Dubious Battle: Saving the Appearances

Milton’s “lik’ning spiritual to corporal forms” (PL V. 573) alienates the modern reader. Angels fighting angels, with whatever weapons—swords, cannonballs, mountains? We no longer find war exhilarating. Nor do we believe in the materiality of angels. The heavy concentration of Latin vocabulary is also oppressive; it grides like Michael’s sword. Hughes summarizes (as of 1957), “As a field marshal in Heaven, the critics agree to find Satan disgusting and to say as little as possible about him except to deplore his jibes and Belial’s at the angels whom their first salvo topples over.” ¹ Even as a contest it is short on suspense, long on futility, since the conclusion is foregone and has already been described. Except for the hurling of hills “to and fro with jaculation dire” (VI. 685)—a scene that comes perilously close to a Superman cartoon—it is all too human. Magic might have saved it: A Midsummer Night’s dream. Or it might have glided into “sci-fi”: ² ray guns, Star Wars. It does not: I do not follow Empson’s charge, “unusually stupid Science Fiction.” ³ In any case John Collier shunned it for his “Screenplay,” even as John Dryden did for his “Opera.” ⁴