Paradise Lost

John Milton

• Éditeur: Open Road Media
• Année: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781504062107
• Sujet: Littérature
• Sous-sujet: Poésie

"The greatest epic poem in the English language... A work of unparalleled imaginative genius that shapes English literature even now." —Benjamin Ramm, BBC.com Written in blank verse by the seventeenth-century English poet John Milton, this "epic of over 10, 000 lines is a dramatic, imaginative version of Satan's rebellion against God and of Adam and Eve's eviction from Eden. Set at the beginnings of human history, it shifts us across an expansive universe: Heaven at the top—Earth dangling from it—and Hell at the bottom, a dark gloomy Chaos in between. It tells the story of divine creation, human ambition and hopeless rebellion, but is perhaps most famous for its presentation of Satan, an intensely deep character" ( New Statesman ). "Milton's cosmos is a visionary unfolding and enfolding of the biblical map with others from his vast mental bookstore. Paradise Lost itself is a densely intertextual amalgam of fictional worlds, made newly brilliant by the imagination behind the poet's now sightless eyes, embodied in blank verse at its most vigorously muscled.... That verse flows, twists, ripples and thunders like a team of miraculously tireless and synchronised horses. It's the perfect body-mind work-out." — The Guardian

Book IX

The Argument

Satan having compassed the earth, with meditated guile returns as a mist by night into Paradise, enters into the serpent sleeping, Adam and Eve in the morning go forth to their labours, which Eve proposes to divide in several places, each labouring apart: Adam consents not, alleging the danger, lest that Enemy, of whom they were forewarned, should attempt her found alone: Eve loath to be thought not circumspect or firm enough, urges her going apart, the rather desirous to make trial of her strength; Adam at last yields: the serpent finds her alone; his subtle approach, first gazing, then speaking, with much flattery extolling Eve above all other creatures. Eve wondering to hear the serpent speak, asks how he attained to human speech and such understanding not till now; the serpent answers, that by tasting of a certain tree in the garden he attained both to speech and reason, till then void of both: Eve requires him to bring her to that tree, and finds it to be the Tree of Knowledge forbidden: the serpent now grown bolder, with many wiles and arguments induces her at length to eat; she pleased with the taste deliberates a while whether to impart thereof to Adam or not, at last brings him of the fruit, relates what persuaded her to eat thereof: Adam at first amazed, but perceiving her lost, resolves through vehemence of love to perish with her; and extenuating the trespass eats also of the fruit: the effects thereof in them both; they seek to cover their nakedness; then fall to variance and accusation of one another.

No more of talk where God or angel guest

With man, as with his friend, familiar used

To sit indulgent, and with him partake

Rural repast, permitting him the while

Venial discourse unblamed: I now must change

Those notes to tragic; foul distrust, and breach

Disloyal on the part of man, revolt,

And disobedience: on the part of Heav’n

Now alienated, distance and distaste,

Anger and just rebuke, and judgement giv’n,

That brought into this world a world of woe,

Sin and her shadow Death, and misery

Death’s harbinger: sad task, yet argument

Not less but more heroic than the wrath

Of stem Achilles on his foe pursued

Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage

Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused,

Or Neptune’s ire or Juno’s, that so long

Perplexed the Greek and Cytherea’s son;

If answerable style I can obtain

Of my celestial patroness, who deigns

Her nightly visitation unimplored,

And dictates to me slumb’ring, or inspires

Easy my unpremeditated verse:

Since first this subject for heroic song

Pleased me long choosing, and beginning late;

Not sedulous by nature to indite

Wars, hitherto the only argument

Heroic deemed, chief mast’ry to dissect

With long and tedious havoc fabled knights

In battles feigned; the better fortitude

Of patience and heroic martyrdom

Unsung; or to describe races and games,

Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields,

Impreses quaint, caparisons and steeds;

Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights

At joust and tournament; then marshalled feast

Served up in hall with sewers, and seneschals;

The skill of artifice or office mean,

Not that which justly gives heroic name

To person or to poem. Me of these

Nor skilled nor studious, higher argument

Remains, sufficient of itself to raise

That name, unless an age too late, or cold

Climate, or years damp my intended wing

Depressed, and much they may, if all be mine,

Not hers who brings it nightly to my ear.

The sun was sunk, and after him the star

Of Hesperus, whose office is to bring

Twilight upon the earth, short arbiter

’Twixt day and night, and now from end to end

Night’s hemisphere had veiled the horizon round:

When Satan who late fled before the threats

Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improved

In meditated fraud and malice, bent

On man’s destruction, maugre what might hap

Of heavier on himself, fearless returned.

By night he fled, and at midnight returned

From compassing the earth, cautious of day,

Since Uriel regent of the sun descried

His entrance, and forewarned the Cherubim

That kept their watch; thence full of anguish driv’n,

The space of seven continued nights he rode

With darkness, thrice the equinoctial line

He circled, four times crossed the car of Night

From pole to pole, traversing each colure;

On the eighth returned, and on the coast averse

From entrance or Cherubic watch, by stealth

Found unsuspected way. There was a place,

Now not, though sin, not time, first wrought the change,

Where Tigris at the foot of Paradise

Into a gulf shot under ground, till part

Rose up a fountain by the Tree of Life;

In with the river sunk, and with it rose

Satan involved in rising mist, then sought

Where to lie hid; sea he had searched and land

From Eden over Pontus, and the pool

Maeotis, up beyond the river Ob;

Downward as far Antarctic; and in length

West from Orontes to the ocean barred

At Darien, thence to the land where flows

Ganges and Indus: thus the orb he roamed

With narrow search; and with inspection deep

Considered every creature, which of all

Most opportune might serve his wiles, and found

The serpent subtlest beast of all the field.

Him after long debate, irresolute

Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose

Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom

To enter, and his dark suggestions hide

From sharpest sight: for in the wily snake,

Whatever sleights none would su...