“It is not miserable to be blind; it is miserable to be incapable of enduring blindness.” -John Milton
Even if you’ve never read his work, John Milton has probably affected your life. If you’ve ever used the words dreary, self-esteem, padlock, sublime, flowery or a host of others, you’ve got Milton to thank. Not to mention the insight to be gained from reading his most famous work, Paradise Lost, in which Milton reflects the inner soul's “Celestial Light” to “see and tell of things invisible to mortal sight.”
Though the references to light and sight in the piece make sense to knowledgeable historians, the rest of us may overlook the fact that Milton was completely blind by the time he wrote the epic poem in 1651. The work’s cast of characters: Adam, Eve, Satan, God, and the Son of God. It tells the story of how Satan was thrown out of Heaven and how he came to Earth to corrupt Adam and Eve. It also delves into the themes of war and religious conflict—both prevalent during Milton’s troubled times.
Though Milton began losing his sight in his early thirties, the first reference we see to the event is in the sonnet On Blindness, a Petrarchan sonnet (or lyric poem with fourteen lines):
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."
On the basis of clues in the writings Milton produced, several possible diagnoses have been pointed to in an effort to explain his vision loss. However, popular consensus is that he became the victim of glaucoma. Doctors warned him about straining what was left of his eyesight by continuing to write poetry and pamphlets supporting Oliver Cromwell's Puritan regime. Milton was completely blind by age 43 but fulfilled his government duties as Latin Secretary with the help of assistants, including poet Andrew Marvell.
He also defended divorce and even polygamy, survived imprisonment, the threat of execution and assassination, the plague and the Great Fire of London, and, blind and disillusioned, dictated the greatest long poem in the English language to his family.
Paradise Lost was published when Milton was 55 years old and 16 different editions were printed before 1732. The latter fact because editor Richard Bentley’s argued that corrections needed to be made since Milton could not have proofread what was dictated blindly to a secretary. The Paradise Lost manuscript sold for £5 to Samuel Simmons who promised Milton another £5 if the first edition of 1,300 copies sold out. That happened in a mere 18 months.
In the 1920s, Helen Keller named an interfaith society for the blind after him. Keller persuaded the leaders of several Christian denominations to develop the interdenominational ministry in an effort to bring spiritual guidance and religious literature to people who were blind and deaf. Milton was chosen as the namesake of the organization because of his strong Christian faith, and because, after losing his eyesight he went on to write volume after volume of prose and poetry, including a number of hymns.
“He sacrificed his sight, and then he remembered his first desire, that of being a poet,” Jorge Luis Borges wrote of Milton in a lecture centuries later.
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Visit Disaboom's Blind and Visual Impairment section for more information about this condition.
