Analyse opening Prologue Paradise Lost 1

Analyse, and comment on, the opening of Paradise Lost (Book I)
Or
Discuss the merits of the prologue to Book I of Paradise Lost.

Lines 1-26 of Paradise Lost. (Book 1) are a prologue. (There are three more prologues in Paradise Lost-to Books III, VII, and IX). Following classical example, Milton at once states the theme of his epic poem and invokes a Muse. Homer began the Iliad thus:

Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumbered, Heavenly Goddess sing!

The Muse of the Odyssey was asked to sing of the wanderings of Odysseus. Virgil opened the Aeneid with the words: "Arms and the man I sing". Milton states the theme of Paradise Lost as "man's first disobedience". The emphasis is upon "man" not upon Satan who is not mentioned in the prologue and not referred to until Line 34. Milton follows the classical examples not only in the immediate statement of his principal subject but in the grammatical structure which is highly Latinate. We do not follow the construction of the first sentence until Line 6, when we read: "Sing, Heavenly Muse".

The Prologue clearly shows that the subject-matter is to be derived from the opening chapters of Genesis: the disobedience of man in eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and his Fall as a consequence, bringing death into the world, and all the sorrows from which man has continued to suffer. But, although the story begins with the man who fell, it also mentions the "greater Man" who redeemed mankind.
In later prologues, Milton gives his Muse a classical name, “Urania", the goddess of astronomy, a fitting choice for a poem leading to Heaven. Here, however, she is called "Heavenly Muse", and is localised not upon Mount Olympus or Mount Helicon, but "on the secret top" of Horeb or Sinai, sacred in Hebraic belief, associated here particularly with Moses:

That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the Heavens and Earth
Rose out of Chaos.

A Muse was invoked by a classical poet to help him in the task of writing his poem. Accordingly, Milton asks his Muse to lead him higher than the Aonian mount of the classical poets, because the subject of his epic is higher than theirs. The prologues in Paradise Lost begin as classical invocations but, with one exception, they rise to Christian prayers to the Holy Spirit

In twenty-six lines, we are acquainted with the theme of Paradise Lost, man's first disobedience; we learn that the materials are to be taken chiefly from Genesis, that Milton is writing a classical epic but that he intends, with the aid of the Heavenly Muse, to transcend the classical, and in a poem both Hebrew and Christian, deal with the most profound of all problems, "to justify the ways of God to men". In twenty-six lines, Milton has fused three great civilizations, the main sources of Renaissance religious poetry: classical, Hebrew, and Christian.
Milton's statement of his theme at the beginning of Book I not only follows epic precedent in making such an opening statement; it also, in a remarkably sustained verse-paragraph, indicates the ambitious and comprehensive nature of his task and establishes his status as an epic poet on a higher moral plane than the Latin and Greek classics.
"The placing of the pauses, the rise and fall of the emotion, the high emotional charge in which the poet's sense of dedication and of communion with the great biblical figures of the Old Testament is communicated, the supplicatory cadence of the appeal to have his darkness illumined and his mind elevated, and the final powerful simplicity of the concluding statement of his purpose-all this represents poetic art of a high order.
The devices which Milton uses for sustaining the flow of his great opening passage are worth careful examination. It begins emphatically with simplicity and amplitude: 'Of man's first disobedience'. The sense is then developed, extended, modified, qualified, reconsidered, in a great variety of ways, by the subordination of clauses and the adroit use of conjunctions. prepositions and relative pronouns-and, whose, and, with, till. The reversal of the normal English word-order enables him to place the object of the opening sentence at the beginning (and it is the object, the theme of the poem, which is most important); the first main verb does not come until the sixth line and when it does come it rings out with tremendous emphasis: Sing Heavenly Muse'. But Milton does not pause here, sustaining the flow with a relative pronoun in 'who first taught.......' and weaving on again with
'or........and.........that.........'. The theme, as he states it, is both Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained; his balanced concatenation of clauses enables him to take in, by the way, as it were, the Christian scheme of redemption that was to follow the Fall: 'till one greater Man/Restore us, and regain the blissful seat'. And in calling Christ 'one greater Man', he reveals a preference for considering Christ as man rather than as God. But this is incidental. He goes on to explain that the Muse he invokes is not the classical Muse but the one who spoke to Moses on Mount Horeb and on Sinai and inspired him to write the story of the Creation. And the water which refreshes him is not the spring Aganippe on Mount Helicon but 'Siloa's brook' mentioned in the eighth chapter of Isaiah and he, with no middle flight, will soar above the 'Aonian Mount', that is, above Mount Helicon; he will excel the classical epic to achieve things unattempted yet in prose or rime.' Ambition and humility are mingled in the sense and movement of the verse. When we think he has concluded his opening statement with the line: "Things unattempted yet in prose or rime," he moves on with another and to modify the self-confidence of that bold statement with an appeal for divine inspiration, and the rocking motion of What in me is dark/Illumine, what is low raise and support, balances the tone between modesty and self-confidence until the verse soars up to the conclusion of the opening statement:

Milton's prologues are the more poignant because, in addition to the problems implied by every poet who invoked his Muse for aid, Milton was always conscious of his greatest limitation-his blindness. In other prologues he refers to this limitation in specific terms. Here it is suggested only in: "What in me is dark, illumine".

That to the highth of this great argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.

Here the lines move steadily onwards without any internal pause to come to rest with a grand, elemental statement. Milton can use complex Latin forms when he wishes, but the climax of this invocation could hardly be more simply English: except for the one word "justify," the words in Line 26 are all monosyllables and of Anglo-Saxon origin. He writes 'the ways of God to men', not something like 'designs of Deity to all mankind' nor even the abstract general man.

It is characteristic of John Milton that he should have begun Paradise Lost with an invocation to his Muse in the correct manner of classical epic poetry. It is also typical of him that he Christianised the pagan literary device by replacing the Greek goddess of poetry with Urania (literally 'the heavenly one') who corresponds to the Holy Spirit, doing so in a burst of sustained and splendid poetry. It is further characteristic that after eleven lines he shifts the emphasis from Urania to himself; what follows being a typically Miltonic combination of prayer for divine inspiration and boldness as he explains that he will use his poem to carry out a supremely ambitious literary project:

I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song.
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rime.

In language whose assured eloquence testifies to the intensity with which he is beginning to create, Milton leads up to the climax of the invocation the announcement that his purpose is indeed momentous: being no less than to assert Eternal Providence,/And justify the ways of God to men."

The sense of dedication and depth of personal feeling in this passage are evident. Its imaginative power and verse music are striking.

There is yet another way of looking at the matter. It may be argued that the ostensible philosophical purpose of the poem (to justify the God to men) is of quite secondary importance in this prologue. The real function of these twenty-six lines is to give us the feeling that some great thing is now about to begin. If the poet succeeds in doing that sufficiently. he will have full control over the reader for the rest of Book I; and it is noteworthy that in this kind of poetry much of the effect has to be achieved in advance. Milton surely succeeds, and he succeeds completely in this object. Firstly, there is the quality of weight, produced by the fact that nearly all these lines end in long, heavy monosyllables. Secondly, there is the direct suggestion of deep spiritual preparation at two points-0 spirt who dost prefer and What in me is dark. This direct suggestion of great beginnings is cunningly reinforced by an allusion to the creation of the world itself (Dove-like sat'st brooding), and then by images of rising and lifting (with no middle flight intends to soar.....raise and support...... highth of this great argument). And then again creation and rising come potently together when we are reminded that Heaven and Earth rose out of Chaos. In addition to this, we have that bright promise of good things to come (things unattempted yet) and the reference to one greater Man which makes us feel that we are about to read an epic that spans over the whole of history with its arch. All images that can suggest a great thing beginning have been brought together, and we whole-heartedly respond as we read But a closer scrutiny shows that the ostensible and logical connection between these images is not exactly the same as the emotional connection. - This point is important. "In one respect, Milton's technique is very like that of some moderns. But unlike the moderns he always provides a facade of logical connections as well. The virtue of this is that it lulls our logical faculty to sleep, and enables us to accept what we are given without question."

The first six lines of the prologue show also an important quality of Milton's style. These six lines have the power and sublimity of what T.S. Eliot calls "a breathless leap". The opening sentence departs from its natural order and is an example of "suspension." These opening lines gain in power because of the delaying of the verb. In imperative sentences the verb is normally placed first But here it is the thirty-ninth word in the sentence. In the meanwhile, the whole subject is proposed: disobedience, death, loss of Eden, and restoration through one greater Man. The suppression of the verb until sixth line, combined with the naming of so vast a design, sets up a strong pattern of expectation in our minds, an expectation which is beautifully satisfied when the verb is at last released. The momentum gained by this release of energy is sufficient to carry the sentence on without flagging for ten more lines. The effect of this first paragraph depends very largely on the wonderful congruity between syntax and versification.