Milton Appreciation Week: Satan's Encounter with the Fires of Hell: Paradise Lost, Book I

Satan/Lucifer, another of Gustave Doré's illustrations

for Paradise Lost by John Milton

Here is our first glimpse of the landscape surrounding the fallen and angels and their leader. What powerful images Milton creates for us.

Satan and his rebellious crew of fallen angels have been "hurl'd headlong flaming from th' Ethereal Sky with hideous ruin and combustion down to bottomless perdition." (Paradise Lost, I: 45-47).

A few lines later the poet writes:

...for now the thought

Both of lost happiness and lasting pain

Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes

That witnesse'd huge affliction and dismay

mixt with obdurate pride and steadfast hate:

At once as far as Angels ken he views

The dismal Situation waste and wild,

A dungeon horrible on all sides round

As one great furnace flam'd, yet those flames

No light, but rather darkness visible,

Serv'd only to discover sights of woe, (italics mine)

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace

And rest can never dwell, hope never comes

That comes to all; but torture without end

Still urges and a fiery Deluge, fed

With ever-burning Sulphur, unconsum'd:

Such place Eternal Justice had prepar'd

For those rebellious, here thir Prison ordained

In utter darkness and thir portion set

As far removed from God and light of Heav'n

As from the Center thrice to th' utmost Pole.

(Book I, Verses 54-74)

Just as I focused-in my recent blog- on the woe ( "Nature from her seat Sighing through all Words gave signs of woe Book IX, Verse 84) that Eve abruptly ushered into our universe by her eating the apple from the forbidden tree, so too here, Milton gives us a vivid picture of the sights and pains of woe that Satan first experiences as he plummets from heaven to the burning seas of hell.

Milton draws upon Dante's inscription on the Gates of Hell in the Inferno: "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." Milton writes: "And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all.... but torture without end."

Satan's 'baleful eyes' survey the scene; the dictionary meaning of baleful is malignant or evil in intent. What he takes in is an expanse that covers long distances, miles and miles; he is enveloped in a 'dungeon' a vast prison from which he cannot seemingly escape. Sulphurous flames envelop him and his entourage of fallen angels.

Milton uses a powerful metaphor--'darkness visible' to describe the scene. The phrase is an oxymoron, for, indeed, how can darkness be visible. I think what Milton is hinting at is the inner state of mind, the dark evil, the inner blackness that permeates Satan and his crew. The persistent flames of hell burn bright and eternal to reveal the depravity of its denizens that will never be concealed.

In other words, light exposes evil.

Milton describes their 'Prison ordained in utter darkness.' This is a reference, I believe, to Satan being 'ordained' or self-crowned) the Prince of Darkness--at the opposite pole to God, who is embellished by the 'light of heaven.'