The Prologue:
Having read the first four books (of twelve) from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and having at last begun to feel grounded with it—or perhaps at least gotten used to flights through the cosmos by Satan and the (good) heavenly hosts— it is time to return to the beginning of the poem to re-engage, reflect, and recite.
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As is the convention of the “epic,” Milton not only takes on big topics, but also saves us the effort of discerning those topics by telling us the answer in the opening lines: he will tell of the fall of humanity from grace when Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command to stay away from the forbidden tree and its fruit:
Of Man’s First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav’nly Muse (1.1-6a)
And so, Milton does as the great writers of epic tales had done before him: invokes his “Muse.”
For Milton, though, the muse is not Calliope, but the same Holy Spirit who gave inspiration to Moses, writer of the Pentateuch:
That Shepherd who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos . . . I thence
Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous Song (1.8-13)
And divine aid Milton will need, for he boasts of doing one better—nay, infinitely better—than Homer, Virgil, or the writer of Beowulf, writers who told tales of the origins of a people or nation. In contrast, Milton shall narrate the event that affected not one, but all peoples and nations: when Satan succeeded in turning our first parents away from God. We await, then, “Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhyme” (1.16)
Milton prepares by reminding himself of the need to be virtuous (“And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure” 1.17-18), and thus worthy of receiving inspiration from the Muse, which will enable him to accomplish his task to “justify the ways of God to men” (1. 26). No grander goal has ever been undertaken by mere mortal writers! Note, though, the quid pro quo that Milton assumes is necessary for him to receive this inspiration. Surely, he must be good enough before the Muse will reward him with its gift. It is ironic, then, that as Milton is about to embark on a tale of unmerited grace given from God to sinful humanity through Jesus Christ, he himself must be good enough to receive the free gift of inspiration. Is he perhaps demonstrating the same vice that got Adam and Eve into trouble, namely, pride in himself and his own efforts?
Nevertheless, it is not surprising that Milton cries out to the Heavenly Muse for inspiration, for whom among us have not cried out in hope or anxiousness or frustration for a neatly arranged and quickly delivered package of interesting thoughts and clever words, a package of inspiration that provides us with the material we need to fill up the page?
Christian Overtones 