John Milton's Paradise Lost — what can one say? Perhaps my expectations were too high, or my frame of mind too low when I read it last month. No theme could not be loftier, and there are inarguably striking poetic passages. But the work somehow doesn't work for me, except intermittently.

So what rises to the surface and is flagged for memory, alas, are distractions such as:

• words of the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, when Gabriel orders his guards to patrol: "Uzziel, half these draw off, and coast the south / With strictest watch; these other wheel the north; / Our circuit meets full west." (IV, 781-784)
• exotic vocabulary, e.g., "quaternion" (V, 181) and "gonfalons" (V, 589)
• distracting alliteration: "Soon as the force of that fallacious fruit ..." (IX, 1046)

Not to mention the heavy theology, misogyny, and psychology. Perhaps it will be better for me next time ...

(cf. ParadiseLostFound (11 Jun 2001), ...)

TopicLiterature - TopicPoetry - 2007-01-24

(correlates: ParadiseLostFound, Comments on ImpossibleStandards, RunningBored, ...)