Paul Zolbrod: Paradise Revisited Publishes Soon
The story of the Garden of Eden meets the brilliant Five Worlds creation mythology of the Navajos in a book only this scholar could have written.
To purchase a signed / numbered limited edition hardcover of this brilliant work, please go to www.PleiadesBooks.com … Your purchase helps defray the costs of licensing more than 40 images—some from European Old Masters and some the images of Navajo Nation landscapes and artifacts. You help us immensely when you contribute in this way. And the book that will come in late September will be a magnificently beautiful and well-crafted volume that will be a collectors’ item the moment it arrives. Many thanks for help us publish this unique wonder of a study!
A 300-page, full-color, case-bound royal quarto hardcover book printed on 70 GMS glossy paper. With 40 illustrations, including color photographs of iconic Navajo Nation landscapes, weavings, and sand paintings—Old Master paintings of the Garden of Eden and the story of The Fall—and several black-and-white etchings Gustave Doré created for John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Limited edition identifiers appear on the spine of the color laminate cover and its dust jacket, and a plate before the title page displays the book’s registration number, Dr. Zolbrod’s digital signature, and Pleiades Books’ embossed seal. A Certificate of Authenticity is included. Edition limited to 350 copies. Officially publishes September 23rd, 2024, but limited editions will arrive sooner. We’ll be sending a series of “Sneak Peeks” while you wait. [s]
We are overjoyed to announce presales of the Signed and Numbered Limited Edition copies of Paul Zolbrod’s extraordinary new book, Paradise Revisited: Lines from John Milton’s Paradise Lost and the Navajo Creation Story.
This is the only work in the mythological and English literary disciplines ever to compare and contrast the Judeo-Christian creation story and the Navajo emergent-worlds myth—and only Dr. Zolbrod could have written it. Early in his career as an English professor at Allegheny College, Dr. Zolbrod began teaching Milton’s Paradise Lost. In 1971, he was drawn to overlooked Native American oral traditions and wondered if epic creation mythologies lay secreted within them. He found a glimmering vein of gold in the folklore of the Diné. Zolbrod learned Diné language and compiled and re-translated the entrancing Navajo creation story, Diné bahane'. He is the only academician worldwide with so deep a knowledge of both myths that he can see their similarities and differences with such crystalline clarity.
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.
In both myths, the relationships between masculine and feminine conjure the generative forces that ignite evolutionary processes that will usher humanity into the physical Earth=world. These are human beings as we know them: beautiful and flawed. They love and are swept away by passions; they fight and are wounded by their disputes, Worse, they are subjected to the chaos wrought by Tricksters: in the case of the Navajo, that is a trouble-making rascal of a coyote; in the case of Adam and Eve, it is a quintessentially evil and viciously malignant demon.
But Tricksters, manifestly iniquitous or merely mischievous, are boundary-dwellers, and once boundary-dwellers are engaged, the world will change. For in every case, a boundary-dweller will take a knife to the sky of human reality, and the energies of change, pent up behind the starry veils between worlds, will rush through the gaping slit and bleed like dye into the fabric of consciousness. Happily, all is never lost, for from the ashes of the burnt old world’s fabrics, flocks of phoenixes will always rise.
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.
Inside the covers of Paradise Revisited there wait two great epics. They are tales told by a man who is, in the same moment, one of the greatest storytellers in the world and one of the finest mythologists of our time. It is a profound honor for Pleiades Books to publish this work. We are grateful, dear professor. We are grateful indeed.
Please visit us at www.PleiadesBooks.com to pre-order a signed, limited edition copy.
Buyers of limited editions ahead of publication will appear on our Patrons page in the front of the book -- if they wish to [s].