From Milton to Pullman, the quest for truth is riddled with ambiguity | Kenan Malik
In dark times, works of literature have unique power to remind us of the complexity and contradictory nature of humans
“A poem is not a lecture; a story is not an argument. The way poems and stories work on our minds is not by logic, but by their capacity to enchant, to excite, to move, to inspire.” So writes Philip Pullman in his introduction to John Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Milton’s epic remains one of the greatest retellings of the Christian story, a work that has mesmerised writers through the generations from William Blake to Pullman himself.