our final hope Is flat despair: we must exasperate Th’ Almighty Victor to spend all his rage; 145 And that must end us; that must be our cure— To be no more. Sad cure! for who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallowed up and lost 150 In the wide womb of uncreated Night, Devoid of sense and motion? And who knows, Let this be good,
Belial
Belial’s speech in Paradise Lost is Milton’s most unexpectedly existential moment—a passage that anticipates Camus in its clarity about the human condition. When Belial insists that their “final hope is flat despair,” he voices the absurd recognition that suffering is endless and escape impossible, yet immediately recoils from the only true release—non-existence. His lament that no one would willingly surrender “this intellectual being, those thoughts that wander through eternity” captures the paradox at the heart of consciousness: we long for an end to pain, but we cannot bear the thought of losing the very mind that feels it. Even as he imagines annihilation in the “wide womb of uncreated Night,” a whisper of hope breaks through—“And who knows…”—revealing that hope is instinctive, irrepressible, rising even in despair. In this brief moment, Milton uses a fallen angel to articulate the same tension Camus would later define: existence is unbearable, yet we cling to it; the void terrifies us more than suffering, and hope persists even when reason fails.
