Reviews for The Poetical Works Of John Milton

The average rating for The Poetical Works Of John Milton based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-07-07 00:00:00 Nancy Bernier ADVENTURES IN OLD BOOKS 101 (Or so I'd like to think, no institution I've attended so far has ever offered this course) So I picked this up a few years ago, it was in the musty rare books parlor of Eagle Eye if I recall, all the way in the back, but it was only last week that I finally got around to giving it my full attention. This is Hardy's epic drama, a term, I suppose, which could use some explanation, as there's really no such thing anymore, but for now let's just call it a Gargantua-sized play. My hardback edition is pretty thick & sturdy. It was published by Macmillan in 1923, & there is some cursive handwriting on the back of the front cover, also dated 1923, which reads 'From the Carnegie Trust'. I have rather enjoyed lugging this thing around on the Atlanta coffee shop circuit, & gorging on it when I am able, because Hardy is an excellent poet, & here he is really ambitious as all hell. He was an old man in 1908 by the time he finished The Dynasts, which gives some hope to all of those aging poets out there, who fear this is predominantly a young man's game. Now I could have read this on Gutenberg, for god's sakes, the print in my copy after all is pretty tiny, but then I've been interested in this book's typography for awhile. I'm curious how all of this blank verse & balladry is spread featly on the page, & how all of the cinematic stage directions have been carefully interposed. There's probably a course on FONTS 101 embedded here too, although I imagine you could cover that in a summer session. Anyhow the interesting bit which I really wanted to describe happened today, when I started getting up into the low three hundreds. I was picking up speed, Napoleon was getting remarried & it was really dramatic, until I noticed that a bunch of the pages in the book were stuck together. I tried to get them apart without damaging the book, & as I tugged & maybe even swore a little I realized that they weren't stuck together after all. What in fact had happened was that the pages were never cut properly, and that the top of say page 301 and 303 were joined together by a folded edge. As I flipped further I noticed that this had happened on some of the side edges too, & that some strange eight page interval was trying to manifest itself. The word 'octavo' entered my mind, but that is as far as I got with that. Anyhow I decided after almost no hesitation that something must be done, Gutenberg be damned, & so I ran off to my daughter's room for the safety scissors. Moments later I had begun, with no regrets! to cut. I have since stopped around page 400 or so, there's no rush, I figure I can fix the rest when I get to it. Besides, I want to savor the fact that my copy of this book, which has been a real treat to read, & which I will surely find time someday to go through a second time, is ninety-five years old & counting, & also, for I have had what amounts to surefire proof, that I will soon become the first person in ninety-five years who has ever held it long enough to read it from start to finish.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-02-05 00:00:00 John Corrigan An odd one - a sequence of three historical dramas in verse, intended for reading rather than performance. In adapting to the "drama" novelistic condensations of time and space as well as the novel's capacity for infinitely expandable casts, Hardy anticipates any number of cinematic techniques, some almost certainly requiring digital technology. The main problem here is lack of momentum. Hardy draws all the named characters in his cast from history and the result is more like a pageant of historical scenes than a drama. The only character present from beginning to end is Napoleon, and Hardy doesn't manage to get inside him - he is seen as an instrument of fate, or the "Immanent Will" as Hardy terms it, and this instrumentality largely frees the author of responsibility for delving into motivation. Individual scenes, however, are often excellent and there are memorable passages, like this from Pitt: Tasking and toilsome war's details must be, And toilsome, too, must be their criticism,' Not in a moment's stroke extemporized. - (Part 1 - I. iii.) Or this line from Empress Josephine: Yet there's no joy save sorrow waived awhile. - (Part 2 - I. vi.) Or, from Napoleon's final meditation in defeat: Great men are meteors that consume themselves To light the earth. - (Part 3, VII, ix)Hardy attempts to unify his work by having the action observed and commented upon by a group of "spirits" of different natures: pity, irony, sinister, the years, and the earth. They are a kind of atheistic substitution for the gods of ancient epics. SPIRIT OF THE PITIES What is the creed that these rich rites disclose? SPIRIT OF THE YEARS A local cult, called Christianity, Which the wild dramas of the wheeling spheres Include, with divers other such, in dim Pathetical and brief parentheses, Beyond whose span, uninfluenced, unconcerned, The systems of the suns go sweeping on With all their many-mortaled planet train In mathematic roll unceasingly. SPIRIT OF THE PITIES I did not recognize it here, forsooth; Though in its early, lovingkindly days Of gracious purpose it was much to me. - (Part 1 - I. vi.) These spirits seem to watch the action without foreknowledge, though occasionally, apparently for the sake of a good line, they are allowed to know something of things to come: ARCHDUKE I amply recognize the drear disgrace Involving Austria if this upstart chief Should of his cunning seize and hold in pawn A royal-lineaged son, whose ancestors Root on the primal rocks of history. SPIRIT IRONIC Note that. Five years, and legal brethren they - This feudal treasure and the upstart man! - (Part 1 - IV. iii.) Interestingly, this passage is not included in the Project Gutenberg text of the work. Hardy later somewhat justifies this foreknowledge by having the "spirit of the years" refer to "The bounded prophecy I am dowered with - " (Part 3, IV, ii) Though there are a few passages in prose, mainly for servants and unnamed commoners, most characters speak in an "elevated" blank verse that can seem pretentions or silly at times: Perhaps within this very house and hour, Under an innocent mask of Love or Hope, Some enemy queues my ways to coffin me.... When at the first clash of the late campaign, A bold belief in Austria's star prevailed, There pulsed quick pants of expectation round Among the cowering kings, that too well told What would have fared had I been overthrown! So; I must send down shoots to future time Who'll plant my standard and my story there; And a way opens.'Better I had not Bespoke a wife from Alexander's house. Not there now lies my look. But done is done! - (Part 2, V, i) For the most part I found the scenes narrated by the spirits trying to get through. In addition to providing a "cosmic" perspective on the action, they occasionally speak lyrical passages that I, who read poetry infrequently, found to be somewhat hit or miss. The longest and best of these was this passage in terza rima set in the British encampment on the night before Waterloo: CHORUS OF THE YEARS [aerial music] The eyelids of eve fall together at last, And the forms so foreign to field and tree Lie down as though native, and slumber fast! CHORUS OF THE PITIES Sore are the thrills of misgiving we see In the artless champaign at this harlequinade, Distracting a vigil where calm should be! The green seems opprest, and the Plain afraid Of a Something to come, whereof these are the proofs,' Neither earthquake, nor storm, nor eclipses's shade! CHORUS OF THE YEARS Yea, the coneys are scared by the thud of hoofs, And their white scuts flash at their vanishing heels, And swallows abandon the hamlet-roofs. The mole's tunnelled chambers are crushed by wheels, The lark's eggs scattered, their owners fled; And the hedgehog's household the sapper unseals. The snail draws in at the terrible tread, But in vain; he is crushed by the felloe-rim The worm asks what can be overhead, And wriggles deep from a scene so grim, And guesses him safe; for he does not know What a foul red flood will be soaking him! Beaten about by the heel and toe Are butterflies, sick of the day's long rheum, To die of a worse than the weather-foe. Trodden and bruised to a miry tomb Are ears that have greened but will never be gold, And flowers in the bud that will never bloom. CHORUS OF THE PITIES So the season's intent, ere its fruit unfold, Is frustrate, and mangled, and made succumb, Like a youth of promise struck stark and cold!... And what of these who to-night have come? CHORUS OF THE YEARS The young sleep sound; but the weather awakes In the veterans, pains from the past that numb; Old stabs of Ind, old Peninsular aches, Old Friedland chills, haunt their moist mud bed, Cramps from Austerlitz; till their slumber breaks. CHORUS OF SINISTER SPIRITS And each soul shivers as sinks his head On the loam he's to lease with the other dead From to-morrow's mist-fall till Time be sped! - (Part 3, VI, viii)