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Milton's Paradise Lost
Screenplay for Cinema of the Mind
by John Collier
The Apology
It was entirely without trepidation that I embarked upon this act of pillage. My first objective was the making of a screenplay out of the most dramatic, spectacular and significant parts of Milton's epic, much as certain Romans built their lesser dwellings of materials quarried from the palaces and the monuments of a grander past. Or as the butcher hews his steaks and his sirloins from the unresisting carcass of even the lordliest of bulls. Or, the pious may say, as the hyena . . .
The truth is, a screenwriter of my sort pays no reverence, nor feels he owes any, to even the most august original. All his duty is to what he hopes, always in vain, will appear on the screen.
Printing such a piece of work, even modified as this is, is a more ticklish proposition. Print, after all, is the medium of the epic itself. One might be accused of chewing great poetry into some sort of insipid mash for the benefit of the digest reader. Or, worse yet, of an upstart attempt to edge up to Milton on his own ground, and, taking hold of his cloak, unnoticed by him, endeavoring to pass oneself off as some sort of relation, however distant and however poor. Hither prospect might well cause the boldest to hesitate, and make the wise retrain. Having no such end in view, I did neither.
My first purpose in writing this version was to preserve certain aspects of the screenplay, with which, such is the affectionate nature of my kind, I was in love. In particular, I wanted to retain the pace and immediacy of a certain energetic roughness, which is something quite apart from poetic or literary values.
This thing here is a parade of scenes based on Milton's glorious and appalling images, peopled with hideous or radiant monsters, and with archetypes of human beings caught in the pregnant situations of the table.
Many of Milton's jewels are rough at the edges in this version, having been rudely ripped from their rich setting. I like them rough at the edges.
I have never hesitated to use a cliché in place of the poet's lofty and luminous language when, as sometimes strangely happened, the change seemed to impart enough crude energy to bring up an image clearer and more vivid into the mind's eye.
The ideas in Paradise Lost arise out of profound scholarship, but they are not profound in themselves, being a magnificent but quite orthodox expression of the religious beliefs of three hundred years ago. I do not share these beliefs, and I have substituted other ideas, also not profound in themselves, but which are more in accord with those commonly held today.
Some major portions of the poem have been entirely omitted. Some recount past events sufficiently conveyed in the opening scenes. Others are set in Heaven. Heaven might be adequately expressed in music and even to some extent in words, if they are Milton's words. Unfortunately any attempt to conjure up a definite picture results in something more fit for the calendar than for eternity. I have left out yet other passages because they call for the representation of God in person, which would make for a very embarrassing performance.
Certain great scenes have been worn thin by time, and some others are beautifully illuminated by knowledge that was not available when the original was written. Speech is such a different thing in the dramatic form that almost none of Milton's verse dialogue can be adjusted to it, except for some tremendous lines in the first two books of the poem, which have a quality of their own.
These books contain the basic premise of the dramatic story and all the first great movement of the action. The speeches, at their peak, are the product of the most urgent necessity and the most intense passion acting on a great intelligence. I have been able to take some of these peak lines and, cropping and curbing them as far as my strength allowed, I have used their sense and force and feeling to drive the action on.
Even such jagged fragments echo with enough of the original resonance and rhythm to arouse the question of how they will fall upon a modern ear. It seems to me that, as long as they are spoken plainly and without any added expressiveness, they will sound exactly as they should.
In the later books the speeches become less simple and direct. Others have guessed at an ambivalence on the part of the poet toward certain characters, or values or issues. It is a matter on which I am neither qualified nor inclined to pronounce. Whatever the cause, I have found that after the stupendous council of war in the second of the twelve books it was necessary to use such words as I could muster for myself, which of course means weaker words. Perhaps this is not entirely a disadvantage when Adam and Eve enter the scene. Being human, it seems only fitting that they should speak with less than the tongues of archangels.
In the first two books of Paradise Lost the defeated rebels fall from Heaven with hideous ruin and combustion down into the burning lake. Satan extricates himself, and raises and rallies his followers. They erect a templepalace- fortress to be called Pandemonium. In its shelter grand strategy is discussed, a counterattack decided on, and its objective chosen — God's new creation, Man. Satan himself will reconnoiter. The horrid continents of Hell are over-flown, Sin and Death confronted at Hell gate, Satan flies through the universe in search of the new-made Earth, and finds it.
Who would, or could, steer aside from such a cataract of action? The speeches, as if to make themselves heard above the torrent, seem as they reach their crest to shout from the printed page. They throb with an urgency that bursts out of all rounded eloquence and into an utterance as natural to this century as to their own. Churchill's growl of defiance after Dunkirk was not essentially more modern in tone than the undaunted speech with which Satan maintains his resolution after the fall —
What though the field be lost?
All is not lost – the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield.
In the epic, it's true, Satan speaks these words only to Beelzebub, while both still lie prone in the molten lava. In a dramatic version, with the scene more present to the eye, such ordered thought would imply indifference to the fire. And, if the hosts of the fallen are also to be seen, this allimportant speech, the whole spirit of the resistance, should be audible to them as well. Therefore I have reserved it until Satan can deliver it from the shore, and his words burst like rockets over the seething, struggling crowd, and it is possible to show their utterance and their impact almost simultaneously, and thus convey their magical effect on the morale of the defeated legions.
Now we have a new element for consideration. Satan and all his followers are doomed to torture without end.
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
Such place Eternal Justice had prepared
For those rebellious, here their prison ordained
In utter darkness ...
Yet Satan's shout brings them crowding to the shore, healed of the worst effects of the Hellish fire; soon ranked in martial order, and with music, banners and dazzling arms.
Moreover, they now proceed to raise a superb structure, more magnificent than all the temples and palaces in which Babylon and Egypt enshrined their gods or enthroned their kings.
Milton explains this extraordinary change in the circumstances of those condemned to torture without end plainly enough but not very simply. Satan, he says, lay —
Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence
Had risen or heaved his head but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others, and enraged might see
How all his malice served but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shown
On Man by him seduced, but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured.
In other words, the prisoner was paroled in order that he might commit fresh crimes and incur a yet heavier sentence. Man, at the cost of death to all and damnation to many, was to serve as bait in this outrageous trap.
Luckily Milton, after setting down this explanation, shows us, without naming it, a more likely and a more tolerable one. He shows us the effects of a force that originated in Hell and that has been used on earth, in Heaven's despite, throughout the ages. Frazer could have named it; it is magic. See how Pandemonium, that fairy palace, rose out of the sulfurous, burned-out soil! It rose like an exhalation, with the sound of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet. What better demonstration could we have of the operation of the magic power? And what better formula than Satan's other great dictum, more profound than the first:
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
Consider also that Satan's companions are destined to appear on earth as the false gods of the heathen, and Satan himself as the horned and hoofed deity of the most antique and the most persistent of all idolatries, and later as the dark presence at black mass and witch's sabbath, whose broomstick devotees, fumbling with the last rags and tatters of the ancient mystery, have been pursued by the Church with fire and torment after the great example shown here at the beginning.
Which brings us to the opening of the third book, and into the presence of God, an encounter I had looked forward to with well-founded apprehension.
God sees Satan flying toward the world. (I have taken his wings off, by the way, as boys are said to do with flies; a disgusting practice, but not as disgusting as ever-burning sulphur unconsumed, or the stake and faggots, or the ovens, or the atom bomb, or fire bombing, or napalm, or as any of the detestable wretches who have made use of such abominations.)
God sees Satan, and he foresees that Man will hearken to his glozing lies and easily transgress.
It would seem a simple matter to caution the prospective victim. Sure enough, God sends a warning to Adam, though not, please note, to Eve. Presumably He must also have foreseen the fact that Satan's lies would be told to Eve, and that it was Eve who would be deceived by them, and that she would be the first to eat of the fruit. Nevertheless, it is to Adam the warning is sent, not only because God takes no cognizance of the female, but also for a more extraordinary reason: knowing that Adam will fall, God does not wish him to have any excuse. The Archangel Raphael is sent to put him on the alert lest he pretend surprisal, unadmonished, unforewarned. Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy!
The ill-disposed may well ask why God was so insistent that Adam should not acquire the knowledge of good and evil. Could it be that, given an ability to recognize evil when he saw it, Man might come to an embarrassing conclusion as to which side had triumphed in the primal conflict? Possibly there is some other resolution of the monstrous inconsistency between infinite goodness and unbounded vindictiveness, but, not finding it in Paradise Lost, I hastily backed away into a thicket of lesser contradictions, where I found myself quite comfortably at home.
The first and most important contradiction of all allowed me to avert my gaze from unworthy motives and dreadful deeds, and to accord the Deity the divinest of all his attributes — perfection. Perfection imprisons its possessor as in a crystal; the least move, to better or worse or merely to other, and there is a shattering. With one or two minor exceptions this sublime immobility is in line with the epic, in which, having done His worst at the very outset, God abstains from present and positive action, which is all that this dramatized version makes use of. He therefore remains, as gloriously as you please, off stage.
Not so Satan. His unremitting enterprise and ever-changing moods command attention at every step. It is often asserted, though not by the author himself, that Satan is the true hero of Paradise Lost.
Certainly no figure in history or in myth was ever adorned with such a panoply of heroic virtues. Resplendent in aspect, nor less than Archangel ruined — and even ruined is a romantic addition to an archangel! — of dauntless courage, who durst defy the Omnipotent in arms, steadfast in the bitterest adversity, ingenious in escape, subtle and eloquent, he retains the love and devotion of all the millions who have followed him into unspeakable disaster. His situation is in itself heroic: he is the rebel against the Establishment, the defeated, the exile, the endungeoned, the resurgent, and the guerrilla. To cap it all, he is traduced. He is never referred to except in such terms as evil, proud, cruel, and the like, but we watch in vain for some example of his wickedness.
It will be observed, however, that all the iniquities of which Satan is accused are manifested severally by his closest associates. Mammon, Moloch, Belial and the rest are each the embodiment of a different deadly sin. It has appeared to me not unjust to suggest at times that these individual personalities might have another existence as parts of Satan's own nature. Or, shifting the focus again, it seems possible to present God and Satan as two of the great opposites that contest the universe: the status quo and change, the Establishment and the radical; matter and anti-matter; in this case, good and evil.
According to such a fancy Satan at times may comprehend not only his followers but Hell itself (which Milton says he carries always in his heart). Or, to reduce the greatest of things to the infinitesimal, God in his static perfection might be likened to a crystal, and Satan to the virus which rebels, invades, corrupts and evolves.
Considered as an individual, and as described by Milton, Satan seems to have done nothing worse than do the general run of heroes. He has rebelled and he has attempted, with a measure of success, to subvert his Adversary's creatures. These, surely, are acts of war rather than war crimes, to make a nice distinction. He inflicts no tortures. To the contrary, he is moved to tears, tears such as Angels weep, by the condition of his lowliest followers after the tortures inflicted on them by Another.
Nevertheless, though heroic in the extreme, Satan is not the hero of this particular story. For one thing, his objective, though close to the core of the matter, is not at its very heart, and it is essentially negative. For another, Satan is not human. It would seem that heroism must be encased in our littleness, if only to burst out of it.
Adam, of course, is human by definition. It is true he lacks those little weaknesses we recognize as implicit in the term. Such weaknesses may not be as endearing as their possessors fondly believe; on the other hand, their conspicuous absence is not altogether attractive.
Milton decorates Adam with the names of innumerable fine qualities, but these, like the pejoratives applied to Satan, lack enactment. Thus they remain only words, as formal and unmoving as the measured compliments with which Adam himself prefaces his addresses to Eve.
It must be admitted that Adam, hitherto no more than a prize specimen, suddenly and rather incredibly has his great, romantic moment, a moment of heroism even, in view of the dreadful penalty involved, when he throws in his lot with Eve rather than repudiate his love and remain in favor and immortal in Paradise. Alas, immediately afterward, in the brief space between his utterance of the high resolve and implementing it by eating the fruit, he manages to qualify his sacrifice by persuading himself that the threatened punishment will not be rigorously applied.
Even apart from this, Adam has appeared as such a paragon of all the deadlier virtues that his sudden flare of heroism seems strangely pale and unreal, like a flame in daylight, lacking its dark opposite to show it for what it is. Someone less unrelievedly serene and noble, even someone weak, timid, and uncertain, might at once surprise and convince us by a breathless act of daring and thus emerge as the true hero of the story.
And finally, the true hero of any story is surely the one who does the essential thing, the deed which is that story's raison d'être. Paradise Lost is the story of the loss of Paradise and the attainment of the knowledge of good and evil — and the character who loses the one and gains for us the other is Eve.
For this reason, I have ventured to add a little, here and there, to Eve's personality as depicted by Milton. I have tried to endow her with a stirring of instincts that the bliss of Paradise itself cannot wholly satisfy, and with a little sympathy for greatness and beauty cast down, and with a flicker of vision on such matters as the close relationship between love and sin, and between death and new life. If these slight changes, and the darker tinge I have infused into her complexion, make this Eve seem an unwarrantable distortion of Milton's concept, I shall have failed; if in spite of this the reader still finds her lovable, the attempt will not have been entirely in vain.
J.C.
P.S. I have, in three separate places, used single lines from Shakespeare, Blake, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. I would not have stolen them except that my need was great.
