literary passport

binary Bill

Happy 434th birthday, Willy Shakespeare! If the man were around today, Sonnet 110 might look very different:

paradise lost #9

        but still his strength conceal’d,
Which tempted our attempt and wrought our fall.

Satan loves to cast blame on others, usually one specific other, and take credit where credit is not really due. Why are the fallen angels in the pits of hell rather than basking in the glory of the eternal empyrean?

paradise lost #8

yet such wherein apear'd
Obscure some glimps of joy, to have found thir chief
Not in despair, to have found themselves not lost
In loss it self

As the fallen multitudes gather to hear Satan speak, we begin to realize the size and force of this fallen army. The roar of their voices is strong enough to reach beyond Hell to the realm of Chaos and Night.

paradise lost #7

Whose wanton passions in the sacred Porch
Ezekiel saw, when by the Vision led
His eye survay’d the dark Idolatries
Of alienated Judah.

So why was Asoreth, or Ishtar, so anxious to descend into the nether world? Well, for no other reason than that her lover Thammuz had been taken there after receiving a mortal wound.

paradise lost #6

        With this troop
Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians call’d
Astarte, Quen of Heav’n, with crescent Horns

Vincent D’indi (1851 – 1931) was an incredibly gifted French composer who in 1896 wrote a piece for orchestra entitled Ishtar. The music is a set of sensuous variations with a twist — the variations are in reverse. The work begins with abstract wisps of a tune which become increasingly obvious until, after the seventh variation, the theme is revealed in its unadulterated glory. The music illustrates one of the most famous of all stories about the Babylonian goddess Ishtar. Ishtar desires to visit the underworld, but in order to do so she must pass through seven gates. At each gate she must shed a piece of clothing until, upon passing the final threshold, she is totally nude. Her beauty (she is the goddess of love, fertility and war) shines in the underworld at last in the same way that we hear her glorious theme at the end of D’indi’s variations. Ishtar appears in Paradise Lost as Astarte, one of Satan’s minions called up from the burning lake. All of these powerful demons are pagan gods worshipped at sometime during man’s time on earth after leaving paradise. Ishtar’s tale is one of my very favorites and the tone poem by Vincent D’indi captures the goddess/demon magnificently.

paradise lost #5

For those the Race of Israel oft forsook
Thir living strength, and unfrequented left
His righteous Altar

Moloch, Chemos, Baalim, Ashtaroth, Eleale, Thammuz, Dagon, Rimmon, Osiris, Isis, Orus and Belial. These are some in the list of evil friends Satan calls up from the bottom of the fiery lake to join Beelzebub and himself on the burning plain. Milton draws one of his great metaphors to describe the crowds of demons as they hover in the air. Drawing upon one of the most gruesome scenes in the Old Testament, Milton describes this horde as a swarm of locusts that darkens the sky. The plagues God tormented Egypt with are some of the most vivid scenes in the Bible. Swarming toads, rivers running with blood, first-born sons dieing — these are all curses that bring infertility and death. Not only is the reader given an incredibly ghastly image of so many bugs in the sky that the sun is blotted out, these are bugs that are going to destroy mankind’s true spiritual nature. Famine is going to hit hard and heavy in man’s spiritual existence until these locusts are dispersed by God’s ultimate forgiveness in sending down his son as a sacrifice. That, however, is another story for another time. Now Paradise Lost is swarming with locust demons who are planning to destroy anything that God decides to create and that does not bode well for mankind.