My Summer Reading

"My summer reading" is probably going to propel me well into October, at the rate I'm going. But at least I'm doing it.

Paradise Lost was, like Moby Dick, one of those works in the high school literary canon that high schools were rejecting by the time I came along, so I'd never read it before now.

My Viking Portable edition cost me all of 7 dollars (not used, but the copy had some cover fading). It has a very helpful glossary at the end.

It's taken me all month (reading in bits) to get through Book III (of the twelve), and I've got some early observations.

For one, it's not that hard to read, once you get past the introduction ("Sing, heavenly Muse," is the verb and subject of the first sentence, found six lines into the poem. You don't hit the first period until line 16).

Younger (and faster) readers will want an Oxford Concise Dictionary at their elbows and then maybe hold off researching the full context of the more obscure references to classical mythology. Older folks like me also may want Bulfinch (I think I paid a dollar for mine years ago -- a megabookseller's reprint) nearby.

That, a "good posture" reading chair, some imagination and some more patience may well see you through (We'll see: I'm working on it!). My favorite of Book I was Satan waking up, floating around on a stormy lake of fire (with the construction of Pandemonium a close second). Book II's highlight for me were the speeches of the demons -- each intended to fit a cardinal sin. Book III's description of the world between Heaven and Paradise was as clear as an etching.

The trick so far has been reading 80-120 lines at a sitting. Old Miltie conveniently set his poem into paragraphs (or groups of paragraphs) about that long, so -- there you go!

The 'graphing could be more than convenience -- maybe the poem was set that way, in part, to facilitate public readings (!).

I've had fun reading as The Ham Actor In My Head declaims to me his version of the poem, bit by bit.

BTW -- my earlier ref to an "etching" was not coincidental. If you've got the scratch (sorry) for Dore's plates to the poem -- you've got a 17th century graphic novel (kind of).