WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.240 So when you think of John Milton, what's the 00:00:02.240 --> 00:00:04.240 first image that comes into your head? Oh, it's 00:00:04.240 --> 00:00:06.519 the bust. The stone bust. That's always the bust, 00:00:06.559 --> 00:00:08.240 isn't it? The one you see in a dusty university 00:00:08.240 --> 00:00:11.900 library. He's old. He's blind. He looks incredibly 00:00:11.900 --> 00:00:15.179 severe. Right. He's encased in marble. He looks 00:00:15.179 --> 00:00:17.359 like homework. Like, he is the absolute definition 00:00:17.359 --> 00:00:19.859 of English lit that you're supposed to respect, 00:00:20.059 --> 00:00:22.339 but, you know, maybe don't actually enjoy reading. 00:00:22.480 --> 00:00:26.219 Exactly. He feels like a statue. And, uh... Our 00:00:26.219 --> 00:00:29.140 mission for this deep dive is to basically take 00:00:29.140 --> 00:00:31.699 a hammer to that statue. It's a tragedy, really, 00:00:31.839 --> 00:00:33.640 that that's the version of him that survives. 00:00:33.659 --> 00:00:35.659 Because if you actually dig into the sources, 00:00:35.820 --> 00:00:38.439 the biographies, the court records, his own pamphlets, 00:00:38.640 --> 00:00:41.820 that statue just crumbles. It shatters. The man 00:00:41.820 --> 00:00:46.200 underneath is not boring. He's actually terrifyingly 00:00:46.200 --> 00:00:48.619 radical. That's the word. He has more in common 00:00:48.619 --> 00:00:52.079 with a modern revolutionary firebrand than some 00:00:52.079 --> 00:00:55.210 tenured professor. Right. This is a man who spent 00:00:55.210 --> 00:00:57.630 years publicly arguing that the English people 00:00:57.630 --> 00:01:00.329 had a moral and religious duty to execute their 00:01:00.329 --> 00:01:03.549 own king. A guy who wrote these scandalous pamphlets 00:01:03.549 --> 00:01:06.829 defending divorce that got him branded a heretic. 00:01:07.030 --> 00:01:09.629 And that central tension. That's what we're exploring 00:01:09.629 --> 00:01:13.489 today. How does this guy, this dangerous regicide 00:01:13.489 --> 00:01:16.650 defending politician, end up writing Paradise 00:01:16.650 --> 00:01:19.810 Lost, the greatest religious epic in the English 00:01:19.810 --> 00:01:22.090 language? How do you go from being the enemy 00:01:22.090 --> 00:01:24.049 of the state to being supposed to be? Supposedly 00:01:24.049 --> 00:01:26.349 the voice of God. To figure that out, we have 00:01:26.349 --> 00:01:28.950 to go right back to the beginning. The raw material. 00:01:29.489 --> 00:01:33.030 We're on Bread Street, London, 1608. He's born 00:01:33.030 --> 00:01:35.450 into a pretty well -off family, but it's a specific 00:01:35.450 --> 00:01:38.290 kind of well -off. His father, John Milton Sr., 00:01:38.290 --> 00:01:40.189 was a scrivener. Which is sort of a mix of a 00:01:40.189 --> 00:01:43.290 lawyer, a notary, a moneylender. A bit of everything. 00:01:43.409 --> 00:01:45.209 But the key thing about his father, he was also 00:01:45.209 --> 00:01:47.719 a serious musician. A composer. And that's not 00:01:47.719 --> 00:01:50.920 just a fun fact, is it? That musicality is absolutely 00:01:50.920 --> 00:01:52.920 core to understanding Milton. It's non -negotiable. 00:01:52.939 --> 00:01:56.299 His father's music, it wired Milton's brain for 00:01:56.299 --> 00:01:58.939 rhythm, for sound, for cadence. When you get 00:01:58.939 --> 00:02:00.739 to Paradise Lost later, you're not just reading 00:02:00.739 --> 00:02:03.120 words on a cage. You're hearing a symphony. But 00:02:03.120 --> 00:02:05.439 the father also gave him something else. A kind 00:02:05.439 --> 00:02:09.199 of model for rebellion. That's right. The grandfather 00:02:09.199 --> 00:02:12.439 was a devout Catholic. And he disowned Milton's 00:02:12.439 --> 00:02:15.060 father for becoming a Protestant. So the lesson 00:02:15.060 --> 00:02:18.479 young John learns right from the start is you 00:02:18.479 --> 00:02:21.520 stick to your convictions, even if it costs you 00:02:21.520 --> 00:02:23.719 everything. And he took that lesson, that intensity, 00:02:23.840 --> 00:02:27.009 and just... aimed it at books. The accounts of 00:02:27.009 --> 00:02:30.110 his childhood are, frankly, a little frightening. 00:02:30.310 --> 00:02:31.930 Yeah, his brother Christopher left a record. 00:02:32.129 --> 00:02:35.050 He did. He claimed that from the age of 12, John 00:02:35.050 --> 00:02:37.229 basically never went to bed before midnight, 00:02:37.409 --> 00:02:39.330 sometimes one in the morning. As a 12 -year -old. 00:02:39.430 --> 00:02:42.310 Just reading. Yeah. By candlelight. Yeah. For 00:02:42.310 --> 00:02:44.409 hours and hours. And you can't help but think, 00:02:44.469 --> 00:02:46.969 you know, that's the origin story. Of the blindness. 00:02:47.270 --> 00:02:50.370 Exactly. That eye strain, night after night for 00:02:50.370 --> 00:02:53.789 decades. He was in a very real way burning his 00:02:53.789 --> 00:02:56.150 own eyes out for the sake of knowledge. So eventually 00:02:56.150 --> 00:02:58.729 he gets to Cambridge, Christ's College, and you'd 00:02:58.729 --> 00:03:00.969 think, okay, a guy this brilliant, he must have 00:03:00.969 --> 00:03:03.909 been the star of the show. Not exactly. The sources 00:03:03.909 --> 00:03:07.610 give us this amazing, slightly petty detail about 00:03:07.610 --> 00:03:09.849 his social life there. The nickname. The nickname. 00:03:10.150 --> 00:03:13.370 The other students called him the Lady of Christ's 00:03:13.370 --> 00:03:16.979 College. And was that just about his looks? Because 00:03:16.979 --> 00:03:19.259 I read he was, you know, fair complexioned. It 00:03:19.259 --> 00:03:21.860 was partly that. He was described as having light 00:03:21.860 --> 00:03:24.400 brown hair, very fair skin, kind of delicate 00:03:24.400 --> 00:03:26.620 features. He didn't have that sort of rough masculine 00:03:26.620 --> 00:03:29.860 look of the era, but it was also an insult about 00:03:29.860 --> 00:03:32.479 his personality. He was haughty. He was incredibly 00:03:32.479 --> 00:03:34.819 arrogant, very chaste. He just thought he was 00:03:34.819 --> 00:03:36.740 better than everyone else in there. you know, 00:03:36.759 --> 00:03:39.139 college drinking games. And he clashed with authority 00:03:39.139 --> 00:03:41.159 pretty much immediately. There's that story about 00:03:41.159 --> 00:03:44.419 him being rusticated or suspended. Yes, after 00:03:44.419 --> 00:03:46.740 a huge fight with his tutor, a man named William 00:03:46.740 --> 00:03:50.060 Chappell. And there are even rumors from John 00:03:50.060 --> 00:03:52.419 Aubrey's brief lives that Chappell might have 00:03:52.419 --> 00:03:55.659 actually whipped him. Can you imagine? The future 00:03:55.659 --> 00:03:58.139 author of Paradise Lost getting caned like a 00:03:58.139 --> 00:04:00.930 schoolboy. It had to be a huge moment of humiliation 00:04:00.930 --> 00:04:03.330 for him. You can see it in his own writing. He 00:04:03.330 --> 00:04:05.129 talks about how much he hated the fools he went 00:04:05.129 --> 00:04:07.430 to school with, how he mocked them for acting 00:04:07.430 --> 00:04:09.969 in silly comedies. Because in his mind, he was 00:04:09.969 --> 00:04:12.289 already set apart for something greater. He was 00:04:12.289 --> 00:04:14.810 destined. He believed he was chosen by God to 00:04:14.810 --> 00:04:18.290 write a great English epic, a poem that, in his 00:04:18.290 --> 00:04:20.569 words, the world would not willingly let die. 00:04:21.009 --> 00:04:24.110 That level of self -belief is just staggering. 00:04:24.269 --> 00:04:27.100 And it explains his next move. Because most people 00:04:27.100 --> 00:04:29.680 graduate, they get a job. Milton graduates and 00:04:29.680 --> 00:04:32.040 moves back home with his parents. For six years. 00:04:32.160 --> 00:04:34.379 For six years. It sounds like a total failure 00:04:34.379 --> 00:04:37.079 to launch, right? But it was actually a self 00:04:37.079 --> 00:04:41.329 -designed, hyper -intense PhD program. reading 00:04:41.329 --> 00:04:43.850 systematically reading everything i mean everything 00:04:43.850 --> 00:04:46.410 the entire classical canon church history philosophy 00:04:46.410 --> 00:04:50.470 theology and not just in english and latin greek 00:04:50.470 --> 00:04:53.189 hebrew italian french he was building an arsenal 00:04:53.189 --> 00:04:55.569 inside his own mind he wouldn't let himself start 00:04:55.569 --> 00:04:57.449 writing his masterpiece until he felt he knew 00:04:57.449 --> 00:04:59.629 everything worth knowing and once he felt like 00:04:59.629 --> 00:05:02.550 the uh the hard drive was full he set off on 00:05:02.550 --> 00:05:06.459 the grand tour 1638 France and then Italy. And 00:05:06.459 --> 00:05:08.339 this isn't a vacation. This is where he finally 00:05:08.339 --> 00:05:10.879 finds people he considers his intellectual peers. 00:05:11.199 --> 00:05:14.620 He absolutely thrived. He'd go to these academies 00:05:14.620 --> 00:05:16.060 in Florence, which were basically intellectual 00:05:16.060 --> 00:05:18.920 fight clubs. And the Italians were just stunned 00:05:18.920 --> 00:05:21.540 by this young Englishman who could recite Latin 00:05:21.540 --> 00:05:24.139 poetry better than they could. But the real moment, 00:05:24.240 --> 00:05:26.120 the one that echoes through everything that comes 00:05:26.120 --> 00:05:29.660 after, is his visit to Galileo. It's just so 00:05:29.660 --> 00:05:32.060 cinematic, isn't it? It is. You have the young 00:05:32.060 --> 00:05:34.899 Milton, full of potential, his eyesight still 00:05:34.899 --> 00:05:37.839 perfect. And then you have the old Galileo, already 00:05:37.839 --> 00:05:40.579 blind and under house arrest by the Inquisition. 00:05:40.699 --> 00:05:43.819 A martyr for the truth. Precisely. Galileo had 00:05:43.819 --> 00:05:46.000 used his telescope to discover the truth about 00:05:46.000 --> 00:05:49.519 the cosmos. And for that, the church, this huge 00:05:49.519 --> 00:05:52.759 authoritarian power, had silenced him. Milton 00:05:52.759 --> 00:05:55.740 never, ever forgot that. He saw firsthand what 00:05:55.740 --> 00:05:57.740 happens when a government tries to censor reality. 00:05:58.199 --> 00:06:00.519 And in a deeply ironic way, he's also looking 00:06:00.519 --> 00:06:03.379 at a version of his own future. A blind genius, 00:06:03.699 --> 00:06:06.300 politically isolated, but still speaking truth 00:06:06.300 --> 00:06:08.620 to power. He wanted to stay in Italy, didn't 00:06:08.620 --> 00:06:10.879 he? So he had to cut the trip short. He did. 00:06:11.100 --> 00:06:15.459 He gets word of sad tidings of civil war in England. 00:06:15.800 --> 00:06:19.160 And this sense of duty just kicks in. He basically 00:06:19.160 --> 00:06:21.860 says, I can't be traveling abroad for my own 00:06:21.860 --> 00:06:24.120 pleasure while my countrymen are fighting for 00:06:24.120 --> 00:06:26.379 liberty. So he turns around and heads straight 00:06:26.379 --> 00:06:28.990 for the storm. And in true Milton fashion, the 00:06:28.990 --> 00:06:31.730 first thing he does is walk directly into a personal 00:06:31.730 --> 00:06:34.769 storm of his own making. The marriage. The marriage. 00:06:35.069 --> 00:06:37.769 Yeah. It is such a baffling disaster. A complete 00:06:37.769 --> 00:06:40.329 train wreck. He's 34 years old. He's one of the 00:06:40.329 --> 00:06:42.569 most well -read people on the planet. And he 00:06:42.569 --> 00:06:46.230 marries Mary Powell, who's 17. 17. And from a 00:06:46.230 --> 00:06:50.220 royalist family. The political opposition. What 00:06:50.220 --> 00:06:52.800 could possibly go wrong? Everything, apparently. 00:06:53.019 --> 00:06:55.560 It lasted, what, a month? About a month, maybe 00:06:55.560 --> 00:06:57.879 a bit longer, before she just packed up her bags 00:06:57.879 --> 00:06:59.759 and went back to her parents. She apparently 00:06:59.759 --> 00:07:03.500 found his lifestyle too quiet, too. Philosophical. 00:07:03.639 --> 00:07:05.680 I mean, you can kind of see her point. Being 00:07:05.680 --> 00:07:08.240 married to a man that intense must have been 00:07:08.240 --> 00:07:10.279 like living in a library where you're not allowed 00:07:10.279 --> 00:07:12.339 to make any noise. But here's where Milton is 00:07:12.339 --> 00:07:14.980 just different from other people. A normal person 00:07:14.980 --> 00:07:18.339 gets left, they feel sad. Maybe they drink. That's 00:07:18.339 --> 00:07:20.660 right. Milton decides that if his marriage is 00:07:20.660 --> 00:07:23.819 a failure, then the entire legal and theological 00:07:23.819 --> 00:07:26.759 concept of marriage in England must be fundamentally 00:07:26.759 --> 00:07:29.579 wrong. And he's going to fix it. Which kicks 00:07:29.579 --> 00:07:32.459 off his career as a pamphleteer. The divorce 00:07:32.459 --> 00:07:34.459 tracks. You have to understand how radical this 00:07:34.459 --> 00:07:37.199 was. In the 1640s, marriage was a sacrament. 00:07:37.399 --> 00:07:39.860 You were locked in for life. The only exception 00:07:39.860 --> 00:07:42.399 was adultery. And even then, you could separate, 00:07:42.459 --> 00:07:44.399 but you couldn't remarry. But Milton's argument 00:07:44.399 --> 00:07:46.500 isn't about adultery at all. It's surprisingly 00:07:46.500 --> 00:07:49.459 modern. He's talking about incompatibility. He 00:07:49.459 --> 00:07:51.759 is. But he gets there through a very theological 00:07:51.759 --> 00:07:54.959 route. He goes back to Genesis, to the creation 00:07:54.959 --> 00:07:57.860 of Eve. He says God made her to be a helpmeet 00:07:57.860 --> 00:08:00.319 for Adam, a suitable companion. A meeting of 00:08:00.319 --> 00:08:02.490 minds. A meeting of minds. minds and souls. And 00:08:02.490 --> 00:08:05.230 his argument is if that companionship is impossible, 00:08:05.569 --> 00:08:08.149 if the couple is totally incompatible, then the 00:08:08.149 --> 00:08:10.209 marriage has already failed its core biblical 00:08:10.209 --> 00:08:12.670 purpose. He has that brutal line about it. The 00:08:12.670 --> 00:08:14.910 one about chaining a living soul to a dead corpse. 00:08:15.129 --> 00:08:17.509 That's the one. It's visceral. And the reaction 00:08:17.509 --> 00:08:20.470 was just as visceral. The Presbyterian clergy, 00:08:20.629 --> 00:08:22.490 who were supposed to be his allies against the 00:08:22.490 --> 00:08:25.129 king, they turned on him instantly. They called 00:08:25.129 --> 00:08:28.779 him a heretic, a libertine, a divorcer. This 00:08:28.779 --> 00:08:30.980 must have been a huge betrayal for him. It was. 00:08:31.279 --> 00:08:34.059 It's where he learns that these religious authorities 00:08:34.059 --> 00:08:36.720 don't actually want freedom for everyone. They 00:08:36.720 --> 00:08:38.820 just want to be the ones in charge. So when they 00:08:38.820 --> 00:08:41.200 try to shut him up by passing this licensing 00:08:41.200 --> 00:08:44.279 order, demanding all books get pre -approved 00:08:44.279 --> 00:08:46.100 by the government. Milton just goes nuclear. 00:08:46.500 --> 00:08:48.700 And this gives us one of the most important texts 00:08:48.700 --> 00:08:51.360 ever written on the subject of free speech. It 00:08:51.360 --> 00:08:54.539 gives us Areopagitica, a speech for the liberty 00:08:54.539 --> 00:08:57.830 of unlicensed printing. It is, and I'm not exaggerating, 00:08:57.830 --> 00:08:59.590 the foundational document for freedom of the 00:08:59.590 --> 00:09:01.690 press in the entire English -speaking world. 00:09:01.950 --> 00:09:03.850 But his argument isn't the one we hear a lot 00:09:03.850 --> 00:09:06.309 today, is it? It's not this sort of secular, 00:09:06.450 --> 00:09:10.610 I can say whatever I want idea. It's deeply religious. 00:09:11.009 --> 00:09:13.470 That's the key nuance. His whole argument rests 00:09:13.470 --> 00:09:16.429 on God. God gave humanity reason and free will. 00:09:16.590 --> 00:09:19.169 And for that free will to have any meaning, you 00:09:19.169 --> 00:09:21.549 have to be able to choose between good and evil. 00:09:21.879 --> 00:09:23.820 You can't be virtuous if you've never been tempted. 00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:26.539 Exactly. If you censor all the bad books, if 00:09:26.539 --> 00:09:28.940 you protect people from every wrong idea, you're 00:09:28.940 --> 00:09:30.559 not making them virtuous, you're just keeping 00:09:30.559 --> 00:09:33.220 them ignorant. It's his famous line, I cannot 00:09:33.220 --> 00:09:36.100 praise a fugitive in cloistered virtue. Virtue 00:09:36.100 --> 00:09:38.720 that hasn't been tested isn't real virtue. It's 00:09:38.720 --> 00:09:41.240 just innocence. And that's why he says, he who 00:09:41.240 --> 00:09:44.059 destroys a good book kills reason itself. It's 00:09:44.059 --> 00:09:46.820 just so profound. Yeah. But while he's fighting 00:09:46.820 --> 00:09:49.700 these intellectual wars, The real war, the Civil 00:09:49.700 --> 00:09:53.200 War, is coming to a head. The king, Charles I, 00:09:53.340 --> 00:09:57.000 is captured. He's defeated. And in 1649, the 00:09:57.000 --> 00:09:58.960 radical faction in Parliament does something 00:09:58.960 --> 00:10:01.220 that no one thought was possible. They put their 00:10:01.220 --> 00:10:03.740 own king on trial for treason. And they cut off 00:10:03.740 --> 00:10:06.580 his head. And you just cannot overstate the shockwave 00:10:06.580 --> 00:10:08.919 this sent across Europe. The king wasn't just 00:10:08.919 --> 00:10:11.419 a ruler. He was seen as God's anointed deputy 00:10:11.419 --> 00:10:15.019 on earth. To execute him was a form of sacrilege. 00:10:15.100 --> 00:10:17.200 The English Republic was basically a pariah state. 00:10:17.500 --> 00:10:20.220 Completely. And they desperately needed an intellectual 00:10:20.220 --> 00:10:22.600 defender, someone who could justify this act 00:10:22.600 --> 00:10:25.820 to a horrified world. And John Milton steps up. 00:10:25.860 --> 00:10:28.259 He's appointed secretary for foreign tongues. 00:10:28.460 --> 00:10:30.679 Which sounds like he's just a translator, but 00:10:30.679 --> 00:10:32.740 really he was the minister of propaganda for 00:10:32.740 --> 00:10:34.539 the new government. The intellectual gladiator. 00:10:34.659 --> 00:10:36.860 That's a good way to put it. His job was to fight 00:10:36.860 --> 00:10:39.649 with his pen. When the royalists put out this 00:10:39.649 --> 00:10:42.669 hugely successful book, Icon Besselike, painting 00:10:42.669 --> 00:10:45.769 Charles I as a saintly martyr. Milton was ordered 00:10:45.769 --> 00:10:49.399 to destroy it. And he wrote. Iconoclasties, the 00:10:49.399 --> 00:10:52.320 image breaker, just tearing it apart. Then he 00:10:52.320 --> 00:10:55.000 wrote his great Latin defense, the Defensio Pro 00:10:55.000 --> 00:10:57.919 Populo Anglicano, defending the English people 00:10:57.919 --> 00:11:00.539 for the act of regicide. And he literally worked 00:11:00.539 --> 00:11:02.700 himself blind doing it. He did. His eyesight 00:11:02.700 --> 00:11:05.299 had been failing for years, a result of all that 00:11:05.299 --> 00:11:08.080 childhood study. But the doctors gave him a clear 00:11:08.080 --> 00:11:10.120 warning. They said, if you keep doing this intensive 00:11:10.120 --> 00:11:11.980 reading and writing for the government, you will 00:11:11.980 --> 00:11:14.240 lose your sight completely. And he just chose 00:11:14.240 --> 00:11:17.539 the work. He saw it as a test. a sacrifice for 00:11:17.539 --> 00:11:21.080 the cause he kept writing by candlelight using 00:11:21.080 --> 00:11:23.100 these harsh medical treatments that probably 00:11:23.100 --> 00:11:26.539 just made it worse and by 1652 at the age of 00:11:26.539 --> 00:11:30.759 44 it was gone total darkness total irreversible 00:11:30.759 --> 00:11:33.940 blindness and you can just feel the despair in 00:11:33.940 --> 00:11:36.379 that sign he writes when i consider how my light 00:11:36.379 --> 00:11:40.820 is spent he's asking this profound question doth 00:11:40.820 --> 00:11:44.940 god exact day labor Light denied. How can God 00:11:44.940 --> 00:11:47.039 expect me to serve him when he's taken away my 00:11:47.039 --> 00:11:50.360 ability to see? It's a moment of absolute crisis, 00:11:50.460 --> 00:11:54.110 but... He doesn't quit. And this is just the 00:11:54.110 --> 00:11:57.370 core of who he is. The resilience is incredible. 00:11:57.549 --> 00:11:59.570 This starts dictating. He dictates. He hires 00:11:59.570 --> 00:12:02.490 assistants, amanuenses. He continues to be the 00:12:02.490 --> 00:12:04.450 voice of the English Republic, even when he can't 00:12:04.450 --> 00:12:06.470 see the paper in front of him. He is the blind 00:12:06.470 --> 00:12:08.710 champion of the revolution. Until the revolution 00:12:08.710 --> 00:12:10.789 itself fails. Until it all comes crashing down. 00:12:11.250 --> 00:12:13.950 1660, the restoration, the monarchy is back. 00:12:14.129 --> 00:12:16.409 The son of the king they executed, Charles II, 00:12:16.610 --> 00:12:19.269 is invited to take the throne. The game is over. 00:12:19.549 --> 00:12:21.860 And at that moment, John Milton is arguing. the 00:12:21.860 --> 00:12:24.299 most wanted man in England. Absolutely. Other 00:12:24.299 --> 00:12:26.120 than the men who actually signed the death warrant, 00:12:26.240 --> 00:12:29.159 he's public enemy number one. He's the guy who 00:12:29.159 --> 00:12:31.279 wrote the official justification for killing 00:12:31.279 --> 00:12:33.700 the new king's father. So everyone else is running 00:12:33.700 --> 00:12:35.980 for cover, trying to get a pardon, switching 00:12:35.980 --> 00:12:39.019 sides. And what does Milton do? This is what 00:12:39.019 --> 00:12:41.960 just defines him for me. As the royalist ships 00:12:41.960 --> 00:12:45.240 are literally sailing back to England, he publishes 00:12:45.240 --> 00:12:50.179 one last desperate pamphlet. Ready and easy way 00:12:50.179 --> 00:12:52.519 to establish a free commonwealth. It's like a 00:12:52.519 --> 00:12:55.200 political suicide note. It is. He's screaming 00:12:55.200 --> 00:12:57.500 at the English people, calling them fools for 00:12:57.500 --> 00:12:59.740 running back to the yoke of monarchy. It was 00:12:59.740 --> 00:13:02.559 completely futile, a total lost cause. But he 00:13:02.559 --> 00:13:04.899 refused to be silent, even with the executioner 00:13:04.899 --> 00:13:06.860 basically at the door. He has to go into hiding. 00:13:07.240 --> 00:13:09.759 There's a warrant for his arrest. His books are 00:13:09.759 --> 00:13:11.980 publicly burned by the hangman. He's eventually 00:13:11.980 --> 00:13:14.980 caught and imprisoned. And it's frankly a miracle 00:13:14.980 --> 00:13:17.820 he wasn't executed. Hanged, drawn and quartered. 00:13:17.820 --> 00:13:19.980 He had friends who spoke up for him. Andrew Marvell, 00:13:20.080 --> 00:13:22.740 the poet. Yes. Friends like Marvell managed to 00:13:22.740 --> 00:13:25.480 get him pardoned and released. But he emerges 00:13:25.480 --> 00:13:28.480 from this a completely broken man. He's blind. 00:13:28.779 --> 00:13:32.039 He's poor. Most of his money is gone. He's suffering 00:13:32.039 --> 00:13:34.519 from gout. And the great political cause that 00:13:34.519 --> 00:13:36.960 he sacrificed his sight for is dead and buried. 00:13:37.179 --> 00:13:40.070 And here's the great irony of his life. If he 00:13:40.070 --> 00:13:42.450 had died a successful politician or if he had 00:13:42.450 --> 00:13:45.090 been executed in 1660, we probably wouldn't be 00:13:45.090 --> 00:13:46.730 talking about him today. Not in the same way, 00:13:46.769 --> 00:13:48.769 no. But because he was defeated, because he was 00:13:48.769 --> 00:13:52.029 cast out and forced into this quiet, impoverished 00:13:52.029 --> 00:13:55.409 retirement, he finally had the time. He finally 00:13:55.409 --> 00:13:57.870 had the time to write the poem he had promised 00:13:57.870 --> 00:14:00.570 himself he would write since he was a boy. He 00:14:00.570 --> 00:14:03.120 starts Paradise Lost. And the way he composed 00:14:03.120 --> 00:14:05.820 it is the stuff of legend. It's almost mythic. 00:14:05.840 --> 00:14:08.259 He couldn't see, he couldn't write, so he had 00:14:08.259 --> 00:14:11.299 to compose these long, complex stretches of verse 00:14:11.299 --> 00:14:13.700 entirely in his head, usually at night. And then 00:14:13.700 --> 00:14:15.559 dictate them in the morning. Yes, he talked about 00:14:15.559 --> 00:14:18.360 waking up and needing to be milked. He'd have 00:14:18.360 --> 00:14:21.259 40 or 50 lines of perfect poetry stored in his 00:14:21.259 --> 00:14:23.259 memory, and he was desperate to get them down 00:14:23.259 --> 00:14:25.940 on paper before he forgot them. Dictating to 00:14:25.940 --> 00:14:28.860 whoever was there, an assistant, sometimes even 00:14:28.860 --> 00:14:31.120 his daughters. That relationship with his daughters 00:14:31.120 --> 00:14:34.419 is... It's a complicated and kind of sad story. 00:14:34.840 --> 00:14:37.039 He apparently taught them to read his source 00:14:37.039 --> 00:14:39.799 texts aloud in Greek and Latin, but didn't teach 00:14:39.799 --> 00:14:41.620 them the languages. So they were just sounding 00:14:41.620 --> 00:14:43.460 out words they didn't understand. For hours, 00:14:43.559 --> 00:14:45.980 it must have been an incredibly tense household. 00:14:46.600 --> 00:14:49.279 But out of all that darkness and tension comes 00:14:49.279 --> 00:14:52.259 this monumental poem about the creation and fall 00:14:52.259 --> 00:14:55.539 of humanity. So let's get into the poem itself, 00:14:55.620 --> 00:14:58.799 because for a supposedly orthodox religious epic, 00:14:58.980 --> 00:15:02.590 it is packed with some really... Heretical and 00:15:02.590 --> 00:15:05.389 political ideas. Oh, it is absolutely a political 00:15:05.389 --> 00:15:08.269 document. He takes the basic story from Genesis, 00:15:08.350 --> 00:15:10.889 Adam, Eve, the serpent, and he maps the trauma 00:15:10.889 --> 00:15:13.950 of the English Civil War right onto it. And the 00:15:13.950 --> 00:15:16.629 character that everyone for centuries had been 00:15:16.629 --> 00:15:19.509 drawn to is Satan. Of course, because in the 00:15:19.509 --> 00:15:21.570 first two books of the poem, Satan sounds less 00:15:21.570 --> 00:15:23.870 like the devil and more like a defeated Republican 00:15:23.870 --> 00:15:26.370 general. He sounds like a revolutionary. He's 00:15:26.370 --> 00:15:28.370 the one fighting against an all -powerful monarch 00:15:28.370 --> 00:15:30.409 in heaven. He gives these incredible speeches 00:15:30.409 --> 00:15:33.029 about liberty. Better to reign in hell than serve 00:15:33.029 --> 00:15:35.110 in heaven. It's one of the most famous lines 00:15:35.110 --> 00:15:37.870 in all of English literature. It's so magnetic. 00:15:38.210 --> 00:15:41.070 And for centuries, poets like William Blake and 00:15:41.070 --> 00:15:43.669 Shelley, they argued that Milton was, in their 00:15:43.669 --> 00:15:46.490 words, of the devil's party without knowing it. 00:15:46.590 --> 00:15:49.330 They thought his real subconscious sympathies 00:15:49.330 --> 00:15:52.169 were with the rebel. Because Milton was the rebel. 00:15:52.330 --> 00:15:54.429 He knew what it felt like to lose a war against 00:15:54.429 --> 00:15:57.409 a king. He gave Satan all the best lines, the 00:15:57.409 --> 00:15:59.649 most persuasive arguments. It's a trap, isn't 00:15:59.649 --> 00:16:02.309 it? It's a brilliant trap because as the poem 00:16:02.309 --> 00:16:04.649 continues, you start to see that Satan's idea 00:16:04.649 --> 00:16:08.769 of liberty is a complete fraud. It's all about 00:16:08.769 --> 00:16:12.450 ego and pride and narcissism. He doesn't want 00:16:12.450 --> 00:16:15.289 freedom. He just wants to be the one in charge. 00:16:15.549 --> 00:16:18.389 So Satan becomes a tyrant himself. He does. And 00:16:18.389 --> 00:16:20.529 you can see Milton working through the failure 00:16:20.529 --> 00:16:23.370 of his own revolution. He's asking. What went 00:16:23.370 --> 00:16:25.870 wrong? Why did our good old cause fail? And the 00:16:25.870 --> 00:16:28.110 answer in the poem is that just getting rid of 00:16:28.110 --> 00:16:30.409 the king isn't enough if you're still a slave 00:16:30.409 --> 00:16:33.090 to your own sin and ambition. The politics are 00:16:33.090 --> 00:16:35.230 incredible, but the theology might be even more 00:16:35.230 --> 00:16:37.490 radical. You mentioned earlier that the boring 00:16:37.490 --> 00:16:40.649 statue, Milton, hides some wild stuff. Let's 00:16:40.649 --> 00:16:43.230 talk about monism. Okay, this is one of my favorite 00:16:43.230 --> 00:16:45.409 deep dive facts about Milton. So traditional 00:16:45.409 --> 00:16:48.049 Christianity draws a hard line between spirit 00:16:48.049 --> 00:16:51.490 and matter. The soul is good. the body is base 00:16:51.490 --> 00:16:54.370 and corrupt milton didn't believe that he was 00:16:54.370 --> 00:16:57.830 a monist or you could even say materialist he 00:16:57.830 --> 00:16:59.750 believed that everything in the entire universe 00:16:59.750 --> 00:17:02.029 from a rock on the ground to a human soul to 00:17:02.029 --> 00:17:04.589 an angel all the way up to god himself is made 00:17:04.589 --> 00:17:07.589 of one single material substance wait hold on 00:17:07.589 --> 00:17:10.049 so you're saying in milton's universe god is 00:17:10.049 --> 00:17:14.680 physical Meat of stuff. In a way, yes. It's just 00:17:14.680 --> 00:17:18.420 an infinitely purer and more refined form of 00:17:18.420 --> 00:17:21.880 matter, but it's all on the same continuum. That 00:17:21.880 --> 00:17:24.529 is. Wild. And that has to have some weird implications 00:17:24.529 --> 00:17:26.650 for this story. It has huge implications. It's 00:17:26.650 --> 00:17:28.730 why in Paradise Lost, the angels get hungry, 00:17:28.869 --> 00:17:30.630 they fly down to Eden, and they sit and eat lunch 00:17:30.630 --> 00:17:32.650 with Adam and Eve. They actually eat food. They 00:17:32.650 --> 00:17:34.809 eat, they digest, they have a whole conversation 00:17:34.809 --> 00:17:36.970 about angelic digestion, and they also have sex. 00:17:37.269 --> 00:17:40.970 The angel Raphael explains to Adam that when 00:17:40.970 --> 00:17:43.670 angels embrace, because their substance is so 00:17:43.670 --> 00:17:45.950 pure, they don't need to bother with specific 00:17:45.950 --> 00:17:49.240 body parts. They can just merge. He writes, Total 00:17:49.240 --> 00:17:53.000 they mix. Wow. OK, but why? Why is this idea 00:17:53.000 --> 00:17:55.420 so important to him? Because it's a deeply humanist 00:17:55.420 --> 00:17:58.880 idea. If angels and humans are made of the same 00:17:58.880 --> 00:18:02.079 basic stuff, it means we can aspire to be like 00:18:02.079 --> 00:18:05.779 them. There's no unbridgeable gap. He's elevating 00:18:05.779 --> 00:18:07.599 the status of the human body in the physical 00:18:07.599 --> 00:18:10.079 world, saying that matter isn't evil, matter 00:18:10.079 --> 00:18:12.660 itself is divine. Which is a pretty optimistic 00:18:12.660 --> 00:18:15.079 take for a poem about the fall of man. And he 00:18:15.079 --> 00:18:16.799 slips other heresies in there too, right? Like 00:18:16.799 --> 00:18:20.339 Arianism. Yes, his portrayal of the son of Jesus 00:18:20.339 --> 00:18:23.259 suggests that he's a created being subordinate 00:18:23.259 --> 00:18:26.519 to the father, not co -eternal with him. That's 00:18:26.519 --> 00:18:29.259 a major heresy. Honestly, if the church censors 00:18:29.259 --> 00:18:31.279 had been paying closer attention to the theology 00:18:31.279 --> 00:18:33.940 instead of being swept away by the poetry, the 00:18:33.940 --> 00:18:35.599 book might never have been published. And we 00:18:35.599 --> 00:18:37.380 have to talk about that poetry, the sound of 00:18:37.380 --> 00:18:40.579 it. He famously despised rhyme. He loathed it. 00:18:40.619 --> 00:18:42.759 He called it the invention of a barbarous age 00:18:42.759 --> 00:18:45.200 and a troublesome and modern bondage. There's 00:18:45.200 --> 00:18:47.500 that political language again. Rhyme is bondage. 00:18:47.640 --> 00:18:52.200 Exactly. For him, blank verse unrhymed iambic 00:18:52.200 --> 00:18:54.880 pentameter was ancient liberty. It was the freedom 00:18:54.880 --> 00:18:57.549 of the classics. He wanted the poetry to sound 00:18:57.549 --> 00:19:00.230 like a great orator, to flow without what he 00:19:00.230 --> 00:19:03.549 called the jingling sound of like endings. And 00:19:03.549 --> 00:19:06.049 in doing that, he basically broke the English 00:19:06.049 --> 00:19:09.269 language open for poetry. He showed that you 00:19:09.269 --> 00:19:12.630 could create this incredible rolling symphonic 00:19:12.630 --> 00:19:16.089 momentum without needing rhyme to hold it all 00:19:16.089 --> 00:19:19.069 together. He creates a new voice. And the romantics, 00:19:19.170 --> 00:19:21.690 a century later, they just picked up that voice 00:19:21.690 --> 00:19:23.789 and ran with it. He's their spiritual father 00:19:23.789 --> 00:19:26.400 without Milton's blank verse. You don't get Wordsworth's 00:19:26.400 --> 00:19:28.920 Prelude. You don't get Keats' epics. He invented 00:19:28.920 --> 00:19:30.960 the instrument they all played. And they were 00:19:30.960 --> 00:19:33.180 completely obsessed with his themes, too. I'm 00:19:33.180 --> 00:19:35.180 thinking of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Oh, 00:19:35.259 --> 00:19:37.680 Frankenstein is almost a sequel to Paradise Lost. 00:19:38.019 --> 00:19:40.519 The creature literally learns about the world 00:19:40.519 --> 00:19:43.079 by finding a copy of Milton's poem. And he sees 00:19:43.079 --> 00:19:45.420 himself in it. He sees himself as Adam, the lonely 00:19:45.420 --> 00:19:48.079 first creation. But when his creator abandons 00:19:48.079 --> 00:19:51.039 him, he starts to see himself as Satan. Evil, 00:19:51.180 --> 00:19:54.559 be thou my good. The entire novel is a wrestling 00:19:54.559 --> 00:19:56.900 match with Milton's ideas about creation, rebellion, 00:19:57.160 --> 00:20:00.099 and what a creator owes to his creation. It's 00:20:00.099 --> 00:20:03.119 just incredible. A 17th century Puritan poem 00:20:03.119 --> 00:20:06.339 becomes the blueprint for one of our greatest 00:20:06.339 --> 00:20:08.519 science fiction monster stories. And it's still 00:20:08.519 --> 00:20:11.420 happening. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. 00:20:11.420 --> 00:20:14.099 The title is a direct quote from book two of 00:20:14.099 --> 00:20:16.720 Paradise Lost. Right. His Dark Materials to Create 00:20:16.720 --> 00:20:19.119 More Worlds. Pullman is basically retelling the 00:20:19.119 --> 00:20:20.980 story, but from the devil's party's point of 00:20:20.980 --> 00:20:22.619 view. He's still playing in Milton's sandbox. 00:20:22.980 --> 00:20:25.359 We all are. I want to jump to the very end of 00:20:25.359 --> 00:20:28.240 his life. He's written the great epic. He's blind. 00:20:28.400 --> 00:20:31.480 He's old. He's a political pariah. But he writes 00:20:31.480 --> 00:20:35.680 one more masterpiece. Samson Agonistes. For me, 00:20:35.759 --> 00:20:37.700 this is the most personal and moving thing he 00:20:37.700 --> 00:20:39.579 ever wrote. It's a drama, but it's meant to be 00:20:39.579 --> 00:20:42.059 read, not staged. And it's about the biblical 00:20:42.059 --> 00:20:44.440 hero Samson. And you just think about Samson's 00:20:44.440 --> 00:20:47.680 story. A champion chosen by God. Gifted with 00:20:47.680 --> 00:20:49.759 incredible strength. And was defeated, betrayed, 00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:52.920 and has his eyes gouged out by his enemies. A 00:20:52.920 --> 00:20:55.640 blind hero held captive by the Philistines. It's 00:20:55.640 --> 00:20:59.220 not subtle. No. Milton's is Samson. It's pure 00:20:59.220 --> 00:21:02.200 autobiography. Samson in the play is mocked. 00:21:02.200 --> 00:21:04.400 He feels abandoned by God. He feels useless. 00:21:04.759 --> 00:21:07.380 But at the very end, his strength returns for 00:21:07.380 --> 00:21:09.960 one last act. He pulls down the pillars of the 00:21:09.960 --> 00:21:12.299 temple. He pulls the temple down on himself and 00:21:12.299 --> 00:21:15.319 all his enemies. It is. It's a revenge fantasy 00:21:15.319 --> 00:21:17.619 in a way. But it's also a statement of faith, 00:21:17.740 --> 00:21:19.579 isn't it? It's a final assertion of spiritual 00:21:19.579 --> 00:21:22.539 victory. He's saying, you can defeat me politically, 00:21:22.779 --> 00:21:25.240 you can burn my books, you can blind me, but 00:21:25.240 --> 00:21:28.099 you can't defeat the truth. And in the end, truth 00:21:28.099 --> 00:21:30.299 will bring the whole corrupt structure crashing 00:21:30.299 --> 00:21:34.559 down. It's his final defiant roar. Which brings 00:21:34.559 --> 00:21:37.460 us all the way back to that core idea from Areopagitica, 00:21:37.599 --> 00:21:41.279 the free marketplace of ideas. His belief that 00:21:41.279 --> 00:21:43.519 if you just let truth and falsehood grapple, 00:21:43.579 --> 00:21:46.019 truth will always win. It's a beautiful and deeply 00:21:46.019 --> 00:21:48.640 optimistic idea. But I have to ask the final 00:21:48.640 --> 00:21:51.440 provocative question. Does that idea still hold 00:21:51.440 --> 00:21:54.220 up today? Milton's marketplace was one of pamphlets 00:21:54.220 --> 00:21:56.720 and books. We live in a world of social media 00:21:56.720 --> 00:21:59.700 algorithms, AI -generated content, and echo chambers, 00:21:59.880 --> 00:22:02.220 where falsehood often travels much faster and 00:22:02.220 --> 00:22:04.339 further than truth. Right. Because it's more 00:22:04.339 --> 00:22:07.660 engaging, it gets more clicks. Exactly. If Milton 00:22:07.660 --> 00:22:10.769 saw our modern world, Would he still be so confident 00:22:10.769 --> 00:22:13.089 that truth would win in a fair fight? That is 00:22:13.089 --> 00:22:16.069 the big uncomfortable question, isn't it? Milton's 00:22:16.069 --> 00:22:19.069 whole argument is based on a faith in human reason. 00:22:19.329 --> 00:22:22.609 He believed that, ultimately, people could and 00:22:22.609 --> 00:22:25.670 would discern truth from error. He didn't foresee 00:22:25.670 --> 00:22:28.049 a world where the very technology of communication 00:22:28.049 --> 00:22:31.210 could be engineered to bypass reason and appeal 00:22:31.210 --> 00:22:34.109 directly to our most basic emotions and biases. 00:22:34.690 --> 00:22:37.490 So what do you think he'd say? You know, I think 00:22:37.490 --> 00:22:39.990 he would be horrified. But I don't think he would 00:22:39.990 --> 00:22:41.630 change his mind. I think he would double down. 00:22:41.730 --> 00:22:43.950 He would say that all this chaos, all this misinformation, 00:22:44.349 --> 00:22:47.369 that is the test. That is the dust and heat he 00:22:47.369 --> 00:22:49.970 talked about. And the alternative, censorship, 00:22:50.170 --> 00:22:52.369 is still worse. The alternative is always worse. 00:22:52.569 --> 00:22:55.569 He would reject any ministry of truth. He would 00:22:55.569 --> 00:22:57.549 tell us that the answer isn't to be protected 00:22:57.549 --> 00:23:00.910 from lies. The answer is to get better at spotting 00:23:00.910 --> 00:23:03.309 them, to sharpen our own reason. He doesn't want 00:23:03.309 --> 00:23:05.910 a passive reader. He demands that we do the work. 00:23:06.029 --> 00:23:09.269 He demands that we be worthy of the liberty he 00:23:09.269 --> 00:23:11.789 fought for. He said he wanted a fit audience, 00:23:11.930 --> 00:23:14.390 though few. He wants you to wrestle with the 00:23:14.390 --> 00:23:17.029 ideas. That's a high standard, but a pretty powerful 00:23:17.029 --> 00:23:19.430 one. So for anyone listening, maybe that's the 00:23:19.430 --> 00:23:22.250 challenge. Don't let it be a statue. Go read 00:23:22.250 --> 00:23:25.829 just book one of Paradise Lost. Go read Satan's 00:23:25.829 --> 00:23:28.559 speeches. See the fire for yourself. It's not 00:23:28.559 --> 00:23:31.339 easy reading but the reward is immense. Well 00:23:31.339 --> 00:23:33.420 thank you for taking this deep dive with us into 00:23:33.420 --> 00:23:35.660 the mind of a true revolutionary. A pleasure. 00:23:35.799 --> 00:23:36.519 We'll see you on the next one.