I thought it might be fun to write about how to read a difficult book. I mean a book that’s literally difficult to understand. I’m going to take Paradise Lost for my example but I think these ideas apply to most difficult literature.
Reading Outside your Comfort Zone
The thing about reading as a hobby is that everyone finds their niche eventually. Some people can’t read enough mystery novels, for example. Then there are people like me who love a good mystery. But I don’t seek them out. I’m not sure there’s any genre I seek out. Leastwise not for long. I’ll enjoy the crap out of an epic fantasy series weighing in at several million words. And then the next book I read will be a Jane Austen romance.
So let’s say for argument’s sake that you’re interested in reading a book outside of your comfort zone. For example, you usually read thrillers and mysteries but you want to read something older.
Well, for starters, there are mystery novels written before Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. I actually really liked the book that is widely considered the first full-length detective story: The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. Like many books of its era, The Moonstone is a bit racist (the few non-white characters are either good to a fault or else don’t have a personality at all). And it’s a bit obsessed with imperialist guilt (the titular stone is a diamond stolen from India). But it’s gorgeously written. And at 500 pages, it’ll keep you busy for longer than most whodunit-type novels (the exception being A Game of Thrones, which is about twice as long, but, yes, does have the overall contour of a murder mystery).
But it’s absurd to think that The Moonstone is the first murder-y mystery simply because it’s the first mystery novel. Some works in the same (or a similar) genre that predate it include Hamlet, Prince of Denmark and Oedipus Tyrannos.
Unfamiliar Form, Uncertain Expectations
I’m starting with a discussion of familiar genres because a lot of the time the thing that turns people off from reading books written more than a hundred years ago is this sense of foreignness. But there’s a reason some publisher or other releases a new translation of the Iliad every couple of years. Okay one reason will always be that people with disposable income think it looks good on their bookshelf. And another reason is that 18-year-olds get assigned this book so there’s always a market for it. But surely some of us are actually reading these books, no?
So a significant obstacle to immersing yourself in a classic from more than a century ago is the form. And yes. You can find precursors to your favorite genre to help with that. But what about the language?
There are a few ways of getting around the issue of language, and, again, I’ll use Paradise Lost as my example. Because right from the first few sentences, Milton is telling us how it’s going to be. Which means those first sentences are longer than they should be and have more moving parts than a cappuccino machine. And the foam on top is that the words themselves are difficult to understand. See:
The First Sentence of Paradise Lost (Book 1, Lines 1-16)
OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flow’d
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.
The Sentence-Structure and Vocabulary of Paradise Lost
That is the first sentence, and right away some issues present themselves. First, it’s well over 100 words. Second, a lot of people who read it are not going to know what “Oreb” or “Sinai” or “Siloa” or the “Aonian Mount” are. Third, the spelling is weird. Yes, there are modern spelling editions. So let’s start there. Find yourself a modern spelling edition. That does mean going to the library or spending some money.
Another option for getting around the archaic spelling is to find a recording. But wait. If only there were a website that had public domain recordings of literature. And if only that website happened to have an excellent version of Paradise Lost.
But even the deftest recording won’t get you around this “middle flight” stuff and “Aonian mount.” There you need a bit of a utility belt. Something that will serve you for ALL occasions, not just for reading Paradise Lost.
Why Paradise Lost makes Reference to so Many other Poems: Poetic One-Upmanship
The thing about long poems is that they are not particularly common. It’s hard to write a whole book in verse. But even as uncommon as they are, they are very much in competition with each other. Because for every book like the Iliad or Paradise Lost that you may have heard of (and may even have read) there is another thousand poems like The Civil Wars Between the Houses of Lancaster and York by Samuel Daniel (1609). The Civil Wars was actually a bit of a blockbuster at the time it was written… but is not often read anymore, even by scholars. The damn thing falls squarely in my scholarly area, which is roughly the Tudor-Stuart Period of England (1500s-1680). And even so, I have only skimmed it.
The point is that it takes years to write an epic poem. And during those years, it takes dedication. For whatever reason, it’s the most prestigious type of literature you can write. And thus the stiffest competition. But also the greatest rewards await the successful ones. The Iliad is some three thousand years old and still read as if it were today’s news. Likewise, the Mahabharat. Gilgamesh is even older and nevertheless has some devoted readers. Some of the massive number of poems published in the last thousand or so years have earned that kind of following. Dante’s Divine Comedy. Milton’s Paradise Lost. There are also some really fun ones from the age of chivalry. Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, for example, is genuinely funny if you read a good edition.
Okay Let’s Call it What it is: Dick Measuring
All of which is to say that there’s a lot of pressure on an epic poet, and they know it. So, not content with writing the best story they can, there is a convention whereby they will compare themselves (favorably, of course) to previous epic poets. Not just once but several times throughout the poem. Milton takes particular joy in reminding the reader how much bigger and more consequential his poem is compared to others of its kind.
There’s even a place (still in Book 1 of Paradise Lost) where he points out that Satan’s spear is so long that a Norwegian pine-tree, the kind you would use for a ship-mast, would seem like a twig next to it. Elsewhere, he hastens to assure his reader that it’s not the size of the spear. It’s how you use it. But it’s not just an idle comparison. He’s calling out Homer, Vergil, and other authors of maritime epic. Emphasizing how much greater his story is than theirs. In those stories, the spears tend to be in the 10-20 foot range and the ship’s masts tend to be less than 100 feet. But for Milton, the fact that his spears are bigger than their ship’s masts is a metaphor for the fact that his story is more important than theirs overall.
It’s a fascinating moment. If you know what to look for. But the inevitable question is: what if you don’t know what to look for?
Can I Read Paradise Lost or Not?
The point is that a lot of these references to things you may not have heard of (or may not recognize) come from other epic poems. And I can hear you saying: Does that mean I need to read all of those other epic poems to understand Paradise Lost? And there are at least three answers.
- Yes.
- No.
- No, but with extra steps.
1. Yes it’s Difficult
The first answer is that of course I won’t lie to you and pretend that you can fully understand a book like Paradise Lost if you don’t understand the world it’s coming from. There will be references to Ovid and Vergil and Homer and the Bible that you just might not get. There is a line on the first page that’s actually very funny. But only if you recognize that it comes from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. That sort of thing.
2. But that’s what Footnotes are For
But the second answer is: that’s okay. It’s okay to try to read a book and see what you get out of it. It’s okay to miss lines and miss bits of context and to constantly be raising and lowering your face as you go back and forth between the text and the footnotes.
3. But not Everyone Likes Footnotes. Still, Give it a Shot.
And the third answer is: not everyone likes to do that. Not everyone is willing to be a slave to the footnotes in order to get through a story. In fact, the reason people avoid a book like Paradise Lost in the first place is because of all of those footnotes. They take up half of a typical page. What’s up with that? So am I still recommending you give Paradise Lost a shot? And the answer is yes. With a caveat. What I’m saying is: try it. Take one or two big sentences (the first ones will do quite nicely) and read them over and over out loud until they start to make sense. Hunt for famous passages, like this one:
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
Or this one that occurs just a few lines later:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.
What I’m saying is: the language of this poem gets easier the more you play with it. And it’s especially fun to recite it out loud.
Paradise Lost: Rogue’s Gallery
But none of that makes a difference unless the characters are worthwhile. And they are. Angry, tragic Satan. Plucky Abdiel. Naive but intelligent Eve and Adam. Plus there’s this super cool scene where Satan starts mining heaven itself and using the stuff of the celestial plane to make guns and powder. Above all, the character of Milton himself comes through over the course of the epic. The decisions he makes. The tantalizing details he reveals about his life. You’ll want to know more. Fortunately, he’s less of a tease than Shakespeare. Unlike Shakespeare, Milton’s biographies aren’t just speculation.
Anyway, the point is that it’s worth a read. It’s at least worth a try. Milton knew his business. The scenes that take place in hell are psychologically troubling. Those in which Satan is alone with his thoughts are sad and frustrating. The scenes between Adam and Eve are sweet and romantic and maybe just a little bit misogynistic but not nearly as much as you’d expect. After all, Milton only had daughters, and they were very well educated. He was pro-divorce at a time when that was not politically popular. And despite being fiercely religious, it strikes me that he was, in most things, a pragmatist.
Take a Chance
Ultimately, I am a believer in giving things a try. If you decided tomorrow to read Paradise Lost then all of the little problems attending such a reading (the complexity of the language, the remoteness of some of the references…) those problems would not just go away. But you would find answers for them. You’d start to learn the arcane vocabulary. You’d get better and better at navigating the strange, musical, bewitching sentences. And you’d occasionally glance into those dreaded footnotes for help with the references to heroes and monsters from poems you may not have read, or may not have remembered. Perhaps most importantly, you’d find other people who have read, studied, loved the same book. Librarians. People on Reddit. YouTubers. You’re far from alone in this big world of ours.
The same thing goes if you were to decide to read, say, one of the massive novels of 19th Century Russia. Like Anna Karenina. Let’s say you’ve never read something of the kind before. The first few pages would be a torture of long Russian names (and street-names). You’d need someone to explain to you that the middle name is a patronymic, that is, an identifier of the character’s father. Someone whose middle name is Alexandrovich would be male (or at least assigned-male) and has a father named Alexander. A sister from the same family would have the middle name Alexandrovna. Same father, but with the feminine ending to the patronymic instead of the masculine.
That is, if you weren’t used to such things. You’d be figuring out based on context clues what everyone’s values were on certain subjects. What kinds of foods kasha and borscht are, if you didn’t already know. And you might have to look up why the characters are talking in French half the time. But you’d get there.
Paradise
There’s a magic to these works. A sense that, by reading them, you’re joining a conversation with millions of people across a dozen, or a hundred, generations.
And it’s just good fun. If you’re like me, by the time you get to the end of the book, you’ll be ready to return to the beginning again. Rereading is another joy I wish more people shared. Books are funnier and more poignant the next time around. And sometimes they’re even more surprising.
As we wrap up our celebration of National Poetry Month, we would love to hear from you. Have you tried to tackle any particularly difficult works of literature? Recently? Ever? What are some of your favorite poems? Long or short, difficult or approachable?
