The Art of Paradise Lost
John Milton’s Birthday
Today was John Milton’s birthday – and he died 350 years ago this year. To mark the occasion, I thought I’d share some of my favourite artworks inspired by his epic masterpiece Paradise Lost (1667).
Milton was born in London, the son of a scrivener. After attending St Paul’s School and Christ’s College, Cambridge, he spent six years in scholarly retirement before embarking on a political career, championing Presbyterianism and eventually the new Commonwealth. Oliver Cromwell appointed him ‘Secretary for Foreign Tongues to the Council of State’ and Milton worked tirelessly, defending the English Revolution in Latin for overseas correspondents, work which swiftly brought about the deterioration of his eyesight. Blind and impoverished, he lived a quiet life after the Restoration, working on Paradise Lost, which he composed entirely through dictation.
Milton wrote his masterpiece to ‘justify the ways of God to men’. The most striking character is Satan, once the most beautiful angel in heaven, now cast into Tartarus for leading a rebellion against God. Unrepentant, Satan presides over the infernal city of Pandaemonium, believing it ‘Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n’, and he sets about arranging the catastrophic Temptation of Eve, Fall of Man and Expulsion from Eden. William Blake thought the ‘reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it’.
Many artists have illustrated Milton’s epic poem over the last 350 years. Here are twenty particularly remarkable images – and the lines that inspired them.
With expanded wings he [Satan] steers his flight
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air
That felt unusual weight, till on dry land
He lights, if it were land that ever burned
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire.
Book I, 225-9
Up they sprung
Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch
On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread,
Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake.
Nor did they not perceive the evil plight
In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel.
Book I, 331-6
High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Show’rs on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
Satan exalted sat.
Book II, 1-5
Before the gates [of Hell] there sat
On either side a formidable shape;
The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair,
But ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast, a serpent armed
With mortal sting: about her middle round
A cry of Hell-hounds never ceasing barked.
Book II, 648-54
[Satan] toward the coast of earth beneath,
Down from th’ ecliptic, sped with hoped success,
Throws his steep flight in many an airy wheel.
Book III, 739-41
Adam the goodliest man of men since born
His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.
Under a tuft of shade that on a green
Stood whispering soft, by a fresh fountain side
They sat them down.
Book IV, 323-7
[Adam] pressed her matron lip
With kisses pure: aside the Devil turned
For envy, yet with jealous leer malign
Eyed them askance.
Book IV, 501-4
[Adam:] ‘Haste hither Eve, and worth thy sight behold
Eastward among those trees, what glorious shape
Comes this way moving; seems another morn
Ris’n on mid-noon.’
Book V, 308-11
[Eve:] ‘I will haste and from each bough and brake,
Each plant and juiciest gourd will pluck such choice
To entertain our angel guest, as he
Beholding shall confess that here on earth
God hath dispensed his bounties as in Heav’n.’
Book V, 326-30
Now storming fury rose,
And clamour such as heard in Heav’n till now
Was never; arms on armour clashing brayed
Horrible discord, and the madding wheels
Of brazen chariots raged; dire was the noise.
Book VI, 207-11
The monstrous sight
Strook them with horror backward, but far worse
Urged them behind; headlong themselves they threw
Down from the verge of Heav’n; eternal wrath
Burnt after them to the bottomless pit.
Book VI, 862-6
Again th’ Almighy spake: Let there be lights
High in th’ expanse of heaven to divide
The day from night.
Book VII, 339-41
And God said, Let the waters generate
Reptile with spawn abundant, living soul:
And let fowl fly above the earth, with wings.
Book VII, 387-9
Nearer he drew, and many a walk traversed
Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm,
Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen
Among thick-woven arborets and flow’rs
Embordered on each bank.
Book IX, 434-8
His words replete with guile
Into her heart too easy entrance won:
Fixed on the fruit she gazed, which to behold
Might tempt alone, and in her ears the sound
Yet rung of his persuasive words, impregned
With reason, to her seeming, and with truth.
Book IX, 733-8
Her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate:
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost.
Book IX, 780-4
A ridge of pendent rock
Over the vexed abyss, following the track
Of Satan, to the selfsame place where he
First lighted from his wing, and landed safe
From out of Chaos to the outside bare
Of this round world.
Book X, 311-8
Dreadful was the din
Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now
With complicated monsters, head and tail,
Scorpion and asp, and amphisbaena dire.
Book X, 521-4
The Heav’nly bands
Down from a sky of jasper lighted now
In Paradise, and on a hill made halt.
Book XI, 208-10
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:
They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.
Book XII, 646-9
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Milton seems to be in my personal zeitgeist at the moment. I’ve just finished reading Olivia Laing's latest book 'The Garden Against Time'. The first chapter about paradise gardens contains her thoughts about re-reading Milton and she made me want to do so too. I've barely looked at him since A level although unlike all my contemporaries as a seventeen year old I loved him and the enormous craziness of his vision. Milton thought of himself as a conduit, hearing the verses in his head at night and dictating them to an amanuensis every morning. Anyone who has experienced true inspiration knows what that feels like. I’m thrilled too to see the Doré illustration. Earlier this year I was researching a man called George Lord Beeforth a former mayor of Scarborough, who made himself a fortune selling Doré prints to the Victorian middle classes. He was a fascinating and good man. Thanks for the reminder.
Ah. I love this so much! *Paradise Lost* is one of my favorite classics. (The scene with Eve looking at her reflection always makes me feel so many things.) I've always been a fan of the William Blake pieces but I had never seen the John Martins! Wow. I'm blown away. I also really love that 1951 piece at the end—it feels somewhere between a Dalí and a Leonora Carrington.
Beautiful stuff! Thank you so much for this!