প্রভাষক
২৯ জুলাই, ২০২১ ১০:০৬ অপরাহ্ণ
William Blake And Annotation of his poetry
William Blake
was born Nov. 28, 1757, London, England and died Aug. 12, 1827, London. He was English
engraver, artist, poet, and visionary, author of exquisite lyrics in Songs of Innocence (1789)
and Songs of Experience (1794) and profound and difficult
“prophecies,” such as Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), The
First Book of Urizen (1794), Milton (1804),
and Jerusalem (1804).
Blake was born over his father’s modest hosiery shop at 28
Broad Street, Golden Square, London. His parents were James Blake (1722–84) and
Catherine Wright Armitage Blake (1722–92). His father came from an obscure
family in Rotherhithe, across the River Thames from London, and his mother was from equally obscure
yeoman stock in the straggling little village of Walkeringham in
Nottinghamshire. His mother had first married (1746) a haberdasher named Thomas
Armitage, and in 1748 they moved to 28 Broad Street. In 1750 the couple joined
the newly established Moravian church in Fetter Lane, London. The Moravian
religious movement, recently imported from Germany, had had a strong attraction
to the powerful emotions associated with nascent Methodism (see Moravian church). Catherine Armitage bore a son named Thomas, who died as a
baby in 1751, and a few months later Thomas Armitage himself died.
Unlike many well-known
writers of his day, Blake was born into a family of moderate means. His father,
James, was a hosier, and the family lived at 28 Broad Street in London in an
unpretentious but “respectable” neighborhood. In all, seven children were born
to James and Catherine Wright Blake, but only five survived infancy. Blake
seems to have been closest to his youngest brother, Robert, who died young.
By all accounts Blake
had a pleasant and peaceful childhood, made even more pleasant by skipping any
formal schooling. As a young boy he wandered the streets of London and could
easily escape to the surrounding countryside. Even at an early age, however,
his unique mental powers would prove disquieting.
His parents were not
amused at such a story, and only his mother’s pleadings prevented him from
receiving a beating. His parents did, however, encourage his artistic talents,
and the young Blake was enrolled at the age of 10 in Pars’ drawing school. The
expense of continued formal training in art was a prohibitive, and the family
decided that at the age of 14 William would be apprenticed to a master
engraver. At first his father took him to William Ryland, a highly respected
engraver. The grim prophecy was to come true 12 years later. Instead of Ryland
the family settled on a lesser-known engraver, James Basire. Basire seems to
have been a good master, and Blake was a good student of the craft.
At the age of 21, Blake
left Basire’s apprenticeship and enrolled for a time in the newly formed Royal
Academy. He earned his living as a journeyman engraver. Booksellers employed
him to engrave illustrations for publications ranging from novels such as Don
Quixote to serials such as Ladies’ Magazine.
One incident at this
time affected Blake deeply. In June of 1780 riots broke out in London incited
by the anti-Catholic preaching of Lord George Gordon and by resistance to
continued war against the American colonists. Houses, churches, and prisons
were burned by uncontrollable mobs bent on destruction. On one evening, whether
by design or by accident, Blake found himself at the front of the mob that
burned Newgate prison. These images of violent destruction and unbridled
revolution gave Blake powerful material for works such as Europe (1794)
and America (1793).
Not all of the young
man’s interests were confined to art and politics. After one ill-fated romance,
Blake met Catherine Boucher. After a year’s courtship the couple was married on
August 18, 1782. The parish registry shows that Catherine, like many women of
her class, could not sign her own name. Blake soon taught her to read and to
write, and under Blake’s tutoring she also became an accomplished draftsman,
helping him in the execution of his designs. By all accounts the marriage was a
successful one, but no children were born to the Blake’s.
Blake’s friend John
Flaxman introduced Blake to the bluestocking Harriet Mathew, wife of the Rev.
Henry Mathew, whose drawing room was often a meeting place for artists and
musicians. There Blake gained favor by reciting and even singing his early
poems. Thanks to the support of Flaxman and Mrs. Mathew, a thin volume of poems
was published under the title Poetical Sketches (1783). Many
of these poems are imitations of classical models, much like the sketches of
models of antiquity the young artist made to learn his trade. Even here,
however, one sees signs of Blake’s protest against war and the tyranny of
kings. Only about 50 copies of Poetical Sketches are known to
have been printed. Blake’s financial enterprises also did not fare well. In
1784, after his father’s death, Blake used part of the money he inherited to
set up shop as a print seller with his friend James Parker. The Blakes moved to
27 Broad Street, next door to the family home and close to Blake’s brothers.
The business did not do well, however, and the Blakes soon moved out.
Of more concern to Blake
was the deteriorating health of his favorite brother, Robert. Blake tended to
his brother in his illness and according to Gilchrist watched the spirit of his
brother escape his body in his death: “At the last solemn moment, the visionary
eyes beheld the released spirit ascend heaven ward through the matter-of-fact
ceiling, ‘clapping its hands for joy.’"
Blake always felt the
spirit of Robert lived with him. He even announced that it was Robert who
informed him how to illustrate his poems in “illuminated writing.” Blake’s
technique was to produce his text and design on a copper plate with an
impervious liquid. The plate was then dipped in acid so that the text and
design remained in relief. That plate could be used to print on paper, and the
final copy would be then hand colored.
After experimenting with
this method in a series of aphorisms entitled There is No Natural
Religion and All Religions are One (1788?), Blake
designed the series of plates for the poems entitled Songs of Innocence and
dated the title page 1789. Blake continued to experiment with the process of
illuminated writing and in 1794 combined the early poems with companion poems
entitled Songs of Experience. The title page of the combined set
announces that the poems show “the two Contrary States of the Human Soul.”
The introductory poems
to each series display Blake’s dual image of the poet as both a “piper” and a
“Bard.” As man goes through various stages of innocence and experience in the
poems, the poet also is in different stages of innocence and experience. The
pleasant lyrical aspect of poetry is shown in the role of the “piper” while the
more somber prophetic nature of poetry is displayed by the stern Bard.
The dual role played by
the poet is Blake’s interpretation of the ancient dictum that poetry should
both delight and instruct. More important, for Blake the poet speaks both from
the personal experience of his own vision and from the “inherited” tradition of
ancient Bards and prophets who carried the Holy Word to the nations.
The two states of
innocence and experience are not always clearly separate in the poems, and one
can see signs of both states in many poems. The companion poems titled “Holy
Thursday” are on the same subject, the forced marching of poor children to St.
Paul’s Cathedral in London. The speaker in the state of innocence approves
warmly of the progression of children:
’Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean
The children walking two & two in red & blue & green
Grey headed beadles walked before with wands as white as snow
Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow.
The brutal irony is that
in this world of truly “innocent” children there are evil men who repress the
children, round them up like herd of cattle, and force them to show their
piety. In this state of innocence, experience is very much present.
If experience has a way
of creeping into the world of innocence, innocence also has a way of creeping
into experience. The golden land where the “sun does shine” and the “rain does
fall” is a land of bountiful goodness and innocence. But even here in this
blessed land, there are children starving. The sharp contrast between the two
conditions makes the social commentary all the more striking and supplies the
energy of the poem.
The storming of the
Bastille in Paris in 1789 and the agonies of the French Revolution sent shock
waves through England. Some hoped for a corresponding outbreak of liberty in
England while others feared a breakdown of the social order. In much of his
writing Blake argues against the monarchy. In his early Tiriel (written
circa 1789) Blake traces the fall of a tyrannical king.
Politics was surely
often the topic of conversation at the publisher Joseph Johnson’s house, where
Blake was often invited. There Blake met important literary and political
figures such as William Godwin, Joseph Priestly, Mary Wollstonecraft, and
Thomas Paine. According to one legend Blake is even said to have saved Paine’s
life by warning him of his impending arrest. Whether or not that is true, it is
clear that Blake was familiar with some of the leading radical thinkers of his
day.
In The French
Revolution Blake celebrates the rise of democracy in France and the
fall of the monarchy. King Louis represents a monarchy that is old and dying.
The sick king is lethargic and unable to act: “From my window I see the old
mountains of France, like aged men, fading away.” The “voice of the people”
demands the removal of the king’s troops from Paris, and their departure at the
end of the first book signals the triumph of democracy.
On the title page for
book one of The French Revolution Blake announces that it is “A
Poem in Seven Books,” but none of the other books has been found. Johnson never
published the poem, perhaps because of fear of prosecution, or perhaps because
Blake himself withdrew it from publication. Johnson did have cause to be
nervous. Erdman points out that in the same year booksellers were thrown in
jail for selling the works of Thomas Paine.
In America (1793)
Blake also addresses the idea of revolution–less as a commentary on the actual
revolution in America as a commentary on universal principles that are at work
in any revolution. The figure of Orc represents all revolutions:
The fiery joy, that Urizen perverted to ten commands,
What night he led the starry hosts thro’ the wide wilderness,
That stony law I stamp to dust; and scatter religion abroad
To the four winds as a torn book, & none shall gather the leaves.
The same force that
causes the colonists to rebel against King George is the force that overthrows
the perverted rules and restrictions of established religions.
The revolution in
America suggests to Blake a similar revolution in England. In the poem the
king, like the ancient pharaohs of Egypt, sends pestilence to America to punish
the rebels, but the colonists are able to redirect the forces of destruction to
England. Erdman suggests that Blake is thinking of the riots in England during
the war and the chaotic condition of the English troops, many of whom deserted.
Writing this poem in the 1790s, Blake also surely imagined the possible effect
of the French Revolution on England.
Another product of the
radical 1790s is The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Written and
etched between 1790 and 1793, Blake’s poem brutally satirizes oppressive
authority in church and state.
The powerful opening of
the poem suggests a world of violence. “Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in
the burdened air / Hungry clouds swag on the deep.” The fire and smoke suggest
a battlefield and the chaos of revolution. The cause of that chaos is analyzed
at the beginning of the poem. The world has been turned upside down. The “just
man” has been turned away from the institutions of church and state, and in his
place are fools and hypocrites who preach law and order but create chaos. Those
who proclaim restrictive moral rules and oppressive laws as “goodness” are in
themselves evil. Hence to counteract this repression, Blake announces that he
is of the “Devil’s Party” that will advocate freedom and energy and gratified
desire.
The “Proverbs of Hell”
are clearly designed to shock the reader out of his commonplace notion of what
is good and what is evil:
Prisons are built with stones of Law,
Brothels with bricks of Religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
It is the oppressive
nature of church and state that has created the repulsive prisons and brothels.
Sexual energy is not an inherent evil, but the repression of that energy is.
The preachers of morality fail to understand that God is in all things,
including the sexual nature of men and women.
The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell contains many of the
basic religious ideas developed in the major prophecies. Blake analyzes the
development of organized religion as a perversion of ancient visions: “The
ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them
by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains,
lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & Numerous senses could
perceive.” Ancient man created those gods to express his vision of the
spiritual properties that he perceived in the physical world. The gods began to
take on a life of their own separate from man: “Till a system was formed, which
some took advantage of & enslaved the vulgar by attempting to realize or
abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began Priesthood.” The
“system” or organized religion keeps man from perceiving the spiritual in the
physical. The gods are seen as separate from man, and an elite race of priests
is developed to approach the gods: “Thus men forgot that All deities reside in
the human breast.” Instead of looking for God on remote altars, Blake warns,
man should look within.
In August of 1790 Blake
moved from his house on Poland Street across the Thames to the area known as
Lambeth. The Blakes lived in the house for 10 years, and the surrounding
neighborhood often becomes mythologized in his poetry. Felpham was a “lovely
vale,” a place of trees and open meadows, but it also contained signs of human
cruelty, such as the house for orphans. At his home Blake kept busy not only
with his illuminated poetry but also with the daily chore of making money.
During the 1790s Blake earned fame as an engraver and was glad to receive
numerous commissions.
One story told by
Blake’s friend Thomas Butts shows how much the Blakes enjoyed the pastoral
surroundings of Lambeth. At the end of Blake’s garden was a small summer house,
and coming to call on the Blakes one day Butts was shocked to find the couple
stark naked: “Come in!” cried Blake; “it’s only Adam and Eve you know!” The
Blakes were reciting passages from Paradise Lost, apparently “in
character."Sexual freedom is addressed in Visions of the Daughters
of Albion (1793), also written during the Lambeth period.
Between 1793 and 1795
Blake produced a remarkable collection of illuminated works that have come to
be known as the “Minor Prophecies.” In Europe (1794), The
First Book of Urizen (1794), The Book of Los (1795), The
Song of Los (1795), and The Book of Ahania (1795)
Blake develops the major outlines of his universal mythology. In these poems
Blake examines the fall of man. In Blake’s mythology man and God were once
united, but man separated himself from God and became weaker and weaker as he
became further divided.
The narrative of the
universal mythology is interwoven with the historical events of Blake’s own
time. The execution of King Louis XVI in 1793 led to an inevitable reaction,
and England soon declared war on France. England’s participation in the war
against France and its attempt to quell the revolutionary spirit is addressed
in Europe. The very force of that repression, however, will cause
its opposite to appear in the revolutionary figure of Orc: “And in the
vineyards of reds France appeared the light of his fury.”
The causes of that
repression are examined in The First Book of Urizen. The word Urizen suggests
“your reason” and also “horizon.” He represents that part of the mind that
constantly defines and limits human thought and action. In the frontispiece to
the poem he is pictured as an aged man hunched over a massive book writing with
both hands in other books. Behind him stand the tablets of the 10 commandments,
and Urizen is surely writing other “thou shalt nots” for others to follow. His
twisted anatomical position shows the perversity of what should be the “human
form divine."
The poem traces the
birth of Urizen as a separate part of the human mind. He insists on laws for
all to follow:
One command, one joy, one desire
One curse, one weight, one measure,
One King, one God, one Law.
Urizen’s repressive laws
bring only further chaos and destruction. Appalled by the chaos he himself
created, Urizen fashions a world apart.
The process of
separation continues as the character of Los is divided from Urizen. Los, the
“Eternal Prophet,” represents another power of the human mind. Los forges the
creative aspects of the mind into works of art. Like Urizen he is a limiter,
but the limitations he creates are productive and necessary. In the poem Los
forms “nets and gins” to bring an end to Urizen’s continual chaotic separation.
Los is horrified by the
figure of the bound Urizen and is separated by his pity, “for Pity divides the
Soul.” Los undergoes a separation into a male and female form. His female form
is called Enitharmon, and her creation is viewed with horror:
Eternity shuddered when they saw
Man begetting his likeness
On his own divided image.
This separation into
separate sexual identities is yet another sign of man’s fall. The “Eternals” contain
both male and female forms within themselves, but man is divided and weak.
Enitharmon gives birth
to the fiery Orc, whose violent birth gives some hope for radical change in a
fallen world, but Orc is bound in chains by Los, now a victim of jealousy.
Enitharmon bears an “enormous race,” but it is a race of men and women who are
weak and divided and who have lost sight of eternity.
In his fallen state man
has limited senses and fails to perceive the infinite. Divided from God and
caught by the narrow traps of religion, he sees God only as a crude lawgiver
who must be obeyed.
The Book of Los also examines man’s fall and the binding
of Urizen, but from the perspective of Los, whose task it is to place a limit
on the chaotic separation begun by Urizen. The decayed world is again one of
ignorance where there is “no light from the fires.” From this chaos the bare
outlines of the human form begin to appear:
Many ages of groans, till there grew
Branchy forms organizing the Human
Into finite inflexible organs.
The human senses are
pale imitations of the true senses that allow one to perceive eternity.
Urizen’s world where man now lives is spoken of as an “illusion” because it
masks the spiritual world that is everywhere present.
In The Song of
Los, Los sings of the decayed state of man, where the arbitrary laws of
Urizen have become institutionalized:
Thus the terrible race of Los & Enitharmon gave
Laws & Religions to the sons of Har, binding them more
And more to Earth, closing and restraining,
Till a Philosophy of five Senses was complete.
Urizen wept & gave it into the hands of Newton & Locke.
The “philosophy of the
five senses” espoused by scientists and philosophers argues that the world and
the mind are like industrial machines operating by fixed laws but devoid of
imagination, creativity, or any spiritual life. Blake condemns this
materialistic view of the world espoused in the writings of Newton and Locke.
Although man is in a
fallen state, the end of the poem points to the regeneration that is to come:
Orc, raging in European darkness,
Arose like a pillar of fire above the Alps,
Like a serpent of fiery flame!
The coming of Orc is
likened not only to the fires of revolution sweeping Europe, but also to the
final apocalypse when the “Grave shrieks with delight."
The separation of man is
also examined in The Book of Ahania, which Blake later incorporated
in Vala, or The Four Zoas. In The Book of Ahania Urizen
is further divided into male and female forms. Urizen is repulsed by his
feminine shadow that is called Ahania:
He groaned anguished & called her Sin,
Kissing her and weeping over her;
Then hid her in darkness, in silence,
Jealous, thou’ she was invisible.
“Ahania” is only a
“sin” in that she is given that name. Urizen, the lawgiver, can not accept the
liberating aspects of sexual pleasure. At the end of the poem, Ahania laments
the lost pleasures of eternity:
Where is my golden palace?
Where my ivory bed?
Where the joy of my morning hour?
Where the sons of eternity singing.
The physical pleasures
of sexual union are celebrated as an entrance to a spiritual state. The
physical union of man and woman is sign of the spiritual union that is to come.
The Four Zoas is subtitled “The Torments of Love and
Jealousy in the Death and Judgement of Albion the Ancient Man,” and the poem
develops Blake’s myth of Albion, who represents both the country of England and
the unification of all men. Albion is composed of “Four Mighty Ones":
Tharmas, Urthona, Urizen, and Luvah. Originally, in Eden, these four exist in
the unity of “The Universal Brotherhood.” At this early time all parts of man
lived in perfect harmony, but now they are fallen into warring camps. The poem
traces the changes in Albion:
His fall into Division & his Resurrection to Unity:
His fall into the Generation of decay & death, & his
Regeneration by the Resurrection from the dead.
The poem begins with
Tharmas and examines the fall of each aspect of man’s identity. The poem
progresses from disunity toward unity as each Zoa moves toward final
unification.
In the apocalyptic
“Night the Ninth,” the evils of oppression are overturned in the turmoil of the
Last Judgment: “The thrones of Kings are shaken, they have lost their robes
& crowns/ The poor smite their oppressors, they awake up to the harvest.”
As dead men are
rejuvenated, Christ, the “Lamb of God,” is brought back to life and sheds the
evils of institutionalized religions:
. Thus shall the male & female live the life of Eternity,
Because the Lamb of God Creates himself a bride & wife
That we his Children evermore may live in Jerusalem
Which now descended out of heaven, a City, yet a Woman
Mother of myriads redeemed & born in her spiritual palaces,
By a New Spiritual birth Regenerated from Death
Very little of Blake’s
poetry of the 1790s was known to the general public. His reputation as an
artist was mixed. Response to his art ranged from praise to derision, but he
did gain some fame as an engraver. His commissions did not produce much in the
way of income, but Blake never seems to have been discouraged. In 1799 Blake
wrote to George Cumberland, “I laugh at Fortune & Go on & on."
Because of his monetary
woes, Blake often had to depend on the benevolence of patrons of the arts. This
sometimes led to heated exchanges between the independent artist and the wealthy
patron. Dr. John Trusler was one such patron whom Blake failed to please. Dr.
Trusler was a clergyman, a student of medicine, a bookseller, and the author of
such works as Hogarth Moralized (1768), The Way to be
Rich and Respectable (1750?), and A Sure Way to Lengthen Life
with Vigor (circa 1819). Blake found himself unable to follow the
clergyman’s wishes: “I attempted every morning for a fortnight together to
follow your Dictate, but when I found my attempts were in vain, resolved to show
an independence which I know will please an Author better than slavishly
following the track of another, however admirable that track may be. At any
rate, my Excuse must be: I could not do otherwise; it was out of my power!” Dr.
Trusler was not convinced and replied that he found Blake’s “Fancy” to be
located in the “World of Spirits” and not in this world. Dr. Trusler was not
the only patron that tried to make Blake conform to popular tastes; for
example, Blake’s stormy relation to his erstwhile friend and patron William
Hayley directly affected the writing of the epics Milton and Jerusalem.
Blake left Felpham in
1803 and returned to London. In April of that year he wrote to Butts that he
was overjoyed to return to the city: “That I can alone carry on my visionary studies
in London unannoy’d, & that I may converse with my friends in Eternity, See
Visions, Dream Dreams & Prophecy & Speak Parables unobserved & at
liberty from the Doubts of other Mortals.” In the same letter Blake refers to
his epic poem Milton, composed while at Felpham: “But none can know
the Spiritual Acts of my three years ‘Slumber on the banks of the Ocean, unless
he has seen them in the Spirit, or unless he should read My long Poem
descriptive of those Acts."
In his “slumber on the
banks of the Ocean,” Blake, surrounded by financial worries and hounded by a
patron who could not appreciate his art, reflected on the value of visionary
poetry. Milton, which Blake started to engrave in 1804(probably
finishing in 1808),is a poem that constantly draws attention to itself as a
work of literature. Its ostensible subject is the poet John Milton, but the author, William Blake, also creates a character for
himself in his own poem. Blake examines the entire range of mental activity
involved in the art of poetry from the initial inspiration of the poet to the
reception of his vision by the reader of the poem. Milton examines
as part of its subject the very nature of poetry: what it means to be a poet,
what a poem is, and what it means to be a reader of poetry.
In the preface to the
poem, Blake issues a battle cry to his readers to reject what is merely
fashionable in art:
Rouze up, O Young Men of
the New Age! set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings! For we have
Hirelings in the Camp, the Court & the University, who would, if they
could, for ever depress Mental & prolong Corporeal War. Painters! on you I
call. Sculptors! Architects! suffer not the fashionable Fools to depress your
powers by the prices they pretend to give for contemptible works, or the
expensive advertizing boasts that they make of such works; believe Christ &
his Apostles that there is a Class of men whose whole delight is in Destroying.
We do not want either Greek or Roman Models if we are but just & true to
our own imaginations, those Worlds of Eternity in which we shall live for ever
in Jesus our Lord.
In attacking the
“ignorant Hirelings” in the “Camp, the Court & the University,” Blake
repeats a familiar dissenting cry against established figures in English
society. Blake’s insistence on being “just & true to our own Imaginations”
places a special burden on the reader of his poem. For as he makes clear,Blake
demands the exercise of the creative imagination from his own readers.
In the well-known lyric
that follows, Blake asks for a continuation of Christ’s vision in modern-day
England:
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green & pleasant Land.
The poet-prophet must
lead the reader away from man’s fallen state and toward a revitalized state
where man can perceive eternity.
"Book the First”
contains a poem-within-a-poem, a “Bard’s Prophetic Song.” The Bard’s Song
describes man’s fall from a state of vision. We see man’s fall in the ruined
form of Albion as a representative of all men and in the fall of Palamabron
from his proper position as prophet to a nation. Interwoven into this narrative
are the Bard’s addresses to the reader, challenges to the reader’s senses,
descriptions of contemporary events and locations in England, and references to
the life of William Blake. Blake is at pains to show us that his mythology is
not something far removed from us but is part of our day to day life. Blake
describes the reader’s own fall from vision and the possibility of regaining
those faculties necessary for vision.
The climax of the Bard’s
Song is the Bard’s sudden vision of the “Holy Lamb of God": “Glory! Glory!
to the Holy lamb of God: / I touch the heavens as an instrument to glorify the
Lord.” At the end of the Bard’s Song, his spirit is incorporated into that of
the poet Milton. Blake portrays Milton as a great but flawed poet who must
unify the separated elements of his own identity before he can reclaim his
powers of vision and become a true poet, casting off “all that is not
inspiration."
As Milton is presented
as a man in the process of becoming a poet, Blake presents himself as a
character in the poem undergoing the transformation necessary to become a poet.
Only Milton believes in the vision of the Bard’s Song, and the Bard takes
“refuge in Milton’s bosom.” As Blake realizes the insignificance of this
“Vegetable World,” Los merges with Blake, and he arises in “fury and strength.”
This ongoing belief in the hidden powers of the mind heals divisions and
increases powers of perception. The Bard, Milton, Los, and Blake begin to merge
into a powerful bardic union. Yet it is but one stage in a greater drive toward
the unification of all men in a “Universal Brotherhood."
In the second book
of Milton Blake initiates the reader into the order of poets
and prophets. Blake continues the process begun in book one of taking the
reader through different stages in the growth of a poet.
Turning the outside
world upside down is a preliminary stage in an extensive examination of man’s
internal world. A searching inquiry into the self is a necessary stage in the
development of the poet. Milton is told he must first look within: “Judge then
of thy Own Self: thy Eternal Lineaments explore, what is Eternal & what
Changeable, & what Annihilable.” Central to the process of judging
the self is a confrontation with that destructive part of man’s identity Blake
calls the Selfhood, which blocks “the human center of creativity.” Only by
annihilating the Selfhood, Blake believes, can one hope to participate in the
visionary experience of the poem.
The Selfhood places two
powerful forces to block our path: the socially accepted values of “love” and
“reason.” In its purest state love is given freely with no restrictions and no
thought of return. In its fallen state love is reduced to a form of trade: “Thy
love depends on him thou lovest, & on his dear loves /dssepend thy
pleasures, which thou hast cut off by jealousy.” “Female love” is given only in
exchange for love received. It is bartering in human emotions and is not love
at all. When Milton denounces his own Selfhood, he gives up “Female love” and
loves freely and openly.
As Blake attacks
accepted notions of love, he also forces the reader to question the value
society places on reason. In his struggle with Urizen, who represents man’s
limited power of reason, Milton seeks to cast off the deadening effect of the
reasoning power and free the mind for the power of the imagination.
Destroying the Selfhood
allows Milton to unite with others. He descends upon Blake’s path and continues
the process of uniting with Blake that had begun in book one. This union is
also a reflection of Blake’s encounter with Los that is described in book one
and illustrated in book two.
The apex of Blake’s
vision is the brief image of the Throne of God. In Revelation, John’s vision of
the Throne of God is a prelude to the apocalypse itself. Similarly Blake’s
vision of the throne is also a prelude to the coming apocalypse. Blake’s vision
is abruptly cut off as the Four Zoas sound the Four Trumpets, signaling the
call to judgment of the peoples of the earth. The trumpets bring to a halt
Blake’s vision, as he falls to the ground and returns to his mortal state. The
apocalypse is still to come.
The author falls before
the vision of the Throne of God and the awful sound of the coming apocalypse.
However, the author’s vision does not fall with him to the ground. In the very
next line after Blake describes his faint, we see his vision soar: “Immediately
the lark mounted with a loud trill from Felpham’s Vale.” We have seen the lark
as the messenger of Los and the carrier of inspiration. Its sudden flight here
demonstrates that the vision of the poem continues. It is up to the reader to
follow the flight of the lark to the Gate of Los and continue the vision
of Milton.
Before Blake could leave
Felpham and return to London, an incident occurred that was very disturbing to
him and possibly even dangerous. Without Blake’s knowledge, his gardener had
invited a soldier by the name of John Scoffed into his garden to help with the
work. Blake seeing the soldier and thinking he had no business being there
promptly tossed him out.
What made this incident
so serious was that the soldier swore before a magistrate that Blake had said
“Damn the King” and had uttered seditious words. Blake denied the charge, but
he was forced to post bail and appear in court. Blake left Felpham at the end
of September 1803 and settled in a new residence on South Molton Street in
London. His trial was set for the following January at Chichester. The
soldier’s testimony was shown to be false, and the jury acquitted Blake.
Blake’s radical
political views made him fear persecution, and he wondered if Scoffed had been
a government agent sent to entrap him. In any event Blake forever damned the
soldier by attacking him in the epic poem Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is in many ways Blake’s major achievement.
It is an epic poem consisting of 100 illuminated plates. Blake dated the title
page 1804, but he seems to have worked on the poem for a considerable length of
time after that date. In Jerusalem he develops his mythology
to explore man’s fall and redemption. As the narrative begins, man is apart
from God and split into separate identities. As the poem progresses man’s split
identities are unified, and man is reunited with the divinity that is within
him.
In chapter one Blake announces the purpose of his “great
task":
To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes
Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought, into Eternity
Ever expanding in the Bosom of God, the Human Imagination.
It is sometimes easy to
get lost in the complex mythology of Blake’s poetry and forget that he is
describing not outside events but a “Mental Fight” that takes place in the
mind. Much of Jerusalem is devoted to the idea of awakening
the human senses, so that the reader can perceive the spiritual world that is
everywhere present.
At the beginning of the
poem, Jesus addresses the fallen Albion: “’I am not a God afar off, I am a
brother and friend; ‘Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me.’” In
his fallen state Albion rejects this close union with God and dismisses Jesus
as the “Phantom of the overheated brain!” Driven by jealousy Albion hides his
emanation, Jerusalem. Separation from God leads to further separation into
countless male and female forms creating endless division and dispute.
Blake describes the
fallen state of man by describing the present day. Interwoven into the
mythology are references to present-day London. In chapter two the “disease of
Albion” leads to further separation and decay. As the human body is a limited
form of its divine origin, the cities of England are limited representations of
the Universal Brotherhood of Man. Fortunately for man, there is “a limit of
contraction,” and the fall must come to an end.
Caught by the errors of
sin and vengeance, Albion gives up hope and dies. The flawed religions of moral
law cannot save him: “The Visions of Eternity, by reason of narrowed
perceptions, / Are become weak Visions of Time & Space, fixed into furrows
of death.” Our limited senses make us think of our lives as bounded by time and
space apart from eternity. In such a framework physical death marks the end of
existence. But there is also a limit to death, and social order and in the
minds of men. Though in his lifetime his work was largely neglected or
dismissed, he is now considered one of the leading lights of English poetry,
and his work has only grown in popularity. Yet Blake himself believed that his
writings were of national importance and that they could be understood by a
majority of his peers. Far from being an isolated mystic, Blake lived and
worked in the teeming metropolis of London at a time of great social and
political change that profoundly influenced his writing. In addition to being
considered one of the most visionary of English poets and one of the great
progenitors of English Romanticism, his visual artwork is highly regarded
around the world.