3 ms·

I’m not a big lit guy but I read this. The first 10% was hard to get through due to how different Milton’s english is from my own. However I’m glad I did. It go

I’m not a big lit guy but I read this. The first 10% was hard to get through due to how different Milton’s english is from my own. However I’m glad I did. It got progressively easy to read until it was as natural as anything else. What a payoff. Never before or since have I read something where I was consistently floored by the beautiful, sometimes breathtaking, use of my native language. Some passages stay with me probably forever, like Adam’s description of Eve. Highly recommended.

gwern 3y ago
> I’m not a big lit guy but I read this. The first 10% was hard to get through due to how different Milton’s english is from my own. I agree. Milton's English is beautiful but easily on the level of an unmodernized Shakespeare in terms of deterring a reader, who spends as much time cracking the puzzle as they do on any kind of esthetic appreciation. As an experiment, I was trying rewriting _Paradise Lost_ in contemporary blank verse with GPT-4/Claude-2. It was OK, but what I discovered was that what really works is an alliterative verse translation! (I was then informed that it is believed that Milton may have been drawing on an Old English poem about the Fall, "Genesis A", and so this may not be an accident.) Two example renditions of the prologue: 1. Man's first folly, the fateful fruit's taste, From forbidden tree's tempting twig it came, Death and doom dealt, despair in our world, Eden erased, exalted man to mend, Restoring realms of radiant bliss, sing, Sacred muse, who soared on secret summits, Oreb, Sinai, sharing whispered wisdom, With shepherds, teaching truths to chosen kin, Heavens and earth hewn from harrowing haze, Sion's slopes, Siloa's silver stream, Flowing fast by God's grand guiding hand, Grant thy aid to my aspiring anthem, Aiming high above Aonian heights, Pursuing paths untried in prose or rhyme. 2. Man's fatal first taste, the forbidden fruit Whose bitter bloom brought bale and sorrow bleak With paradise perished, till One more mighty restores what was lost Reclaims the radiant seats—O sacred Muse, Who on Sinai's summit secret And Horeb's height inspired Chosen seers to teach the tribes since time first woke, How heavens and earth arose from Chaos hoar, Or if thou rather tread Sion's summit steep, And Siloa's silvern stream that rushed thereby Where dwelt the oracle and rock of God, That poured forth fates—now lend thy light, that I May soar on song's ambitious wings Above Parnassus' peaks, pursuing lofty themes... Great matters meet for grandest strains of lore. Thee chiefly, thee, heart's truth, soul's purest shine, O Spirit blest, who scorneth shrine and show Inspire my strain; for thou, who knowest all, Hast known since earth's first sunrise. Mighty wings Did brood with wings outspread upon the formless void Kindling Chaos into teeming, shaping flame; To attain the epic theme, this lofty matter, In hymns that hallow Heaven's eternal ways.
- DrStormyDaniels 3y ago
  It takes less time than you might think to get aquatinted with older English spellings, especially if you start at the deep end with Chaucer; it’s plain sailing after. Personally I got to enjoy and prefer the absolute disregard for standard spellings, capitalisation, and punctuation, so much that I find it harder to read, e.g. Shakespeare in a modernised text. More interestingly, there’s the problem of translating or updating poetry. If the poem was written with full self-consciousness of word choice, then the meaning really is lost by “updating” it, and where the poetry is best written, the meaning will be most lost.
  - Animats 3y ago
    If you read the Canterbury Tales, read one half way through and ask yourself how it will end. You'll be right. Plot twists hadn't been invented yet. Those now-cliche plots were new back then.
    - DrStormyDaniels 3y ago
      Perhaps, but I think that is beside the point. I read the tales for the voices of the characters, and for the poetry. It’s like Shakespeare, where the plot or story is usually a bit boring, more of a pretext to the poetry, and not really the purpose.
      - Animats 3y ago
        Not Shakespeare. Shakespeare's plays are successful commercial theater. They were performed in his day, profitably. They have been widely performed for centuries since, in various adaptations, usually profitably. And usually, minus the poetry.
        DrStormyDaniels 3y ago
        You are right of course. The plays are plays. And ”commercial” minus the poetry ;) and yet, the poetry is there, for the non-commercial reader. (I hear they exist)
Yodel0914 3y ago
Same. It took me a few attempts to get all the way through it, but it was certainly worth it. Never has Satan been so... relatable.
billfruit 3y ago
Samuel Johnson wasn't a fan. He wrote of Paradise Lost: "Its perusal is a duty than a pleasure". "The confusion of spirit and matter which provides the whole narration of the war of heaven fills it with incongruity. And the book in which it is related is I believe, the favourite of children, and gradually neglected as knowledge is increased."
- kijin 3y ago
  That would be totally expected of Johnson. He was diametrically opposed to Milton in almost every subject that mattered: literary style, politics, and theology.
dhosek 3y ago
In an alternate universe, I’m a Milton scholar. One of the things¹ that actually led to my not getting there was when I transferred schools and became a full English major instead of an English-Math double major. While I was the latter, I had registration priority at Pomona College as an English major even though I was enrolled up the street at Harvey Mudd. When I moved to Pitzer, I lost that priority and was bumped from the senior Milton seminar that I had hoped to be in. ⸻ 1. The other factor is my tendency to be a crappy student. Being more concerned about learning than grades (or even doing the expected work) is not a recipe for being able to get into a good humanities PhD program.

gwern 3y ago

> I’m not a big lit guy but I read this. The first 10% was hard to get through due to how different Milton’s english is from my own. I agree. Milton's English is beautiful but easily on the level of an unmodernized Shakespeare in terms of deterring a reader, who spends as much time cracking the puzzle as they do on any kind of esthetic appreciation. As an experiment, I was trying rewriting _Paradise Lost_ in contemporary blank verse with GPT-4/Claude-2. It was OK, but what I discovered was that what really works is an alliterative verse translation! (I was then informed that it is believed that Milton may have been drawing on an Old English poem about the Fall, "Genesis A", and so this may not be an accident.) Two example renditions of the prologue: 1. Man's first folly, the fateful fruit's taste, From forbidden tree's tempting twig it came, Death and doom dealt, despair in our world, Eden erased, exalted man to mend, Restoring realms of radiant bliss, sing, Sacred muse, who soared on secret summits, Oreb, Sinai, sharing whispered wisdom, With shepherds, teaching truths to chosen kin, Heavens and earth hewn from harrowing haze, Sion's slopes, Siloa's silver stream, Flowing fast by God's grand guiding hand, Grant thy aid to my aspiring anthem, Aiming high above Aonian heights, Pursuing paths untried in prose or rhyme. 2. Man's fatal first taste, the forbidden fruit Whose bitter bloom brought bale and sorrow bleak With paradise perished, till One more mighty restores what was lost Reclaims the radiant seats—O sacred Muse, Who on Sinai's summit secret And Horeb's height inspired Chosen seers to teach the tribes since time first woke, How heavens and earth arose from Chaos hoar, Or if thou rather tread Sion's summit steep, And Siloa's silvern stream that rushed thereby Where dwelt the oracle and rock of God, That poured forth fates—now lend thy light, that I May soar on song's ambitious wings Above Parnassus' peaks, pursuing lofty themes... Great matters meet for grandest strains of lore. Thee chiefly, thee, heart's truth, soul's purest shine, O Spirit blest, who scorneth shrine and show Inspire my strain; for thou, who knowest all, Hast known since earth's first sunrise. Mighty wings Did brood with wings outspread upon the formless void Kindling Chaos into teeming, shaping flame; To attain the epic theme, this lofty matter, In hymns that hallow Heaven's eternal ways.

DrStormyDaniels 3y ago
It takes less time than you might think to get aquatinted with older English spellings, especially if you start at the deep end with Chaucer; it’s plain sailing after. Personally I got to enjoy and prefer the absolute disregard for standard spellings, capitalisation, and punctuation, so much that I find it harder to read, e.g. Shakespeare in a modernised text. More interestingly, there’s the problem of translating or updating poetry. If the poem was written with full self-consciousness of word choice, then the meaning really is lost by “updating” it, and where the poetry is best written, the meaning will be most lost.
- Animats 3y ago
  If you read the Canterbury Tales, read one half way through and ask yourself how it will end. You'll be right. Plot twists hadn't been invented yet. Those now-cliche plots were new back then.
  - DrStormyDaniels 3y ago
    Perhaps, but I think that is beside the point. I read the tales for the voices of the characters, and for the poetry. It’s like Shakespeare, where the plot or story is usually a bit boring, more of a pretext to the poetry, and not really the purpose.
    - Animats 3y ago
      Not Shakespeare. Shakespeare's plays are successful commercial theater. They were performed in his day, profitably. They have been widely performed for centuries since, in various adaptations, usually profitably. And usually, minus the poetry.
      - DrStormyDaniels 3y ago
        You are right of course. The plays are plays. And ”commercial” minus the poetry ;) and yet, the poetry is there, for the non-commercial reader. (I hear they exist)

Yodel0914 3y ago

Same. It took me a few attempts to get all the way through it, but it was certainly worth it. Never has Satan been so... relatable.

billfruit 3y ago

Samuel Johnson wasn't a fan. He wrote of Paradise Lost: "Its perusal is a duty than a pleasure". "The confusion of spirit and matter which provides the whole narration of the war of heaven fills it with incongruity. And the book in which it is related is I believe, the favourite of children, and gradually neglected as knowledge is increased."

kijin 3y ago
That would be totally expected of Johnson. He was diametrically opposed to Milton in almost every subject that mattered: literary style, politics, and theology.

dhosek 3y ago

In an alternate universe, I’m a Milton scholar. One of the things¹ that actually led to my not getting there was when I transferred schools and became a full English major instead of an English-Math double major. While I was the latter, I had registration priority at Pomona College as an English major even though I was enrolled up the street at Harvey Mudd. When I moved to Pitzer, I lost that priority and was bumped from the senior Milton seminar that I had hoped to be in. ⸻ 1. The other factor is my tendency to be a crappy student. Being more concerned about learning than grades (or even doing the expected work) is not a recipe for being able to get into a good humanities PhD program.