SOURCE: "La chute d'un ange: Heaven and Hell on Earth," in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. XIII, No. 4, Summer, 1985, pp. 191-99.

In the following excerpt, the critic explicates La chute d'un ange, focusing on humankind's relationship to God, suffering, and evil as presented in the poem.

La Chute d'un ange brings us into a world where men have forgotten Heaven. The nomadic tribesmen who figure in the first part of the narration are thus doubly fallen, for they have not only been excluded from Eden, they have no recollection of God and have lost the power to see the signs of His presence which are visible in the universe. The central narrator, who is a holy man, has told us that in the antediluvian natural universe, still in its original state of perfection, all things are "pleins de Dieu." But when the cedars of Lebanon sing their hymn of...