Paradise Lost: "virtually unreadable"?

Sophie Gee

Writer and Scholar

(Image from Princeton University)

A scholar on the Milton List linked to a humorous article by Daisy Fried on 'failed' attempts to rewrite Milton's epic poem, "Sing, God-awful Muse!" (Poetry, July/August 2009), an article partly incited by Sophie Gee's observation that the poem is "now virtually unreadable."

Intrigued by this remark, I followed up on Professor Gee's words at the New York Times in an article titled "Great Adaptations" (January 13, 2008) and discovered that she was also speaking of that old poem Beowulf:

Take "Beowulf" and "Paradise Lost." The unpalatable truth is that both originals are now virtually unreadable. "Beowulf" is written in Old English, an inflected Germanic tongue that looks a lot less like our language than one would hope. As for Milton's epic, it's in "normal" English, but its blank verse is so densely learned, so syntactically complicated and philosophically obscure, that it's almost never read outside college courses.

There's considerable truth to these words, I suppose, though I strongly suspect that Milton's poem was already "virtually unreadable" when it was first published, not only now, three centuries later, and for precisely the reasons offered by Ms. Gee.

Ms. Gee goes on to praise recent adaptations of both Beowulf and Paradise Lost, referring to "Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary's film version" of the former and "Philip Pullman's [Dark Materials] trilogy" version of the latter. Readers may recall that I had kind words for the Beowulf film but unkind words for Pullman's reworking of themes in Paradise Lost. Pullman can write very well, but I find profound bitterness in the novels, a bitterness so pervasive that it distorts the story and ruins the narrative . . . at least for me. Not that Pullman is uninteresting, for he is intelligent, and draws on Milton for ideas with literary potential, as Ms. Gee notes:

The oddest of Pullman's ideas is Dust. Composed of animate, freely moving particles that gather on adults and avoid children, Dust turns out to be the stuff of consciousness itself, the matter that permits people free will and choice (and arouses the hostility of those in authority). Pullman gets it from "Paradise Lost," where Milton describes the universe as composed of animate particles, originally the matter of chaos. In this, Milton builds on a philosophy called Vitalism, which holds that all animate things -- including plants and insubstantial beings, like angels -- are made from "thinking matter."

I wasn't aware that vitalism attributes plant life to "thinking matter," but this does have me curious about the degree to which Milton may have built on the philosophy of vitalism, assuming that this philosophy even pre-dates Milton, and curious about the sense in which Milton's particles of chaos are animate, assuming that one can call them particles.

At any rate, despite Pullman's updating of Milton, I find Paradise Lost far more readable than Dark Materials.

Or am I, not Pullman, the sinister one?

Stelmaria?

Lord Asriel's Dæmon?

(Image from Philip Pullman)

In a previous post ("Philip Pullman: 'shallow and sinister'?"), I agreed with Milton scholar Professor James Fleming, who had written that he found Pullman both shallow and sinister:

As far as I can tell, The Golden Compass ends with Lord Asriel, the good-scary guy, murdering a child (Roger). This is presented as a noble sacrifice, allowing the great man to open up the heavens in defiance of an authoritarian God.

I agreed but also had an inkling that something else might be going on:

Like Professor Fleming, I was troubled by the "noble sacrifice" -- though there may have been an allusion to Christianity in that.

Lord Asriel is a complex figure but is partly modeled upon Milton's Satan in his rebellion against God, and therein lies Pullman's cleverness.

If Stanley Fish is correct in Surprised by Sin, then Milton intends for the reader of Paradise Lost to identify with Satan not because Milton has cast Satan as the hero of this epic but because Milton wants us to renact the original fall from Paradise in our experience as readers. We initially admire Satan's heroic qualities and follow him as he escapes from hell and crosses the treacherous realm of chaos, but we later discover that we have been misled and therefore come to recognize the sin within ourselves that drew us into that identification.

I suspect that Pullman is doing something similar with Lord Asriel. He wants us to initially identify with Asriel but to discover through Asriel's sacrifice of the child Roger that we have been misled.

Why should this be problematic for the reader? Couldn't one simply reject Asriel? I think that Pullman intends his readers to do so, but he is also setting a trap for his Christian critics, who will certainly not wish to identify with Asriel (even if they initially might have done so as readers). The Christian critique of Asriel will likely center on Asriel's apparent "end-justifies-means" ethic, namely the evil of sacrificing a child to open a way toward attaining what Asriel considers good. Pullman could then retort -- more or less plausibly -- that this is precisely what the Christian God does, i.e., sacrifice a child to attain the good. If Christians reject Asriel, then they must also reject their own God. If they refuse to reject their own God, then they cannot criticize Asriel.

I think that this is what Pullman is up to with his depiction of Asriel. Whether the trap that he springs catches Christian critics is less clear to me, for the two cases of sacrifice are not entirely analogous.

What do readers of Pullman think about this?

"So, it's settled. Pullman is sinister."

Philip Pullman

Sinister?

(Image from Philip Pullman)

An old Ozark friend who teaches elementary children has posted an interesting response to my Pullman inquiry:

I might make a suggestion. I assume that all of you are adults; therefore, you are reading Pullman's and Rowling's books from that perspective. If you read Pullman's series along with 5th and 6th graders, then very rarely does any religious discussion arise. Children LOVE any book where a child overcomes adults. Books where they must survive using their wits against the adult world in general. When I was a child, it was the Boxcar Children who survived on their own, or Madeline l'engle's books. After having spent years now in discussion with children about Harry Potter, they identify with his struggle to overcome the adult world. Mean teachers, horrible foster family, etc. Bad guys out to get you, or the bad kid that the good ones ultimately overcome. I have always maintained that the genius of Pullman and Rowling was mixing the above with a little magic. It takes a rare elementary student to assess these books as good vs evil in a religious sense.

Well, just a few thoughts from an elementary literacy person!

Since these two authors have primarily made their retirement stash from selling to elementary students then I applaud them for cluing into the buying audience. Of course, the great aspect, of both writers, I believe, is giving adults something to discuss also!

Jeanie's central point is this:

"Children LOVE any book where a child overcomes adults."

As I wrote in my reply:

So, it's settled. Pullman is sinister.

I'm glad that this issue has been settled. I now know that I must forbid my children to read His Dark Materials. Still awaiting answer is the question of Pullman's shallowness.

But to be serious for at least one moment . . . Jeanie has clearly identified a crucial element in Pullman's appeal for young readers. Children defeating adults. That's also true of Coraline and The Graveyard Book, both by Neil Gaiman.

Now if only I could find a book that shows an adult like me how to defeat adults.

Philip Pullman: "shallow and sinister"?

Philip Pullman, April 2005

Photograph by Adrian Hon, MSSV

(Image from Wikipedia)

The Milton List has been having a discussion of Philip Pullman's "Dark Materials" series because of its many allusions to Milton's writings, which some Milton experts are currently exploring. Other Milton scholars remain unimpressed by Pullman. For instance, Professor James Fleming wrote:

Am I alone in finding Pullman both shallow and sinister?

As far as I can tell, The Golden Compass ends with Lord Asriel, the good-scary guy, murdering a child (Roger). This is presented as a noble sacrifice, allowing the great man to open up the heavens in defiance of an authoritarian God.

A little Brothers Karamazov rids us of this deed.

I concurred:

You're not "alone in finding Pullman both shallow and sinister." Even worse, he can't tell a good story.

In the mid-90s, I was sitting in a cafe in London reading book reviews in some newspaper and came across two reviews, one of Rowling and the other of Pullman. An excerpt from the latter's book aroused my curiosity, but I didn't actually read the series until around 2005, long after I'd read most of the Harry Potter series.

I was greatly disappointed by the story's development in the Pullman's series. I started reading with high expectations, and the quality of his writing is certainly very good, but the story went nowhere. Even the writing seemed to falter in the latter books . . . but perhaps I was just getting bored.

Like Professor Fleming, I was troubled by the "noble sacrifice" -- though there may have been an allusion to Christianity in that -- but whatever Pullman might have intended by that, and by the entire series, I finished reading him with a sense of letdown.

In my opinion, he let his animus toward Christianity distort his story.

Despite Pullman's literary gifts, which are considerable and far better than Rowlings', the latter tells a much better story that kept me interested to the very end.

The 'noble sacrifice' in the Harry Potter series worked rather better, too.

For anyone interested, I blogged on my reaction to Pullman back in 2005, soon after having finished him in disappointment.

Other readers will certainly have had a different reaction, and I'd be interested in Written Wyrdd's opinion since she's a reader of fantasy and sci-fi and is also, I take it, a writer herself.

Was the Pullman series a letdown for anyone else?

The Very Christian J.K. Rowling?

Harry Potter

and the Deathly Hallows

(Image from Wikipedia)

Well, I've had a lot of fun with a couple of posts on Harry Potter, but all joking aside, let me say something more earnest about the latest (and last?) in the Harry Potter series.

As I noted in the humorous posts, a faction of evangelicals (and also other Christians, including some Catholics) are opposed to letting their children read Harry Potter because of the witchcraft, wizardry, and magic, which they see as anti-Christian.

Some fantasy writers are anti-Christian, of course. Philip Pullman, with the series His Dark Materials, comes to mind. Pullman, by the way, is a far better literary stylist and descriptive writer than Rowling but lacks the latter's storytelling skills ... in my opinion, of course.

Rowling has never struck me as anti-Christian. Her first book seemed simply to ignore Christianity, perhaps as irrelevant to her story, but as the books have grown darker and more serious in their exploration of evil, Christian symbols have begun to surface at key points that might indicate something more than purely 'pagan' going on underneath ... like finding Christ in Beowulf or in the reworked Celtic myths of Medieval English literature.

For instance, at a certain point in the story, Harry and Hermione visit Godric's Hollow, the place where Harry would have grown up if Voldemort hadn't murdered his parents. Harry and Hermione are on a quest to defeat Voldemort, and here are some excerpts that suggest Christian allusions:

The snow here had become impacted: It was hard and slippery where people had trodden on it all day. Villagers were crisscrossing in front of them, their figures briefly illuminated by streetlamps. They heard a snatch of laughter and pop music as the pub door opened and closed; then they heard a carol start up inside the little church.

"Harry, I think it's Christmas Eve!" said Hermione.

"Is it?"

He had lost track of the date; they had not seen a newspaper for weeks.

"I'm sure it is," said Hermione, her eyes upon the church. "They . . . they'll be in there, won't they? Your mum and dad? I can see the graveyard behind it." (page 323)

Now, the thing to note here is something easily missed. Godric's Hollow is a town where many witches and wizards live, perhaps even outnumbering the 'Muggles' (nonmagical folk), yet a church stands in the middle of the village. Moreover, Harry's parents are buried there among other witches and wizards.

Rowling takes this a step further in some of the wording on tombstones:

[Hermione] pointed to the dark stone. Harry stooped down and saw , upon the frozen, lichen-spotted granite, the words Kendra Dumbledore and, a short way down her dates of birth and death, and Her Daughter Ariana. There was also a quotation:

Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (page 325)

Rowling doesn't identify this quote, but it's from Matthew 6:21, which in its original context was about laying up treasures in heaven rather than upon earth. Harry, raised by Muggles who seem not to have been religious, doesn't understand the quote:

Hermione was looking at Harry, and he was glad that his face was hidden in shadow. He read the words on the tombstone again. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. He did not understand what these words meant. Surely Dumbledore had chosen them, as the eldest member of the family once his mother had died. (page 326)

Some minutes later, they find the grave of Harry's parents:

And he knew by her tone that it was his mother and father this time: He moved toward her, feeling as if something heavy were pressing on his chest, the same sensation he had had right after Dumbledore had died, a grief that had actually weighed on his heart and lungs.

The headstone was only two rows behind Kendra and Ariana's. It was made of white marble, just like Dumbledore's tomb, and this made it easy to read, as it seemed to shine in the dark. Harry did not need to kneel or even approach very close to it to make out the words engraved upon it.

JAMES POTTER - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LILY POTTER

BORN 27 MARCH 1960 - - - BORN 30 JANUARY 1960

DIED 31 OCTOBER 1981 - - - DIED 31 OCTOBER 1981

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

Harry read the words slowly, as though he would have only one chance to take in their meaning, and he read the last of them aloud.

"'The last enemy that shall be defeated is death' . . ." A horrible thought came to him, and with a kind of panic. "Isn't that a Death Eater idea? Why is that there?"

"It doesn't mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry," said Hermione, her voice gentle. "It means . . . you know . . . living beyond death. Living after death."

But they were not living, thought Harry. They were gone. The empty words could not disguise the fact that his parents' moldering remains lay beneath snow and stone, indifferent, unknowing. And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending? He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick snow hiding from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them. (pages 327-328)

Interestingly, whereas Harry misunderstands the words about defeating death, Hermione seems to know the meaning of the quote, which is again biblical (from 1 Corinthians 15:26) and which suggests that Hermione herself might have been raised by her Muggle parents as a Christian ... though whether in a personally significant way or in a merely cultural sense remains unclear.

I'm not sure what Rowling is up to with these quotes, and she may be using them in nonbiblical ways, coded statements containing clues for Harry to draw forth and interpret, but there is also this description of a moment in Harry's quest for the means of defeating Voldemort when he finds the crucially needed instrument lying at the bottom of a forest pool, the sword of Gryffindor:

He moved forward rather cautiously and looked down. The ice reflected his distorted shadow and the beam of wandlight, but deep below the thick, misty gray carapace, something else glinted. A great silver cross...

His heart skipped into his mouth: He dropped to his knees at the pool's edge and angled the wand so as to flood the bottom of the pool with as much light as possible. A glint of deep red... It was a sword with glittering rubies in its hilt.... The sword of Gryffindor was lying at the bottom of the forest pool. (page 367)

In Medieval Romance literature, a bejeweled Christian cross is sometimes symbolized by a sword due to their shared form, and that sort of thing may be happening here. Also of significance is that Harry drops to his knees. I don't think that such an expression could be chosen by an author in this sort of context without an allusion being made to Christian prayer ... not that Harry himself realizes this, for he seems not to.

What does this all mean? Is J.K. Rowling, like C.S. Lewis, writing Christian 'allegory'? I don't know. I still need to finish the book and do some more thinking.