Dear Readers: Have I told you that I’ve committed Milton’s Paradise Lost to memory? Yes, all 10,561 lines! It’s enriching — and it feels as if I’m carrying around with me a big gallery full of some of the greatest works of art in the world, because that’s what one scene after another is, or one speech.
Anyway, for this our week on what is right, I’m going to read a couple of speeches from the beginning of Book 12. Saint Michael the archangel, sent by God to remove Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, but not before he fortifies Adam with knowledge of what is to come, and with the salvation to be wrought by Christ the Son of God, is here revealing what will happen after the Flood — the career of Nimrod, that “mighty hunter before the Lord,” whom Milton, like the Church Fathers before him, associated with the Tower of Babel. So arrogance against God and the desire to subjugate your fellow human beings go together. Adam is displeased to hear of it, but Michael advises him that because of his original sin, “true liberty / Is lost.” True liberty always dwells twinned with “right reason.” It is impossible to be free if you give yourself over to what violates reason: wickedness and folly are like shackles that people clap on their own hearts and minds and souls — and nations too. Our American forefathers all knew this — and we should heed the lesson too!
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