Reflexive Conversations (Books I-III) is here. Prepare yourself for the most stunningly original epic poem since Milton’s Paradise Lost.
This remarkable and unique volume gives literature its first truly romantic depiction of Satan; a tragic character whose greatest love results in his greatest loss. A contemporary Paradise Lost, John Everett Button’s Reflexive Conversations brilliantly renders a brave new vision of the Devil. Challenging the bounds of the traditional tragedy, this romantic and
sonorous tale promises to resonatewith the general public and the scholar alike. An evocative journey into the depths of the Devil’s mind, Reflexive Conversations intoxicates the reader with poetic magnificence in this dialog full of twists and turns and savory verses, lifting the reader to a new height, where the heartaches and accidents of the reader’s personal life disappear.
The argument
This first book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject, fate’s disobedience of the Devil’s heart, and the loss thereupon of the heavenly paradise which awaited him. Then touches the prime cause of his fall: the sudden flood of memories of his forgotten Love lost. The poem begins in the midst of things, presenting Satan, as described here, not in a hell of utter darkness, but in an earthly palace of great marble pillars and statues.
Here Satan, stops his only son, who standing before him, anxious and alive, is prepared to leave on a great pale horse in search of his own throne. To him Satan directs his speech, comforting him with knowledge of his past and all that has come to pass, so that his son should not follow in his footsteps.
The argument
The conversation begun at nightfall, Satan lies awake with his lover, talking for an entire night. They talk of God and heaven and what it would be like to pierce its cloudy floor. Then, after showing his lover a portrait of his voyage at sea, she wishes to know how such travels took place.
He starts the story after his expulsion from the Garden of Eden, where he stands on the banks of the Island of Purgatory, prepared to end his suffering by drowning in the sea. As he tells his lover about being swept away into the sea, she finds herself swept away his words.
The argument
Satan enters the Great Halls of Justice, a great marble palace, unaware of the judgment that awaits him inside. After falling asleep in one of the palace’s rooms, dreaming about a man hanging from a tree in the Land of the Dead, he awakens and finds Judas waiting for him upon a thrown, wearing a crown of golden thorns.
Judas explains that he was merely holding the throne for the one whose sin would be greater than his own. Satan, at the behest of Judas, explains how he found himself upon the steps of the palace, starting his story with his first landfall since leaving the Island of Purgatory.
