Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

Paradise Lost 233and cunning which have marked the mighty hunters of mankindfrom Nimrod to Napoleon. The common fascination of men is, thatthese great men, as they are called, must act from some great motive.Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, thealcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in hell than serve inheaven. To place this lust of self in opposition to denial of self or duty,and to show what exertions it would make, and what pains endureto accomplish its end, is Milton’s particular object in the character ofSatan. But around this character he has thrown a singularity of daring,a grandeur of sufferance, and a ruined splendour, which constitute thevery height of poetic sublimity.Lastly, as to the execution:—The language and versification of the Paradise Lost are peculiar inbeing so much more necessarily correspondent to each than those inany other poem or poet. The connexion of the sentences and the positionof the words are exquisitely artificial; but the position is ratheraccording to the logic of passion or universal logic, than to the logicof grammar. Milton attempted to make the English language obeythe logic of passion as perfectly as the Greek and Latin. Hence theoccasional harshness in the construction.Sublimity is the pre-eminent characteristic of the Paradise Lost.It is not an arithmetical sublime like Klopstock’s, whose rule alwaysis to treat what we might think large as contemptibly small. Klopstockmistakes bigness for greatness. There is a greatness arising fromimages of effort and daring, and also from those of moral endurance;in Milton both are united. The fallen angels are human passions,invested with a dramatic reality.The apostrophe to light at the commencement of the third bookis particularly beautiful as an intermediate link between Hell andHeaven; and observe, how the second and third book support thesubjective character of the poem. In all modern poetry in Christendomthere is an under consciousness of a sinful nature, a fleetingaway of external things, the mind or subject greater than the object,the reflective character predominant. In the Paradise Lost the sublimestparts are the revelations of Milton’s own mind, producing itself andevolving its own greatness; and this is so truly so, that when thatwhich is merely entertaining for its objective beauty is introduced, itat first seems a discord.