Tag: milton

The dilemma of the Fallen or the Thrown: the idiocy of happiness or free self-possession and self- regulation in a world of horror and gloom.

December 21, 2025

Gustave Doré’s version of Satan after the Fall may be thinking: ‘Am I happy here?’ Those of us who refuse the blandishments of comforting religions still appreciate the call of bliss, so called, of perfect and unqualified satisfaction and that superfluous emotion we call joy. We all now live in a world into which we … More The dilemma of the Fallen or the Thrown: the idiocy of happiness or free self-possession and self- regulation in a world of horror and gloom.

The only city you could continue to want to visit, and not yet have found a way to go there, is one of which you lack any realistic current knowledge but of the need your visit will fulfill in your imagination. For Dick Whittington, that city was not London but a city paved with gold. Satan, as imagined by Milton, wishes for a community of all and every demon, and because these demons believed, the city of Pandemonium was built as they convened and communed in it.

December 15, 2025

Why not start with versifying of my own: But that is not the city, said DickAnd looked away to one not built,Its roads with gold inlaid so thick, Building, gilding his inner guiltThat he knew would rule that cityAs mayor, without love nor pity. Meanwhile, in Hell, Satan’s fine gilded hornA Trump of doom did … More The only city you could continue to want to visit, and not yet have found a way to go there, is one of which you lack any realistic current knowledge but of the need your visit will fulfill in your imagination. For Dick Whittington, that city was not London but a city paved with gold. Satan, as imagined by Milton, wishes for a community of all and every demon, and because these demons believed, the city of Pandemonium was built as they convened and communed in it.