A Preface to Paradise Lost

by C.S. Lewis

The first qualification for judging any piece of workmanship from a corkscrew to a cathedral is to know what it is—what it was intended to do and how it is meant to be used.

He is writing epic poetry which is a species of narrative poetry, and neither the species nor the genus is very well understood at present.

The first question he asked himself was not ‘What do I want to say?’ but ‘What kind of poem do I want to make?’—to which of the great pre-existing kinds, so different in the expectations they excite and fulfil, so diverse in their powers, so recognizably distinguished in the minds of all cultured readers, do I intend to contribute?

Every poem can be considered in two ways—as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes.

It is easy to forget that the man who writes a good love sonnet needs not only to be enamoured of a woman, but also to be enamoured of the Sonnet.

The Christian and the classical elements are not being kept in watertight compartments, but being organized together to produce a whole.

This quality will be understood by any one who really understands the meaning of the Middle English word solempne. This means something different, but not quite different, from modern English solemn. Like solemn it implies the opposite of what is familiar, free and easy, or ordinary. But unlike solemn it does not suggest gloom, oppression, or austerity.

The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender’s inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.

Music means not the noises it is nice to make, but the noises it is nice to hear. Good poetry means not the poetry men like composing, but the poetry men like to listen to or to read.

To look for single ‘good’ lines is like looking for single ‘good’ stones in a cathedral.

Epic diction, Christmas fare, and the liturgy, are all examples of ritual—that is, of something set deliberately apart from daily usage, but wholly familiar within its own sphere.

Continuity is an essential of the epic style. If the mere printed page is to affect us like the voice of a bard chanting in a hall, then the chant must go on—smoothly, irresistibly, ‘upborne with indefatigable wings’. We must not be allowed to settle down at the end of each sentence. Even the fuller pause at the end of a paragraph must be felt as we feel the pause in a piece of music, where the silence is part of the music, and not as we feel the pause between one item of a concert and the next. Even between one Book and the next we must not wholly wake from the enchantment nor quite put off our festal clothes. A boat will not answer to the rudder unless it is in motion; the poet can work upon us only as long as we are kept on the move.

We need most urgently to recover the lost poetic art of enriching a response without making it eccentric, and of being normal without being vulgar. Meanwhile—until that recovery is made—such poetry as Milton’s is more than ever necessary to us.

In the Dry Salvages Mr. Eliot speaks of ‘music heard so deeply that it is not heard at all’. Only as we emerge from the mode of consciousness induced by the symphony do we begin once more to attend explicitly to the sounds which induced it. In the same way, when we are caught up into the experience which a ‘grand’ style communicates, we are, in a sense, no longer conscious of the style.

‘Men do mightily wrong themselves when they refuse to be present in all ages and neglect to see the beauty of all kingdoms.’ TRAHERNE.

I held this theory myself for many years, but I have now abandoned it. I continue, of course, to admit that if you remove from people the things that make them different, what is left must be the same, and that the Human Heart will certainly appear as Unchanging if you ignore its changes. But I have come to doubt whether the study of this mere L.C.M. is the best end the student of old poetry can set before himself.

In order to take no unfair advantage I should warn the reader that I myself am a Christian, and that some (by no means all) of the things which the atheist reader must ‘try to feel as if he believed’ I actually, in cold prose, do believe. But for the student of Milton my Christianity is an advantage. What would you not give to have a real, live Epicurean at your elbow while reading Lucretius?

God created all things without exception good, and because they are good, ‘No Nature (i.e. no positive reality) is bad and the word Bad denotes merely privation of good,’ (De Civ. Dei, XI, 21, 22).

What we call bad things are good things perverted (De Civ. Dei, XIV, 11). This perversion arises when a conscious creature becomes more interested in itself than in God (ibid. XIV, 11), and wishes to exist ‘on its own’ (esse in semet ipso, XIV, 13). This is the sin of Pride. The first creature who ever committed it was Satan ‘the proud angel who turned from God to himself, not wishing to be a subject, but to rejoice like a tyrant in having subjects of his own’ (XIV, 11).

From this doctrine of good and evil it follows (a) That good can exist without evil, as in Milton’s Heaven and Paradise, but not evil without good (De Civ. Dei, XIV, 11). (b) That good and bad angels have the same Nature, happy when it adheres to God and miserable when it adheres to itself (ibid. XII, 1).

Though God has made all creatures good He foreknows that some will voluntarily make themselves bad (De Civ. Dei, XIV, 11) and also foreknows the good use which He will then make of their badness (ibid.).

As the angels point out, whoever tries to rebel against God produces the result opposite to his intention (VII, 613). At the end of the poem Adam is astonished at the power ‘that all this good of evil shall produce’ (XII, 470). This is the exact reverse of the programme Satan had envisaged in Book I, when he hoped, if God attempted any good through him, to ‘pervert that end’ (164); instead he is allowed to do all the evil he wants and finds that he has produced good. Those who will not be God’s sons become His tools.

If there had been no Fall, the human race after multiplying to its full numbers would have been promoted to angelic status (De Civ. Dei, XIV, 10). Milton agrees.

Satan attacked Eve rather than Adam because he knew she was less intelligent and more credulous (De Civ. Dei, XIV, 11). So Milton’s Satan is pleased to find ‘the woman, opportune to all attempts’ separated from the man ‘whose higher intellectual more he shuns’ (P.L. IX, 483).

Adam was not deceived. He did not believe what his wife said to him to be true, but yielded because of the social bond (socialis necessitudo) between them (De Civ. Dei, XIV, 11). Milton, with a very slightly increased emphasis on the erotic, at the expense of the affectional, element in Adam’s motive, almost paraphrases this—‘Against his better knowledge, not deceav’d But fondly overcome with Femal charm’ (P.L. IX, 998).

The Fall consisted in Disobedience. All idea of a magic apple has fallen out of sight. The apple was ‘not bad nor harmful except in so far as it was forbidden’ and the only point of forbidding it was to instil obedience, ‘which virtue in a rational creature (the emphasis is on creature; that which though rational, is merely a creature, not self-existent being) is, as it were, the mother and guardian of all virtues’ (De Civ. Dei, XIV, 12).

But while the Fall consisted in Disobedience it resulted, like Satan’s, from Pride (De Civ. Dei, XIV, 13). Hence Satan approaches Eve through her Pride: first by flattery of her beauty (P.L. IX, 532–48) which ‘should be seen . . . ador’d and served by Angels’ and secondly (this is more important) by urging her selfhood to direct revolt against the fact of being subject to God at all. ‘Why,’ he asks, ‘was this forbid? Why but to keep ye low and ignorant, His worshippers?’ (IX, 703).

Since the Fall consisted in man’s Disobedience to his superior, it was punished by man’s loss of Authority over his inferiors; that is, chiefly, over his passions and his physical organism (De Civ. Dei, XIV, 15). Man has called for anarchy: God lets him have it.

This Disobedience of man’s organism to man is specially evident in sexuality as sexuality now is but would not have been but for the Fall (XIV, 16–19). What St. Augustine means here is, in itself, so clear and yet so open to misunderstanding if not given in full, that we must not pass it over. He means that the sexual organs are not under direct control from the will at all. You can clench your fist without being angry and you can be angry without clenching your fist; the modification of the hand preparatory to fighting is controlled directly by the will and only indirectly, when at all, by the Passions.

Milton thought men made only for rebellion and women only for obedience. Others have assumed that since he was a rebel against the monarchy of the Stuarts he must also have been a rebel against the monarchy of God and secretly of the devil’s party. At the very least, there is felt to be a disquieting contrast between republicanism for the earth and royalism for Heaven. In my opinion, all such opinions are false

Eve fell through Pride. The serpent tells her first that she is very beautiful, and then that all living things are gazing at her and adoring her (IX, 532–41). Next he begins to make her ‘feel herself impair’d’. Her beauty lacks spectators. What is one man? She ought to be ador’d and served by angels: she would be queen of heaven if all had their rights (IX, 542–8). God is trying to keep the human race down: Godhead is their true destiny (703, 711), and Godhead is what she thinks of when she eats (790). The results of her fall begin at once. She thinks that earth is a long way from Heaven and God may not have seen her (811–16); the doom of Nonsense is already at work. Next she decides that she will not tell Adam about the fruit. She will exploit her secret to become his equal—or no, better still, his superior (817–25).

It is, of course, important to realize that there is no war between Satan and Christ. There is a war between Satan and Michael; and it is not so much won as stopped, by Divine intervention.

As for the style of the poem, I have already noted this peculiar difficulty in the meeting the adverse critics, that they blame it for the very qualities which Milton and his lovers regard as virtues. Milton institutes solemn games, funeral games, and triumphal games in which we mourn the fall and celebrate the redemption of our species; they complain that his poetry is ‘like a solemn game’. He sets out to enchant us and they complain that the result sounds like an incantation. His Satan rises to make a speech before an audience of angels ‘innumerable as the starrs of night’ and they complain that he sounds as if he were ‘making a speech’. It reminds us of Aristotle’s question—if water itself sticks in a man’s throat, what will you give him to wash it down with? If a man blames port wine for being strong and sweet, or a woman’s arms for being white and smooth and round, or the sun for shining, or sleep because it puts thought away, how can we answer him?

The poet who finds by introspection that the soul is mere chaos is like a policeman who, having himself stopped all the traffic in a certain street, should then solemnly write down in his note-book ‘The stillness in this street is highly suspicious.’