Pandemonium Paradise Lost
The word “pandemonium” is a
compound word formed by joining the Greek words “pan” and “demonises” meaning a
place or abode of all demons.
In Paradise Lost Book 1, Milton
describes pandemonium as a structure of architectonic excellence. This
marvellous structure is situated in the pit of hell where darkness is only
visible. On top of a hill, which constantly vomited out ‘fire and rolling
smoke’, the huge brigade of fallen angels undertook the task to build up
the high structure of pandemonium. The leader of the builders was Mammon.
Mammon when he was in Heaven had his eyes downward bent on the golden pavement.
He was not concerned with anything divine or exalted. Other angels had an interest
in the divine but Mammon was exceptional.
Prompted by Mammon, men searched
for riches on Earth and robbed their mother Earth of the treasures hidden
within her. Under the direction of Mammon the fallen angels dug a hole in the
hill and extracted gold from it. The fallen angels, directed by Mammon, worked
with miraculous speed and built the massive structure called Pandemonium.
Milton describes the effort of the fallen angels in the following words:
“Strength and Art are easily outdone
By Spirits reprobate, and in an hour
What is an age they with incessant toil
And hands innumerable scarce
perform.”
Milton says that the
architectonic excellence of Pandemonium could easily excel human
achievements of Babylon and the Egyptian pyramid. What took an age or about twenty
years for human beings to build, it took only an hour for the fallen angels to
build. Another group of fallen angels prepared cells near the plain. They
separated impurities and collected the metallic ore in these cells. The
metallic ore was derived from liquid fire. A third group of fallen angels made
moulds of varied shapes and designs, and from the boiling, cells carried off the
molten metal by some peculiar mode of transportation. This is how the
foundation was constructed.
Then with the sound of harmonious
music, square columns and master beams and doric pillars were raised on top of
the foundation. Every cornice or frieze was embossed with golden decoration.
The roof too was intricately decorated with gold. The magnificence of the
structure was such that it surpassed Babylon and Egyptian pyramids. Pandemonium
had a stately height and the doors were made of ‘brazen folds’. The building
itself had enormous space within it. Milton very meticulously described the
interior decorations:
“From the arched roof
Pendant by subtle
Magic many a row
Of starry Lamps and Blazing Crossets fed
Naphtha and Asphaltus yielded light
As from a sky:”
Some admired the work, and some the architect. Milton a little later described the chief architect:
“his hand was known”
In heaven by many a towered
structure high. In ancient Italy Ausonian Land, “men called him Mulciber.” In
ancient Greece, he was known as Hephaestus.
It is in this structure called
Pandemonium, built with awful ceremony and trumpeted sounds, that the first
conference of all the fallen angels in Hell was held.
Pandemonium introduces that
imagery of technology, commerce and luxurious barbaric tyranny which surrounds
the fallen angels, for they foreshadow all human error. Pandemonium suggests a
Florid Renaissance (or late Roman) building.
Pandemonium is the devil’s
attempt to recreate heaven and is a concession to their frustrated psychology.
Evil, Milton once more seems to suggest, can only make not create. In place of
the natural clarity of Heaven are naphtha-fares. In need of light, the devils
imitate the society of heaven.
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