The Spouter-Inn

8. Paradise Lost.

. . . Farewel happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
[ . . . ] Here at least
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.

John Milton’s Paradise Lost uses haunting, powerful poetry to retell the biblical story of Adam and Eve’s sin and exile from the Garden of Eden. But Chris and Suzanne still struggle with Milton’s personality and theology. They discuss the characters, including a famously compelling depiction of Satan; Milton’s use of other texts, including the Metamorphoses; and the text’s troubling gender politics.

Show Notes.

John Milton’s Paradise Lost. [Project Gutenberg, Bookshop.]

The Tree of Knowledge, by Eva Figes, is a novel about Milton’s daughter Deborah [NYTimes review].

Thoughts on Milton and his daughters.

More images of Milton and his daughters.

Everybody wants a piece of Milton.

Gustave Doré’s illustrations for Paradise Lost.

William Blake’s illustrations for Paradise Lost.

Blake’s illuminated book Milton: A Poem.

Next episode: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (the 1818 version). Also on Project Gutenberg.

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7. Inferno.

I am the way into the doleful city,
I am the way into eternal grief,
I am the way to a forsaken race.

Justice it was that moved my great creator;
Divine omnipotence created me,
And highest wisdom joined with primal love.

Before me nothing but eternal things
Were made, and I shall last eternally.
Abandon every hope, all you who enter.

I saw these words spelled out in somber colors
Inscribed along the ledge above a gate;
‘Master,’ I said, ‘these words I see are cruel.’


Dante’s Inferno, the first section of the Divine Comedy, is a medieval poem in which our author is given a guided tour of Hell. He encounters famous historical figures as well as people he knew personally, while his tour guide (the Roman poet Vergil) explains the logic of the Hell’s organization and the divine justice of its terrible punishments. Suzanne and Chris retrace these steps and talk about their favourite passages in all their upsetting cruelty and beauty.

Show Notes.

The Inferno as translated by Mark Musa [Bookshop], Charles Singleton, or Ciaran Carson. Also available free online in Allen Mandelbaum’s translation (with useful notes by Teodolinda Barolini) at Digital Dante.

The Holkham manuscript, one of only four fully illustrated copies of Dante’s Divine Comedy from the fourteenth century, is available online through the Bodleian library. It’s worth exploring its illustrations.

Gustave Doré’s famous nineteenth-century illustrations are also fabulous.

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s statue of Ugolino and His Sons.

More artworks inspired by the Inferno.

Caroline Bergvall reading “Via”, hosted at her PennSound page. The poem is in her collection Fig.

Next time: John Milton’s Paradise Lost, also available at Project Gutenberg.

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6. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

I may say that only three times in my life have I met a genius and each time a bell within me rang and I was not mistaken, and I may say in each case it was before there was any general recognition of the quality of genius in them. The three geniuses of whom I wish to speak are Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso and Alfred Whitehead. I have met many important people, I have met several great people but I have only known three first class geniuses and in each case on sight within me something rang. In no one of the three cases have I been mistaken. In this way my new full life began.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (written by her partner, Gertrude Stein) recounts the couple’s lives in early twentieth-century Paris among painters, writers, and composers—and, during the First World War, soldiers. Chris and Suzanne explore what the book says about how painting is like writing, about wives, and about America—and they talk about other pieces by Stein that they love.

Show Notes.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. [Project Gutenberg. Bookshop.]

Other works by Stein: Three Lives. Tender Buttons. The Making of Americans. How to Write.

Gertrude Stein reads If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso.

Alice B. Toklas in her own words.

Picasso’s Trois femmes (1908), a portrait, “in a sort of red brown, of three women, square and posturing, all of it rather frightening”.

Picasso’s Portrait of Gertrude Stein.

Sonia Delaunay’s magnificent book collaboration with poet Blaise Cendrars, La prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France.

Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories, an exhibit that was at the National Portrait Gallery several years ago with a webpage full of images of Stein.

The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde, a series of lectures hosted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Next time: Dante’s Inferno (translated by Mark Musa or Charles Singleton or Ciaran Carson or whomever you’d like).

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5. Little Women.

‘In spite of the curly crop, I don’t see the ‘son Jo’ whom I left a year ago,’ said Mr. March. ‘I see a young lady who pins her collar straight, laces her boots neatly, and neither talks slang, nor lies on the rug as she used to do. Her face is rather thin and pale just now, with watching and anxiety, but I like to look at it, for it has grown gentler, and her voice is lower; she doesn’t bounce, but moves quietly, and takes care of a certain little person in a motherly way which delights me. I rather miss my wild girl, but if I get a strong, helpful, tender-hearted woman in her place, I shall feel quite satisfied. I don’t know whether the shearing sobered our black sheep, but I do know that in all Washington I couldn’t find anything beautiful enough to be bought with the five-and-twenty dollars which my good girl sent me.’

Little Women has Suzanne and Chris tackling new territory: a novel, a children’s book, and something written within the last two hundred years. They discuss this tale of four sisters (Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy), the possibilities it offers young women (but eventually takes from them), its complex exploration of gender, and its fascination with death.

Show Notes.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. [Project Gutenberg. Bookshop.]

Avidly, on the Los Angeles Review of Books, had a great cluster of articles about each of the sisters.

How Little Women Got Big” at the New Yorker, which draws upon a recent book about Little Women, Anne Boyd Rioux’s Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters.

Next episode: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein.

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4b. Bonus: Timothy Perry on The Book of Peace.

There’s the importance of the text and the writer, but also the importance of the physical object and all the things you can do with the physical object that you can’t do if you only have digital accuess or [no] access at all.

We met up with Timothy Perry, medieval manuscript and early book librarian at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto. The Fisher is excited to announce the acquisition of a rare and lavish medieval manuscript of The Book of Peace, written by Christine de Pizan (whose classic The Book of the City of Ladies we discussed in our last episode). Tim was kind enough to show the newly acquired book to us and tell us about its many charms.

Show Notes.

A detailed description of the manuscript (with images!) from the Fisher Rare Book Library.

An article about the acquisition in U of T News.

The Book of Peace, translated by Karen Green, Constance Mews, and Janice Pinder. (Open access!)

An article about Pierre Bergé, a previous owner of the manuscript.

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