Kenneth Gross: "From Satan and the Romantic Satan: A Notebook"

Before we go any further, Gross points out that reading Milton’s epic requires a critical fideism. (Gross, 421). This fideism, as Gross puts it, is of a “sufficient condition” that provide a means “ for us to try and ground our reading of the poetry on a hypothetical commitment to the polarized terms of the poet’s belief”. (Gross, 421). Gross means to say that in order to follow what is written in Paradise Lost, we must put ourselves in a state that dispels all scientific notions and theories, except those of religious factors that play a key role in the development of this epic.

First things first, Gross’s criticism focuses a great deal on what makes Satan such a compelling character in Paradise Lost. “It is not that I like Satan’s voice, mind, or attitude better than those of other characters in the poem, but rather that Satan, at times, seems to be the only character with a voice, mind, or attitude of his own, or the one who places the stresses of voice, mind, and attitude most clearly” (Gross, 421-422). Gross explains that Satan seems to be the only character in the book, because almost everything that happens in the chapter is about Satan. Books I and II highlight the peak of his height to power; III is about God and His Son talking about the their plan of action as a result of what Satan is doing; IV devotes a great deal of Satan’s thought processes as he witnesses Eve and Adam in Paradise; V relates Eve’s dream about Satan’s temptation as well as Raphael’s discourse of Satan’s revolt against Heaven; Book VI continues to relate the final battle whence Satan fell from Heaven, and VII does not fail to mention again loss of “the envious foe” and his “flaming legions” several times, over the narration of the creation of earth and its inhabitants. (VII, 131-46). Book VIII devotes a few lines of what Raphael saw when he visited Hell. (VIII, 228-47). He tells Adam he hears within “noise other than the sound of dance or song, / Torment and loud lament and furious rage (VIII, 243-44). These lines detail what happens in Book I when Satan and his followers find themselves in Hell. IX focuses on Satan tempting Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which resulted in Eve’s and Adam’s fall from Grace. Book X devotes some of its lines about Satan’s fulfilled mission and what happens when he returns to Pandemonium. (Books XI and XII, I shall recount in a later post, so as to not divert the attention away from what this post is about.) These Books, although they recount of things other than Satan, retells everything as a result of Satan’s rebellion. This is what Gross means when he says that Satan seems to be the only character in the book.

Gross also says that he likes to think about Satan, because how Milton describes Satan’s thought processes parallel how our minds interpret situations when we are under subjectivity, self-consciousness, awkward pressures, and the like. (Gross 422). “The steady awareness of Satan’s conscious and unconscious falsehoods - his lies against himself, his cohorts, his God - the feeling of things lost or evaded, the evidence in his speeches of a mind crossed by longing and pain, the awareness of contexts and unacknowledged truths which press in, threaten, and block: there is a good reason why these also have carried more dramatic weight with readers than the accurate theology of a reasonable God who must have no inside, no underside, no shifts in motivation (indeed, no motivation at all), must in a sense have no mind.” Gross means to say that Satan’s actions and feelings are romantic in a sense, because he is derived from the essence of dramatic plays such as Macbeth and Hamlet. Readers such as myself are more likely to empathize with Satan because he is a character who has faults and who is very much similar to the next human being. Readers like me are less likely to empathize the Son or God because any description that tells any action sprung from these beings carry little dramatic interest, due to them appearing “difficult, spare, authoritative, and their often beautiful utterances may yet appear to us as more unabashedly ‘political’ ”. (Gross, 423). Perfection is boring!!!!!! What exciting thing ever happens from knowing everything? With Satan, its different. We expect drama; we expect conflicts; we expect emotions; we expect chaos erupting from the depths of our soul. With Satan, he appears to be just like us. With Satan - the Romantic Satan - , we liken the battles of frustrations of our daily lives similar to the battles Satan was fighting for as he battles with his own mind. “The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n” (I. 254-55). These lines reflect our own state of mind when we choose to sugar-coat the realities of life. We try to find happiness amidst the chaos resulting from our entropic state, but really, we see things the way we choose our mind to see things. To me, the motivation behind his actions is similar to the depths of our soul, but only constrained by our own superego. This is why I sympathize and empathize Satan and his plight.

- Marjorie D.