Of innocence and experience

It’s a tough listen, Paradise Lost on Radio 4 at the weekend. In bold defiance of the demands of a broad audience, Milton’s 10,000 lines of high-flown, complex verse runs for two-and-a-half hours (broadcast in two parts on Saturday and Sunday). You need to concentrate and take in every word, not be busy with something else, ears half-cocked to gather the general meaning. But, if you stay with it, the majesty of the subject, that galactic struggle between good and evil, and the mighty flow of words will ensure that all foolish thought is thenceforth banished (at least until the next Trumpian tweet or fallacious Facebook rumour).

The poet Michael Symmons Roberts, who has shaped the epic poem for radio, juxtaposes Milton’s verses, set in the cosmic world of God, Satan, Raphael and Beelzebub, with the blind poet’s efforts to wrestle them from his imagination and on to the page. The battle of the angels is brought down to human level by the pathos of Milton’s situation in 1667, shuffling feet, blind man’s stick, the way in which without sight he is forced to live inside his head, brooding on the chaos he has witnessed through the years of the Civil War.