Plain talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

---

England is celebrating the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Milton. to mark this occasion a new book about him has just been published. It is by Anna Beer with the title Milton: Poet, Pamphleeter and Patriot. At the same time a selection of his poems by Claire Tomain has appeared.

Writing in the Books Supplement of the Times, Peter Ackroyd examines Milton legacy and discusses the two publications. About the biography Ackroyd writes, "Beer gives a persuasive reading of the power and complexity of Paradise Lost, arguably the greatest religious poem in the English language." Paradise Lost was followed three years later by Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes and History of Britain.

Milton was one of the poets we studied at the English Department of the Faculty of Arts in Cairo. I still remember listening to Professor Holloway reading some of Milton's poems, including passages from Paradise Lost which, I believe, was rendered into Arabic by Dr Lewis Awad.

Milton had a rather adventurous life. From his early age he was a serious student. As a boy he studied hard and rarely went to bed before midnight. He learnt Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and Italian. Indeed he began writing poetry in Latin and Italian.

The age of Milton, the 17th century, was marked by two things, a passionate debate about the nature of Catholicism, Protestantism and the whole range of religious dissent. As Ackroyd put it "No one (or hardly anyone) was an unbeliever. The life of the mind was inseparable from the notions of piety and prayer." Milton was involved in that debate and contributed to it by his religious poems.

The other event that characterised that period was the civil war between King and Parliament which ended with the execution of Charles I. Milton was caught up in this conflict and he was on the side of Cromwell, the leader of the anti-royal movement. Milton wrote pamphlets against the King which were condemned as licentious and irreligious. He became, in the words of Ackroyd "a revolutionary republican." After the execution of the King, Milton accepted the post of Secretary for Foreign Tongues in Cromwell's government.

It was during that time that Milton began to lose his sight, ending in complete blindness. About this he wrote "Then let us bear it. to be blind is not miserable, not to be able to bear blindness is miserable."

From time to time, I still go to Milton's poem On His Blindness :

"When I consider how my light is spent/

E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,/

And that one talent which is death to hide,/

Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent/

To serve therewith my Maker, and present/

My true account, least he returning chide,/

Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,/

I fondly ask"

Milton ends the poem with submission and religious fervour:

[..] his state is kingly./

Thousands at his bidding speed/

And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:/

They also serve who only stand and waite."

When Cromwell died in 1658, Milton's political world died with him. On the return of the King in 1660, Milton went into hiding. His books were burnt, and when he emerged from hiding he was arrested and imprisoned for two months. "There could be no more tracts, no more pamphlets," writes Ackroyd, "Instead he began work on a subject upon which he had mused in his cell and in his blindness, a biblical epic on the loss of Paradise." Hence his series of religious poems, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.

Ackroyd writes "All of his works were of a piece, a long symphony that ended only on his death. His writing is as eloquent and as engaging as it ever was. Milton was sure of his genre, and he knew he would triumph in the end."