Romanticizing Satan

Blake’s comment that Milton was of the devil’s party without knowing it is well-known. Louis Markos shows in his survey of Western poetic views of the afterlife ( Heaven and Hell: Visions of the Afterlife in the Western Poetic Tradition ) that Blake’s view of Milton’s Satan was common currency among English romantics. Shelley too thought that Milton undermines himself and that Paradise Lost “contains within itself a philosophical refutation of that system, of which, by a strange and natural antithesis, it has been a chief popular support.”

Shelley continues: “Nothing could exceed the energy and magnificence of the character of Satan as expressed in ‘Paradise Lost.’ It is a mistake to suppose that he could ever have been intended for the popular personification of evil. Implacable hate, patient cunning, and a sleepless refinement of device to inflict the extremist anguish on an enemy, these things are evil; and, although venial in a slave, are not to be forgiven in a tyrant; although redeemed by much that ennobles his defeat in one subdued, are marked by all that dishonors his conquest of the victor. And Milton’s Devil as a moral being is as far superior to his God, as One who perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture, is to One who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his enemy, not from any mistaken notion of inducing him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the alleged design of exasperating him to deserve new torments. Milton has so far violated the popular cred (if this shall be judged to be a violation) as to have alleged no superiority of moral virtue to his God over his Devil. And this bold neglect of a direct moral purpose is the most decisive proof of the supremacy of Milton’s genius.”