A Mythic Comparison of John Milton’s Paradise Lost and the Navajo Creation Story

We are overjoyed to announce a new, expanded hardcover edition of Paul Zolbrod’s magnificent book—this one with a spectacular new cover image of Shiprock, a sacred site of the Navajo, an image gifted to the project by celebrated photographer Mark Barzman.

It was the last great dream of Dr. Zolbrod, a consummate Milton scholar and the man who compiled and translated the Navajo creation myth into English, to establish the great epics of the Native American oral literature as equal to any epics laid down in writing by any culture.

Dr. Zolbrod has succeeded splendidly in this quest, using the ravishing poetic work of John Milton and the complex, poignant, sometimes humorous, always deeply spiritual masterwork of Navajo story craft. The mythic landscape of the Navajo world is deeply moving, believing as they do that the earth is sacred and sentient and that the goal of one’s life should be the creation and maintenance of hozhoon, the synergy of beauty, balance, and harmony. For them, spirit is immanent in all things and in all people.

GO TO THE BOTTOM FOR A GALLERY OF SOME COOL IMAGES AND A FEW MYTHIC NOTES!

A FEW IMPORTANT NOTES:

• IMAGE ACCESS: If you want to access images for use in newspaper reviews, etc., we can help. Some images can’t be used at all (photographer’s privilege), and some are public domain while some are from Wikimedia and easily accessible. Every image in the book is accompanied by the photograph’s information, so you’ll be able to locate images to license very easily. Licenses are serious business, so be careful, and don’t scan images from the book! You could violate two copyrights at once!

• IF YOU WANT TO QUOTE PASSAGES FROM THE BOOK. The passages from Dennis Tedlock’s Popol Vuh, you must contact Simon & Schuster. They are extremely strict that you cannot quote a single word without paying them. To quote from Paul’s Diné bahane’, contact the University of New Mexico Press. We took the quotes from Paradise Lost from the bespoke version published by Limited Editions in 1939. After an extensive search for the author of this version, we determined it to be in the public domain, and the Library of Congress and the Limited Editions Club concurred after they searched as well. If you want to quote from the Publisher’s Notes, from “The Michelangelo of the Word” or from “Fiat Lux,” write MorgaanSinclairPhD@PleiadesBooks.com. If you want to quote Paul’s original work for this book, please contact Zoe Zolbrod, Paul’s literary executrix, at ZoeZolbrod@gmail.com

This is the first book ever written that compares a great Native American oral epic with a classic from the written Western canon. It joyously establishes the equality of Indigenous literature.

Dr. Paul Zolbrod wanted to prove that oral literature—and especially Native American myth—was as intricate, deep and meaningful as anything produced by the lettered cultures that had long been held to be superior to oral cultures that were universally characterized as “primitive.” With this book, Dr. Zolbrod resoundingly proves those assumptions wrong—and, in the process, offers two fantastic stories, superbly told by the incomparable John Milton and by a host of magnificent Indigenous story tellers, medicine folk, and early anthropologists. It is a unique, heartfelt, powerful and passionate defense of Native American creative imagination that also elevates the brilliant work of one of England’s greatest poets. For Dr. Zolbrod, one of America’s most esteemed Milton scholars, Paradise Lost was a lifetime love, rivaled only by the creation story from the Navajo culture he came to adore.

546 pages | 147 images (most color) | Foreword by Dr. Dennis Patrick Slattery | Preface by Dr. Morgaan Sinclair Dozens of sidebars—with images—that illumine cultural and religious beliefs, Indigenous arts and ceremonial dance, historical influences, arts, holy places, weavings, and global archetypal symbols.

NOW FOR SOME FUN STUFF.

Consistent with Carl Jung’s theory that the archetypes of the collective unconscious appear in the myths of all peoples—and with Joseph Campbell’s theory that the Hero’s and Heroine’s Journeys are fundamental myths that appear in virtually all cultures globally—both the Christian myth of Paradise and the Navajo tale of how Five-Fingered Earth-Surface People emerged in the Fifth World are chock-full of heroes and heroines, gods and goddesses, demons and monsters—and instances of our all-too-human fantastic successes and devastating failures. However, though our myths have many features in common, they are also shot through with and sometimes crucially shaped by beliefs that are particular to isolated human families. These are beliefs engendered by individual groups’ unique natural environments and their specific experiences, challenges, quests, and imaginative attempts to resolve the vital and sometimes existential questions we have about who we are and why we are here, about our purposes and potentials, about how we relate to the divine, and about how we should solve specific, pressing problems.

So, the myths Dr. Zolbrod explores are stunningly similar and radically different. The Judeo-Christian worldview is monotheistic, top-down hierarchical, and resolutely patriarchal, with a singular-authority deity who creates the natural world and yet is separate from it. For the Navajo, Spirit is emanate in the world, shining in everything. Women and men are equal—and need each other very much.

Paradise Revisited is a joy to read, start to finish. It is, first, graced with the incandescent language of Milton. The poet’s riveting terrors of the war between God and Lucifer—at the end of which the Angel of Light is condemned to hell for eternity—are nothing short of mesmeric. His account of the Serpent’s cruel manipulation of a curious Eve—with the one thing she can’t have—is heartbreaking. And these are only two of the passages from Milton’s epic poem, among the most lauded works in the English language, that Zolbrod includes in Paradise Revisited.

Paradise Revisited is further blessed with the great narrative powers of the Navajo and the archetypal presences of Asdzaan nádleehe (Changing Woman), Jóhonaa’éí the Sun, the Warrior Twins, and the Trickster Ma’ii (the Coyote), whose great talent is wreaking havoc. In one episode he casts the stars into the heavens with no aforethought whatsoever—because he is impatient—and creates a dangerously disorganized mess strewn all over the sky—an act of truly asinine recklessness.

The damnedest thing, of course, is that Coyote will be forgiven every single time—though he doesn’t deserve it, and though it certainly is not fair. No one has any other choice as Coyote is immortal: though he is repeatedly killed, he will be serially resurrected from the dead, becoming instantly available to subject humanity to his supremely irritating waggery once again. Apparently, annoying rascality, like hope, springs eternal.

There is devastation and soul-crushing loss in the story of Adam and Eve. There is pain, ribald sexuality, and healing humor in the creation mythology of the Navajo. Both are gifts for our time, yet blessings that never grow old.