{"id":1175,"date":"2026-05-05T04:16:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T09:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/?p=1175"},"modified":"2026-04-27T13:28:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T18:28:49","slug":"%c2%a7-6-3-fortaleza-vegetal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/2026\/05\/05\/%c2%a7-6-3-fortaleza-vegetal\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00a7\u00a06.3. A Verdurous Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph translation-block\">The most thorough and imaginative description of Eden\u2014and of the drama of the expulsion from the original paradisiacal state\u2014appears in John Milton\u2019s <em>Paradise Lost<\/em> (1667), one of the most important epic poems in the English language. Of course, Milton\u2019s story includes the spring and the rivers of Genesis:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">With mazy error under pendant shades<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Flowers worthy of Paradise which not nice art<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">In beds and curious knots, but nature boon <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Poured forth profuse on hill and dale and plain\u2026<sup data-fn=\"6b905430-b5f4-4fa6-be7b-aa9a1a303aad\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#6b905430-b5f4-4fa6-be7b-aa9a1a303aad\" id=\"6b905430-b5f4-4fa6-be7b-aa9a1a303aad-link\">1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph translation-block\">Aside from the presence of water and bountiful nature, another feature that binds Milton\u2019s version of the Garden of Eden with the idea of <em>paradeisos<\/em> is its closed character. This trait is not openly enunciated in the book of Genesis, but it does figure tacitly when, after having eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden through an opening at the east that would appear to be its only access. Just as you cannot \u201center\u201d into the open (<a href=\"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/2025\/12\/18\/\u00a7-0-9-el-umbral-y-la-ley\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"158\" target=\"_self\">0.9<\/a>), you can only \u201cexit\u201d a place that is closed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Book IV, we find Satan admiring the garden from afar, with the intention of perverting the creation of his eternal opponent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">So on he fares, and to the border comes,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">As with a rural mound the champaign head<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Access denied; and overhead up grew<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Insuperable height of loftiest shade,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">A sylvan scene, and as the ranks ascend<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Shade above shade, a woody theatre<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Of stateliest view. Yet higher that their tops<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The verdurous wall of Paradise up sprung:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Which to our general sire gave prospect large <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Into his nether empire neighbouring round.<sup data-fn=\"b35a8ed8-50e1-4515-9b3e-6b2658217365\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#b35a8ed8-50e1-4515-9b3e-6b2658217365\" id=\"b35a8ed8-50e1-4515-9b3e-6b2658217365-link\">2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph translation-block\">Eden\u2019s geography has changed substantially, it is not a humid plain anymore but something more akin to a northern european forest, a rural mound in a vast wilderness overgrown with \u201chairy sides\u201d and surrounded by \u201ca verdurous wall.\u201d In other words, a natural fortress which, in contrast to the surrounding wilderness, keeps within itself all that is amenable and necessary to human life, that is, all that is \u201cof the home,\u201d that has already been domesticated (<a href=\"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/2026\/04\/23\/\u00a7-0-24-domesticacion\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"1107\" target=\"_self\">0.24<\/a>). As a political concept the biblical Paradise legitimizes domestication by turning it into the natural state of the human animal, that is, making the separation between self and other something supposedly natural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph translation-block\">By Milton\u2019s time the connotations implied in the word <em>paradeisos<\/em> had already thoroughly penetrated the Western imaginary. Like the Persian hunting parks, Milton\u2019s Eden is an enclosure surrounded by a thick wall\u2014made of trees in this primordial stage\u2014a natural obstacle that evinces the estructural relation between the <em>locus amoenus<\/em> and the <em>locus terribilis<\/em> (perfectly expressed in the epigraph by Rousseau which opens this study): <em>that which protects you may very well enclose you and suffocate you.<\/em> The difference between these two poles rests mainly in the voluntary character of the pleasant and the involuntary of the terrible (<a href=\"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/2025\/12\/12\/\u00a7-0-4-islas-y-umbrales\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"83\" target=\"_self\">0.4<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-footnotes has-small-font-size\"><li id=\"6b905430-b5f4-4fa6-be7b-aa9a1a303aad\" class=\"translation-block\">Milton, <em>Paradise Lost<\/em>, IV, 237-243. <a href=\"#6b905430-b5f4-4fa6-be7b-aa9a1a303aad-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 1\" target=\"_self\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"b35a8ed8-50e1-4515-9b3e-6b2658217365\" class=\"translation-block\">Ibid. IV, 131-149. <a href=\"#b35a8ed8-50e1-4515-9b3e-6b2658217365-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 2\" target=\"_self\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>La descripci\u00f3n m\u00e1s completa e imaginativa del Ed\u00e9n \u2014y del drama de la expulsi\u00f3n del estado paradisiaco original\u2014, aparece en El para\u00edso perdido (1667) de John Milton, uno de los poemas \u00e9picos m\u00e1s importantes de la lengua inglesa. Desde luego, en el relato de Milton figuran el manantial y los r\u00edos del G\u00e9nesis:&nbsp; Aquella fuente [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":274836558,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"[{\"content\":\"Milton, <em>Paradiso Perdido<\/em>, 142.\",\"id\":\"6b905430-b5f4-4fa6-be7b-aa9a1a303aad\"},{\"content\":\"Ib\u00edd., 136.\",\"id\":\"b35a8ed8-50e1-4515-9b3e-6b2658217365\"}]","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[786109404],"tags":[786109410,786109411,786109412],"class_list":["post-1175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitulo-6","tag-john-milton","tag-paradise-lost","tag-paraiso-perdido"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgYHfz-iX","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/274836558"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1175"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1186,"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175\/revisions\/1186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}