John Milton : Paradise lost book - I

good morning friends welcome to this easy it is said live lecture dear friends as you know that we talk on different topics different subjects from time to time and today if we talk about we are going to talk or know John Milton's Paradise Lost we would be conducting two sessions or honor this particular topic one would be going to be two today and one in the later sessions that is in a forthcoming lectures so dear friends as I already said that we would be going to discuss on John Milton's Paradise Lost and ER for this discussion on Paradise Lost we have again with us Anna studios dr. Arun Prakash dr. hannel Prakash's retired professor from Department of English University of Delhi and I believe that in his experience it helps us a lot in understanding various objectives and perspectives related to a particular topic so without wasting any time I would like to welcome our guest professor Anand Prakash professor Prakash welcome to the edited later Thank You Jessica and welcome viewers as has been around today's topic is Paradise Lost book 1 by John Milton and since we are focusing upon texts the great text in English literature so this comes in that sequence after Shakespeare you know came the two metaphysical quotes and I referred extensively to their poetic writing and in this case I would be focusing upon of Paradise Lost Book One Paradise Lost is there is a long point it is a point running into about 300 pages and it has 12 books in the final version and the first book is very important because here Wilton is spreading out a plan and he will stick to this plan because being the long poem and epic in fact I would require you know that there is a mental preparation done by the reader or before one you know starts this so right in the beginning of Milton would be talking about the plan that he has to execute in poetic terms now in order to understand Milton one has to refer to the times in which he lived and let me tell you friends that Milton was wall of in 1608 eighty years often century began and Shakespeare in London was quite active at that time and there was no moving towards his closure now in the career and Milton is born then there is a kind of continuity between Shakespeare and Milton and so what is the level of talent is concerned or Milton is an extension of what you know Shakespeare left as a kind of heritage as a kind of tradition and since the times were important the the late 16th century of the 7th century all times of a different kind or very very rarely do you know historical epochs have you know such developments that inspire not just one or two but a host of writers intellectuals thinkers activists etc to you know or intervene in the situation existing at the time and if Shakespeare is teaching this of you know closure of of their inning and Milton is beginning from there he's born in 1608 Shakespeare is around here Shakespeare would die in 1616 you know eight years later so at the time at the time of the death of Shakespeare Milton will be eight years and the continuity would be a run or in the stream of time along lines of what is called political governance England is being governed by by James or one at the time and James one is a different kind thing then Elizabeth was till she died in 1603 so this time with it you know our developments and it strains is being carried forward intellectually and literally from Shakespeare to Milton in this particular case now since the times are changing now quite fast and as I have said in the other discussions also the times are witness to the growth and development of Parliament Parliament which is totally into the ends of the King at the moment but one never knows because it has a dynamic of its own Parliament means to be its Parliament means framing of policies Parliament means you know gauging the temperature of life of the people around the requirements their needs etc the king has one view and the Parliament may have another and since society is always developing always growing always you know expanding its scope of production and management therefore one can say that in the late 16th and early 17th century a trend has begun and that trend is of what can be called different kind of production it will not be just they were peasant based it would not be just agriculture based there will be a large team of workers in the indie cities and there will be a great deal of trade also and well England is rising in the metals of trade so much so that it is outdoing certain other countries in Europe at the time and a lot of wealth is being created in England and this wealth is in the hands of traders merchants or in people in the cities and this wealth and its power is now translating into political activism of the Parliament I say it again because this is a direct connection with what Milton will do when he grows up as a young man and when he starts you know grasping the reality of his time so when Milton is born and there is 10 years 15 years 20 years this is the time you know when the Parliament is going strength to strength and the king is becoming weaker and weaker day by day so you see this pendulum it is it is on the side of the Parliament now and the king is feeling the pressure of feeling the heat and or he is threatening all the time the Parliament is dissolving Parliament almost every here and and yet you know is not succeeding in containing the pressure of the Parliament at that time and Parliament on its side is getting strength from the followers who are the common masses of course the king and his quote will not support the Parliament the court the courtiers the nobility and all they know that in the final analysis their fate is tied down integrally with the fate of the king so they will willy-nilly support the king but then the Parliament and then and the trading lobby there and well I do not want to go into the mechanics of this seats in the parliament were available for sale also and some people in over rich and went become new landowners or in England in the latter part of the 16th century these people also had you know a kind of ambition to enter the Parliament and to play a role there so all these things are happening simultaneously all together and when that happens then this is the society the country is you know changing at the grassroots and well if the people are taking part in the Parliament effectivity and in the countries you know politics and the people are ranging behind the trading merchant community then one knows you know that the message of change is going from the center which is London to all corners of the country and which means that kind of awakening a kind of mass awakening is happening in England in the 1610 1620s onwards and well Wilton is breathing in all these factors so that they will finally become a part of his mind the power to his consciousness now I want to use the word Republican some for but let me now use the word Republican a kind of Republican spirit a kind of Republican sense is now coming in in the air it is there in the ideological air it's in the political air people discuss things you know in the city they also discuss in small towns they further discussed it even even the rural areas and well the form of discussion I can shift from our in over one area to another maybe it's about religion maybe it's about culture maybe it's about entertainment maybe it is about the simple ways of life all these things are connected at that time and people are discussing them and with the coming in England of Protestantism in the in the 16th century a large number of people are now directly hearing about the Bible directly reading the Bible and when you read the Bible yourself when you hear about the Bible yourself and you start discussing there a different view of the Bible emerges and country earlier you know our people would go to the priest and the priest would tell them what is there in the Bible then you know the priest also will tell the the message of the Bible as interpreted by the Pope but now the the priest is talking directly to the people and there is a there is a kind of emphasis on reading of the Bible by the individuals so a new kind of religious sense is is happening and when religion becomes a part of social life then it starts affecting social life on the other hand social life itself starts affecting religion and now now see religion is not then as much a god-centered as it become social center because people are discussing it and they are putting pressure on religion so all this is happening and religion becomes at that time religious debates become at that time a kind of vehicle of you know ideas that will travel from one place to another and a kind of you know area in which ideas will sprout or ideas will be generated there and these ideas or will finally accumulate in the culture in the air and then in literature and when Milton lives then he is living you know in the middle of all this so this is what is Republican is republicanism or the political spirit and this is growing day by day in England at the time Melton is growing up now the Milton is 20 or so I think he'll be tall 1608 is the year of his job birth and then are 20 years later 90 1628 or 60 around 1629 this King James will die and his son will take over he will ascend the throne and it is then you know that the crisis becomes still deeper in in English political life and Milton is twenty years and he has already done his graduation he's already done this up you know post graduation let us see the masters and he is reading Greek literature Greek thought Greek language he is reading Italian he is reading you know Latin at that time so he's a great scholar and I know his name is spreading in England at that time as a great scholar in his early twenties and people discuss you know his his role or in life and the University and well such a great scholar will finally turn a poet would be a matter of joy for all you know people who are interested in literature that will happen later but then at the time in 1630s Milton more or less completely jumps into the fray of what is called the political activity and and this political activity is in the form of writing pamphlets speaking to people studying things you know layer of one's heart for instance that there is a big debate going on at that time regarding the you know desirability or acceptability of divorce now Christianity takes one view of human relationships man and wife but then can divorce happen 6pr this Milton takes part in this debate writes a whole pamphlet on this and and he is quite open so you can see that Milton is taking up an intellectual stand which is open which is curious which wants to study things and if things are changing if the water is changing then definitions of the older relationships also would have to be changed this seems to be transline and you know he is taking part in the what is called what we call later as the Cromwellian revolution he will be on the side of Cromwell and he will write political pamphlets for him to support his cause and well when the Civil War happens and in the late 30s and early 40s then Milton is directly a part of it so he said he is a political activist I would say and he's a great philosopher and and he can you know uh compare what is happening in England in the 17th century with what happened in Rome many years ago hundreds of years ago what happened in Greece so he can compare the developments of you know social nature that happened in the ancient time with those that will that happen in the contemporary period so he is a range of imagination his range of comprehension and graphs plane is expanding you know in the 1630s and 40s and well in essence he is an activist therefore his words will carry from fro for himself for from his immediate here as an listeners to the people elsewhere he is in the meantime also started writing poems but then you know there is a kind of setback to republicanism in the latter years of the 17th century sixteen fifties at that crucial period where Cromwell would not be able to you know he questions are being raised about him but then he is a great you know visionary and he wields a great influence the King has in the meantime been deposed Parliament is totally into the hands of in the hands of you know Oliver Cromwell and things are working really fine it's not the same England that was let's say even 15-20 years ago and well I do not want to go into other details literature now has to serve a purpose in society that's what Cromwell wants to know wants to tell people so wants to share with people so a new perspective in literature also developing and there's and since you know as I talked about religion when that religious spirit has gone still further then people start also play out thing questions about the efficacy and the appeal of literature so under the Puritan influence the stronger element of Protestantism under the third and influence the play houses the theaters are closed because they they generally spread all kinds of ideas irresponsible and often Arctic and that anarchie now now cannot we used uniforms or any cool thing in society therefore the social cultural ideological scene is changing drastically in the 1650s and later there is an there is a backlash as I said in the 1660s Cromwell dies his son also cannot carry on quite quite for I think I touched upon this topic in another discussion also but then what happens in the case of Milton is that his hands now all tied he's identified with the old cause he's identified with the cause of public above Dukan ISM but republicanism is losing its hold parliament is strong but the moment Parliament is strong then they call back the king you know for a very narrow reason these are things you have that that happened most of the histories in the world when the Parliament has gained strength on the straight on all the support of the people then Parliament wants to they maintain a distance between themselves and the people so now they will come the people earlier they were using them against the king now that the king is gone and a new king is brought on the mercy of the Parliament therefore the Parliament does not require more support which means that the country now is coming down heavily on those people who actively participated in the social change earlier so in this case where should Milton go he was a Republican he was an activist he would write pamphlets he would discuss things you know openly objectively sometimes you would arouse the masses sometimes you know he would you know tell them to to tow to organs hammer and tongs and at the existing structures and now when the times are changed when you look at the same government the same regime which earlier you know to part in the eye with you know this section that becomes the regime now once took part in the civil war and attack the forces of the king now this particular regime now wants to curb all the freedoms and liberties of the ordinary masses and because Milton is their champion therefore they would not allow Milton to write or speak or act further this is the time you know when Milton turns to writing in a in a serious manner he was a poet earlier also but this is at this time doesn't have anything else to do he is asked not to do not to you know go out of his home he is in a state of you know house imprisonment and and and there is a kind of universal restraint on him you even his you know what whatever he writes is also checked so what should we do so anyway he starts planning now a different activity for himself which is poetry and well when he starts writing poetry by the time because of many things that happened in his life he you know lived a very hard life and I almost turned blind and he could not even read and write therefore he takes help from his daughter who has grown up and it requests her she lives with him he requests her to take down you know whatever he speaks so Paradise Lost is a poem that is dictated by Milton to his daughter and imagine the kind of mind that Milton had he without you know having the second look at the page because when you write I I know I sometimes write and when I write I have to make many changes in what I do and still I feel that perhaps I have been able to convey but Milton does not have eyes well tilted account can count will depend now they can't see the paper so what should we do so he speaks out and well that is what paralyzed lost is it was dictated by Milton to his daughter and a 300 page long poem a poem you know which consists of 12,000 lines because every every book has more or less 1000 lines each so he'll he'll write he turn out this I am using the word churning out not in the mechanical sense but he will write regularly if they speak out and and those would be you know the lines that now that they are clearly measured what am i what am i hinting at if we buy if I if I ask this question for myself then perhaps I'm thinking of the old poets who wrote you know who didn't write because they didn't at that point of time believe in writing or didn't have the capacity to write like this as we do so those people spoke those people sang they compose their songs in their minds they shared those songs with the audience I am talking of in all the people who were were points let us say three thousand years before milton started writing or four thousand years ago and you know the earliest epics in Europe are the epics of Greek language you have homework they were one of the greatest scene of epic writers and Homer was a family I am told and there were poets in it so one after another the tradition continued people entertained others they went to congregations they spoke and that same mean that speaking was important writing was sort of modern so as chance would have it melton joints inherently the company of those who could not write but who could speak so he is speaking in verse he is he of course he's not singing but then in the world singing is there as somewhere no in this and he also composes songs but then it is a spoken word that has become important for Milton at that point of time and that takes him even technically back to the period when epics were written when epics were composed when epics were shared you know with the with the whole gathering so this this is the small introduction I thought I should give you regarding the writing of Paradise Lost and well Milton because he has read all these epics in Greek in Latin and he has imbibed the tradition and the conventions of epic writing therefore when he writes his paradise lost' as an epic then he knows what he's doing he is conscious of his responsibilities as an epic writer and these he shows in Paradise Lost in full measure now one small point before I go further Milton decides in the 17th century to write an epic in English he could easily have written the applicant Latin and well it was a great Latin scholar and I'll tell you later this with respect to a paralyzed loss also but it decides to write in you know an epic in English English which is not a developed language then I think in my Shakespeare lectures I told you was that our spear was one of the pioneers prepared the greatest pioneer you know of introducing he introduced the use of English into serious writing and Milton takes it further Milton is not writing dramas he is not writing to entertain people Milton is writing to to tell people as to what happened earlier so he is a kind of a historian he is a kind of a great poet who is sharing two perspective with the audience and when that happens then Milton raises the level of English very high English does not have a vocabulary English does not have very very large number of words you know which will suit an epic writing what should he do well his answer is he will take world's borrow words from from from Latin he'll borrow words from Greek how to hold the long line for as long as 800 lines or 1000 lines in a book Milton must have gone into this and he realized that in order to hold the long line he has to use the conventions of the epic of the of your of the ancient period so he will write long sentences long lines and when the first line of the first sentence of Paradise Lost is almost as big as 19 lines the sentence goes on and on and all and this shows you know that Milton is borrowing certain aspects of writing of the original the ancient epic writer who would write like this from whose mouth you know words would simply flow as if in a torrent and this torrent is now watched it's observed very clearly by the reader of Milton particularly with respect to Paradise Lost now the kind of poetic genius and the kind of level that Milton had is described beautifully by the 90 century you know socialist thinker Karl Marx somebody asked him as what he thinks of Melton and perhaps it was a reference somewhere and Karl Marx said about mental you know that Milton writes poetry says Karl Marx the way silkworm produces silk what a beautiful I know simile silkworms job is to produce silk and right it comes naturally order to to the silkworm so a mark says that Milton wrote poetry the way silkworm produces silk and then the next sentence comes that is its nature so by nature Milton's report says Karl Marx and and oh well if you read the lines you will you will see that he does not make any conscious effort to write he simply dictates as I said literally and he just maybe he doesn't even dictate he doesn't even stop he simply supposes sometimes in order to you know wait for thee for the daughter to write those lines on the page but then he is spontaneously talking about it so his word is spontaneity he is what is effortless rendering of certain certain ideas as I was afraid less you know a rendering of of a whole perspective and that is why he became he became a darling in the 18th and 19th centuries of the Romantic poets because there is lot of romance here and well when when is writing about romance and when is enjoying writing I mean he's talking about you know a particular fable I will come to this now then you know he is doing a job of a popular bar a person who sinks the person who composes and sings and shares with the audience so well this is how Paradise Lost is supposed to begin one more thing there are lots and lots of things to share you know regarding paralyzed lost one more thing was that initially Milton had the plan to write about this particular you know content although he had to deal with this content he thought you know in the drama mode you'd write a drama I know in order to you know give character I can give certain characters roles and those would those characters would speak their their own ideas you know in the drama but then he changed or his business plan and thought of writing and epic now what is the difference between epic and ended drama well are there are two different modes in the epic you're supposed to sing along and you're supposed to comment and you're supposed to give your own version also you give your own emphasis also and you are standing in front of the audience as they are representative their entertainer and somebody who is explaining to them letting them know about what happened some time earlier then the role of the epic writer on the other hand the role of the dramatic writer is that the dramatic writer just makes visualized situations assigns role to characters those characters come on the stage in person in flesh and blood they come on the stage and they speak their lines and then they just just carry on with the clashes the agreements disagreements on the stage itself and the dramatist who has given them lines is standing in a corner which means the dremel the dramatist does not have an opinion the opinion of the dramatist is expressed by in in some ways by the characters on the stage so there are two different forms of writing and Milton later on thought that he should not use the drama mode but he should use the you know the epic mode anyway then when he it he talked about content that was supposed to be in dramatic initially you know and gave it the the form of epic then certain forms of drama they silently creep then so you will have long speeches in Paradise Lost and speeches are made by different characters and when this the speeches are introduced where then they are brought in then Milton makes a comment at the end of the speech also he makes a comment and then let's the other person speak now there will be a problem with with respect to this and a very creative very fascinating problem with respect to this I will come to that later but then let me tell you that our Milton is thinking now of writing an epic in English taking inspiration from Latin and he will follow certain convention of a variety without conventions you cannot write it in a page you have to be very formal you are standing in front of an audience of two thousand people ten thousand people even more the week epic writer sometimes faced audiences as big as twenty thousand people so you are standing before them so you have to be formal you cannot in that matter can be informal and Milton starts is a book one with a formal statement and this formal statement is supposed to be one of the finest statements and a statement which is discussed by all students of English literature at some point or the other this is statement which is I said or in fifteen line nineteen lines or so and if this supposed to be just one sentence and here you know the English say it's not an English sentence an English sentence always starts you know with with the subject or when I say viewers well let me let me tell you this I do this all I start with I so there has to be subject in the beginning of the sentence but in the Latin sentence or as in the nearer home in the South sentence in India sin does not begin with the subject it may begin anywhere and in the end in the middle of the sentence and Milton deliberately chooses the middle of the sentence of the beginning of the sentence for instance he saw the first line is of man's first disobedience now there is no subject here of man's first disobedience this is the first line you or therefore these are the first words of now of Milton's Paradise Lost and somewhere you know he will say after after all this of this of that etcetera finally say I sing so initially initially his job was to say I sing of man's first disobedience but I sing comes at the end no not in the beginning of the and this this creates a kind of an impact which is difficult to ignore so Milton is using the Latin kind of a style and by a long sentence because that that is the formal thing he is announcing that he is going to write a point and he will he'll sing a song and he says I sing what is the topic officer what is the subject of his writing of a phase epic man's disobedience that the rest of the poem begins human being is disobeying whom God when in the beginning so it is this is a pressure point about explanation of the disobedience of man the man disobeying God what kind of a theme is this it is a religious point it is of course the religious point Milton says it very clearly it's a religious poem and then in the same sentence he will also say you know that he is going to justify and mark my words is going to justify the ways of God to man this of God the principles of God the ideas of God the perspective of God whatever God wants whatever God plans for human beings all these are the ways of God these go these ways the poet is going to justify to hold them true but to prove that they are true so if people do not believe in God if people you know as somehow distrust God if if people are neutral regarding God then he will convert these people he'll tell these people to come back to the fold of God and should start believing in him he will justify he will give reasons why this is so so the both your epics purpose is very clear the aplex purpose is that he will talk about human beings distrusting God disagreeing with him flouting his wishes flouting is dictum and coming to grief for that reason and then God will be angry with them and therefore he will tell them how other they can call they can come back into his hole and Milton is in a way intervening between God and man when I say he is intervening between God and man then one part is man the other part is God and the intervening Authority is Milton what is he doing I think he is subverting the ideas of religion religion does not require some kind of a bridge between man and God God well directly you know a govern the affairs of the world God will directly tell em one being what to do what not to do but here say he here he said there is a rift between God and man and his job is to intervene and justify so right in the beginning you can see that there is a kind of a secular voice in the point where Milton takes upon himself you know the role of justifying ways on God to man and he starts with disobedience and disobedience of whom a well of initially that disobedience came not from human beings there were two human beings at the time you know the play a little tease in the poem begins Adam and II and there is somebody else who disobeyed God who was this person and Milton is going to talk about him initially and this person is Satan Satan who can be you know for for purposes of clarity in our case can be called Shaitaan so he is Satan and Satan has the Soviet God why has it is obeyed God and then the episode is in the Bible Satan you know somehow did not want to remain servile to God he was ambitious and and he wanted to you know displace God from the throne and occupy his place and for that he led a revolt of his followers against God's armies and finally God well very variable God was very powerful God is only only a potent and for that reason just a God you know set the forces against him and and his and his followers and threw them out of the of heaven and they went into the pit the day they went into chaos and they would definitely go into hell and that is what God's punishment was so he is talking about this punishment and that happened in the case of Satan challenging the authority of God and disobeying him so he's going to talk about this disobedience so the first point is first book of the point Paradise Lost is given to the after effects of disobedience of Satan against God so that the first point very clearly and since it's an epic so there is no suspense in it well viewers let me tell you that the epic tradition is that right in the beginning the entire plan is given so Milton also follows that convention he makes a statement about 10 to 15 lines where he says I am going to show you this and then he show he writes up those 10 lines and after that the this book one begins and the first 19 lines are just the the statement of purpose and there is a word for it in English criticism there is word for it in the vocabulary of epic also and that word is invocation with a capital I invocation that you are invoking here you are in a way making the statement and you are starting formally that this is what to the epic poem is going to be now can Milton do justice to this kind of a great theme Milton is a human being Milton is raised in the 7th century Milton is a person who is born who will die who will have his weaknesses who will have other problems to attend to can he really do justice to such a great theme as God great theme is God's relationship with man great theme of God handling you know the challenge of Satan there are big themes they are lofty things there are high themes these things we has no belong to the cosmos that they belong to stars and planets they belong to heaven so how can a ordinary mortal a human being do justice to this kind of a thing Milton knows it Milton knows that it is very difficult for a human being with his language with the language at his command to actually do justice to this kind of message which belongs to cosmos which which belongs to the Creator which belongs to God which belongs to Satan all of them great heroes or whatever but then Milton says I'll do it not myself but with the help of a goddess and his goddesses muse mus a muse muses with a capital M Musa the goddess of poetry chorus of creation and God goddess of imagination so he is taking the help of the muse to do justice to this very big theme of talking about God and he being disobeyed by another agent another agency and that is disobedience finally is the you know punished and and then you know the other things begin the other things I will take up in the second lecture but so where this is concerned God has already all stood for disobedience he has all stood Satan and his followers and how you know when he is ousted how do how do they regroup so the first you know book is given to the description of regrouping of the vanquished forces of the defeated forces by God and these people are lying you know half-conscious somewhere in the chaos somewhere near than linear hell and finally they wake up gradually and the first to wake up is Satan himself and he wakes up he realizes that he has been thoroughly totally it was never stated what should he do where should he go he cannot go back to paradise I cannot go back to heaven God has already thrust him out of out from this in that place and millions of his followers who fought with him against God they also have been thrown out what should Satan do now so what Satan does and in this in this particular part of the poem the beginning of the poem is that he wakes up he looks around and there is a scene of desolation destruction and you cannot do a thing for some time and then realizes that he has to get up and he has to play a role to revive his old glory and for that you know he wants to wake up his followers who are also lying helter-skelter lea near him so he calls them up he wakes them up gradually they get up and then he makes a speech and this is the speech and the latest species that he makes in this point they are remarkable for their content when I see I read them it was many many decades ago and I whenever I speak about Milton I do the kind of reading again and when I read for this lecture the speeches I realized that that these speeches are themselves a very great statement of the ordinary ambition human beings those human beings who do not have a dignity of their own those human beings you know who who just want some kind of a leader to lead them out of this and the leader is merely coaxing them to come forward coaxing them to come up to fight along with him against the common enemy and I realize that perhaps Milton was having in mind the common masses who were being you know asked why by the leaders of the time to come up and go against the common Authority a common I was thinking of all this and I could not come to a conclusion as to why winters ruining it and some of the lines of Satan are really very moving lines you know that famous line the waiter says he is talking about it is better to serve in it is better to rule in Hell than to serve in heaven there is famous line you know is in this particular speech so I think this this is line that most of the Republicans who would have liked you know in a long time so we should not think of serving we should rule but then Milton is putting it in a romantic mode and Satan is saying these lines therefore wants to take them away the different coloring and and I realize that Milton at that point of time was going through a phase where you know the ordinary plight the plight of the ordinary masses was so sought to be dramatized and it remet eyes this way so Satan is the culprit he is an ambitious person he does not have any hope in him he is meant only to do evil he says very clearly that I am an evil person I will do evil only and if God is good to me then I will turn that goodness also into evil and I'll fight him he says very clearly and then you know he says these lines it is better to rule in Hell than to serve in heaven and when he does it then you know where one does not know what to what were to take off Milton but then Welton is putting these ideas whether they are ideals common masses whether the ideals of the leaders were the ideas of God whether the ideals of religion he is putting all them together in a framework where we are compelled to thing and well his scope is very wide people do not easily get up but but he just makes them set up stand up to file in front of him to stand in ranks according to hierarchy in front of him and then he is addressing them and this address shows that Milton is somehow presenting a contemporary scene where this kind of thing happening but then Milton very clearly says I'm on the side of God III want God's grace I want God to to remain as kind as he has been all through and what is the theme of God God's theme was that human beings should remain in heaven should remain in paradise you know enjoying themselves without bothering about any work without bothering about anything and their job is only to be together Adam and Eve should remain together enjoy each other's company and and and they should just know you have all things you know at their disposal and they should believe in God and remain happy and the only restriction that God Nino imposed on the human beings the Adam and Eve was that they should not go to layer a particular tree with that she was dangerous said God and what is the dangerous job aspect about that tree and God said this is a tree of knowledge do not go near it because knowledge will destroy the sense of faith you have in me you will start thinking of your own self and God had a reason for this so whenever you is you think of reason then you start thinking of yourself then you start thinking of others so reason is supposed to divide you from anybody else and the reason divides you from your originator from your Creator so the only condition that God laid for the human beings was that they should not go to the tree of knowledge and should not eat that fruit in fact that fruit is called by Milton in this one the forbidden fruit this fruit should never be tested by Adam and Eve because this will send them against each other and they will set them against God and God will be very angry so there is a kind of research done by Satan now in the first book the research is to find out what will hurt God most or that there is a very very very fine point of psychology now when you want to fight an enemy then you first should find out what he lies the best and you destroy that when you destroy that the enemy will be hard very very much so Milton is making you know Satan going search of something that will hurt God and they realize is that God has in the meantime created a human race and they are the darlings of God and God is very happy creating them and he's put them at the nicest place possible in the world and he's given them a garden in which they can roam around freely and of course they roam around freely human beings that then they are not ashamed of their bodies therefore they are moving around naked and then they enjoy the Stars they enjoy the trees they enjoy the grass they enjoy the movement of water sounds music etcetera and they're quite happy so in this kind of a thing they have created a God has created a species called the human beings and he is going to make them happy and Satan says I want to destroy their happiness when I destroy this happiness then God will be hurt so it is a very devious trick that that as Satan is employing and for that he decides to make Adam and Eve eat the fruit of knowledge and it is not easy to approach human beings as that they are protected from all sides but then he has used different shapes he is also a wave he also has an element of godliness in him so he can assume some form so he assumes the form of this bird or a litter on a snake and he crawls near he when she is alone and there he whispers into her ear something and you know becomes curious about the the you know the the nature of the Apple the the the forbidden Apple the forbidden fruit and then she tells Adam that she wants it and then somehow there is one thing leads to another then Adam and Eve eat the Apple and it is on that date that the unhappiness be so in a way Satan has finally succeeded in his mission of you know setting the human beings against God against his wishes because they were asked not to taste the fruit of knowledge and he made them eat the fruit of knowledge so this is the myth and Milton in the first book is talking about it two things he does one that are the Fallen Angels the the followers of Satan Satan included and is a close associate Beelzebub these two people and the Fallen Angels they get out of the snow you know stupor that they have been are defeated so there is a get up and then the Satan ask them to you know become valiant and strong again because they have to fight against the forces of God one one small s'more and then he says before that happens he will go he'll do some research regarding God's mission visible human beings and when that is done then then I will get back and tell you as to what is to be done next so this is the kind of plan that is there in the first book and one or two more things about the first book and then and then I come to the conclusion anything you would like to say about this point anything I would like to say is that Milton has beautifully identified the most important relation the creation of the universe first as we have already said as you have given examples of Adam and Eve and the how the advent of the universe took place as the well could be predicted from the Milton's poetry if I'm not wrong and if there is regarding this one more in every rewriting the Bible and he is writing the Bible from his angle and what I particularly liked about Milton is that in the 17th century a person can write the Bible and can assign roles to God thus akasaki holds to his some assign roads to the roles to Saturn so author has become in fact a God and still it is the author who is now creating God you know there is a character in his thing and this is what I call secular imagination writer you know where there is creator himself so God is a creator of the universe the author is a creator of ideas images are descriptions etcetera roles that human beings as characters play and he is able to do this so he is writing the second Bible now is there a difference between this Bible in the first Bible is the question viewers and well let's take it off slightly you know differently if Milton is assuming the role of a writer who will you know decide what God has to speak whatever what what you know son has to speak of course as you asked Milton why is doing it why are you doing it you would say I'm not doing it this is what actually happened so I am busy producing it but then if as we read the Paradise Lost today in the 21st century and or as people would have read about Paradise Lost in the 70 century was published in the second half of the century then you know they were approaching God and all these things through the intervention of Satan himself Milton himself and Milton was presenting to them an argument and in this argument was that this how things happened but no you can't really say this is how things happen actually use you that they are telling how they happen so whether they happen that we are not nobody can find out the only thing one can say is that this person says that this is how they happen so in a way Milton has himself you know acquired what is called the central position in Paradise Lost by telling the reader that he he knows he has he has seen or visualize you know that this is how God happens so in a way the the you know the string off of the puppet I'm using words I think some people are not exactly like this but then as an author who is a puppet here he is using different characters in order to in order to tell one another that this is how you to play roll so in the 70 century some poet emerges and at this point again and again says well the muse is telling me the uses in a way enabling me to do it but then he is out of his own imagination is creating this an actual person a person who took part in the Republican revolt against against you know all the king in the 70 century and when I became disabled he had this kind of dual your disability then you know he could he could not move any further in guarding this so friends there are lots of things to be said about this I will just say one or two more and then finish this thing why is the milton using the latent forms if he is writing in english this is the last point i will make his sentences are latinized it is called latent isms in english criticism the way of the world use these Latin isms he is using Latin innocence he is using paradoxes he is coining new phrases and and these phrases will will you know later on become very very very powerful and in the 18th century and in the 19th century Milton will have a different kind of reading he is very clearly saying even the side of God as I have told you he is clearly saying he is going to justify the ways of God to men but then in the 18th century when William Blake the great Romantic poet started think poor Milton read Milton then you know Blake said no he is not God's party Milton said Blake is actually devil's party because he is giving a voice any character to depth to the devil of a kind that brings the devil closer to us than God so this way this was this also is you know met the romantic requirements of the of the 8th century poet because Romantic poets in the 18th century and then essentially they would go into the mysteries of life go into the mysteries of belief go into the mysteries of this world and there would not be moral or religious in the sense in which Milton would have us I mean in the you know Samuel essentially and therefore they created their own meaning Paradise Lost after their heart and 1780 18th and 19th centuries in England they were always sympathetic with Milton as a supporter of level who said we should have not served in heaven but what about should rule in hell and that kind of a thing so that way the book Paradise Lost became a talking point for generations to come and then the 20th century and even today well you can always say that Milton's inner voice is closer to Satan's when it is to gods you can also say that he said you know in a way presenting the reality of the seventh century religious experience in dramatic terms and he is not taking any sides or one can say that he is taking the side of God so these three things and well this is how I think I should conclude definitely sir thank you so very much and I would only say that when God doesn't find any means to talk to the human beings then he himself take helps of the poet's like John Milton so that he could talk to the human beings so that it is mandatory for each of us to be involved in a good deeds so that the task of the God become easier so with this note thank you sir thank you so very much and she will be meeting again very soon till then take care good bye

Channel: cec

Views: 68,321

Rating: 4.8296294 out of 5

Keywords: John Milton : Paradise lost book, CEC, CEC Edusat, CEC New Delhi, CEC-UGC, Dr. Anand Prakash, 17-12-15, English

Id: 42KiENcID4I

Length: 54min 33sec (3273 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 21 2015