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An Oft-told Tale Well-told
The Tale of Paradise Lost
Retold by Nancy Willard
Illustrated by Jude Daly
Based on the poem by John Milton
Atheneum, 2004. 150 pages.
Dense, epic, controversial, John Milton’s Paradise Lost is challenging reading. It is the source, however, of more events and imagery related to the biblical creation myth than the biblical accounts themselves. The stories in the first few chapters of Genesis, together with Milton’s poem, provide cultural touchstone after cultural touchstone with images of rebel angels, tempters and the tempted, the cost of knowledge. As Nancy Willard remarks in her introductory note to her retelling of the tale, the story of Adam and Eve is “like one of those family stories you’ve heard so often and from so many different people you can’t possibly remember your first encounter with it.”
In retelling Paradise Lost, Willard has done something akin to what the theater and film director Peter Brook did two decades ago when he took Bizet’s opera Carmen, typically produced in lavish fashion, and scaled it down to its essential plot and handful of characters in a production that lasted a mere ninety minutes. Hard-hitting and moving, Brook’s production did not perhaps sit well with purists, but was utterly satisfying theater -- and it remained Bizet’s Carmen at the same time. Willard’s goal, to “invite younger readers into the tale” and to keep “as much of Milton’s imagery as possible” has resulted in a colorful, compelling presentation that can be read through in a mere couple of hours and take away the reader’s breath. From the opening paragraph we know we are in for quite a tale:
Long, long ago, before the world was, before minutes ticked and seconds tocked, before beginnings had endings, there was a war in Heaven. The most radiant of God’s angels was also the most proud. “Why shouldn’t I rule Heaven?” he asked himself, and he raised an army against God. One third of the angels in Heaven followed him. For three days they fought, and on the third day god hurled the whole lot of them out of Heaven, headlong into the bottomless dark of Hell.
It is a tale with great nuance, too, as Willard succeeds as well in translating many subtleties of the nature of God, humans, and their relationship both before and after the Fall. We see for example a God who is both stern and compassionate, ordering “his angels to change the sweet climate of the Earth,” bringing the “terrible cold of winter” and the “summer’s scorching heat” and rolling thunder and “furious winds” -- but not before “pitying how Adam and Eve stood before him, naked to the air that was already turning cold” and clothing “their nakedness with warmth from the beasts.” The Tale of Paradise Lost shares with Genesis and Milton the quality of an extended and excellent pourquoi tale, answering the “why” questions of human nature and the physical universe: Why do we die? Why do the seasons change? Why do we do wrong? Why do we experience discord amongst ourselves? It is rich with theology and philosophy, but it is the telling of the story that comes first and that makes the pages turn.
Jude Daly’s illustrations provide a harmonious complement to the words on the page. Her naked Adam and Eve exude such bliss as creatures of God that their inevitable Fall, represented in a picture of them tensely, hurriedly, covering themselves with leaves, is all the more dramatic and sensual. Her use of multiple panels picks up on that powerful tradition in religious art through the ages and gives readers of all ages exceptional visuals to enjoy along with the sound of Willard’s words.
Like so much of Nancy Willard’s work, The Tale of Paradise Lost begs to be read aloud. With its strong pace and imagery it is a perfect introduction to Milton’s great poem as well as being a wonderful way to revisit the poem in its essence. And as one of our culture’s “family stories,” it is well worth having this version to invite all members of the family in.
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