The Acrostic Paradise Lost by John Milton and Terrance Lindall

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Lindall has synopsized the story of Paradise Lost with genuine care in order to bring
Milton’s great epic alive to young and old. His synopsis is poetic in its own beauty, with
each word carefully chosen to be true to Milton while maintaining integrity with his great
epic and the rendering of it into a readily understandable format. Lindall’s synopsis
maintains the spirit of Milton’s epic while revealing the genius of the poet in telling “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 grater Man /
Restore us and regain the blissful seat, / Sing heav/nly Muse. . .”
Terrance Lindall has spent decades perfecting his painting skill and illustrating technique
in order to capture all that is best and visionary about Milton, providing illustrations of
Milton’s great epic, early on, e.g., along with his synopsis in a fold-out brochure in order
to bring Milton’s epic alive to students in schools. Lindall’s first edition of his
synopsized version of Paradise Lost along with his illustrations (1983) were designed to
encourage young readers to look into the brilliance and eloquence of Milton’s visionary
poetic landscape and his great organ voice.
More recently he has gone beyond illustrating Paradise Lost by capturing the essence of
Milton’s epic and its meaning down through the centuries and beyond in a “Gold
Illuminated Paradise Lost Scroll” (size with border 17” x 50”), with nine panels to be
read from right to left, as with Hebrew; the Scroll is Lindall’s “tribute to his love [of] and
sincere gratitude for Milton’s great contribution to humanity.” He finished the “Gold
Illuminated Paradise Lost Scroll” in 2010.
He has also brought Milton’s epic alive in a very large “Altar Piece,” called “The
Paradise Lost Altar Piece” (oil on wood, 40” x 24 “), consisting of two large panels.
When opened, the panels might be seen as pages from an illuminated manuscript of the
Renaissance. One panel shows the gates to the “Garden of Eden.” The second panel
shows the “Gates to Hell.” In both panels, pages from the epic poem Paradise Lost lie
revealed in the foreground at the center of the illustration. “The Paradise Lost Altar
Piece” was completed in 2009.
Lindall’s passion for Milton and his desire to bring the poet and his great epic alive to
modern readers reveal themselves over nearly four decades. During this same period,
from the late 1970s to 2012, Lindall’s “love of Paradise Lost” and his “sincere gratitude
for Milton’s great contribution to humanity” grew enormously.
To get a sense of this as well as of Lindall’s broader artistic background and its influence
on his illustrations of Paradise Lost, there is his large cover illustration of the comic book
Creepy (now considered a classic – both the comic book and Lindall’s “creepy” cover
illustration of “Visions Of Hell (6/79).” Likewise his cover to Creepy (#116, May 1980),
entitled “The End of Man” (again, the comic book and Lindall’s cover illustration now
considered classic).