “Experts you come forward, have a hold on the teaching system..make a generation to learn more properly with your own soil of liberty.”

..

People might rush against my thoughts. But at, it is completely my own to think on the vision as a teacher, I first try to think myself an abode of students consists a good as well as a mediocre student. Hence my method of teaching should be subscribed equally among all, not that only to reside among a rank of certain capable students.

However, I do have a question to myself that be continued..

Does a student therefore, learn properly on the Language at, Secondary Stage of Education? The Way if I can Meditate on the question to get the answer , I should say it is certainly “NOT”.

Of like Mediocre Students, every time I had a question , why English Language Grammar is too insistent? The teacher never told me answer, only endorsed to arrest myself among so many rules and examples.

Several years after, I came to know the answer of my question : ‘ English Language and ”Masculine Gender” ‘. This ‘is’ not the only a mysterious knowledge I had acquired at the time, as also along with other knowledge on ‘Growth of English Language’.. I had learn-t much later “DERIVATION’ MEANS THE MAKING OF A NEW WORD OUT OF AN OLD ONE. IT IS ONE OF THE RICHEST SOURCES OF FORMING WORDS IN ENGLISH.”

Pronunciation, an utmost problem and hence myself amidst in dilemma. Of a length, who” shall help me” was an uttered question.The answer became clear to me when I had learn-t on -“Prosody”. During childhood I learn-t decorum of a paragraph , or stress on the language certainly, such that obviously sounds to be good.The then-vague conception became clear : advent when I learn-t on ‘Rhetoric’.

………………. ‘Hence, I do feel that many things are been left to know.’

“Let , If the System of Secondary Education on English be changed”...Let ‘Philology’ (SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE) be introduced on Secondary System..Let pupils know what is ‘Rhetoric’ and what is ‘Prosody’ on the base, WITH GRADUALLY ADVENT OF THE AGE. Like me, many people feel Knowledge on the Language, is in Dilemma.. 20:20, 31 May 2015 (UTC)20:20, 31 May 2015 (UTC)Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri (talk) 20:20, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sharing on Knowledge of Rajendralal Roy Chowdhury Family :

HISTORY:I FIND OF CONSTANT ACQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE THROUGH WEB :"During Durga Puja in the house of Narayan Roy Choudhury in Birnagar Village of Nadia District of West Bengal, Renowned (Prof) Late Dr. Makhanlal Roy Choudhury, youngest brother of Named Late Rajendralal Roy Choudhury and uncle of Narayan, recalled and described to all about the Origin of FAMOUS Roy Chowdhury Family and the FAMOUS Karpara,OF NOAKHALI district, since as back as possible till the riot of 1946..."- History has its own history..Its quite around good to get on many people, interested on knowledge on related- discussion. Well, I am the ELEVENTH Direct Descendant of The- Family, I remember after my admission to Presidency College, Late Bina Devi, wife of Dr. Makhanlal Roy Choudhury, told me: " Remember that our family is attached with Presidency College since 1905 through Rajendralal. You must keep dignity of that ". My grandmother Late Niva Roy Choudhury , wife of Late Narayan Roy Choudhury ,said "Presidency is not new to us.." Well thanks.. RITUPARNA RAY CHAUDHURI.

http://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=0wtg748AAAAJ. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Rituparna-Ray-Chaudhuri 16:49, 21 June 2015 (UTC)16:49, 21 June 2015 (UTC)16:49, 21 June 2015 (UTC)16:49, 21 June 2015 (UTC)16:49, 21 June 2015 (UTC)~

LETTERS TO EDITORS: TOI..

Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri: Letters to the Editor sent to Times ... rituparnaraychaudhuri.blogspot.com/.../letters-to-editor-sent-to-times-of.... 5 days ago - Letters to the Editor sent to Times of India, The - Noakhali Riots: As Published In Wikipedia by Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri. Letters to the Editor ...

Read Letters to the Editor sent to Times of India, The - On ... www.publishaletter.com/readletter.jsp?plid=59169 Apr 19, 2015 - WRITE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR OF YOUR CHOICE. PUBLISH ... Posted in Publishaletter.com By :(Not Verified), Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri.

09:36, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: LET "ME" TALK:

http://www.academia.edu/14928911/_THE_ENGLISH_LANGUAGE_AND_ITS_WHISPERS_OF_IMMORTALITY_._DIRECT_TO_ALSO_http_archive.org_details_THEENGLISHLANGUAGEIAMBUTIDOSPEAKENGLISH_http_www.slideshare.net_RituparnaRayChaudhur_the-english-language-i-am-but-i-do-speak-english_http_bit.ly_1Ps8sR7 Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri (talk) 08:03, 20 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

THE MEALS ARE FOR MY REAL- TENANTS-

http://itim.es/kKk0ua Top 9 English Teacher, Argentina profiles | LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/title/english-teacher,-argentina Here are the top 9 English Teacher, Argentina profiles on LinkedIn. Get all the ... Sapna Pieroux. Creative Cross-discipline Solutions Seeker: graphics, web, marketing, content, copywriting - and now, interiors ... Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri. 20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)20:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri (talk)

Science & The Modern Generation,in Majority..

" Truth and falsehood may be predicted of propositions, but never of arguments and attributes of validity and invalidity can belong only to deductive arguments, never to propositions.There is a connection between the validity or invalidity of an argument and the truth or falsehood of its premisses and conclusion, but the connection is by no means a simple one. It is important to realize that an argument may be valid while one or more of its premisses is untrue. The addition of new premisses may alter the strength of an inductive argument, but a deductive argument, if valid, cannot be made more valid or invalid by the addition of any premisses.

The strength of the claim about the relation between the premisses and the conclusion of the argument is the nub of the difference between deductive and inductive arguments.We characterize the two types of arguments as: A deductive argument is one whose conclusion is claimed to follow from its premisses with absolute necessity, This necessity not being a matter of degree and not depending in any way on whatever else may be the case; in sharp contrast, an inductive argument is one whose conclusion is claimed to follow from its premisses only with probability, this probability being a matter of degree and dependent upon what else may be the case.

"I should treat all subjects equally"-a dictum should be carried by self. "My child, is the student of Science,...hence he/she cannot exactly concentrate upon all subjects equally" irrelevant to the same bearings "When I know that I am determined to go through my medical-study, engineering alike...why I should unnecessarily concentrate more on The English Language! I am the student of this medium, I am a good student...so well I can shrug up my syllabus of the English language....considering my other subjects, well I wont read Arts in future, so I shall manage it. " More,

"Being a student of Science, it is better to concentrate more on pure science, rather than upon all these..I dream to go abroad as a Science student..a lots of dream I am 'biting' through. I am a self - devotee to Science only, my neutral analysis of controversial matters and theorizing..."

More such things I am experiencing through my daily experiences. I am, afraid to visualize on these students whether the mere presence of word "probability" within an argument self is no sure indication that the argument is inductive, because there are some strictly deductive arguments about probabilities themselves...

May God bless them to their amazing thoughts with ruptures and raptures of lexical emotive role of their own speculative definitions that, can help to prevent fruitless verbal conflict..."The Word "Mountain" means a large mass of earth or rock rising to a considerable height above the surrounding country." - - "

             -               -     -Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri.

(Only logical words followed from an authenticated book). 07:37, 7 October 2015 (UTC)07:37, 7 October 2015 (UTC)07:37, 7 October 2015 (UTC)07:37, 7 October 2015 (UTC)07:37, 7 October 2015 (UTC)07:37, 7 October 2015 (UTC)07:37, 7 October 2015 (UTC)07:37, 7 October 2015 (UTC)07:37, 7 October 2015 (UTC)07:37, 7 October 2015 (UTC)07:37, 7 October 2015 (UTC)07:37, 7 October 2015 (UTC)``