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Jan. 16th, 2026 07:56 am
started re-reading Paradise Lost
Because someone on Substack is doing a slow read for 2026. I don't know that I was ever a huge Milton fan, but on my bookshelf I had a collected anthology of his work, which included a version of Paradise Lost with all the footnotes. (Required reading for an English literature major who actually didn't care much for English literature.) Thank god, too, because I honestly found it difficult to parse - like, who is talking here, and what are they talking about? Nevertheless, I am still getting a lot out of it, but I swear half the footnotes are like, so Milton totally cribbed this from Dante's The Inferno.
Some absolutely great lines, though:
Some absolutely great lines, though:
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then he
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.
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