(Original Review, 1981-02-10)
It has been a long time since I read “Manfred”, and much longer since “Paradise Lost”, so maybe I am wrong. But Milton's Satan was first and foremost, I think, rebellious. Satan's will was his own, NOT God's, he was so to speak his own man. He could not regain Paradise because wherever he went, Hell went. Satan in Paradise is Satan still in Hell, "myself am Hell". This Satan might have BEEN Sublime, but by the 20th century he is no more than a literary symbol. Manfred was still able to be Satanic, but he too was first and foremost, a creature of his own will, and thereby alone and lonely. But despite all those crags and peaks, there is no Sublime left for him to be for us. And in us I include Dashiell Hammett. The Dark is no longer anything religious or based in any thing of the sort. There is no Devil or Satan, cosmically majestic being. Manfred was a metaphysical play, that could only be called paranormal today. Satan exists in media in all his ancient regalia, but we are talking genre fiction, Hollywood, and comic books, and he has to coexist with Aliens from deep space or buried under the ice, or from another dimension. The recent hero of comics, a movie, and now TV; some modern TV characters are really just Sam Space, a bit grungier and dealing with supernatural villains.
The great Romantic concepts of the Sublime, Poetry, Imagination, Dream, were all much diminished by Hammett's time and have done nothing but lose steam since then. If Hammett had made Sam Spade into a Manfred we would only see the Corny, not the Sublime.
