I’d like to share with you the experience of my colleague, Jen, who, for the past fourteen months, has been reading one text with her reading group in Liverpool. Week after week they have returned to the same work of literature. Little by little they have made their way through the profound and beautiful verse of John Milton: they have been reading Paradise Lost. This is Jen’s description of their undertaking:
It’s not been a slog, it’s been the most incredible reading experience of my life: it’s also not been easy (far, far from it) but it’s been something that the six to nine of us (we can’t all be there every week!) have shared: we’ve laughed, we’ve cried, we’ve been hugely frustrated, we’ve disagreed, we’ve seen eye-to-eye, we’ve been able to talk about the Big Stuff. Our ideas and thoughts have been able to be expressed openly, in an environment where there’s no judgment, no pressure to say the ‘right’ thing. Milton’s allowed us to talk about life, death, infinity and everything in between: why were we created pure if we were always meant to fall? What does it mean for us that humans exist in a broken world? How is it that good can only exist when there is an opposite to it, evil?
These questions (none of which we have found the answers to, by the way), have got us all thinking about our lives – each week were were thinking about what it is to be human – and this isn’t to say that it was all really heavy going, there have been many laughs and lighter moments along the way too. Milton was writing over 400 years ago, what did that matter? What Milton gets at is the struggle within us all to live our lives: the world is broken, how do we live in it the best we can? What actually is “utter darkness” and are we still in it? We only think of the earth, heaven and hell in terms of space and time – how are we meant to understand eternity?
Please follow the link to read the Jen’s full account:
http://thereaderonline.co.uk/2010/06/10/theres-no-such-thing-as-an-ending/
Jen has selected some highlights from the group’s reading of Paradise Lost. They include:
As Satan gets expelled from Heaven:
Yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe
Book I, ll. 62-4
As Satan decides what lies ahead of him in his new surroundings:
The mind can make its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of a Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
Book I, ll. 254-5
Satan is a fabulous orator! This is where he addresses the other
fallen angels, telling of his plans to corrupt God’s latest creation – man:
O progeny of Heav’n, empyreal Thrones,
With reason hath deep silence and demur
Seized us, though undismayed: long is the way
And hard, that out of Hell leads up to light;
Our prison strong, this huge convex of fire…
Book II, ll. 430-4
God gives us free will:
They trespass, authors to themselves in all
Both what they judge and what they choose; for so
I formed them free, and free they must remain,
Till they enthrall themselves
Book III, ll. 122-5
Psychology creeps in – Satan begins to feel:
Me miserable! Which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell
Book IV, ll. 73-5
As ever, I’d welcome your comments about Jen’s group and Paradise Lost.
