The scenes he spins are as clear and dazzling, or as dark and terrifying as the subject matter. The writing is breathtaking and leaves me, an atheist, in the awkward position of finding it perfectly plausible that it was, as Milton claimed, divinely inspired. I recognised myself in Adam and Eve, and indeed in Satan, who is portrayed as a complex but understandable evil. Milton takes what I always considered a bland and tedious subject matter, the fall of man, and turns it into a romping story with cataclysmic battles, horrific monsters and disarmingly human characters. From the start, with Satan crashing headlong into hell, I was gripped. Not only have I found this in Paradise Lost, which has now taken the place as my favourite piece of mythology, but I would say this is one of the greatest books I have ever read. Having been enthralled by the myths of Vikings and of ancient Greece and Rome, I always suspected that Christianity had a bit more to offer than the limp moralising stories I encountered at school and through the Venerable Bede. An awe-inspiring book read flawlessly by SV
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |