I may assert eternal providence
And justify the ways of God to men
So, I’ve been building up to this by reading a lot of Milton’s significant shorter work. Let me tell you, I was not prepared. I mean, look, I’m just going to say straight up that I, like most people I reckon, approach the Classics with some trepidation. I mean, we’ve all had the experience of picking up some Canonical Masterpiece and being bored to tears (hello, Mill on the Floss). So, that’s how I came to Paradise Lost even though I’d liked a lot of Milton’s shorter poems. But I’m hear to say that the short version of this review is: it’s all true about how great this is; all of it is true. It really is everything three-hundred-and-fifty years of literary criticism has cracked it up to be. The language is epic and sweeping and beautiful, but it’s also incredibly visceral. I was shocked at just how much of a page turner this actually was. It probably helped that my version of the book had a brief summary of each section of the book at the start of each section; that certainly helped keep me oriented. But I still say that this is, dare I say it, an easy read. It’s fast-paced, witty, smart, grand and brilliant. I don’t suppose I need to spend much time spilling more ink about it. Like I say, three-hundred-and-fifty years of criticism has come before me. I loved the characters. Satan gets all the press and Milton’s Satan, which has shaped popular culture’s vision of Satan as much, if not more so, than the Bible is a magnificent creation. But I thought even many of the angels came to life as characters and Adam & Eve definitely did. To the degree really that I found myself incredibly moved by the end of this poem. It takes real genius to make a reader feel dread over something as hackneyed and predictable as Eve eating that apple and probably even more to make you really feel the weight of it as tragedy and sorrow, but Milton does both of those things. I was really just floored by Paradise Lost; it’s a monumental achievement by any technical standard you want to use, but it’s so much more than that. It deserves the press it gets. Three-hundred-and-fifty years later . . . it’s still a knock-out. 4 stars.
tl;dr – literary icon stands up to its stellar reputation; gripping, visceral, emotional and a technical marvel to boot, this truly is one for the ages. 4 stars.