Devil’s despair

In your brief encounter (December 2021), Armando Iannucci points to Satan in Paradise Lost for his most memorable quotation: “evil, be thou my good.”

As a line it is endlessly fascinating. This pompous and ultimately tragic piece of vainglory is spoken before Satan enters Eden in Book IV. Rather than addressing the other devils in the raucous senate of Pandæmonium, he is grieving and “fixes sad” his eyes towards heaven, the place to which he knows he’ll never return.

The full speech is a soliloquy worthy of Shakespeare. It begins with a lament that pride and ambition led him to take on God, but as it continues the speaker transforms from tragic hero to full-blown Machiavel. If an omnipotent deity has decided that the devil is to fall, then the devil will take on his new role with braggadocio: “so farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear.”

That Satan is not the master of his words becomes clear when his once angelic face, disfigured by passion, is spotted by archangel Uriel, who realises how far Lucifer has fallen. As with so many of Satan’s lines, what appears to be a cry of bravado is ultimately no more than a sign of the devil’s despair.

Jason Whittaker, author of “Divine Images: The Life and Work of William Blake”