Paradise Glossed

I have lately revisited Paradise Lost, which I last read with reluctant attention and imperfect comprehension as an inmate in a freshman English Lit survey course nearly half a century ago. Although the work remains tough sledding, not the sort of thing you’d want to take in at a bustling airport in the course of a layover, I found myself at this sere point in my life, with considerably more cultural context under my belt (would that cultural context were all I had accumulated there!), better appreciating it. Milton’s gender politics will not strike the modern reader as particularly or even remotely “woke,” but I’m not a big fan of holding authors long dead to modern standards of belief, if only in the vain hope of soliciting like slack from posterity regarding my own shortcomings. He was a puritan and a republican (as this latter term was understood in the mid-seventeenth century England), having little use for the papacy and monarchy, respectively, as is evident in the poem. His descriptions of the starry firmament, reflecting as they do a cosmology then in flux, are fascinating.

I have taken the liberty of condensing and paraphrasing the “Battle in Heaven” sequence from Book VI, recasting it from blank verse to closet drama:

God: I’m calling this meeting to announce that I’m naming my son—you all know God Junior—CEO. He’s going to be in charge of day-to-day operations going forward. I’ll remain as Chairman, but all you seraphim and cherubim will be reporting to him from now on, which is to say unto eternity. And you know, at this time it might be a good idea for the entire Heavenly Host to do some serious genuflecting, and to sing a few hosannas to Junior, if you want to stay on My good side. Not, you understand, that I have an actual side, being omnipresent and all. It’s, you know, a—what do they call it?—a metaphor. Anyway, just, like, do what he says, and everything will be copacetic. Any questions?

Satan: This is bullshit! You’re jumping your kid up to the executive suite over senior management? What the hell for?

God: Speaking of hell…

Satan: Fuck if I’m going to bow and scrape to this squirt! Who’s with me?

(A full third of the shareholders walk out with him.)

Satan: The Old Man’s losing his grip. We need to mount a hostile takeover, and by that I mean hostile.

(Next day: the dissident faction assaults heaven. They’re outnumbered, and, after a certain amount of cut-and-thrust swordplay, soundly beaten. Plenty of ichor is shed on both sides, but these immaterial spirits have impressive powers of regeneration.)

Team God: Hurrah!

(Overnight: Satan devises cannons.)

(Next day: Team Hell’s artillery routs Team God at first, until TG drops a mountain range on TH. Series now 2-1 Team God.)

Team God: Hallelujah!

(Next day: Team Hell rallies.)

Team God: Jesus, you guys! What’s it going to take?

God’s Son: You rang? [to God] Now, Pop? Now?

God: Sure. Sic ’em, Junior.

(God Junior puts paid to Team Hell, and sends the lot into th’ lake o’ fire.)

God: Good work. Remind me to punish humanity once I get around to creating it next week.

God’s Son: Will do, Pop. Listen, about the whole, you know, “redemption” business…?

(fade to black: “To Be Continued”)