Predawn Paradise Lost Book 3 iPhone Blogging

May I just say that mainstream "orthodox" Calvinist Protestantism contains things orders of magnitude more bats--- insane than any of the "special" doctrines of the Book of Mormon?

Paradise Lost 3:

Man shall not quite be lost, but sav'd who will;
Yet not of will in him, but grace in me
Freely vouchsaf'd; once more I will renew
His lapsed powers, though forfeit; and enthrall'd
By sin to foul exorbitant desires;
Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand
On even ground against his mortal foe;
By me upheld, that he may know how frail
His fallen condition is, and to me owe
All his deliverance, and to none but me.
Some I have chosen of peculiar grace,
Elect above the rest; so is my will:
The rest shall hear me call, and oft be warn'd
Their sinful state, and to appease betimes
The incensed Deity...
But hard be harden'd, blind be blinded more,
That they may stumble on, and deeper fall...

To change topics completely, the coming of the iPod/iPhone has changed how I hear the literary world. I had never been able to get long poems. The Odyssey and the Iliad and Gilgamesh I found gripping to the extent that I could read them in prosy or semi-prosy translation, and occasional stanzas ripped out and presented to me were poewrful and affecting. But all the rest, or the Iliad and Odyssey in verse translations, were annoying and painful. When I read them at my normal pace the syntax was awkward and confusing. When I read them more slowly, the plot and the ideas dragged and came through much much too slowly--almost as painful as watching the uniformed pundits babble on CNN, where at most one thought a minute emerges, and that is usually wrong. And the rhythm and assonance and rhyme--well, I have never heard what I read in my mind's ear, or if I ever did it was forty years ago and that faculty I have lost.

But when you have an iPod/iPhone, you have no excuse not to put the audiotext on it and carry it around with you, and when you attend to it the poetry forces itself upon your brain, and you don't mind nearly as much that the plot and ideas are as from an eyedropper because the words are so glorious, and then you crest the top of Burton Ridge at 7:13 AM on December 8, 2007 while hearing:

Paradise Lost 3:

Satan from hence, now on the lower stair,
That scaled by steps of gold to Heaven-gate,
Looks down with wonder at the sudden view
Of all this world at once. As when a scout,
Through dark and desert ways with peril gone
All night; at last by break of cheerful dawn
Obtains the brow of some high-climbing hill,
Which to his eye discovers unaware
The goodly prospect of some foreign land
First seen, or some renowned metropolis
With glistering spires and pinnacles adorned,
Which now the rising sun gilds with his beams:
Such wonder seised, though after Heaven seen,
The Spirit malign, but much more envy seised,
At sight of all this world beheld so fair...

And you get Paradise Lost in a way that you had never gotten it before.

And America's Silliest Dog^TM, as the rays of the rising sun first strike her eyes, jumps three feet in the air like a nut five times, and then frantically runs in 40-foot circles for four minutes before calming down again. (At least she is obedient enough not to go running over to make friends with Wile E. Coyote who we saw watching us from amidst the cell phone towers 150 yards away.)

And here, courtesy of http://dailycoyote.blogspot.com/, is Mr. Coyote:

---

One more thing: Milton on his blindness:

Paradise Lost 3:

I sung of Chaos and eternal Night;
Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to re-ascend,
Though hard and rare: Thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn....

Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank
Of nature's works to me expung'd and ras'd,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather thou, celestial Light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight...

---

Gustave Dore http://www.artsycraftsy.com/dore/dore_satan_falls.jpg:

Comments

[tom s.]

"then you crest the top of Burton Ridge at 7:13 AM on December 8, 2007 while hearing:

Satan from hence, now on the lower stair,
That scaled by steps of gold to Heaven-gate,
Looks down with wonder at the sudden view
Of all this world at once."

I knew it. DeLong is Satan.

[Walt Pohl]

This is a tempting idea. Where did you get the audiotext?

[afsd]

I missed the part where the mainline Protestant denominations announced that Milton received Paradise Lost from the angel Retardo and translated it from Aramaic with the aid of his trusty slide rule.

[Colin Danby]

Wile E. Jr.: http://dailycoyote.blogspot.com/ (Sentimental, but stunning photography.)

I had a related experience listening to Defoe novels (Penguin audiobooks): passages I'd rush through on the page got better attention and I realized lots was going on in less eventful passages.

[rea]

But, O sad Virgin, that thy power
Might raise Musæus from his bower,
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing 105
Such notes as, warbled to the string,
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek
And made Hell grant what Love did seek!

[susan]

For a real treat, read or listen to Beowulf by Seamus Heaney.

[Bruce Webb]

Brad I understand this is a poetry thread bit it would seem that between Calvinist Election by Grace and Ruling your Own Planet surrounded by your entire family in bodily form the "orders of magnitude more bat___ insane" measurement falls a lot more on the Joseph Smith side than the John Milton side

[Tom Bozzo]

Part of the problem is that contradictions enshrined in doctrine is dime-a-dozen stuff for most organized religions. I'm waiting for the Rev. Brendan Powell Smith (of Brick Testament fame) to do the Book of Mormon in LEGO before deciding who's more bats---.

[Gene O'Grady]

My understanding has always been that Milton, both in PL and his prose theological work (I think it's called de doctrina Christiana, but I may have moved that over from another theologian) is very far from an orthodox Christian of Calvinist or other stripe, and that his views may in fact have something in common with the adaptations of Joe Smith. Milton is, of course, a much better writer.

[sm]

Gene O'Grady has it; these doctrines should be judged as poetry.

Book of Mormon may do pretty poorly on that scale.

[Scott Martens]

Calvinism is mainstream only for Calvinists. The bulk of Protestants are Arminianists. Well, no, the bulk of Protestants have never heard of Jacobus Arminius, but what gets preached bears a much closer resemblance to his doctrines.

[poetryman69]

Watching the Master Craftsman

Working out my Salvation

On the Anvil of Faith

[abc _d]

In Defense Of Mitt Romney

There is a thing called the Book Of Mormon and then there is a thing called hell, I don't live in the Book Of Mormon. I don't live in hell either. I want to know about Milton. Rsound like a theologian. In the end special doctrines can be explained with understanding that Johnny Calvin, Dant Alighieri and Josef Smith were all in reality possesseed.

[wood turtle]

That coyote looks so self satisfied he must have eaten a cat.

On another note, how lucky you are to have a big room with eastern exposure.

[Ken Houghton]

susan - I believe if you check the archives (about a week or two ago), you'll see that he started with Beowulf. (May have been Pincus instead of Heaney, though.)

Brad - The REST shall hear me call is, to put it in optimization terms, a relaxation of the initial condition set forth in Exodus 20:5. It's not "he that believeth and is baptised shall be saved," true, but it's rather nicer than the G-d of Purim (to take the least noble of the "we fought, we won, let's eat" Holy Days).

[Diamond Jim]

For an even bigger treat, check out Benjamin Bagby's performance, in the original, of Beowulf. I saw him live a couple of years ago, and "enthralling" is too mild a word.

[Diamond Jim]

For an even bigger treat, check out Benjamin Bagby's performance, in the original, of Beowulf. I saw him live a couple of years ago, and "enthralling" is too mild a word.

[andres]

Orthodox Calvinism? I thought that consisted entirely in going over a small cliff in a wagon with only a stuffed tiger for company and philosophizing about the nature of existence on the way down. I must have gotten my references wrong.

As for Orthodox Wile E. Coyoteism, that consists mainly of a sorrowful expression on your face as you reach terminal velocity on the way to the bottom of the canyon. Sort of what Ben Bernanke feels when he looks at today's housing market.

And Brad gets the Nobel Prize for Nerdonomics by wasting his iPod listening to epic poetry, of all things. Isn't there some good rap music he can listen to? Sorry, I'm about to go insane combing through US macro data, and pop culture is the only thing that keeps me from going bat____, as Brad would say.

[Bloix]

Look at the ears on that fellow. Bet he can hear a hare nibbling a blade of grass at 5 miles. Course, the hare can hear him listening.

[Bloix]

Look at the ears on that fellow. Bet he can hear a hare nibbling a blade of grass at 5 miles. Course, the hare can hear him listening.

[derrida derider]

Milton's great sonnet on his blindness is both more profound and (lots) more moving than that segment from PL. But alas, it's too short for listening to while commuting.

[derrida derider]

Milton's great sonnet on his blindness is both more profound and (lots) more moving than that segment from PL. But alas, it's too short for listening to while commuting.

[Fruity Bev]

I could never appreciate Ezra Pound until I heard him read his own poetry. It was recorded by two Wellesley students who visited him in St. Elizabeth's.

He has a precise dry New England voice that rolls round periods and then does silly voices for the funny parts: "Five castles!/Five castles!/(King giv em five castles)/And what the hell do I know about dye works?" (Canto XXXVI)

[Fruity Bev]

I could never appreciate Ezra Pound until I heard him read his own poetry. It was recorded by two Wellesley students who visited him in St. Elizabeth's.

He has a precise dry New England voice that rolls round periods and then does silly voices for the funny parts: "Five castles!/Five castles!/(King giv em five castles)/And what the hell do I know about dye works?" (Canto XXXVI)

[wood turtle]

Brad DeLong, don't you have better things to do than to be double posting people? We know what you are doing and the jig is up.

[JRoth]

So Brad, are you listening to the $21 version or the $40 one? The reviews of the $21 one seem to suggest that it's worth the extra $$, but I wonder....

[Karl Bilawski]

1) I recall fondly how Washington DC's more gentrified residents began locking their doors and clicking up the panic-meters a few years ago as the Post reported that coyotes had been spotted in Rock Creek Park. Ferocious animals in our park! Heavens!

This amused me greatly being as I have actually been chewed on by a coyote, as I lay in my sleeping bag atop Glacier Point watching a meteor shower, and a danger to innocent joggers they are not. Cats, certainly.

2) You are aware that your section of Burton Ridge is on the docket for development into an eight-home subdivision? Of course, the state of the housing market may have put the kibosh on that for the time being.