Paradise Lost ,—— based on Kidd and not related to Milton

One

Gide said that there was once a paradise.

That's a pure Eden! There the pleasant breeze fluctuates according to the foreseen curve; there the sky unfolds a boundless blue, obscuring the well-proportioned meadows; there the birds of all kinds have the color of time, and the butterflies on the flowers practice the harmony of divine will; where the roses are rose-colored, and precisely because the rose beetles are green, they stop on the roses. Everything is as complete as a number, everything is in order; a harmony flows from the harmony of the lines; there is a symphony of eternal music floating in the garden.

In the center of Eden, there is a large ash tree (Ygdrasil). In the shade, against the trunk, there are "mysterious" books, one by one, which record the truths that should be known. The wind, blowing among the branches and leaves, reads the necessary hieroglyphs in the book all day long. Adam, sitting in the shade of a great tree, listened reverently. However, Adam wasn't satisfied just being a spectator, he felt bored. He reached out and grabbed one of the branches of the large ash tree, and he was going to break it. Terrible results were produced, and the large ash tree was crumbling. The leaves that had been playing with the breeze were swept away in the sudden wind, and at the same time, the scattered pages that had fallen off the Great Sacred Book were swept away.

Panicked Adam, the man of the two sexes, now divided in half. They wept in pain and terror, trying to recreate, through themselves, perfect human beings, only to cause an unknown new race to move in the woman's belly. This human being, which is about to be sent out of time, is still incomplete and unselfish, and they will be ravaged by the memory of the lost paradise. This wretched human being in this land of dusk and prayer is going to go everywhere to find that paradise, to collect the zero pages of the holy book that is beyond memory, for there are truths written there that should be known.

That's how Gide described the lost paradise.

Two

All cultures seem to share this common theme: Paradise Lost.

In the ancient Greeks, there was a golden age for mankind. Then there was no sorrow, no tiredness, no sorrow. They don't age, and they die painlessly. The fertile land has abundant fruits for them to enjoy. They live peacefully on earth. They are said to be human beings, not so much the spirits of the earth.

The golden age of Chinese was the era of the "Five Emperors" who sang with their bellies and bells:

Qingyun is rotten, and He is sloppy.

Sun and moonlight, Dan Fudan Xi.

However, happiness does not last long, and we all lose paradise.

Paradise Lost, as a cultural theme, seems to reflect many, many things: we were once sons of God, and we were once living in a happy paradise. We are only banished Sons of God, we are simply banished from the promised land of happiness. All our sacrifices and struggles on the earth, all our joys and sorrows, all our loneliness and nightmares, are only because we have been expelled, because we want to return to the paradise of lost happiness. Reality is suffering, the future is unknowable, and only the promised land that God once gave us is the other side of happiness that our souls can reach. We have history, we have the Garden of Eden, we dream of dust reincarnation. The future is the past, and where we come is where we go.

Three

I would like to quote this passage from Gone with the Wind.

In this paradise, heroic deeds have disappeared, knights and ladies are no longer seen, masters and slaves have disappeared without a trace, only the scenes that can be traced in the book can no longer relive this dream, a civilization that has passed away with the wind....

Because, behind every major event, there is paradise lost.