Paradise Lost Book IV, Part I

Milton’s “Paradise Lost” is an exquisitely detailed masterpiece of epic literature that outlines the fall of mankind as depicted in the Bible. The poem is divided into twelve books, the fourth of which describes how the story’s infamous antagonist Satan ventures to Earth to contrive a way he can bring about ruin to the creation of God he has heard about. Satan was once loved by God, but was condemned when his aspirations to rule led him to attempt an overthrow of God’s kingdom. Feeling unjustly punished for his crime, Satan’s purpose is motivated by a thirst for revenge, and Milton’s work of character description goes above and beyond the duty of a poet to bring to the reader a Satan who is at once, solemn yet resolute in his plot to wreak havoc against a God who has cast him from the face of heaven.

When Satan reaches Mt. Niphates, a tragic side of himself is revealed in a moment of reflection. He sees the sun and is touched by memories of Heaven’s glory and his once valued position before God. Satan’s mood adopts human characteristics of remorse by these memories, and he is somehow saddened in spite of his malicious plan to lash out at God. But his fury is ignited once more when he deigns that God must have somehow endowed him with a powerful will to rebel, though he is frustrated by this circular logic. “O had his powerful destiny ordained me some inferior angel,” he states during his soliloquy upon the mountain; Satan is under the complete impression that by being created with the intrinsic nature to fail as a spirit-child of God, he has somehow been short-changed by some manipulative, ulterior motive. Although these ideas enrage him within, his thoughts allow him to ponder whether or not he could claim redemption. When he concedes to himself that his very nature, whether preordained or not, is subject to rebelliousness no matter the condition, his thoughts quickly revert to ferocious hate. Satan’s anger at God is so deeply rooted that he perceives the notion of redemption as ultimately futile. Satan fully understands the omnipotence of God’s power, and he not only surmises that God has already thought all of this through, but he becomes resolute in fulfilling God’s all-knowing predictions with the most nefarious of his malice. If God has somehow chosen Satan to enact a crucial part of some grand scheme to play out over time, the fury of Satan has become the essential impetus to initiate the plan into action.

Milton paints the figure of Satan vividly during this moment of self-reflection, employing facial descriptions of “ire, envy, and despair.” Such emotions are not pleasing to experience, and yet they act as a sort of morbid inspiration for the devil’s purpose. Satan is soon an ambitious, curious spirit who wanders about the Garden of Eden, recovered and reequipped with his natural instincts of cunning and avaricious malice. He is in no hurry to return to Hell, and the hope of discovering a means to create problems for God drive him to watch and wait. The fascination with which he catalogues the wonders of Eden in his mind is testament to the intelligence level that Satan possesses; Satan is acutely enlightened to the awesome power of God. His intelligence is tickled when his eyes fall upon Adam and Eve, at which he gazes with surprise and subtle wonder; they appear unbelievably divine to him. Though Satan’s intelligence level provides him the patience to simply observe with a sense of skeptical awe, his innate haughtiness drives him to inwardly and immediately vow to a state of ruin for the both of them. Satan’s jealousy has been inflamed by the exasperating breadth of their beauty, and his motivation to destroy becomes ever so decisive that he perceives victory before even knowing the exact means by which he will do so.

Paradise Lost Book IV, Part II

Satan’s plan becomes etched in stone when he eavesdrops on Adam speaking to Eve. But first he is appalled by how disgustingly good and beautiful God has made them, and is mildly infuriated by a contrasting, mental picture of their luxurious Eden to his ugly Hell; Adam and Eve are living with lavishing gifts from God while he, a spirit-child once dearly loved, has been cast from grace without forgiveness. Immersed in a cool and collected jealousy, his emotional flare-up does not cause him to overreact. His thoughts instead process the information he has gained concerning the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. By now his ruminations on the possibility of redemption have long since fled, and Satan’s mind is now capitalizing on the prospect of temptation; since the fruit of the tree is forbidden by penalty of death, he will tempt them with eating the fruit by suggesting that to do so would be perfectly harmless. His eavesdropping, however, has provided more than just the means by which he will ruin what he fiendishly terms, the “gentle pair,” but has given him insight into whom his trickery will work best.

When the dialogue unfolded between the lovers, Satan seemed to discern that Eve must be of the weaker sex. Adam spoke of his knowledge of the rules of the forbidden fruit, which possibly indicated to Satan that he must know more than Eve. Satan understands that knowledge is power, for God has great knowledge and power, but he may have reinforced this view of inequality between the two when Eve spoke of her encounter with a reflection of herself in the water. She revealed how she was startled, knowing not what the image was, but was somehow enlightened as to the explanation and implications of the reflection that was herself. The event tells of the susceptibility to confusion she possessed at the time, a type of uncertainty she may be predisposed to possess again in the future. Continuing in her words, Eve described how she “yields” to her lover, wherein Satan must have ultimately concluded that Eve does not quite hold the same level of ethereal status as Adam. Satan configures these conclusions into a course of action that is realized when Ithuriel and Zephon find Satan “squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve.” Satan has made his job as easy as possible by choosing Eve as the subject of his temptation because he senses that through her, he will meet with a more likely chance of success.

The events that outline this hateful mode of behavior clearly reveal a Satan who is immensely distraught by the circumstances that he realizes, are largely a result of his own actions. This fact does not change the sheer hatred Satan has developed for all things Godly. That Adam and Eve talk of their love for each other only serves to propel Satan’s desire to destroy them even further; their love is grotesquely representative of God’s goodness, and this fills him with a dire sense of loathing. Satan is renowned for his jealousy and fierce ambition to take over Heaven, and his inclination to harness this type of behavior materializes yet again when he observes the two lovers engaged in their acts of devotion to one another and to God. An odd part of him feels that God’s paradise is so replete with perfection that to bring about destruction would be a travesty, that only his impassioned, unchanging fate as a servant of evil demands that he attempt to do so. Yet another part of him feels he is only passing on the torch of God’s fate, that he has been composed with all of the mental components to be demonically evil. Ultimately his conviction to defy God remains as pronounced and steadfast as from the very meeting with his cohorts that defined him as king of Pandemonium in the first place. The panoramic vistas of paradise inflame his emotions with resentment when he thinks on the ugliness of Hell, and his jealousy skyrockets when he considers the tender love extending between Adam and Eve that makes him so sick. This classic tapestry of ill-fated emotions entangled with such extreme portraits of goodness present to the reader a Satan who has become acutely resolute in achieving success toward anything that may ease the pangs of his troubled mind. Where the aspects of what is good and what is evil have collided, Satan’s inwardly response is likened unto the result of some explosive, chemical reaction.

Satan does well at justifying his behavior when confronting Gabriel, in the process completing the outline that defines him as the prime candidate for bringing about the fall of mankind. “Lives there who loves his pain?” inquires Satan, speaking to the arch-angel who has momentarily captured him. This is Satan’s champion statement and open confession: Satan is a being with nothing to lose. He has his hatred of all things good, he has his resentment toward a God who refuses to forgive him, he has the creaturely creations of God at his disposal to destroy if he can only manage to succeed, and he has an eternity of time to go about the process with seemingly nothing better to do.

Iago & Othello, Part I

In Scene Four, Act One of William Shakespeare’s “Othello,” Iago leads Othello in a train of thought that causes him to mimic Iago’s pattern of rhetoric. Iago is the villain of the story and has vowed revenge against General Othello, whom he feels overlooked him with respect for a promotion in the service of the military. Othello is known for his valiant and honest disposition, but these characteristics have made him credulous to Iago’s scheming. The two of them have known each other for many years, a span of time that has allowed a bond of trust to form, but for Othello, the trusting nature of this bond is what provides the medium for Iago to enact his vengeance upon him for what he feels was an unfair exchange of duty in friendship. That Iago is wholly trusted by Othello is Iago’s power to deceive him with near impunity.

By the time this scene appears, Iago has already met with success concerning the outcome of his destructive plans thus far, and appears to have developed a rhythm in his pattern of deceit. When Othello mimics Iago’s words, Othello is unwittingly allowing Iago’s manipulative tactics to flood his thoughts with appalling and intolerable revelations that fuel his suspicion. The mimicry is charged with apprehension, where each heightened response to Iago’s suggestions are loaded with Othello’s reaction to the alleged situation of his wife’s infidelity. For Othello, the very hint of such a situation is to be deplored. Othello has known Desdemona for a considerable amount of time so that a deep, emotional attachment has formed; their love is more than one of lovers infatuated by the flesh, rather, their love has taken on characteristics of devotion, honor and sincerity for one another. “I cannot speak enough of this content,” declares Othello in Act Two, Scene One, speaking on the joy of seeing his wife after being separated during their journeys. These deeply seated feelings lie at the root of Othello’s flare in listening to Iago unsettling implications.

Iago, on the contrary, is fueled by the notion that Othello is succumbing to the charms of his nefarious work. His behavior has already shown him to be a feisty, industrious person. He has expended clever, zealous effort to make sure Roderigo and Cassio fight, and has even taken the initiative to perform the risky task of planting evidence in Cassio’s room. Having these incidents already panned out for him have allowed the force of his intentions to propel his scheming right along. When he gets Othello alone, he utilizes the platonic intimacy that spans between them to play him, where Iago’s feistiness drives his tactical use of rhetoric to incite suspicion and anger in Othello. Iago is intellectually quick, and with each spoken confirmation of Othello’s excited thoughts, Iago quickly fills in the spaces with inflammatory suggestions that further Othello’s distrust in Desdemona.

To expound on the character of Iago, the soliloquy following his moment with Roderigo at the beginning of the play reveals something of a supercilious person enraptured by the power that his diminished sense of self has created. After being looked over for a promotion in Othello’s service, he capitalizes on his suspicion of Othello having once slept with his wife to further justify his hatred of him. This is Iago utilizing what he can to heighten the vengeful emotions that blanket his underlying feelings of inferiority. He admits to using Roderigo for his money, an admission that presents his inclination for abnormal thinking. That he is unwilling to suggest a healthy way for Roderigo to accept he will never have Desdemona, and that he seeks to use these frustrations to his advantage, playing on Roderigo’s naiveté to plot small portions of a larger scheme to bring Othello down, make Iago unstable. These aspects and intentions incline his personality toward the sociopathic; he is truly uncaring of another’s feelings and emotions.

Later, the true monster in Iago is revealed through literal acts of physical aggression. During an ambush to end Cassio’s life, Iago sneaks from the shadows to slash his leg when he figures out that matters aren’t going as planned. The act is cowardly but decisive, and is representative of the sociopathology working within him, making him adaptable to such unforeseen circumstances in the most heinous of ways. As soon as he calculates the risk of having his plot uncovered by the mishap in what should have been Cassio’s death, he commits his most depraved act: he murders Roderigo. This hasty and callous behavior is Iago the megalomaniac out of control. The act of murder with no hesitation nor conscience is the culminating result of Iago’s mentally disfigured way of thinking.

Iago & Othello, Part II

The character of Othello stands in contrast to Iago, but only to a certain degree before both of their behaviors become similar in methodology. Othello is a general in the Venetian Military, a worthy accomplishment that extends from the days when he was a foot soldier, a time when he was even taken captive during battle and sold into slavery. He speaks of “distressful strokes” that occurred in his childhood to Desdemona, details that add to the tale of his path to glory through struggle and hardship. Othello is also moor, meaning he is from a land where the people have darker skin color, a fact that implies the specter of racism he has had to contend with through the years. In spite of his proclivity for struggle, Desdemona’s father is a senator who once loved Othello, as this was the chance circumstance by which the two lovers met. That this senator loved Othello, and that Othello ultimately became a general, are honors that show Othello was able to face daunting challenges and overcome them, all the while earning his fair share of respect in the process.

Standing in opposition to Othello’s valiance as a distinguished individual are the shadows of his aggravations that have made him who he is. Othello’s path to becoming a general was embroiled in conflict and tactical toiling. The ability of a general is to make critical and expedient decisions in the face of these often trying situations, a trait that Othello appears to have possessed, but one that does not serve him well in his personal affairs. Not long after Iago begins to coax him into believing Desdemona is sleeping with Cassio, does his ability to think critically dissipate into curious, irrational behavior. Othello’s demand for results on the battlefield is such an ingrained component of his ego, that when he is not able to compute the meaning of Desdemona‘s platonic affection for Cassio, the soldier and general in him perceives an enemy and demands for a resolution. In battle, he may have acted on impulse with regard to an impacting, devastating event; in the case of his wife championing Cassio, he impulsively hits her across the face. This preview into the realm of domestic violence is a preview into the demise of Othello. That Othello is subject to this type of behavior makes him unstable, and not far in disposition from that of his enemy, Iago.

By the end of the play, Othello and Iago have developed similar behaviors that signal the success of Iago’s devilish machinations. Both have become servants to the sin of murder. The sad irony is the drastic change that evolved in Othello’s disposition as a person. Where he was once able to negotiate conflict, he is now a part of the conflict. Where he was once communicable and enjoined with the love of his life, he is now the one who is to plot her murder. Where he was once of the type to be recognized as a voice of authority, he is now the subject of authority. The change speaks volumes in the overall personality of Othello, of whose trials and tribulations of soldiering and problems of racism have seeped to the surface of his temperament as impatience and the incapability and unwillingness to seek out, validate, and truly understand his wife’s behavior. Though Iago’s revenge lies at the foundation of Othello’s madness, Othello himself is ultimately and truly the one responsible for the malaise that is his enraged jealousy.

Both Iago and Othello have dealt with issues that have caused them to experience inner conflict, character traits that make them alike as much as they are different. Othello’s aspect of skin color juxtaposes Iago’s situation of inferiority: Iago’s struggle with being a second rate individual as a common soldier to that of Cassio’s elitist standing, is similar to Othello’s life as a colored person among a largely non-colored populous. Othello’s jealousy at Desdemona is also not far from different to Iago’s jealousy of Cassio: to be jealous in general is a symptom of pent-up, life-circumstantial struggle. Therefore, the verdict is that both Othello and Iago are guilty of themselves, where either of them could have faced their situations with level-headedness and rationale. Though Iago’s mental instability was observable throughout the entire play, Othello’s rapid change from a relatively calm individual to a person willing to commit murder is confirmation of unresolved issues that consequently, as is evident in the both of them, have manifested themselves in negative, volatile behavior.

The Edge of Love & Dylan Thomas

The Edge of Love is a high priced, finely crafted film drawing upon the tragedies of the London Bombing Blitz during the early part of WWII, while at the same time recounting a portion of the life of famous poet Dylan Thomas. The film makers grace the viewer with a barrage of elegant smiles and seductive charms endowed by none other than the highly fashionable, Ms. Keira Knightly, and her high class antics come freshly augmented and seasoned by the all-out swinging, Ms. Sienna Miller. But aside from watching these two lovely ladies flirt with the camera for nearly two hours, the story underlies the journey of a man gone to war and back as a sidelining distraction to the situation of the famous poet during his attempt to win out in a seeming love triangle.

With the use of clever and witty dialog craftily used early on, the somewhat gloomily filmed movie eventually morphs into a pall of seriousness. A soldier has fallen in love with the red lipped singer only to marry her and then venture off to war. In this regard a slice of the horror of war is brought to the screen in conjunction with scenes of pastoral life at home, where the domestic situation of child rearing and scandalous love-making unfold. Sitting at the helm of such dramatics lies the figure of Dylan Thomas, portrayed here as somewhat of a mild-mannered alpha male with a tinge of lacking in the morality department.   

Played by Matthew Rhys, the suave but flagrant Dylan Thomas marches through the world pounding whiskey, sexing women, and touting some of the best poetry ever written, all the while depicting himself as an honorable man. The accuracy is not far from the truth, as the real life poet would tell those he knew, “An alcoholic is someone you don’t like, someone who drinks as much as you.” While we learn of Dylan’s bad behavior in the movie, we fail to learn of the countless hours he wrote and toured, nor do we learn much of his life as a child much less the incidents surrounding his untimely death.

Overall, the movie is a film about love, though one would have to ultimately decide upon where this love is falling, and this would have to be the allure of the story. He loves her, but he is married; the two girls become best friends and sleep together, but he wants them both; a soldier wants to get married and stands third wheel to the triangle, yet the need to mature and grow up surfaces as the necessity to make critical life decisions arise. The film has been crafted by the screenwriter with excellent talent, and research would have to be conducted as to the entirety of the truth lying at its base.

pic by wiki

As for literary heroes, Dylan Thomas stands gargantuan and needs no validation: he was one of the greats. Renowned for his passionate recitals, the man could have written poetry in his sleep;  the enhancement of a common phrase came so natural that to engage conversation with him, one would have noticed rarely a misplacement of thought. Unfortunately for people graced with the gift of startling creativity and genius, the fabled story of misfortune seems to go hand in hand with the course of their lives, and the life of Dylan Thomas was no exception.

Lord Bryron 1788-1824

 

George Gordon Byron, if known for anything in the entire span of late history, is renowned for his status, by today’s common standard, as the world’s first followed mega-star. Described by Lady Caroline Lamb, Lord Byron is none other than “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” Byron’s reputation for being a dashing, charismatic, elegant, scandalous, blunt, womanizing, rebellious, talented yet moody young man is unparalleled. His lifetime stands at the apex of a time when some of the greatest literature was ever written, an epoch of literary output that includes a chance summer rendezvous upon the shores of Lake Geneva that provided the inspiration for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

While Byron’s talent incited a passionate flare in young women, Byron’s attitude toward the establishment incited a range of socialite and political men to dislike him. For Byron, this fact was irrelevant to the impetus that drove him, but not immune to consequences. Exiled from England, Byron came to know a rich life abroad amid the countries of Europe, an experience that only enhanced his vivaciousness and made him all the more appealing to the women he seduced. He was a man of moderate principle with a knack for scandal, and his witty conversation combined with his uncontrollable mood swings and powerful good looks made him the subject (intentionally or not) of his own work, as well as the work of other famous authors. The characters in his poetry resemble himself, an aspect of his career that drew so much attention, yet his life is fictitiously portrayed in other works that are anything but humble. In John Polidori’s Vampyre, vampiric folk tales are introduced into British lore by depicting a vampire who frequents English social circles, a work of fiction that today, still echoes the elegance and charisma that accompanies the vampire model. Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray bears an undeniable resemblance to Byron, a man who seemingly never turns old or ugly, of whose notoriety extends from a long line of wealth.

Byron’s life incurred the existence of the Byronic hero, a self-destructive man hiding an undesirable past, whose cockiness and iconoclastic tastes are abhorred by contemporaries; a man abounding with promiscuity, yet perputually unsuccessful with love; a man paradoxically exiled yet desired, of whom, in the same vein of paradox, withholds such talent that his ego makes him unutterably bored with life.

Byron did not pass without leaving the world with a sense of his ability to understand his own faults, where often times he openly admitted his inability to control his sprightly and sardonic pronouncements no matter the mood, and he is known for having engaged the most bizarre twist of endeavors by leaping from a person meticulously scribing great poetic works, to organizing rebellions against the most ill-intended powers that threaten, and it is for this reason that Lord Byron is renowned as a hero in present day Greece.

The heroic acts did not prevent Byron’s early death, nor did it relinquish the aftertaste he left in England after his blatant exile, at least not until about 150years later when a memorial was finally erected to him by sheer force of pervading fame, at Westminster Abbey.      

William Blake 1757-1827

Little may many know that the bizzare figure appearing tattooed on the back of the infamous protagonist, Dolarhyde, in the newer movie version of Thomas Harris’ novel, Red Dragon, is an abstract painting by William Blake. Yet Blake’s work as a painter does not wholly represent the extent of his creativity and influence upon aestheticism proceeding the great age of the Early Romantics. Blake wrote many poems, and he drew, painted and plated pictures to accompany the drama unfolding within every poem, with extras to consider. Aside and beneath these cursory references to the man Blake, lies the deeper man, the inconclastic and cognitively intuitive rebel.

Blake was the type of person whom, as a child, would speak of visions of angels in trees. He was intellectually eccentric, and the world within his mind abounded with concepts of, as the bible would call it, “principalities.” A mixed assortment of emotions collected within his frame of thinking, for on the one hand, he was known to have spent hours and hours making sketches of old churches to the sound of chanting monks in the background, where on the other hand, he possessed a vital passion for equality among humans, with such convictions as hatred of slavery.  Being aware of such frightful events such as the Reign of Terror occurring during his day, and possessing such great predisposition for in-depth thought on elevated subjects of spirituality and the human condition, it is no small wonder his works strike an odd chord to the common observer and reader. The conglomerataion of darkness/death, light/love of humanity, and biblical influence unfolding in Blake’s mind could only explain a portion of the vast volumes of complicated poetry that comprise the enormous total of Blake’s work. Upon a reading of Blake, Coleridge once commented the man was none other than a genius.  

Blake was obsessed with the notion of control, or better phrased, the notion of being controlled. He strongly voiced his antagonism toward the opression of society’s leadership at the time through his veiled form of writing. He also felt strongly about the influence of religious dogma, and was torn by his split opinion concerning the French Revolution. Through these emotions emerges the world of Blake, the product of his angelic visions that seem to speak to him the prospect of men being blinded men and the nature of truth he believes lies within the spirit of every human. Blake is a visionary whose inclination toward the arts prevents him from being a societal leader, but rather, a prophet writing on behalf of what the world could or should be. In a famous poem, he is known for reciting the deplorable life state of a young child who is doomed to the job of cleaning chimneys while aristocrats and political nobility live affluent, opulence abounding in spite of the sordid and decrepit reality of child neglect.

As he had spent much of his life as an artist, his poems are recognized as existing in symbiosis with the art he drew for them, for it has been stated that without the images he so tediously created, reading Blake simply doesn’t work. The effort Blake put into these books of poems limited the amount of his self-published works, with copies ranging in numbers below 28, 16, & 9 for each print, such that to own one such book would be to own a book worth millions of dollars in value.

Though Blake is recognized as standing among the stars of the Early Romantics, his work his long and drawn out with extensive even grueling proportion, and touches on subjects that not only differ in aesthetic quality from his contemporaries, but are immensely complex, a cumbersome fact that for the most part, diverts the average reader. Blake was not well accepted during his time for this reason, but like many others, of whom their talent transcends the day and age of their surroundings, he has become widely known as a man praised for his tedious artistic labor and ability to think, and his accomplishments, unique unto themselves, make William Blake more of a singular enigma rather than a realized member of the Romantic Era.