> I’m not a big lit guy but I read this. The first 10% was hard to get through due to how different Milton’s english is from my own.
I agree. Milton's English is beautiful but easily on the level of an unmodernized Shakespeare in terms of deterring a reader, who spends as much time cracking the puzzle as they do on any kind of esthetic appreciation.
As an experiment, I was trying rewriting _Paradise Lost_ in contemporary blank verse with GPT-4/Claude-2. It was OK, but what I discovered was that what really works is an alliterative verse translation! (I was then informed that it is believed that Milton may have been drawing on an Old English poem about the Fall, "Genesis A", and so this may not be an accident.)
Two example renditions of the prologue:
1. Man's first folly, the fateful fruit's taste,
From forbidden tree's tempting twig it came,
Death and doom dealt, despair in our world,
Eden erased, exalted man to mend,
Restoring realms of radiant bliss, sing,
Sacred muse, who soared on secret summits,
Oreb, Sinai, sharing whispered wisdom,
With shepherds, teaching truths to chosen kin,
Heavens and earth hewn from harrowing haze,
Sion's slopes, Siloa's silver stream,
Flowing fast by God's grand guiding hand,
Grant thy aid to my aspiring anthem,
Aiming high above Aonian heights,
Pursuing paths untried in prose or rhyme.
2. Man's fatal first taste, the forbidden fruit
Whose bitter bloom brought bale and sorrow bleak
With paradise perished, till One more mighty restores what was lost
Reclaims the radiant seats—O sacred Muse,
Who on Sinai's summit secret
And Horeb's height inspired
Chosen seers to teach the tribes since time first woke,
How heavens and earth arose from Chaos hoar,
Or if thou rather tread Sion's summit steep,
And Siloa's silvern stream that rushed thereby
Where dwelt the oracle and rock of God,
That poured forth fates—now lend thy light, that I
May soar on song's ambitious wings
Above Parnassus' peaks, pursuing lofty themes...
Great matters meet for grandest strains of lore.
Thee chiefly, thee, heart's truth, soul's purest shine,
O Spirit blest, who scorneth shrine and show
Inspire my strain; for thou, who knowest all,
Hast known since earth's first sunrise. Mighty wings
Did brood with wings outspread upon the formless void
Kindling Chaos into teeming, shaping flame;
To attain the epic theme, this lofty matter,
In hymns that hallow Heaven's eternal ways.
I agree. Milton's English is beautiful but easily on the level of an unmodernized Shakespeare in terms of deterring a reader, who spends as much time cracking the puzzle as they do on any kind of esthetic appreciation.
As an experiment, I was trying rewriting _Paradise Lost_ in contemporary blank verse with GPT-4/Claude-2. It was OK, but what I discovered was that what really works is an alliterative verse translation! (I was then informed that it is believed that Milton may have been drawing on an Old English poem about the Fall, "Genesis A", and so this may not be an accident.)
Two example renditions of the prologue: