【英文原声版66】Erik Gray: Paradise Lost

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Zachary Davis: From an early age, John Milton knew he was going to be a poet. He didn’t know exactly what he would write, but he knew poetry was his calling. While he was a student at Christ’s College, Cambridge, he announced his vocation to the world while performing a poem he’d written in Latin.

扎卡里·戴维斯：小时候，约翰·弥尔顿就知道他会成为一个诗人。他不知道自己到底会写什么内容，但他清楚，写诗歌是他的使命。在剑桥大学基督学院读书时，他朗诵了一首自己写的拉丁语诗歌，向世人宣告了他的使命。

Erik Gray: But then there's this strange bit where it turns English and he starts speaking himself. And right in the middle of this performance, he starts saying, “My muse, I know that you're there waiting for me and I'm coming, I don't know what I'm going to write, but I'm going to write it in English and it's going to be the greatest poem that the world has ever seen.” If you can imagine what this would be like, it would be like your fourth graders up there in a chorus, you know, singing, you know, singing Christmas Carols with with their classmates. And all of a sudden they step forward for their solo and they start singing, and says, “Let me tell you, I'm going to be the world's greatest poet.” Just absolutely extraordinary.

埃里克·格雷：读着读着，事情变得有些奇怪了：朗诵的语言变成了英语，弥尔顿也开始自言自语。朗诵到中途，他说：“我的缪斯，我知道你在那儿等着我，我不知道我要写什么，但我要用英语来写，写一部世界上最伟大的诗歌。”不妨想象一下当时的场景，那就像是一群四年级的学生在合唱圣诞颂歌，突然之间，有人向前迈了一步，开始独唱：“我来告诉你，我将成为世界上最伟大的诗人。”真是出人意料。

Zachary Davis: That’s Erik Gray.

扎卡里·戴维斯：这位是埃里克·格雷。

Erik Gray: I'm a professor of English at Columbia University.

埃里克·格雷：我是哥伦比亚大学的英语教授。

Zachary Davis: Incredibly, Milton’s prediction for his life came true. Decades later, he wrote Paradise Lost, unquestionably the greatest epic poem written in English.

扎卡里·戴维斯：不可思议的是，弥尔顿对自己的人生预言成真了。几十年后，他写下了《失乐园》，这无疑是最伟大的英语史诗

Erik Gray: His poem is set at the very beginning of the world. And by definition, everything that happens in this poem determines who we are today. It's a poem about the fall of humankind from a state of grace to a state of fallenness and what could be more determinative of our current lives. So that's what he's trying to achieve in both taking on the epic mantle, but also, in a sense, completely reinventing what epic can do.

埃里克·格雷：这部史诗的背景设置在世界诞生之初。按照释义，诗中发生的一切都决定了如今人类的模样。它讲述了人类的堕落史，如何从无忧无虑到堕入凡间，还讲述了哪些事情更能决定着我们如今的生活。这就是弥尔顿想要做的——他既继承了史诗的衣钵，也在某种意义上完全重塑了史诗的作用。

Zachary Davis: Welcome to Writ Large, a podcast about how books change the world. I’m Zachary Davis. In each episode, I talk with one of the world’s leading scholars about one book that changed the course of history. For this episode, I sat down with Professor Erik Gray to discuss John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

扎卡里·戴维斯：欢迎收听：改变你和世界的100书，在这里我们为大家讲述改变世界的书籍。我是扎卡里·戴维斯。每一集，我都会和一位世界顶尖学者讨论一本影响历史进程的书。在本集，我和埃里克·格雷教授一起讨论《失乐园》。

Erik Gray: Milton was born in 1608. His father was scrivener, which is to say something like a lawyer and made enough money to get his son John a very good education. Milton went on to Cambridge to study there and was extraordinarily gifted in languages.

埃里克·格雷：弥尔顿出生于1608年，他的父亲是一位公证人，跟律师有些相似。他赚了足够多的钱，让儿子约翰接受了很好的教育。弥尔顿进入了剑桥大学学习，在语言方面特别有天赋。

Zachary Davis: Milton studied Latin, Greek, Italian, Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Dutch. But his interests went beyond languages. He had an insatiable appetite for all kinds of knowledge.

扎卡里·戴维斯：他学习了拉丁语、希腊语、意大利语、希伯来语、法语、西班牙语和荷兰语。但他的兴趣不止在语言，在各个领域他都求知若渴。

Erik Gray: And so he was reading voraciously in everything， in the classics, in science. When he traveled to the continent, he met Galileo. He was very interested in everything. There was really no area of human knowledge that Milton was not interested in and they did not become conversant in. But his real love was for the classics, specifically classical poetry. And so by the time he was at university—so in his late teens—he already knew that he wanted to be a poet.

埃里克·格雷：他如饥似渴地阅读一切书籍，有古典学方面的，有科学方面的。在赴欧洲大陆游历的时候，他还遇到了伽利略。他对所有知识都很感兴趣。在所有人类知识中，没有哪个领域是他不感兴趣、不熟悉的。不过他真正热爱的还是古典学，尤其是古典诗歌。在他十几岁上大学的时候，他就已经清楚自己想成为一名诗人。

Zachary Davis: Milton was also on track to become a minister in the Anglican church. But near the end of his academic studies, he decided against putting on the clerical collar. Milton realized how much he prized freedom of thought and increasingly disliked the hierarchy of the established church. Instead, he turned his full attention to his original calling: poetry.

扎克里·戴维斯：弥尔顿当时也在准备去英国圣公会做牧师。但在大学学业快结束的时候，他决定放弃加入圣公会。他意识到自己是那样珍视思想自由，又是那样越来越反感当时教会的等级制度。于是他把全部注意力转向了他最初的使命——诗歌。

Erik Gray: Milton decided if I really am going to be the greatest, I have to study. And so after he finished his education, because his father had the means to support him, Milton simply retired and lived at his father's house and spent six years doing nothing but studying in order to prepare himself for his calling as a poet.

埃里克·格雷：弥尔顿下定决心，如果真的要成为最伟大的诗人，必须努力学习。毕业之后，由于父亲有能力资助他，弥尔顿索性就住在父亲家里，六年间什么工作都不做，只一心学习，为实现自己诗人的使命做准备。

Zachary Davis: Milton spent these years studying theology, philosophy, history, literature, science, and politics. In the late 1630s, he went on the famous grand tour of France and Italy where he was able to visit the places and experience the religious traditions he had been reading about during his studies. When he returned to England, he found his country in crisis.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在这几年里，弥尔顿学习了神学、哲学、历史、文学、科学和政治。17世纪30年代末，他赴法国和意大利游历，参观了书本上提到的地方，亲身体验了他在学习期间读到的宗教传统。回到英国之后，他发现自己的国家正处于危难之中。

Erik Gray: In the 1640s and 1650s, England had civil war.

埃里克·格雷：17世纪40年代至50年代，英国爆发了内战。

Zachary Davis: This war was both religious and political. The main dispute was over how England, Scotland, and Ireland should be governed. The war was between two parties: the Royalists, who supported the monarchical rule of King Charles I, and the Parliamentarians, who supported a more democratic rule. Although these two parties both supported Protestantism, they had competing interpretations of it. King Charles was in favor of a more ritualistic, hierarchical church, similar to the Catholic Church.

扎卡里·戴维斯：这场战争既有宗教方面因素，也有政治方面的因素，主要争端在于应当如何治理英格兰、苏格兰和爱尔兰。战争双方为保皇派和议会派：保皇派支持国王查理一世的君主统治，而议会派则支持更加民主的统治方式。虽然这两个派别都支持新教，但他们对新教的解释却各不相同。查理一世想要建立一个更加仪式化、等级化的教会，类似于天主教会那样。

Erik Gray: And the parliament had a great deal of affinity for a much more Protestant, indeed Puritan non-hierarchical church and at the same time for a greater role in parliament of a parliament as opposed to simple royal dictatorship. And Milton was very much on one side. This isn't the background to Paradise Lost. This is the foreground to Milton's life.

埃里克·格雷：而议会则倾向于建立一个更符合新教的（准确来说是更符合清教的）、非等级化的教会。他们还希望议会能发挥更大的作用，反对单纯的君主专制。弥尔顿非常支持议会派。当然，这不是《失乐园》的背景，而是弥尔顿人生中重要的图景。

Zachary Davis: Milton sided with the Parliamentarians. The war ended with the execution of king Charles I, the exile of his son Charles II, and the establishment of the English Commonwealth. The new government was led by a man named Oliver Cromwell who ruled for the next 11 years until his death. At this point, Milton changed career paths again.

扎卡里·戴维斯：弥尔顿站在议会派那一边。内战结束了，国王查理一世被处死，他的儿子查理二世被流放，议会派建立了英格兰联邦。新政府由奥利弗·克伦威尔领导。直到去世，他都一直统治着英国，前后长达十一年。在这个阶段，弥尔顿又走上了另一条职业道路。

Erik Gray: By the time Milton undertook his position working for Oliver Cromwell and the British Commonwealth, he had published only one fairly slender book of poems in sixteen forty five, a bunch of Latin poems, and then a group of English poems, all of them extraordinarily good, but only one example of each genre.

埃里克·格雷：弥尔顿在奥利弗·克伦威尔领导的英格兰联邦中任职。到那时，他只在1645年出版了一本薄薄的诗集，里面收录了一些拉丁语诗歌和英文诗歌。所有诗都很好，但每种体裁只有一首。

Erik Gray: So there's one elegy in there. There's one hymn, there's several sonnets, there's one masque, which is like a play. They're all very good. But again, it's a relatively slender volume, which makes it all the more extraordinary that he gives up, or at least he postpones what he had always known to be his vocation, his poetic vocation in order to undertake this job and this other calling, which was to defend as he sought to defend religious and political liberty.

埃里克·格雷：其中有一首挽歌、一首赞美诗、几首十四行诗和一首假面剧。所谓“假面剧”，是当时英国的一种诗剧。这些作品都非常好，但整本册子特别薄。他放弃、或者说推迟自己诗歌使命的决定显得格外不同寻常。不过他暂时抛下诗歌，是为了完成他的另一项工作与使命，那就是尽力捍卫宗教自由和政治自由。

Zachary Davis: This position combined Milton’s political interests with his love of languages.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在这个职位上，弥尔顿融合了自己对政治的兴趣和对语言的热爱。

Erik Gray: He wrote the public defenses of the regicide of killing the thing that was read by all of Europe. But a lot of it was just translating correspondence into Latin.

埃里克·格雷：他公开撰文，为处决君主一事辩护，文章在欧洲广为传阅。还有很多时候，他要负责把书信翻译成拉丁文。

Zachary Davis: But he didn’t put his aspirations aside entirely. Even while he was working for the government, Milton was still thinking about the great poem he would write.

扎卡里·戴维斯：但他并没有完全把自己的抱负放在一边。即使在政府任职期间，弥尔顿仍然在构思未来要写的伟大诗歌。

Erik Gray: When Milton set out to write an epic poem, he had in mind a long tradition that starts with Homer. And for Homer, epic was about the heroic actions of those who are in some sense greater than we are, something set in the past that determines who we are today and sets a model for who we are. And that was reinforced and indeed in a sense changed by Homer’s great successor in Latin, namely Virgil, who made his epic, The Aeneid, something that has direct historical importance.

埃里克·格雷：弥尔顿开始着手写一部史诗。他想到了荷马开创的悠久传统。荷马史诗讲述了那些在某种意义上比我们更伟大的人的壮举，讲述了过去发生的某些事情决定了我们如今的模样，为我们树立了榜样。这一传统被荷马在拉丁语世界的伟大继承者——维吉尔强化了，在某种意义上其实也被他改变了。维吉尔创作的史诗《埃涅阿斯纪》具有直接的历史意义。

Erik Gray: So if Homer's heroes might serve as a model for us, Virgil's hero, Aeneas, actually made us who we are because he founded, according to the epic, he founded Rome and the Roman Empire, at least when Virgil was writing, and in a way, this is still true for the Western world, determined the shape of our laws, our governments and so on.

埃里克·格雷：如果说荷马的英雄可能会成为我们的榜样，那么维吉尔的英雄埃涅阿斯其实造就了我们身份，因为根据史诗中的叙述，他建立了罗马帝国。至少在维吉尔写作的时候，罗马帝国的确塑造着人们的身份。在某种程度上说，如今罗马仍然影响着西方世界，决定了我们的法律、政府等形态。

Zachary Davis: But Milton doesn’t just want to sit among Homer and Virgil, he wants to surpass them. And he believes the way to do this is to set his poem long before the epics of the classical world. What do we know about when he first got that kind of frame or the conception of Paradise Lost? And when did he begin working on the text itself?

扎卡里·戴维斯：但弥尔顿并不只是想和荷马、维吉尔平起平坐，他想要超越他们。他觉得，要想做到这一点，就得把史诗的背景设定得比古典史诗的背景还要早很多。据我们所知，他是什么时候开始构思起了《失乐园》，又是什么时候开始撰写这部史诗？

Erik Gray: First he outlines all the different subjects that might be worthy of his attention. Many of them are typical, many of them are from what we would consider minor parts of the Bible. He also considered writing about King Arthur because this was going to be the great English epic who's writing in English rather than Latin. He thought of Adam on Paradise, that was the title that he gave it. And he outlined a five act version of Adam on Paradise in the 1640s. So obviously, he had an idea of what it was going to be.

埃里克·格雷：首先他列出所有可能值得他关注的主题。许多主题都很经典，还有许多来自《圣经》的细节。他还想过要写亚瑟王的故事，因为他要写的是伟大的英国史诗，是用英语而不是拉丁语写的。后来，他想到了《天堂上的亚当》这个名字。在17世纪40年代，他初步写下了一个五幕剧。显然，他对要写的内容有了些头绪。

Zachary Davis: While Milton was working for the Commonwealth, Oliver Cromwell’s health was deteriorating. Towards the end of his life, Cromwell was battling malaria and kidney disease. He died in 1658. After his death, the Commonwealth of England crumbled, and the Royalists brought Charles II out of exile and back into London. This marked the end of the republic and the restoration of the monarchy.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在弥尔顿为英格兰联邦工作的期间，奥利弗·克伦威尔的身体健康每况愈下。在生命的最后时刻，克伦威尔一直在与疟疾和肾病作斗争。1658年，克伦威尔去世。后来，英格兰联邦倒台，保皇派将查理二世从流放地带回伦敦。这标志着共和制结束了，君主制恢复了。

Zachary Davis: This also meant the end of Milton’s government position. The good news is that he finally had the time to get to work on his great poem. He began working on it in 1658.

扎卡里·戴维斯：这也意味着弥尔顿在政府的任期结束了。好消息是，他终于有时间去创作他的史诗。1658年，他开始着手创作。

Erik Gray: In his own account, he would wake up in the morning, having been inspired over night by his muse and call for somebody to come and write down what he was going to dictate and dictate around 30 lines, and then spend the rest of the day whittling them down to their final form, which would be shorter, and again the next night and so on. So writing at about 15 lines a day, he eventually, over the course of six years, produces the 12 books, originally, it was 10 books, but then it was redivided to be 12 books, that is the final poem.

埃里克·格雷：据他自己描述，缪斯会在夜间赐予他灵感，早上醒来后，他会口述三十行诗，叫人写下他口述的内容，再花上一天推敲删减，形成一个短一些的终稿，下一夜再得来一些灵感，如此往复。他每天完成十五行左右，六年之后，他完成了十卷。整部史诗最初是十卷，后来被重新划分成了十二卷。这就是最终的整部诗。

Zachary Davis: Milton was dictating because he was blind.

扎卡里·戴维斯：弥尔顿口述了要写的内容，他当时已经失明了。

Erik Gray: He went blind around 1652 while he was working for Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth. And so after that, he had to dictate all of his works, both prose and poetry, and so what's considered the manuscript of book one of Paradise Lost is not in Milton's hand.

埃里克·格雷：1652年左右，他失明了，当时他正在为奥利弗·克伦威尔的英格兰联邦工作。在那之后，他创作所有作品，包括散文和诗歌的时候都要口述。所以，我们以为的《失乐园》第一卷的手稿并非出自弥尔顿之手。

Zachary Davis: Let's let's talk about the text, though, so. What's the story, what is the style and form like?

扎卡里·戴维斯：我们来谈谈这部诗吧。它讲了什么故事？风格和形式是怎样的？

Erik Gray: Well, the title Paradise Lost refers to two things, because there are two plots, although closely intertwined plots in the poem. First of all, it refers to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and their fall and their loss of paradise, and then it also refers to the fall of Satan and all the rebel angels out of heaven.

埃里克·格雷：《失乐园》这个标题指的是两件事，诗中有两个紧密相关的情节。一方面，它指的是伊甸园中的亚当和夏娃堕落了，被逐出了天堂。另一方面，它指的是撒旦和所有反叛的天使被赶出天堂。

Zachary Davis: The first story, the story of Adam and Eve, is biblical, found in the Book of Genesis. It describes the origins of the human race beginning with the first two people, Adam and Eve. Milton doesn’t copy the Bible’s text word for word. He rewrites it and embellishes it to fit his poem.

扎卡里·戴维斯：第一个故事源自《圣经·创世纪》中亚当和夏娃的故事。它讲述了人类最初的两位祖先——亚当和夏娃。弥尔顿并没有一字不差地照搬圣经。他改写并加以润色，使之与自己的诗歌相适应。

Erik Gray: There had been some embellishments on that story before, there's a tradition of writing about the Bible and expanding on the sort of bare bones of the stories given in the Bible. And that's a very old tradition. And it flourished in Europe all the way through, you know, the Renaissance literature. But there really hadn't been a retelling of the Adam and Eve story quite as detailed and quite as magnificent as Milton's.

埃里克·格雷：早在弥尔顿之前，就有人改写过亚当与夏娃的故事。当时流传着一种文学传统，就是对圣经中那些光秃秃的故事进行拓展。整个文艺复兴时期，这项古老的传统在欧洲文学中蓬勃发展。但没有哪部改写的作品像弥尔顿的诗歌那样详细、宏伟。

Zachary Davis: So, Milton wasn’t the first to retell the story of Adam and Eve, but his version of the story has had a profound impact on future retellings.

扎卡里·戴维斯：弥尔顿并不是第一个改写亚当和夏娃故事的人，但他的版本对之后的改写产生了深远的影响。

Erik Gray: I remember once being in a class, a lecture course on the Bibles, on the English Bible, English translations of the Bible. And the very first assignment was, read the first three chapters of Genesis. And at the first class, the teacher said, OK, who wants to tell us the story of what you just read last night, what you read last night? A student raised his hand and he stood up and he said, well, Adam and Eve are in the garden. And then Satan comes and says, you should eat this apple. And they do and they fall. Which, of course, is not what happens at all. There is no Satan in the story, that the serpent tells them to do this. There's no mention of the devil at all.

埃里克·格雷：我记得我曾经上过一门《圣经》的讲座课，主题是《圣经》的英文译本。老师布置的第一个作业是读《创世纪》的前三章。第一节课上，老师说：“谁愿意给我们讲讲昨晚刚读的故事？”一个学生举手，站起来说“亚当和夏娃在伊甸园里。撒旦来了，劝诱他们吃禁果。他们吃了，随后被逐出了伊甸园。”当然，这其实并不是《创世纪》里发生的事情。创世纪里没有撒旦，叫他们偷吃禁果的是蛇。里面根本就没有提到魔鬼。

Erik Gray: But the fact is, Milton has made the story of Satan tempting Eve so familiar to English readers that you can read this young man had read three chapters of the Bible and yet he couldn't see what was in front of it, which is that Satan is not mentioned.

埃里克·格雷：事实上，正是由于弥尔顿的改写，英国读者对“撒旦劝诱夏娃”这个情节已经非常熟悉了。所以这个年轻人即使已经读了三章《圣经》，却未曾意识到前面这几章并没有提到撒旦。

Erik Gray: The other story, the story of Satan and the rebel angels, isn't actually in the Bible at all. It's something that had grown up, it’s not Milton’s invention, but had grown up over the course of centuries based on a few passages in the Hebrew Bible and then a longer passage in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. And that story has nevertheless become so ingrained, and especially Milton's version has become so ingrained that there are probably a lot of people who don't know that that story isn't in the Bible.

埃里克·格雷：《失乐园》中的另外一个故事是撒旦和反叛天使的故事。这段其实《圣经》里根本没有。但它也并非弥尔顿的原创，而是在数百年间，基于《希伯来圣经》中的几小段和之后《新约·启示录》中稍长的一段，逐渐发展出来的桥段。但这个故事已经深深扎根在了人们的脑海里，弥尔顿的版本尤其让人印象深刻，乃至很多人可能都不知道《圣经》里根本没有这个故事。

Zachary Davis: These two stories of Adam and Eve and the fall of Satan take place simultaneously and are woven together. What is the plot of the rest of those two stories?

扎卡里·戴维斯：亚当和夏娃的堕落以及撒旦的堕落是同时发生的，而且是交织在一起的。这两个故事其余部分的情节是怎样的？

Erik Gray: The story, which is not Milton's invention, but which he elaborates on, is that there was an Archangel, one of the greatest and most powerful of the angels named Lucifer, who at a certain point became jealous of God and specifically Milton's version became jealous of the son of God. So in Milton's version, we're introduced to the son of God long before he is incarnated as Jesus, and he sits at the right hand of his father and rules over the angels.

埃里克·格雷：虽然撒旦堕落的故事并不是由弥尔顿原创的，但他的确详细叙述了。故事的内容是这样的：天堂上有一个名叫路西法的天使长，是几个最强大的天使之一。某天，他对上帝心生嫉妒。在弥尔顿的版本中，他是对圣子心生嫉妒。圣子早在在化身为耶稣之前，一直坐在上帝右手边，统治着一众天使。

Erik Gray: And there's a moment specifically where God says to the angels. This this is my son, and I am anointing him this day, and he will rule over you. And most of the angels take this is common sense. This is the way it's always been. And this is simply a celebration of the godhead of the son, whereas this one angel known is not actually named as such in the poem, but is generally known as Lucifer before his fall takes umbrage at this and calls all of his own rules over one third of heavens.

埃里克·格雷：有一天，上帝对天使们说：“这是我的儿子，今日我将为他傅膏油，你们将受他统治。”大多数天使觉得没什么，不过是一直以来的规矩罢了，仅仅是在庆祝圣子受膏。但有一位天使不这么想。诗中没有提及他的名字，但人们都说，在堕落前他叫“路西法”。路西法对上帝的话深感不满，于是将超过三分之一的天使召集到自己麾下。

Erik Gray: And he calls them all to a secret council and says, this is an attack on us, on our liberties, and therefore we are going to wage war against God because he is trying to usurp us. This is a usurpation.

埃里克·格雷：他把他们召集到一个秘密会议上，说：“这是在掠夺我们，这是在掠夺我们的自由。我们要向上帝开战，他在篡夺我们的权力，这是场阴谋。”

Zachary Davis: Lucifer believed that God was acting like a tyrant and went to war against Him.

扎卡里·戴维斯：路西法认为上帝做出了暴君之举，决意与他开战。

Erik Gray: The war in heaven is described. And then Satan, with all of his crew, fall. Now he is known as Satan and they all have new names as well. Their old names in Heaven are erased and they fall into this fire pit, this gulf that God has created specifically to receive them. So he is the antagonist of the poem. And yet to many readers, he is also the hero of the poem.

埃里克·格雷：诗中描述了天堂的战争。路西法和他所有的手下被逐出天堂。他被改名为“撒旦”，其他天使也有了新的名字。他们被抹去了天堂的旧名字，被打入上帝专门为他们开辟的烈焰深渊中。

Zachary Davis: For Lucifer’s character, Milton was able to draw from his own life experiences of rebellion.

扎卡里·戴维斯：对路西法性格的刻画与弥尔顿反抗国王的经历息息相关。

Erik Gray: Milton had spent, you know, 15 years before writing, starting Paradise Lost, rebelling against the king and defending the right of oppressed subjects to rebel against the king and to overthrow that king because the king is trampling on their rights.

埃里克·格雷：在动笔写《失乐园》之前的十五年里，弥尔顿一直反抗着国王，捍卫着民众反抗、推翻国王的权力。国王在压迫民众，践踏他们的权利。

Zachary Davis: Milton used Lucifer to illustrate how he and much of England felt under the monarchical rulership of king Charles I.

扎卡里·戴维斯：弥尔顿用路西法这个角色来展现他和英国大部分人在国王查理一世专制统治下的感受。

Erik Gray: And he puts all of his most powerful revolutionary rhetoric into the mouth of Satan and Satan's accomplices. It's extraordinarily stirring. If you ever want to start a revolution, you shouldn't quote from God in the poem. You should quote from Satan. And the readers’ challenge in the poem is to see all of this extraordinarily powerful rhetoric, which in a sense is true, would be true, the defense of liberty that Satan mouths are admirable, they’re simply inapplicable.

埃里克·格雷：他赋予了撒旦和同伙们最有力的革命言论。这太让人心潮澎湃了。如果你想掀起一场革命，你不应该引用诗中上帝的话，反而应该引用撒旦的话！这让读者在阅读时面临着一大挑战：你要看到，尽管从撒旦口中说出这些激情洋溢、捍卫自由的话语有些奇怪，但从某种意义上看，这些话毋庸置疑，这份精神也令人钦佩。

Zachary Davis: Satan is admirable in his fight for liberty against God in the same way Milton and the Parliamentarians were admirable in their fight for liberty against Charles I. But what makes Satan such a complex and difficult character is the fact that God and Charles I have very different levels of power. Charles I can, in fact, restrict one’s liberty. But God, because he is the ultimate authority and creator, provides liberty. Lucifer wasn’t content with his role as God’s favorite angel. He wanted to become God.

扎卡里·戴维斯：弥尔顿和议会派力争从查理一世手中夺回自由，着实令人敬佩。撒旦力争从上帝手中夺回自由，也同样令人敬佩。但撒旦这个角色之所以复杂艰涩，是因为上帝和查理一世所拥有的权力大小不尽相同。查理一世可以限制一个人的自由，而上帝身为万物的终极创造者，赋予了万物自由。路西法不想仅仅做上帝最喜欢的天使，他想要取代上帝。

Erik Gray: But still, it makes the poem so much more interesting, not only because Satan is not foolish or blatantly wrong, that Satan is challenging because he is so admirable in certain ways and his words have this ring of truth and of a stirring wisdom to them, because they are Milton's own words from his revolutionary pamphlets. And yet the challenge is to admire that, recognize that, and also be able to understand in what way Satan is wrong.

埃里克·格雷：但这还是让全诗变得更有意思。撒旦并不是因为愚蠢或胆大妄为而公然反抗上帝。他之所以这么做，是因为他在某些方面如此令人钦佩。他的话语激荡着真理与智慧之音，这些话和弥尔顿革命小册子里的话如出一辙。而对读者来说，困难之处在于认识并欣赏这一点，同时还能领会到撒旦在哪些地方做错了。

Zachary Davis: It sounds like you're saying Milton’s Satan was the original anti-hero, the anti-hero that we root for.

扎卡里·戴维斯：我感觉您像是在说，弥尔顿笔下的撒旦是最早的反英雄，是我们所喜爱的反英雄的雏形。

Erik Gray: That is exactly who he is. It's not unprecedented, but in terms of his magnitude, in terms of the challenges that he presents to the reader, yes, I think he is the original anti-hero. People think of the Satan plot, and it has had perhaps the greater influence of the two main plots in Paradise Lost.

埃里克·格雷：他确实就是这样的。尽管他不是史上第一个反英雄，但就他的重要性和带给读者的挑战而言，我觉得他可谓是反英雄的鼻祖。对读者来说，撒旦个人的故事可能比《失乐园》中两个主要故事的影响更大。

Erik Gray: I think to readers nowadays, the real surprise is coming across the Adam and Eve plot because. Adam and Eve, we don't get much of a sense of their relationship to each other, of their life together before the fall or even much after it from Genesis, Genesis gives us very little and there's much less elaboration in the iconography and the story surrounding Adam and Eve before Milton than there is of the Satan story,

埃里克·格雷：我觉得对于今天的读者来说，诗中亚当和夏娃的故事是真正的惊喜。我们在《创世纪》中并没有读到太多对他们堕落前后日常生活的描写。《创世纪》中的刻画非常少。在弥尔顿之前，对亚当与夏娃的形象塑造与故事叙述比撒旦还要少得多。

Zachary Davis: Satan has appeared in other stories such as the legend of Faust, and he took on different names, like Mephistopheles and Beelzebub. But Milton really breathed new life into the Adam and Eve story and helped paint a more detailed picture of their lives before the fall.

扎卡里·戴维斯：撒旦也曾出现在其他故事中，如在浮士德的传说中，他有着其他名字，比如梅菲斯特或别西卜。但弥尔顿确实为亚当和夏娃的故事注入了新的生命，更细致地描绘了他们堕落前的生活。

Erik Gray: The richness of the portrayal of Adam and Eve is one of the glories of the poem. And it's extraordinarily forward thinking. So just to provide some background, Milton had a very unhappy marriage, his first marriage, it was based on essentially a misunderstanding. He didn't really is why he did not know each other before they got married, which is not unusual. And not long after their marriage first his wife deserted him, went back to her parents, and Milton began writing a series of pamphlets about divorce.

埃里克·格雷：对亚当和夏娃的丰富描写是这首诗的亮点之一，传递的思想也非常超前。关于这个，还有一些背景信息。弥尔顿有一段非常不幸福的婚姻。他的第一段婚姻可以说基于一场误会。结婚前，他和新娘都不了解彼此。这在当时并不罕见。结婚后不久，他的妻子离开他回到了娘家。于是，弥尔顿开始写一些宣传离婚的小册子。

Zachary Davis: At the time, divorce was forbidden by Christian law.

扎卡里·戴维斯：当时，基督教教义禁止离婚。

Erik Gray: And Milton simply takes that on, head on and confronts the four main verses in the New Testament that say that marriage is indissoluble and say why they should not be true. But a little bit paradoxically. What emerges from Milton's writings about divorce is one of the earliest and still the most eloquent defenses of the beauty and the importance of marriage.

埃里克·格雷：弥尔顿质疑了这一点，批判了《新约》中阐述婚姻牢不可破的四大章节，阐明它们错在何处。但有些矛盾的是，反而是在弥尔顿宣扬离婚的著作中，出现了有史以来最早的、最有力的强调婚姻美好与重要性的论述。

Erik Gray: And the reason that we still read Milton's divorce tracks is not because of his specific analyses of biblical quotations, about the legitimacy of divorce, which don't necessarily need to be argued, at least not in our legal system, but because of the high ideal that he has of marriage.

埃里克·格雷：如今我们还会去读弥尔顿宣扬离婚的文章。这并不是因为我们还需要回顾他对圣经文本的具体分析，或是仍需要论证离婚的合法性。这些都已经不言而喻了，至少在我们的法律体系中不需要再去论证了。我们仍然读这些，是因为其中蕴含了他对婚姻的最高理想。

Erik Gray: And really what he's saying there is we allow divorce in case of adultery. And yes, and that is to set physical the physical relation of marriage above the much more important spiritual relation of marriage, and by spiritual, I mean the intellectual relationship of marriage. He says marriage is a form of conversation. And if you can't have a conversation with your spouse, that is a reason to dissolve the marriage just as much as infidelity or impotence, which would both be reasons to annul or dissolve a marriage under the law.

埃里克·格雷：他说，如果夫妻中有人有了婚外关系，那就应当准许这对夫妻离婚。这其实是把婚姻的实际关系至于婚姻的神圣性之上。我所说的神圣性，是指婚姻这个概念被认为是神圣的。他说，婚姻是一种对话方式。如果你没法与伴侣对话，那就足以构成离婚的理由，就像不忠或性无能一样。根据当时的法律，只要提出这两个理由，都可以取消或解除婚姻。

Zachary Davis: In his pamphlets on divorce, Milton looks at marriage and divorce from a new angle. At the time, it was common for people to marry out of convenience. Marriage was often a strategic move for political and or economic reasons. But Milton proposed a new model of marriage, one that was based on love, mutual understanding, and mutual support.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在宣传离婚的小册子中，弥尔顿从新的角度来看待婚姻和离婚。在当时，人们往往出于实际考量而结婚。婚姻往往出自政治和或经济上的原因，是一种战略举措。但弥尔顿提出了一种新的婚姻模式，这种模式建立在爱、相互理解和相互支持的基础上。

Erik Gray: And that's what's represented in Adam and Eve. They have long conversations. And it's true that according to the understanding of the day and to the explicit prescriptions of the Bible as he understood it, Eve is subordinated to Adam. Nevertheless, they interact as partners, not necessarily as equals, but as partners.

埃里克·格雷：诗中的亚当和夏娃就是这一代表。他们常常促膝长谈。尽管根据当时人们的理解，以及弥尔顿眼中《圣经》的明确描述，夏娃是从属于亚当的，但俩人还是像伙伴一样在互动。他们之间不一定平等，但至少是有交流的伙伴。

Erik Gray: There are moments of misogyny in them, but for Adam, misogyny comes only after the fall, it's a result of the fall. And a great deal of Eve’s subordination is also a result of the fall. And on that, that's simply in Genesis, where part of the curse on Eve, besides a curse and childbearing, is you will submit to your husband. But before that, the way in which they're represented, the intelligence of Eve, which is just completely different from but just as admirable as that of Adam, is one of the glories of the poem.

埃里克·格雷：他们的互动之中有时会展现出厌女的倾向，但对亚当而言，厌女倾向是在二人堕落之后才出现的，是堕落的结果。而夏娃的从属地位很大程度上也是堕落的结果。在《创世纪》中，对夏娃的惩罚一是生育的痛苦，二是要永远顺从于自己的丈夫。但在堕落之前，二人的形象非常生动，夏娃也展现了自己的智慧，尽管这智慧与亚当完全不同，但同样令人钦佩。这也是这首诗的亮点之一。

Zachary Davis: Milton’s story of Adam and Eve follows the arc of the story in Genesis. He shows Eve tempted by the serpent to eat the forbidden fruit. After she eats it, Adam realizes what she had done and that she will now die. Adam decides to join her.

扎卡里·戴维斯：弥尔顿按照《创世纪》的情节路径安排了亚当与夏娃的故事。在他笔下，夏娃受到了蛇的诱惑，吃了禁果。在她吃完后，亚当意识到她做了什么，以为她要死了。亚当决定同她一起赴死。

Erik Gray: He says, “I would rather die with you than live alone in Eden. And even if, God, you create a second Eve, part of thee shall never from my heart” and as an extraordinarily moving moment. And he takes it. And knowing what he's doing, he eats the apple. They are then judged and expelled from Eton. But then in the last two books they are offered and this is entirely Milton's invention, they offered, specifically Adam was offered a vision of what is to come so that he will be able to have some hope as he goes forth into his new life.

埃里克·格雷：他说：“我宁愿和你一起死，也不愿独自生活在伊甸园。即使上帝创造出第二个夏娃，失去你的痛苦也会在我心里挥之不去。”非常动人。于是，亚当也吃下了禁果，二人被一同审判并逐出了伊甸园。在诗的最后两卷，弥尔顿增添了一小段情节，让他们、尤其是亚当预见到了未来，好叫他在开始新生活时，能怀有一些希望。

Erik Gray: And in books 11 and 12, the final two books of the poem, The Archangel Michael shows or tells Adam about the whole of biblical history all the way through the rest of Genesis and through the end of the Hebrew Bible and then up through the redemption applied by Jesus. And so Adam is able to understand that in some ways his fall is a happy one, or at least has a happy outcome because it leads to, in the end, the greater glory of God.

埃里克·格雷：在最后两卷，也就是第十一、十二卷中，天使长米迦勒向亚当展现了《圣经》中接下来发生的故事，从《创世纪》的剩余情节和《希伯来圣经》的情节，一直展现到了耶稣的救赎。于是亚当得以明白，从某些方面看，他的堕落是幸福的，至少有着幸福的结局，因为它最终会为上帝带来更多荣耀。

Zachary Davis: What was the immediate reception of his time? What is the life of this book after it's publishing?

扎卡里·戴维斯：出版之后，人们的反响如何？这本书的“身后事”是怎样的？

Erik Gray: Paradise Lost was almost immediately recognized as being the great poem in English. There are poems in praise of it, that were appended to the second edition and to later editions. So these are poems by 17th century contemporaries saying, ‘I can't believe that somebody has outstripped Homer and Virgil combined, Homer and Virgil and Dante.’ They're just they're just amazed by what they see.

埃里克·格雷：《失乐园》几乎立刻被公认为伟大的英语诗歌。第二版和后来的版本中附上了一些17世纪同时代的诗人赞美它的诗。他们说：“很难相信能有人比荷马、维吉尔和但丁加在一起都厉害。”他们被自己读的东西震惊到了。

Zachary Davis: When Milton published Paradise Lost, he was in a precarious position. The old monarchy that he had fought against for years was now back in power. Because he was so outspoken in his opposition to the monarchy, Milton feared for his life. Luckily, he still had friends in parliament who were able to speak on his behalf. Thanks to these friends, and the fact that he was old and blind, the government showed him mercy. Instead of a death sentence, Milton was essentially placed under house arrest.

扎卡里·戴维斯：出版《失乐园》的时候，弥尔顿的处境很不安全。他反对了多年的君主制又重新掌权了。考虑到自己曾直言不讳地批判君主制，弥尔顿担心自己危在旦夕。幸运的是，他在议会中还有为他说话的朋友。多亏了这些朋友，再加上他年老失明，君主政府对他网开一面。弥尔顿没有被判处死刑，但也近乎被软禁了起来。

Erik Gray: And even those whose in later centuries whose political views were the opposite of Milton's, like Samuel Johnson in the 18th century. Nevertheless, had to recognize, did recognize, ungrudgingly, in fact recognized the brilliance of the poem. For those whose political views align more with Milton’s, it was more than that. It was more than just the best written poem in English. It was a source of inspiration. And so for the great romantic poets of the turn of the 19th century, starting with William Blake, but also William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and later John Keats, as well as for a host of women, poets, Paradise Lost could very easily be seen, very brightly be seen as a feminist poem.

埃里克·格雷：即便是后世那些与弥尔顿政治观点相左的人，也不得不对弥尔顿的才华心服口服，承认《失乐园》是一部伟大之作。18世纪的塞缪尔·约翰逊便是如此。而对那些与弥尔顿政治观点较为一致的人来说，《失乐园》不仅伟大，还堪称最棒的英语诗歌。它赋予了后世许多灵感，影响着19世纪的一大批伟大的浪漫主义诗人，如最早的威廉·布莱克、威廉·华兹华斯、拜伦、珀西·雪莱和后来的约翰·济慈。它也影响了许多女性诗人。对她们来说，《失乐园》往往被视为一部女权主义诗歌。这种看法非常新奇。

Erik Gray: And although criticism took a while to warm up to that idea, that is to say, professional scholarly criticism on the 20th and 21st centuries took a while to warm up to that idea. If this is now commonly accepted and that it served as an inspiration to women, there have been arguments that where certain rebellious poets, both politically and poetically rebellious poets, could look to Satan as a model of successful individualism and rebellion.

埃里克·格雷：批评界花了一段时间才接受了这个看法。直到20、21世纪，专业的学术批评者才接受了它。既然它被广泛接受，也对女性起到了激励作用，那么有人就觉得，某些在政治上和诗学上反抗传统的诗人，可以把撒旦看作个人主义和反叛的成功典范。

Erik Gray: That other poets and specifically female poets could look to Eve as a, in a sense even more successful and even more admirable model of individualism and finding one's own voice and expressing oneself.

埃里克·格雷：而其他诗人，特别是女性诗人可以把夏娃看成一个在某种意义上更为成功、更令人钦佩的个人主义者，一个发掘内心、表达自我的典范。

Zachary Davis: Paradise Lost was such a monumental text in so many ways, it was a hard act to follow. All English literature written after Paradise Lost has had to reckon in some way with its legacy.

扎卡里·戴维斯：《失乐园》在很多方面都堪称不朽。你很难达到和它一样的高度。在它之后的所有英国文学作品都不得不在某种程度上依赖于它带来的影响。

Erik Gray: There is a common critical perception that Milton put an end to the application of English. Milton put an end to a number of different genres in English because he not only did things so well, but he did them so ambitiously that there's nowhere to go from there, and Paradise Lost is perhaps the best example of that.

埃里克·格雷：常常有人批评，说弥尔顿终结了英语文学，终结了各种体裁的英语文学，因为他不仅把作品写得这么好，还写得这么有野心，乃至别的作品都无路可走了。《失乐园》或许便是最好的例子。

Erik Gray: Paradise Lost responded to classical epic by superseding it, by preceding it, by placing itself at a time prior to classical epic and therefore necessarily dealing with something even more primal, original, essential than you would find in Homer and Virgil.

埃里克·格雷：《失乐园》回应古典史诗的方式是：超越它，把故事背景设置在在古典史诗之前的时代。所以它必然涉及了一些比你在荷马和维吉尔的史诗中所能找到的更原始、更本真、更本质的东西。

Erik Gray: But where are you going to go from there? And where people went was internally. That is to say that if you were to ask many people what is the next great epic in English literature, in English poetry after Paradise Lost, many people might say, well, Wordsworth's autobiography, which is called The Prelude, which invokes Milton all the time.

埃里克·格雷：但在《失乐园》之后，你还能把故事背景提前到哪儿呢？于是人们选择把把视线转向自身。如果你问很多人，继《失乐园》之后，英国文学中的伟大史诗是哪一部，很多人可能会说，是华兹华斯的自传《序曲》。在《序曲》中，华兹华斯一直在引用弥尔顿。

Erik Gray: But instead of trying to supersede him by going beyond or trying to talk about some sort of not national or even greater sort of universal story, takes that bit of Milton that is very personal, that bit those bits at the beginning of four of the 12 books of Paradise Lost, where Milton is comparing his own internal flights of fancy and difficulties and struggles to those of his characters, whether Satan or Adam and Eve takes that and internalizes epic and makes it a matter of the self.

埃里克·格雷：他没有把背景设置得更往前，或是继续讨论民族国家等宏大而普遍的故事。他没有用这种方式来超越弥尔顿，而是承袭了弥尔顿一些较为私人化的内容。比如在《失乐园》十二卷中的前四卷，弥尔顿用撒旦、亚当和夏娃等角色展现了自己的奇思妙想、面临的困难与挣扎，将他们的故事内化为一部史诗，表达出自身关注的问题。

Erik Gray: So you could say that Milton put an end to epic. And then on the other hand, you could say that he also, partly by his positive example and partly by his negative example, that is to say that he had done forced it to take a different route and that the way in which poetry of the past two centuries has dwelt so not exclusively, but so dominantly on private experience is a result of Milton's writing.

埃里克·格雷：你可以说弥尔顿为史诗画上了句号。而在另一方面，你也可以说，部分由于他的积极影响，部分由于他的消极影响，史诗不得不发展出了另一条路线。过去两百年里的诗歌纵然并非全都着眼于个人经验，但绝大多数也是如此。这便是弥尔顿的作品带来的影响。

Zachary Davis: Writ Large is a production of Ximalaya. Writ Large is produced by Jack Pombriant, Liza French, and me, Zachary Davis. Script editing is by Galen Beebe. We get help from Feiran Du, Ariel Liu, and Monica Zhang. Our theme song is by Ian Coss. Don’t miss an episode. Subscribe today in the Ximalaya app. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

扎卡里·戴维斯：本节目由喜马拉雅独家制作播出。感谢您的收听，我们下期再见！