PARADISE LOST

[Lozzer]

This is my favourite part of Paradise Lost so far:

Farewell, happy fields Where joy forever dwells: hail horrors, hail Infernal World, and thou profoundest hell
Receive thy new possessor: One who brings a mind not to be changed by place or time.
The Mind is it own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of Heaven. And what matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less than he Whom thunder hath made greater?

Explain?

I understand the first part is Satan bidding goodbye to a better place and saying hello and grasping the evil of his new home. But what about the second? Is Satan referring to God who seems to have forgotten Lucifer and many other Angels in favour of Mankind? I also understand the third lines which seems to state that reality is what you make of it, or at least a show of disregard for environment because Satan will always be the same.

The last line I'm having trouble with, is Satan aspiring to be the worse he possibly can be?

[Rum]

Well I admire you for trying to penetrate this as it is a 'classic' of the English language after all. But do you have to? It is after all a load of wank..

If you really have to I will dredge up my English A level and get the cogs spinning..

[Lozzer]

Well I admire you for trying to penetrate this as it is a 'classic' of the English language after all. But do you have to? It is after all a load of wank..

If you really have to I will dredge up my English A level and get the cogs spinning..

I think its beautiful. Milton pisses on Shakespeare.

[Clinton Huxley]

Well I admire you for trying to penetrate this as it is a 'classic' of the English language after all. But do you have to? It is after all a load of wank..

If you really have to I will dredge up my English A level and get the cogs spinning..

I think its beautiful. Milton pisses on Shakespeare.

Dante could beat both of them at arm wrestling.

[Rum]

Well I admire you for trying to penetrate this as it is a 'classic' of the English language after all. But do you have to? It is after all a load of wank..

If you really have to I will dredge up my English A level and get the cogs spinning..

I think its beautiful. Milton pisses on Shakespeare.

I don't agree. I think Shakespeare is another level altogether but I do agree it is beautiful. The thing is though that it is symbolic and allegorical, but about stuff that Milton and people of his time believed absolutely, which was by and large total wooo.

I don't actually understand the last line - I admit it.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I think he's commenting that he will always be less than gawd - "he whom thunder has made greater"

[Trolldor]

When I read paradise lost, the 'gawd bother' parts read like a tack-on.

[Lozzer]

So? It's fiction who cares.

[Trolldor]

I mean, that Satan goes on these massive rants against how he's tired of submission, and then expected to submit not only to God unquestioningly, but man as well.
And then for no reason he just comes to an epiphany that god is awesome... because.

[Lozzer]

I mean, that Satan goes on these massive rants against how he's tired of submission, and then expected to submit not only to God unquestioningly, but man as well.
And then for no reason he just comes to an epiphany that god is awesome... because.

Thanks for the spoiler

[ficklefiend]

I mean, that Satan goes on these massive rants against how he's tired of submission, and then expected to submit not only to God unquestioningly, but man as well.
And then for no reason he just comes to an epiphany that god is awesome... because.

Thanks for the spoiler

Shit, I haven't got that far through yet either! Should have seen it coming I suppose...

To my mind it's something like "what does it matter if my place is to be less powerful than god?"