Here’s an Interesting Question

I just read part of an NY Times essay about popularizations and adaptations of classic literature. In the words of the author, Sophie Gee:

Mass-market adaptations make Great Books go bad. Or so conventional wisdom would have it. But every so often, plundering and pillaging a canonical text for the sake of entertainment gives it the kiss of life. Take “Beowulf” and “Paradise Lost.” The unpalatable truth is that both originals are now virtually unreadable. “Beowulf” is written in Old English, an inflected Germanic tongue that looks a lot less like our language than one would hope. As for Milton’s epic, it’s in “normal” English, but its blank verse is so densely learned, so syntactically complicated and philosophically obscure, that it’s almost never read outside college courses. Even Samuel Johnson, writing 100 years after Milton, said: “‘Paradise Lost’ is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.”

This poses the question of language… I don’t mind making “unpalatable” works more understandable. It is a good thing to introduce people to a text which they have never read or may not be able to understand. But just because a book isn’t read outside of college courses doesn’t make it unpalatable. And, specifically with Paradise Lost, isn’t part of the process, part of the essential process of the poem is learning. We are supposed to learn. Milton was imagining the beginning of genres, creating hybrids… So I don’t think using “learned” in that disdainful way is quite appropriate. In fact, I find it appalling. Gee does state that:

Milton wrote “Paradise Lost” as a difficult poem because he wanted reading to involve active intellectual labor as much as pleasure. Now active, canny reading has produced two mass-market hits. That’s how literature works: the best books always need rewriting, and the best writers know they’re rewriters. “Beowulf” was rewritten by Gaiman and Avary. Homer was rewritten by Virgil, who was rewritten by Dante, who was rewritten by Milton, who was rewritten by Pullman. ‘

I do admire this kind of attitude. I had an English professor who was such a one. He investigates pulp fiction as seriously as he would anything else. This is tolerance and open-mindedness. I, however, am a large part purist. No, I say, the best books don’t need rewriting. They need re-reading.  Because every revision is inspired by an act of discovery.  And if the final reader, the consumer, the movie-goer, or whomever, cannot or will not work toward that discovery (which is the essence and the purpose of the act) no amount of simplification will ever matter.  And thus, paradise lost…