"Paradise Lost"

[Belle]

This program was recently repeated on our ABC and I caught up with it again. It's a discussion about 'books that transport you' and what I love about this particular program is hearing, arguably Australian's most important indigenous political activist, Noel Pearson speaking magnificently about Milton's great poem. An indigenous man demonstrates his love for the English language and literature in a way few human beings ever do. Pearson has a law degree from Sydney University, is a main of faith, lover of books and significant public intellectual. I hope you can see the first 12 minutes to hear what he has to say about "Paradise Lost". And his reading of some of the lines is very moving. I hope the link can be viewed in the USA:

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/firsttuesday/s4513720.htm

The only thing I disagree with is Pearson's assertion that Milton is greater than Shakespeare, and he refers to "Christ" expelling Satan from Heaven, when it was actually God Milton was writing about.

It very much has the ebb and flow of something which is dictated rather than written down!! These are amongst my favourite lines and they might be the motivating force of human beings in the political sphere today, which Milton rightly identified as a feature of hubris:

What though the field be lost?
All is not lost-the unconquerable will.
And study of revenge, immoral hate,
And courage never to submit or yield.
And what is else not to be overcome?

[david johnson]

I have enjoyed Paradise Lost each time I read it.

[jbuck919]

The only thing I disagree with is Pearson's assertion that Milton is greater than Shakespeare, and he refers to "Christ" expelling Satan from Heaven, when it was actually God Milton was writing about.

No no no no no, no no no no. Even Milton, who wrote one of the great dedicatory poems about Shakespeare, would not have claimed that.

One of the differences between the two is that Milton was what was once called a poeta doctus (a learned poet), while Shakespeare was a poeta natus (a natural poet). Milton wrote many poems in Latin, among other things, and his translation of this ode of Horace is the only one I know of that is equal to if not superior to the original. Before I post this, let me just say that I cannot think of Paradise Lost without thinking of Samuel Beckett's play Happy Days, where one act ironically begins with the opening words of one chapter of PL: Hail holy light.
The Fifth Ode of Horace. Lib. I.


Quis multa gracilis te puer in Rosa, Rendred almost word for word with-
out Rhyme according to the Latin Measure, as near as the Language will
permit.

WHAT slender Youth bedew'd with liquid odours
Courts thee on Roses in some pleasant Cave,
Pyrrha for whom bindst thou
In wreaths thy golden Hair,
Plain in thy neatness; O how oft shall he
On Faith and changed Gods complain: and Seas
Rough with black winds and storms
Unwonted shall admire:
Who now enjoyes thee credulous, all Gold,
Who alwayes vacant, alwayes amiable
Hopes thee; of flattering gales
Unmindfull. Hapless they
To whom thou untry'd seem'st fair. Me in my vow'd
Picture the sacred wall declares t' have hung
My dank and dropping weeds
To the stern God of Sea.

[John F]

As for me, I cannot think of "Paradise Lost" without thinking of Samuel Johnson's observation that "None ever wished it longer than it is." He also wrote about it with qualified admiration, but you can count on Dr. Johnson to say what he thinks.

(The context: "The want of human interest is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read Milton for instruction, retire harassed and overburdened, and look elsewhere for recreation; we desert our master, and seek for companions."

That's a very 18th century view, of course, but I must say that having read as much of "Paradise Lost" as needed to pass a college course, I've never been tempted to take it up again. The only part of it that remains in my mind is the casting of Satan out of Heaven and the scene in Hell, which is a tour de force.

[Belle]

That's what most on that 'Book Show' I included had to say about it. But it's one of those texts which I occasionally dip into for explicit passages or when I feel that I'm in need of something magnificent in the English language which is amongst the gold standard of how it can be. Of course, Christianity seems to be growing ever more unfashionable and having just come this minute from the Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert hall and the Bach B Minor Mass I think the naysayers can have their false gods!!

And I note that none of us here has to resort to the "plain English" version of "Paradise Lost". Its arcane writing is part of its awesome mystery!

[jbuck919]

Milton was nominally a Christian, but almost everything in Paradise Lost is made up. Some people still think there is something in the Bible about Satan (Lucifer) and his minions being expelled from heaven, but there is no such thing. As Harold Bloom wrote, Milton, the greatest writer to supposedly represent the Puritans, was a tissue of heresies.

Although I cannot remember the details, other writers have received the comment that reading them is more a painful duty than anything else. Henry James is one.

[Belle]

Milton was nominally a Christian, but almost everything in Paradise Lost is made up. Some people still think there is something in the Bible about Satan (Lucifer) and his minions being expelled from heaven, but there is no such thing. As Harold Bloom wrote, Milton, the greatest writer to supposedly represent the Puritans, was a tissue of heresies.

Although I cannot remember the details, other writers have received the comment that reading them is more a painful duty than anything else. Henry James is one.

Henry James isn't the easiest read on the block either, for what it's worth!! Some of his whole pages with huge sentences and few, if any, paragraphs are a feature of his later novels.

I found it a 'painful duty' having to read James Joyce at university. Like wading through chewing gum. And when Joyce was trying to be amusing it was about as funny as having your arm caught in a meat grinder. Give me Milton's poetry any day!!

[John F]

Oddly enough, "Ulysses" was one of my most exciting reads in college. I enjoy solving puzzles and "Ulysses" is one puzzle after another. Also, this is a setup for some boasting. Leon Edel was a visiting professor and taught the course in the modern novel. For my term paper, I argued that the Sirens episode in "Ulysses" (the bar room scene) wasn't really a fuga per canonem, as Joyce said and evidently intended when writing it, but in sonata form. To maintain that Joyce didn't know what he was doing was pretty bold, though I didn't feel particularly bold about it at the time. Edel actually read my paper himself and said in the margin that he wasn't qualified to grade it, but either he or his teaching assistant marked it A - one of my very few, most of my grades were toward the other end of the scale. As for Edel's specialty Henry James, he assigned "The Ambassadors" and I don't believe I ever read any of it. Too busy at WHRB, where his son Matthew was working in the News department.

I've just now found that this very episode is a crux of Joyce interpretation, and his claim has been dismissed by some critics as "bogus" and "a hoax." So maybe I was on to something after all.

Joyce’s claim of a fugal structure for “Sirens” has seduced but ultimately defeated critics for over eighty years. There is no need to rehearse the dozens of conflicting attempts to explicate the fugal structure of “Sirens” which have kept critics busy. The theories range from the argument that a strict canonical structure applies to the episode to the claim that “Sirens” intentionally mirrors a Bach fugue to the more recent position that Joyce’s fugal reference was a “hoax” (Sebastian Knowles lists “fugal form in ‘Sirens’” under “bogus statements” in the index of Dublin Helix 167). More importantly, no thesis has emerged as sufficiently definitive to become the standard reading in Joyce studies or in the classroom.

http://www.geneticjoycestudies.org/GJS7/GJS7brown.html

Obviously she hasn't read my college term paper of 1962. Actually, at least three critics have come to essentially the same conclusion, but I got there before them.

http://www.geneticjoycestudies.org/GJS1 ... eWiten.htm

[Belle]

Well, this is terribly interesting. That term paper on Joyce sounds way too esoteric for me; just reading this author (apart from the boring "Portrait of the Artist") is an endurance test as I said earlier. I'm very interested to find you saying you went against critical opinion during your years at university and that you felt you were "onto something" - since I've done that right here on CMG in arguing with you about this critic or that and a particular interpretation.

The musicality in Joyce is most definitely there, but I felt it was a distraction; it's an acquired taste and I could never feel empathy for any Joycean character.

We must feel free to challenge the critics when we have knowledge and instincts about works of art. I always use critics as a springboard for my own ideas. I've just come from dinner at my eldest son's place where we've been discussing these sort of things. He's a winemaker but hugely intelligent and well read.

[John F]

I don't want to give the impression that I was an intellectual rebel in college, or thereafter for that matter. And I didn't know until this morning (via the Internet) what critics have said about the Sirens episode, only what Joyce said. Since I do know enough about music to tell the difference between a fugue and sonata form, and enough about literature to read for form as well as content, I was naturally curious about how a master like Joyce would actually write a fugue in words. And when it appeared to me that he hadn't done it, whatever he may have intended, presto! I had a term paper topic.

I read a good deal of musical and literary criticism, as distinct from and in addition to journalistic reviews. Generally speaking, the professionals know more than I do and I learn from them. Of course I read critically and don't take it all as definitive, but I have no chip on my shoulder. Except, of course, where Norman Lebrecht is concerned.

[Belle]

It NEVER appears to me that you have a chip on your shoulder; you have firm views, as do I, and I respect that. One doesn't have to agree with somebody's ideas to feel that way. Perhaps a little diplomacy is sometimes useful. I need the mental challenge of ideas, often complex ones, so I'll go the extra mile to get that!!

I've read many of the sorts of things you describe with regard to music (and film, which I much more freely criticize) and over the decades I've felt more empowered to challenge them based upon my own knowledge, understanding and instincts. That's not being an intellectual rebel; it's about thinking for oneself. Critics provide us with the tools to do that.

At university I wrote an essay on "Othello" and argued FOR the proposition rather than AGAINST, as I was supposed to do. I was severely marked down (and that's the only time it happened to me at university) because I agreed with the sentiment that Othello was "a dolt, a fool" - the words uttered at the end of the play by Emilia. Professor Frost was having none of it; he became confused, like so many academics in English literature, between what a person says and how eloquently he says it and his actions!! It's a position I hold even more strongly today, so I think I was 'onto something' even then!!

[jbuck919]

I don't want to give the impression that I was an intellectual rebel in college, or thereafter for that matter. And I didn't know until this morning (via the Internet) what critics have said about the Sirens episode, only what Joyce said. Since I do know enough about music to tell the difference between a fugue and sonata form, and enough about literature to read for form as well as content, I was naturally curious about how a master like Joyce would actually write a fugue in words. And when it appeared to me that he hadn't done it, whatever he may have intended, presto! I had a term paper topic.

For the record, a fugue and a sonata-allegro movement have the same form, as Heinrich Schenker proved. I am speaking of course of the great composers of the common practice period. The only difference (and it is an important one) is the imitative nature of the counterpoint.

[John F]

For the record, a fugue and a sonata-allegro movement have the same form

Only in the most general terms. In a fugue, fugal counterpoint is obligatory (duh!), in sonata form not. In sonata form the tonal structure and movement is always definitive in that it defines the form, in fugue I don't think so. An experienced listener can tell the difference by ear on first hearing. And I could tell the difference when reading the Sirens episode in "Ulysses."

[jbuck919]

For the record, a fugue and a sonata-allegro movement have the same form

Only in the most general terms. In a fugue, fugal counterpoint is obligatory (duh!), in sonata form not. In sonata form the tonal structure and movement is always definitive in that it defines the form, in fugue I don't think so. An experienced listener can tell the difference by ear on first hearing. And I could tell the difference when reading the Sirens episode in "Ulysses."

Well I'm an experienced listener and can also tell the difference on first hearing, but we are talking past each other. (You can't think I'm such a dolt as not to recognize and distinguish the two types of composition.) In the foreground, which is of course extremely important, they are obviously different. But work your way back to the Urlinie, and they look very similar in a tonal sense. But that would probably be unimportant to most listeners. I suppose it's even unimportant to me.

[John F]

If you were trying to make a point by claiming that fugue and sonata have "the same form," undercutting my post about the form of the Sirens episode, I don't get it, and I still think you're mistaken.

[jbuck919]

If you were trying to make a point by claiming that fugue and sonata have "the same form," undercutting my post about the form of the Sirens episode, I don't get it, and I still think you're mistaken.

I was not trying to undercut anything. I have never read Ulysses to completion and don't know that episode. Please cut me some slack. About the only things I remember about what I have read in that work are the passage near the beginning where some character says "Introibo ad altare Dei" (I will go to the altar of God), which I'll bet you didn't know were the beginning words of the old Latin Mass. Multilingualism is very helpful with Joyce, so I figured I could go on, but I grew tired of it. At the other end there is Molly Bloom's famous so-called stream-of-consciousness monologue, which does not seem so senseless when it is read out loud by a great actress.

[Belle]

"Whatever where he put it; I forget" (Priest)!! Absolutely priceless.

Thanks for that excellent clip from the film, "Ulysses". I hope that it once and for all puts to bed the notion from JohnF that great acting isn't possible on film!!

[John F]

Hey, Belle, I didn't say that. But great film acting, such as it is, is fundamentally different from what I consider real acting, in continuous live performances before a living audience. In movies, with their camera angles and many takes and retakes and editing, in the absence of an audience, the actors' performances are largely created by the director. Of course, if the director is one of the actors, as in Olivier's Shakespeare films, he may give himself and perhaps the other actors more scope, but that's unusual.

[Belle]

Hey, Belle, I didn't say that. But great film acting, such as it is, is fundamentally different from what I consider real acting, in continuous live performances before a living audience. In movies, with their camera angles and many takes and retakes and editing, in the absence of an audience, the actors' performances are largely created by the director. Of course, if the director is one of the actors, as in Olivier's Shakespeare films, he may give himself and perhaps the other actors more scope, but that's unusual.

We've had this argument before and I couldn't disagree more. A director can give instructions; say, somebody particularly like Elia Kazan or George Cukor, but they cannot MAKE an actor deliver an outstanding performance - no matter how many set-ups or whatever the angles. Look at this scene again ("In the Name of the Father") and this devastating performance from Daniel Day-Lewis, which would have been done in a single take (possibly after multiple takes - rehearsals - to derive perfection): a phenomenal, volcanic performance in one of the greatest films of all time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwvjZXfHUbY

Now compare this screen test with Leslie Nielson with the sublime end product which appeared in "Ben Hur" between Stephen Boyd and Charlton Heston: THERE IS NO COMPARISON!! (The stunning music of Rosza helps!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa59mD1Oms0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsCjWQ0kUac

Boyd was a poet!! The way his final word in "where the beams cross" drops so softly and elegantly!! And his nervously excited laugh. Wonderful.

Another magnificent scene is between Hugh Griffith and Heston when the latter is introduced to his 5 beautiful horses, from where this production still was taken. I can't find it on U-Tube:

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1ys_udx2p60/ ... -hur-7.jpg

[John F]

A director can get at least a passable performance out of an "actor" who can hardly act at all. Cf. Marilyn Monroe in "Some Like It Hot." I mean, all a movie actor has to do is "act" for a few seconds at a time, giving the director what he needs to create a performance that the actor never actually gave. I've read enough about cinema and seen Michael Caine's course in movie acting on video to know this for a fact.

If I don't think much of movie actors who haven't proved themselves on the stage, I think very highly of some movie directors who have created what I think of as works of art; they're in full control of the "performance" we see as no movie actor can ever be, but as stage actors always are once the curtain goes up. I'm not talking about Howard Hawks or John Huston but Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, François Truffaut, people like that. Visconti and Bergman were also brilliant stage directors, but that's not necessary.

[Belle]

A director can get at least a passable performance out of an "actor" who can hardly act at all. Cf. Marilyn Monroe in "Some Like It Hot." I mean, all a movie actor has to do is "act" for a few seconds at a time, giving the director what he needs to create a performance that the actor never actually gave. I've read enough about cinema and seen Michael Caine's course in movie acting on video to know this for a fact.

If I don't think much of movie actors who haven't proved themselves on the stage, I think very highly of some movie directors who have created what I think of as works of art; they're in full control of the "performance" we see as no movie actor can ever be, but as stage actors always are once the curtain goes up. I'm not talking about Howard Hawks or John Huston but Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, François Truffaut, people like that. Visconti and Bergman were also brilliant stage directors, but that's not necessary.

Neither Hawks nor Wilder could get anything out of Monroe. She had Paula Strasberg standing beside her as her 'coach'. It infuriated both of them - especially when she could NEVER remember even a single line of dialogue.

You're on a slippery slope with this one, John!!

[jbuck919]

A director can get at least a passable performance out of an "actor" who can hardly act at all. Cf. Marilyn Monroe in "Some Like It Hot." I mean, all a movie actor has to do is "act" for a few seconds at a time, giving the director what he needs to create a performance that the actor never actually gave. I've read enough about cinema and seen Michael Caine's course in movie acting on video to know this for a fact.

If I don't think much of movie actors who haven't proved themselves on the stage, I think very highly of some movie directors who have created what I think of as works of art; they're in full control of the "performance" we see as no movie actor can ever be, but as stage actors always are once the curtain goes up. I'm not talking about Howard Hawks or John Huston but Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, François Truffaut, people like that. Visconti and Bergman were also brilliant stage directors, but that's not necessary.

Neither Hawks nor Wilder could get anything out of Monroe. She had Paula Strasberg standing beside her as her 'coach'. It infuriated both of them - especially when she could NEVER remember even a single line of dialogue.

You're on a slippery slope with this one, John!!

Laurence Olivier, who should resolve the difference between a great stage and screen actor, was infuriated by Marilyn Monroe in the production of The Prince and the Showgirl, which by the way is a great film in case you have not seen it. One day he asked Monroe "Is there some reason why you must always be so f*cking late?" To which she replied, "Oh, you have that word in England too."

[Belle]

I know the film well; a drama teacher of mine from a theatre school I attended in 1970, Gillian Owen, was in a minor role as one of Marilyn's friends in that film. Olivier intensely disliked Marilyn Monroe and I think it shows in the film! And Paula Strasberg nearly drove him insane.

Marilyn Monroe could never keep up her end of the film-making bargain without pressure being exerted from elsewhere. She was effective in comedy roles. I've read Arthur Miller's autobiography and quite a lot of material about Monroe - including biographies of Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder. She wanted to be taken seriously as a person of intelligence but, frankly, I saw little evidence of any intelligence in much of what she said or did. And Arthur Miller's justification for his relationship with her is just about the most dubious piece of self-serving pap I've ever read..."oh, she was fragile...intelligent but poorly understood...vulnerable". Yeah, right.

Arthur Miller loved Marilyn Monroe for the same reason everybody else did; she looked delectable, was good in the sack and a compliant "kitten" who went out of her way to please men. This necessarily implied an obliteration of the self. Arthur Miller didn't want to be exposed as a man who did most of his thinking from below the belt the way the great unwashed do. I didn't believe any of what he wrote for a minute, poetic though it often was. It was actually priceless!! And definitely not rocket science.

[jbuck919]

I know the film well; a drama teacher of mine from a theatre school I attended in 1970, Gillian Owen, was in a minor role as one of Marilyn's friends in that film. Olivier intensely disliked Marilyn Monroe and I think it shows in the film! And Paula Strasberg nearly drove him insane.

Marilyn Monroe could never keep up her end of the film-making bargain without pressure being exerted from elsewhere. She was effective in comedy roles. I've read Arthur Miller's autobiography and quite a lot of material about Monroe - including biographies of Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder. She wanted to be taken seriously as a person of intelligence but, frankly, I saw little evidence of any intelligence in much of what she said or did. And Arthur Miller's justification for his relationship with her is just about the most dubious piece of self-serving pap I've ever read..."oh, she was fragile...intelligent but poorly understood...vulnerable". Yeah, right.

Arthur Miller loved Marilyn Monroe for the same reason everybody else did; she looked delectable, was good in the sack and a compliant "kitten" who went out of her way to please men. This necessarily implied an obliteration of the self. Arthur Miller didn't want to be exposed as a man who did most of his thinking from below the belt the way the great unwashed do. I didn't believe any of what he wrote for a minute, poetic though it often was. It was actually priceless!! And definitely not rocket science.

There's no figuring out some things, Belle. Her other ex-husband, Joe DiMaggio, was disconsolate when she died. Then years later one of the greatest baseball players of all time died of lung cancer, meaning that he had been a heavy smoker all his life. In Germany, which has a bunch of ordinary grocery stores with two-syllable names, one is Norma (Marilyn Monroe's real name), and they advertised themselves with a picture of her.

Monroe had serious talent. She was just a mess in expressing it. If you watch her last movie, The Searchers, she is incredibly gorgeous but in a natural way, not like the French whore she appears to be in most of her films.

[jserraglio]

Milton was about as Christian as they make 'em, in spite of his anti-trinitarian Arian views. He was, after all, a progressive Puritan intellectual writing in revolutionary times. His Paradise Lost is maybe the greatest, most imaginative and most influential long-form narrative poem in English. I can't imagine Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats or Tennyson without Milton's grand style to pave the way.

The fact that some folks assume that Milton's powerfully imagined scenes of speculative fiction are straight from the Bible bespeaks their greatness.

Contrary to Samuel Johnson (Btw, Johnson did also suggest that Milton was the greatest epic poet after Homer and Virgil), I do not find Paradise Lost to be short on human interest, though his characterization of God (The Father) as in effect a tedious prig left me wanting more on the divine side.

[Belle]

Wonderful, erudite comments!! Much appreciated.

[John F]

Bringing together the topics of two apparently unrelated threads, Penderecki composed an opera based on "Paradise Lost," premiered and broadcast in Chicago in 1978. As I remember, it was listenable and quite powerful. And lo, it's on YouTube. Here's the first part:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z75cdL2Kv8

[jserraglio]

Bringing together the topics of two apparently unrelated threads, Penderecki composed an opera based on "Paradise Lost," premiered and broadcast in Chicago in 1978. As I remember, it was listenable and quite powerful. And lo, it's on YouTube. Here's the first part:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z75cdL2Kv8

Thank you. Will listen. I am a Penderecki admirer.