# Fans of Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy and The Raven...



## Dream Brother (Dec 31, 2007)

Well, seeing as I've had to stay awake all night doing this God-awful-utterly-annoying-last-minute-essay, I've had to look around for resources on the 'net as well as in my books, and I came across the works of Gustave Doré. For anyone not in the know, this guy was a famous French artist, engraver and illustrator who (amongst his numerous other works) depicted scenes from _Paradise Lost_, _The Divine Comedy_ and _The Raven_, and damn, they really are something special.

A few of them:









There's a lot more pictures for each of these classic literary works, and I can't be bothered to link all the pictures here, so go here to see all of them:


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## sel (Dec 31, 2007)

Regretfully I haven't managed to read any of the listed works, so my I can only appreciate it from an artistic perspective as opposed to how it complements the storyline. But yes, they are something special. I'm bookmarking his homepage now as we speak.


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## Morwain (Dec 31, 2007)

I've read The Raven and the Divine Comedy. I love The Raven to death but, The Divne Comedy(at least the part about paradise) was agonizing for me to get through although the first part of it (The Inferno) was actually quite good.


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## Bonten (Jan 5, 2008)

I had that second picture on my HDD and wondered who it was by, thanks for the link Dream Brother. I've read Paradise Lost but not the other two.


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## Susano-o (Jan 5, 2008)

There's this awesome pic on the cover of my copy of Paradise Lost, called 'Satan in His Original Glory' (made by a certain William Blake)  That one really portrayed Satan in his glory, from the days he was a fully fledged angel in the service of God, looking like the 'good guy'

really awesome
also, I like the ones you posted here


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## Dream Brother (Jan 5, 2008)

Blake is awesome. I haven't seen that specific pic though, I'll have to check it out.


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## Nikitaa (Jan 6, 2008)

Have you read Paradise Lost? I really want to read it, the storyline sounds interesting and epic but I'm not too fond of prosa =.=


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## Kyuubi Whisker (Jan 6, 2008)

_Paradise Lost_ is, I guarantee, going to be the most difficult thing you have ever read...but completely worth it.  Some of the imagery will never leave you; it's hard to believe that Milton was blind.


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## Zissou (Jan 10, 2008)

His illustrations of the Comedy as well as Coleridge's Mariner are simply amazing.

Be it the first, second or fourth time you read the Comedy, it doesn't matter. I can't help being drawn into the illustrations over, and over again!

Edit- 

Thanks for the link!


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## Yak (Jan 10, 2008)

I remember several of those pictures from being used in the Bastard!! manga.


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## Toby (Jan 13, 2008)

Paradise Lost is of course heavy, but _the_ tolling read is Ulysses by James Joyce, hands down. 

I have seen a few of Blake's and Gustave Doré's pictures before, but I didn't know that Doré also made art for Paradise Lost. That is simply beautiful in its simplistic method for conveying such a terrible image. Funny how these images from the past are still as captivating as they were when they were originally made.

Nice find.


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## Dream Brother (Jan 13, 2008)

> Paradise Lost is, I guarantee, going to be the most difficult thing you have ever read...but completely worth it.



It's not _that_ bad, but yeah, the style can be quite 'thick' to wade through at times. I agree that it's definitely ultimately worth it, though.



Yak said:


> I remember several of those pictures from being used in the Bastard!! manga.



They use them in there? I may have to start reading that manga.



> Paradise Lost is of course heavy, but the tolling read is Ulysses by James Joyce, hands down.
> 
> I have seen a few of Blake's and Gustave Doré's pictures before, but I didn't know that Doré also made art for Paradise Lost. That is simply beautiful in its simplistic method for conveying such a terrible image. Funny how these images from the past are still as captivating as they were when they were originally made.
> 
> Nice find.



I still have to get around to reading _Ulysses_ -- I like a lot of Irish literature, like that of Heaney and Yeats' work, and they both seemed to hold Joyce in high regard. I'll have to check his stuff out soon. And thanks.


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## Pintsize (Jan 13, 2008)

You think _Ulysses_ is tough?

Try reading , a book by the same author and widely considered the hardest book to read in the English language.


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## Kyuubi Whisker (Jan 13, 2008)

I still think that _Finnegan's Wake_ was a hoax.


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## Toby (Jan 14, 2008)

Dream Brother: Yeats is marvellous. My favourite poem is the good old sappy "He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven". Incredibly enough, it is also my girlfriend's favourite poem. We are quite fortunate in that regard. 

Still, I didn't realise its vast possibilities for application, until Sean Bean cited it in Equilibrium. 



Pintsize said:


> You think _Ulysses_ is tough?
> 
> Try reading , a book by the same author and widely considered the hardest book to read in the English language.



No,  is a song.  is James Joyce's final novel, its title referring to the song and its complexity, which it has a inter-textual relationship to for being written in several languages, thus preserving the complexity of the original. 

I know that was picky, but the punctuation makes all the difference in this case. 

I think that like Woody Allen's tributes to New York, James Joyce's literature plays a role as a loving tribute to Dublin. Ulysses is in that case a love-song to Dublin, whereas Finnegan's Wake is equivalent to Woody Allen's Play it Again, Sam, which draws on Casablanca, just as Joyce draws upon the original Finnegans Wake. This continuation or paying homage to great stories of the past is part of a greater theme of continuation, a new beginning, which takes place in both great masterpieces. 

I don't know if you have seen Casablanca or Woody Allen before, but it just hit me now that it is the same tradition of paying homage to a story of the past which the two have in common. That way, Finnegan's Wake loses a lot of its mysteriousness. Its complexity however, I believe is meant to be so indecipherable that we shan't obtain its true meaning, theme or motif. Thus preserving the mystery of the water of life, ie whiskey, an important element in James Joyce's life, and the topic of the original Finnegans Wake.

Just my two cents on that. I didn't get much out of Finnegans Wake except for this great metaphysical conceit which whiskey is, and how its distillation is about continuation of life as well. I do however agree, Finnegans Wake is extremely complex to read, so I understood a lot less of the book's content than of its purpose. 

But I read Ulysses when I was younger, and since I still understood it a few years later, that was at least possible. Finnegans Wake on the other hand isn't meant for such, in my opinion, but to leave us with a question about what it can be related to, since in itself it gives us no meaning whatsoever.

Ah, now I ramble.


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## Dream Brother (Jan 14, 2008)

Toby_Christ said:


> Dream Brother: Yeats is marvellous. My favourite poem is the good old sappy "He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven". Incredibly enough, it is also my girlfriend's favourite poem. We are quite fortunate in that regard.
> 
> Still, I didn't realise its vast possibilities for application, until Sean Bean cited it in Equilibrium.



That's my favourite too -- I was actually using that exact poem for my signature text until just a day or two ago, when my love for Elliott Smith prompted me to change it. Great poem.

I'll have to grab _Finnegans Wake_ too, hmm.


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## Pintsize (Jan 14, 2008)

Toby_Christ said:


> Ulysses is in that case a love-song to Dublin, whereas Finnegan*'*s Wake is equivalent to Woody Allen's Play it Again



 **


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## Jimin (Mar 7, 2008)

I hated Paradiso. I didn't get all the references.


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## Cardboard Tube Knight (Mar 8, 2008)

Some of these I have seen before, I haven't read all of Paradise Lost, but from what I have read I am a fan, I even reference it in my stories.


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