Joe Moshenska, _Making Darkness Light: A Life of John Milton_

 “MOSHENSKA HAS WRITTEN a new kind of literary biography,” announces the blurb from Adam Phillips on the back of Making Darkness Light, which is just the sort of thing that makes you mutter, “pfft, yeah, right,” but having read the book I can only agree.

Moshenska fulfills all the key criteria of a literary biographer. One, he has the archive down cold; he’s a genuine Milton scholar. Two, he has an excellent grasp of the historical context in which Milton lived, not only of the unbelievably messy political-cum-theological controversies of that time in England,, but of what was going down on the continent as well. Three, he has a lively understanding of why Milton’s work is still interesting all these centuries later, what the unique pleasures of reading him are.

For mastery of the archive, you might say Barbara Lewalski has the advantage of him; for grasp of 17th century controversy, Christopher Hill may surpass him; for seeing why Milton’s poetic imagination still gets to us, especially in its representation of becoming, of unfolding process, Regina Schwartz may have an edge. But can one book combine the virtues of all those essential Miltonists in a well-paced, ingeniously organized, vividly written 390 pages? Moshenska has written it.

And that’s not all. As Phillips’s blurb notes,  Moshenska’s book is also “glancingly a memoir,” but not at all in any self-indulgent way. He travels to many of the places Milton visited or lived in, giving his impressions of what they are like now, always deepening his portrait of Milton as he does so, especially of young Milton’s European tour. He is also candid about being an atheist and a Jew, culturally separated from Milton in a couple of significant ways, yet turns that separation to account as well, making his insights into Milton’s thinking all the mote striking for those differences. 

It took me a while to appreciate Milton; on first reading him at 19, I admit, I wasn’t at all sure he was worth the effort. But now I find my appreciation ever growing, and Moshenska’s book ha done a lot to deepen it.