Ice Trains
Ice Trains
It’s the birthday of the great English poet John Milton, born in London (1608). He’s best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667). But he spent twenty years of his life writing almost nothing but essays on political and religious topics.
…Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself….
He married a woman named Mary Powell in 1642, but she quickly grew tired of him and left him almost immediately after their honeymoon. Milton was furious, but it was against the law to get a divorce on the grounds of incompatibility. The next year, he wrote The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643), in which he argued that couples should be able to divorce if the marriage turns out to be unhappy. He tried to prove that marriage was created to remedy the loneliness of men, and that if a wife failed to perform this function, her husband should have the right to divorce her. He also said that those who had lived freely in their youth were more likely to find happiness in marriage than those who were chaste and inexperienced. Milton addressed his tract to the British Parliament, but it didn’t go over well. He remained married to Powell until her death in 1652.
Milton was also one of the early crusaders against the government’s censorship of books and pamphlets. He argued that no one group should control the number of available opinions from which an individual can choose. He wrote, “Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself.”
But his great masterpiece was Paradise Lost, from which many readers come away feeling that Satan is the most interesting and sympathetic character in the poem.
From the Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.
Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK
Available by e-mail daily.
Further reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK
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