The rhetorical strategy that Milton uses to give us this perspective of eternity is what Geoffrey Hartman called Milton's counter-plot.

弥尔顿习惯于展现给我们的修辞性的手法,这种永恒的看法正是被哈特曼称为,弥尔顿的反策略。

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选

This image of the afterlife is founded on the orthodox figure for eternity. The body stays to the earth while the soul, like the day-star, rises to the sky.

关于来生的这幅画面是建立在正统基督教,对永生的信仰上的，肉体归于泥土,灵魂却会像启明星一样升上天空。

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选

Yet even there, when I imagine an eternity of thinking about math--or for that matter, an eternity of thinking about philosophy, which I obviously like even more than math-- the prospect seems an unattractive one.

即使如此，当我想到让我永远,思考数学问题，或者说，让我永远思考哲学问题，显然和数学相比，我更钟情于它-,但这个提议也变得无趣。

耶鲁公开课 - 死亡课程节选

This is how this logic goes -- we are all familiar with this: our body remains to molder in the earth or welter in the ocean , but our incorporeal spirit rises to heaven where it can enjoy an ethereal, a bodiless, world of eternity.

就是这种逻辑--我们都熟悉这个：,我们的肉体在地下或是海底归于腐朽,但灵魂却会升入天堂,在那里享受无形的永生。

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选

Then we read, or at least we think we read, that Satan's spear is small, and then we realize over the course of this reading process that Satan's spear is unimaginable, and we realize that our time-bound mode of knowing is ultimately inadequate to understand anything about the inscrutable truths of eternity: this is according to Fish.

然后又读到，至少我们认为读到，撒旦的长矛又很小，接着我们意识到了在阅读的过程中,撒旦的长矛实际上是不可想象的，并且我们被特定时代拘束的理解模式,是不足以理解任何,有关永恒的难以预测的真相的：,这是费什告诉我们的道理。

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选