A Prayer to God:
"that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them
and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one."
(John 17:20-22)
The theologues of the forties and fifties learned from Paul Tillich that everyone has an ultimate concern, which is his God. People in Alcoholics Anonymous have told some of their theologically confused members that, lacking any better God, they may worship a 'pot on the mantle', anything at all to break that devotion to the bottle which is actually the worship of a lower form of the self. To remain sober one must believe in a Higher Power of some sort.
The important thing is that one's Higher Power not be a projection of some lower form of self; that's idolatry. The person seriously interested in ultimate reality engages in a life long search for the most real image he can discover, the image of his God. A person's best image of God nurtures his spirit as he goes through life.
The Bible contains a multiplicity of images of God. For example we read about the finger of God, the nostrils of God, even the backside of God. All his life Blake maintained a high level of respect for the Bible as vision. Nevertheless he refused to worship other men's visions of God:
"I (you!) must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's"
(Jerusalem, 10.21; E153)".
He's saying that we have a choice: to adhere to the conventions (whatever conventions may be for us) or to create our own values from our own experience. Blake did this for a lifetime, creating his own myth of meaning, and with his creative works he expressed it over and over again.
The only thing Blake really trusted was his own immediate direct vision, and he possessed his soul in varying degrees of patience until that vision clarified (and you may be sure that it was criticized, corrected and amended over and over again. The 'Felpham Moment' marks the decisive clarification of Blake's vision of God. Even then the Father remained for Blake a symbol of subjection to the other man's vision, of spiritual tyranny. His own vision came to center upon Jesus.
Nobodaddy, Father of Jealousy, Urizen, all the creator and authority figures that filled the young Blake's mind, represented in essence his rejection of other men's images of God. The "Vision of Ahania" (4Z: chapter 3, 39.13ff; E327) expressed Blake's dawning awareness of a fundamental spiritual truth: the transcendental image which had dominated institutional religion is most often a projection of man's primitive negativities. The ultimate negativities, repressed into the unconscious, irupt into consciousness as the ultimate positivity, a God built upon sand, a "shadow from his wearied intellect". This passage, probably as much as anything else in his experience, inspired Thomas Altizer in the sixties to launch his Death of God movement.
Blake depreciated the God of Law and Wrath in order to exalt the God of Forgiveness. He believed that the far off, elusive, mysterious, transcendental image of God freezes man into spiritual immobility. He wanted to liberate men's minds from this imposture and put them in touch with the true source of creativity:
"Seek not thy heavenly father then beyond the skies,
There Chaos dwells & ancient Night & Og & Anak old. " (Milton 20:33-34)
"I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend;
Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me:
Lo! we are One, forgiving all Evil, Not seeking recompense.
Ye are my members...."
(Jerusalem 4:18-21)
The prophetic poems which Blake wrote prior to 1800 concern his efforts to know, describe and deal with the old, jealous, wrathful, creator image; he finally dismissed it as a "shadow from his wearied intellect" (FZ3-40.3). The later, major prophecies, Milton and Jerusalem, also contain this theme, happily outweighed by the new vision.
Prior to the Felpham Moment Blake had worshipped his own visionary endowment, his Pot on the Mantle; he called it the Poetic Genius and later the Imagination.
The evolving figure of Los building Golgonooza personified what we might call a pre-Christian God. When grace fell upon Blake, he came to see the true embodiment of God in Jesus.
In a letter (22) to his friend and patron, Thomas Butts, he described the experience of redemption that had come to him:
"And now let me finish with assuring you that tho I have been very unhappy I am so no longer I am again Emerged into the light of Day I still & shall to Eternity Embrace Christianity and Adore him who is the Express image of God..."
(Erdman 718)
Friday, February 25, 2011
Forgiveness of the Spectre
I forgive you you forgive me
As our dear Redeemer said
This the Wine & this the Bread
(Erdman 475-77)
Two ideas occur repeatedly in this blog:
1. The Spectre
2. Forgiveness
The epigram combines these two ideas into a whole. For years I used to
think that in those four lines Blake was addressing God. But in the
Silence of early morning, reading the poem as a whole the vision came
that he wasn't addressing God at all; he was addressing the Spectre. The entire poem represents a conversation with the Spectre.
What Spectre? His Spectre! Not the universal devil, but his
personal devil, all of the 'worldly stuff' that kept him from
the visionary consciousness that he loved. Just any little old
will keep you from God. Your Spectre tries desperately to
keep your attention on 'his stuff', not God's Kingdom, not
God's will, but on anything else: your financial account, your
golfing game, your romantic life; whatever he can get you to
focus on instead of God: all your prejudices, all your holding
things against people (including yourself), lust instead of
sacred love.
This is the idea that came to our hero when he visited the
Truchsessian Gallery: I don't need all this getting ahead
stuff, this feeding of my ego. I'm okay; I'm God's child. He
realized that he was in God's hands, and he was all right.
Self control; no more worrying; perhaps he met Buddha.
Errors were no longer necessary, and a Last Judgement
passed upon him:
"What are all the Gifts of the Spirit but Mental Gifts
whenever any Individual Rejects Error & Embraces Truth
a Last Judgment passes upon that Individual"
(A Vision of the Last Judgment at page 562)
What is rejecting Errors and embracing Truth, but forgiving
and being forgiven. That's the wine and the bread. Jesus, the
'forgiveness' was the central element in Blake's Faith.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Blake's Faith I
"...I rest not from my 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."
(Jerusalem Plate 5: line 17ff)
- Seek love in the pity of another's woe,
In the gentle relief of another's care,
In the darkness of night and the winter's snow.
In the naked and outcast, seek love there. (William Bond)
The most striking tenet of Blake's faith was his vision of the Eternal; it was also his primary gift to mankind. Blake lived in an age when the realm of spirit had virtually disappeared from the intellectual horizon. This single fact explains why he stood out like a sore thumb in late 18th Century England and why for most of his contemporaries he could never be more than an irritant, an eccentric, a madman; their most common term of depreciation was 'enthusiast'. His primary concern was a world whose existence they not only denied, but held in derision.
The task of the Enlightenment had been to emancipate man from superstition, and Voltaire, Gibbon, and their associates had done this with great distinction. Blake was born emancipated, but he knew that closed off from Vision, from the individuality of Genius, from the spontaneous spiritual dimension, from what Jesus had called the kingdom of God, mankind will regress to a level beneath the human. In his prophetic writings he predicted 1940 and its aftermath. "Where there is no vision, the people perish" (Proverbs 29:19).
Blake was blessed with vision from his earliest days; his visions were immediate and concrete. He found the eternal inward worlds of thought more real than the objective nature exalted by John Locke and Joshua Reynolds. Their depreciation of vision, genius, the Eternal never failed to infuriate Blake. This fury strongly colored his work and often threatened to overwhelm it. It also led to his deprecatory view of Nature, which was their God. He wrote, "There is no natural religion".
Blake perceived the five senses as "the chief inlets of Soul in this age" (MHH plate 4). The rationalists had imposed upon their world the view that life consists exclusively of the five senses. Blake knew better:
"How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?" (MHH plate 7)
Blake was keenly alive to another world, a world of Vision, of Imagination, of God, which he called the Eternal; it was a world that most of his contemporaries had deliberately closed their minds to. He spent his life furiously trying to strike off their mind forged manacles.
The man of faith believes some things; other things he knows by experience. Blake had experienced the Eternal from earliest childhood. At times the vision clouded, but its reality remained the one unshakeable tenet of his faith.
Every child begins in Eternity. Jesus said, "Except you become as little children...."
Blake knew this better than anyone since Jesus, or maybe anyone since Francis. He knew it because by a providential dispensation of grace the child in Blake remained alive throughout his life. At the age of 34 he wrote those beautiful 'Songs of Innocence', his "happy songs Every child may joy to hear". 'Songs of Innocence' hooked a great many people on Blake originally: transparent goodness transcribed into black type on white paper--somewhat beyond Locke's tabula rasa.
If life were only like that. If Blake were only like that, he'd have an assured place as one of England's best loved poets, a beloved impractical idealist and a threat to no one. But in 'Songs of Experience' he began to express a more complex reality. 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'
represents a healthy beginning in working out the complexities. They have to be worked out, every minute particular in the corrosive burning flame of thought, etching away the surfaces, getting down to bedrock.
Most of us have refused Blake and his Eternal because we don't want to be bothered with reality; we don't want to take the trouble. We're content with the little sub-realities that inform our lives and values, the simple half truths and prejudices which we call the real world.
Blake wrote, etched, painted, sang his visions of Eternity throughout a long life time. In order to learn we systematize his visions as they address and relate to the general constructs of Christian theology. That enterprise of course violates the spirit of his creative genius, which refused systematization. Nevertheless we systematize in the hope that a coherent picture of his faith may emerge and lead the faithful reader to an encounter with the original, organized in Blake's own inimitable style.30
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Who was William Blake?
The Enlightenment liberated European culture from thrall to the superstitious dimension in which it had existed for a millenium. Religion in England had become shallow, virtually a form of civil service; the location of priests was bought and sold; very few people attended the organized churches, only the establishment elite..
According to Blake Ezekiel once acted out a bizarre symptom of the prospects of the Israelites, lying for an inordinate period of time on his left side, then another period on his right. Mr. Blake had a conversatiion with him about that and asked him why he had done it; the answer came clearly: "the desire of raising other [people] into a perception of the infinite" Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 13)
According to Blake Ezekiel once acted out a bizarre symptom of the prospects of the Israelites, lying for an inordinate period of time on his left side, then another period on his right. Mr. Blake had a conversatiion with him about that and asked him why he had done it; the answer came clearly: "the desire of raising other [people] into a perception of the infinite" Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 13)
Who can doubt that William actually had that interview with Zeke? But if truth be known, that desire became the agenda for Blake's life, and perhaps the generic life purpose of every true prophet.
He saw things that most of us don't, and he urgently needed to show them to us, to show us how to see them.
There are many kinds of seeing and many levels of consciousness, but we might say there are two:
1. The sense-based, natural, materialistic time and space consciousness lacking anything that cannot be weighed or measured (Blake called this Ulro; Jesus called it Hell).
2. Vision, coming forth from the inner man, the Light, the Now. It's a different kind of consciousness, a perception of the infinite (Blake called it Eden; Jesus called it the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God).
Jesus showed us with his life how to live eternally; and he told us we could do it. Blake did it, periodically at least, and like Jesus he wanted us to share that heavenly gift.
He called it Vision; that's what he lived for, those eternal moments were all that matters. If you can't do it continuously, then you can talk about it, write about it, draw it, paint it. He did (and you can) show us how to see.
Blake's Faith: Introduction
This blog leads (hopefully to improvement of the website (and book) called Ramhorn'd with Gold. And this post will (hopefully) be inserted in the beginning of Chapter Four, entitled Faith.
I know few (if any) ordained ministers who 'have any time for' William Blake; yet he was such a religious man! He proposed an alternative to the sterile polity of the established church of his day (and also for ours, using the word 'established' in a very general sense.
Ordained ministers, generally speaking, represent what we have called here, the established church, be they Catholic priests or Pentecostal preachers. At best they must consider Blake's religious ideas a threat; hence they're most apt to studiously avoid them.
But a few Blakeans have found Blake's religious ideas creative, even life giving.
------------------------------------------
"Everything that lives is holy" (end of MHH). That represents Blake's faith in a nutshell.
There were no sinners in Blake's world (which should please Quakers). Like many Quakers Blake's God was an immanent one, not an old gentleman sitting on a throne in the sky. As Quakers say, there is that of God in you (and me, and Everyman.)
Blake was in essence a Christian Universalist, although he likely would have denied the term. he believed that Everyman would work through his errors (not sins) in the end (whatever the end might be).
All of this may lead one to understand why the very religious William Blake was so uniformly ignored by the clergy, and so enthusiastically accepted by many of the alternative culture. The 'flower children' of the sixties greeted Blake with joy (and perhaps unfortunately took up his sexual ideas too enthusiastically, leading to much suffering over the long haul).
You may want to move on at this point to Blake's Faith.
I know few (if any) ordained ministers who 'have any time for' William Blake; yet he was such a religious man! He proposed an alternative to the sterile polity of the established church of his day (and also for ours, using the word 'established' in a very general sense.
Ordained ministers, generally speaking, represent what we have called here, the established church, be they Catholic priests or Pentecostal preachers. At best they must consider Blake's religious ideas a threat; hence they're most apt to studiously avoid them.
But a few Blakeans have found Blake's religious ideas creative, even life giving.
------------------------------------------
"Everything that lives is holy" (end of MHH). That represents Blake's faith in a nutshell.
There were no sinners in Blake's world (which should please Quakers). Like many Quakers Blake's God was an immanent one, not an old gentleman sitting on a throne in the sky. As Quakers say, there is that of God in you (and me, and Everyman.)
Blake was in essence a Christian Universalist, although he likely would have denied the term. he believed that Everyman would work through his errors (not sins) in the end (whatever the end might be).
All of this may lead one to understand why the very religious William Blake was so uniformly ignored by the clergy, and so enthusiastically accepted by many of the alternative culture. The 'flower children' of the sixties greeted Blake with joy (and perhaps unfortunately took up his sexual ideas too enthusiastically, leading to much suffering over the long haul).
You may want to move on at this point to Blake's Faith.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Tree of Mystery
We learned in an earlier post that Blake's Tree of Mystery corresponded to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
The Human Abstract ends with this quatrain:
"The Gods of the earth and sea
Sought thro' Nature to find this tree
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brain"
(Erdman 27)
The Genesis Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Let's explore this theme for a bit: The Blake Concordance shows 12 occurrence
1. In the Book of Ahania,PLATE 4:
"from the dismal shade
The Tree still grows over the Void
Enrooting itself all around
An endless labyrinth of woe!
The corse of his first begotten
On the accursed Tree of MYSTERY
......"
The Book of Ahania is worth studying, but we might presume
the implication to be that Jesus was crucified on the Tree of
Mystery, equivalent to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
(That idea is worth some serious thought.)
The other ll occurrences appear only in The Four Zoas:
Occurrences 2-6 come in Night VIIa:
2. "Los sat in showers of Urizen watching cold Enitharmon
His broodings rush down to his feet producing Eggs that hatching
Burst forth upon the winds above the tree of Mystery
Enitharmon lay on his knees. Urizen tracd his Verses
In the dark deep the dark tree grew. her shadow was drawn down
Down to the roots it wept over Orc....."
(Erdman 356)
3 and 4: "Thus Los lamented in the night unheard by Enitharmon
For the Shadow of Enitharmon descended down the tree of Mystery
The Spectre saw the Shade Shivering over his gloomy rocks
Beneath the tree of Mystery which in the dismal Abyss
Began to blossom in fierce pain shooting its writhing buds
In throes of birth & now the blossoms falling shining fruit"
(Erdman 357)
5 continues the above:
"Appeard of many colours & of various poisonous qualities
Of Plagues hidden in shining globes that grew on the living tree
The Spectre of Urthona saw the Shadow of Enitharmon
Beneath the Tree of Mystery among the leaves & fruit
Reddning the Demon strong prepard the poison of sweet Love"
(Erdman 358)
6: "She burst the Gates of Enitharmons heart with direful Crash
Nor could they ever be closd again the golden hinges were broken
And the gates broke in sunder & their ornaments defacd
Beneath the tree of Mystery for the immortal shadow shuddering
Brought forth this wonder horrible a Cloud she grew & grew
Till many of the dead burst forth from the bottoms of their tombs
In male forms without female counterparts or Emanations
Cruel and ravening with Enmity & Hatred & War
In dreams of Ulro dark delusive drawn by the lovely shadow"
(Erdman 360)
7. In Night VIIb (says the Concordance) we have
"She joyd in all the Conflict Gratified & drinking tears of woe
No more remaind of Orc but the Serpent round the tree of Mystery
The form of Orc was gone he reard his serpent bulk among
The stars of Urizen in Power rending the form of life
Into a formless indefinite & strewing her on the Abyss
Like clouds upon the winter sky broken with winds & thunders
This was to her Supreme delight The Warriors mournd disappointed
They go out to war with Strong Shouts & loud Clarions O Pity
They return with lamentations mourning & weeping"
(Erdman 365)
If you're sufficiently confused now (as I am!) you (we) had best study the
pages in Night VII of 4Z, namely Erdman 356-367; but it probably pay off
more to study the following occurrences ("If the fool would persist in his
folly he would become wise" MHH Plate 7; E36):
8 "And all the Songs of Beulah sounded comfortable notes
Not suffring doubt to rise up from the Clouds of the Shadowy Female
Then myriads of the Dead burst thro the bottoms of their tombs
Descending on the shadowy females clouds in Spectrous terror
Beyond the Limit of Translucence on the Lake of Udan Adan
These they namd Satans & in the Aggregate they namd them Satan
(SECOND PORTION)
Then took the tree of Mystery root in the World of Los
Its topmost boughs shooting a fibre beneath Enitharmons couch
The double rooted Labyrinth soon wavd around their heads
But then the Spectre enterd Los's bosom"
(Erdman 367)
Here in Occurrence 9 is a critical passage I've quoted it
at length, and you might do well to study pages 375-6 at length:
"Urizen heard the Voice & saw the Shadow. underneath
His woven darkness & in laws & deceitful religions
Beginning at the tree of Mystery circling its root
She spread herself thro all the branches in the power of Orc
A shapeless & indefinite cloud in tears of sorrow incessant
Steeping the Direful Web of Religion swagging heavy it fell
From heaven to heavn thro all its meshes altering the Vortexes
Misplacing every Center hungry desire & lust began
- 375 -
Gathering the fruit of that Mysterious tree till Urizen
Sitting within his temple furious felt the num[m]ing stupor
Himself tangled in his own net in sorrow lust repentance
Enitharmon wove in tears Singing Songs of Lamentations
And pitying comfort as she sighd forth on the wind the spectres
And wove them bodies calling them her belovd sons & daughters
Employing the daughters in her looms & Los employd the Sons
In Golgonoozas Furnaces among the Anvils of time & space
Thus forming a Vast family wondrous in beauty & love
And they appeard a Universal female form created
From those who were dead in Ulro from the Spectres of the dead"
(Erdman 375-76)
10 "For this Lake is formd from the tears & sighs & death sweat of
the Victims
Of Urizens laws. to irrigate the roots of the tree of Mystery
They unweave the soft threads then they weave them anew in the
forms
Of dark death & despair & none from Eternity to Eternity could
Escape
But thou O Universal Humanity who is One Man blessed for Ever
Recievest the Integuments woven Rahab beholds the Lamb of God"
11 "Thus was the Lamb of God condemnd to Death
They naild him upon the tree of Mystery weeping over him
And then mocking & then worshipping calling him Lord & King
Sometimes as twelve daughters lovely & sometimes as five
They stood in beaming beauty & sometimes as one even Rahab
Who is Mystery Babylon the Great the Mother of Harlots
Jerusalem saw the Body dead upon the Cross She fled away
Saying Is this Eternal Death Where shall I hide from Death
Pity me Los pity me Urizen & let us build
A Sepulcher & worship Death in fear while yet we live
Death! God of All from whom we rise to whom we all return
And Let all Nations of the Earth worship at the Sepulcher
With Gifts & Spices with lamps rich embossd jewels & gold
Los took the Body from the Cross Jerusalem weeping over
They bore it to the Sepulcher which Los had hewn in the rock
Of Eternity for himself he hewd it despairing of Life Eternal"
(Erdman 379)
12 "In the fierce flames the limbs of Mystery lay consuming with
howling
And deep despair. Rattling go up the flames around the Synagogue
Of Satan Loud the Serpent Orc ragd thro his twenty Seven
Folds. The tree of Mystery went up in folding flames
Blood issud out in mighty volumes pouring in whirlpools fierce
From out the flood gates of the Sky The Gates are burst down pour
The torrents black upon the Earth the blood pours down incessant
Kings in their palaces lie drownd"
(4Z Night 9; Erdman 388)
Blake has come to end of his Myth; it is the Apocalypse,
the Parousia, the Second Coming, whatever you will.
It'important to realize that Blake is thinking psychologically
and poetically. If you take it literally it likely seems
grotesque. It's about Blake's life, his destiny, mine and yours
as well. These figure are mental constructs, not prophecies
or future events.
After completing The Four Zoas Blake moved on the use of other
metaphors. The Tree of Mystery is heard no longer; we might
wonder why; did his theology change to the point where it no
longer seemed appropriate?
The Human Abstract ends with this quatrain:
"The Gods of the earth and sea
Sought thro' Nature to find this tree
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brain"
(Erdman 27)
The Genesis Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Let's explore this theme for a bit: The Blake Concordance shows 12 occurrence
1. In the Book of Ahania,PLATE 4:
"from the dismal shade
The Tree still grows over the Void
Enrooting itself all around
An endless labyrinth of woe!
The corse of his first begotten
On the accursed Tree of MYSTERY
......"
The Book of Ahania is worth studying, but we might presume
the implication to be that Jesus was crucified on the Tree of
Mystery, equivalent to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
(That idea is worth some serious thought.)
The other ll occurrences appear only in The Four Zoas:
Occurrences 2-6 come in Night VIIa:
2. "Los sat in showers of Urizen watching cold Enitharmon
His broodings rush down to his feet producing Eggs that hatching
Burst forth upon the winds above the tree of Mystery
Enitharmon lay on his knees. Urizen tracd his Verses
In the dark deep the dark tree grew. her shadow was drawn down
Down to the roots it wept over Orc....."
(Erdman 356)
3 and 4: "Thus Los lamented in the night unheard by Enitharmon
For the Shadow of Enitharmon descended down the tree of Mystery
The Spectre saw the Shade Shivering over his gloomy rocks
Beneath the tree of Mystery which in the dismal Abyss
Began to blossom in fierce pain shooting its writhing buds
In throes of birth & now the blossoms falling shining fruit"
(Erdman 357)
5 continues the above:
"Appeard of many colours & of various poisonous qualities
Of Plagues hidden in shining globes that grew on the living tree
The Spectre of Urthona saw the Shadow of Enitharmon
Beneath the Tree of Mystery among the leaves & fruit
Reddning the Demon strong prepard the poison of sweet Love"
(Erdman 358)
6: "She burst the Gates of Enitharmons heart with direful Crash
Nor could they ever be closd again the golden hinges were broken
And the gates broke in sunder & their ornaments defacd
Beneath the tree of Mystery for the immortal shadow shuddering
Brought forth this wonder horrible a Cloud she grew & grew
Till many of the dead burst forth from the bottoms of their tombs
In male forms without female counterparts or Emanations
Cruel and ravening with Enmity & Hatred & War
In dreams of Ulro dark delusive drawn by the lovely shadow"
(Erdman 360)
7. In Night VIIb (says the Concordance) we have
"She joyd in all the Conflict Gratified & drinking tears of woe
No more remaind of Orc but the Serpent round the tree of Mystery
The form of Orc was gone he reard his serpent bulk among
The stars of Urizen in Power rending the form of life
Into a formless indefinite & strewing her on the Abyss
Like clouds upon the winter sky broken with winds & thunders
This was to her Supreme delight The Warriors mournd disappointed
They go out to war with Strong Shouts & loud Clarions O Pity
They return with lamentations mourning & weeping"
(Erdman 365)
If you're sufficiently confused now (as I am!) you (we) had best study the
pages in Night VII of 4Z, namely Erdman 356-367; but it probably pay off
more to study the following occurrences ("If the fool would persist in his
folly he would become wise" MHH Plate 7; E36):
8 "And all the Songs of Beulah sounded comfortable notes
Not suffring doubt to rise up from the Clouds of the Shadowy Female
Then myriads of the Dead burst thro the bottoms of their tombs
Descending on the shadowy females clouds in Spectrous terror
Beyond the Limit of Translucence on the Lake of Udan Adan
These they namd Satans & in the Aggregate they namd them Satan
(SECOND PORTION)
Then took the tree of Mystery root in the World of Los
Its topmost boughs shooting a fibre beneath Enitharmons couch
The double rooted Labyrinth soon wavd around their heads
But then the Spectre enterd Los's bosom"
(Erdman 367)
Here in Occurrence 9 is a critical passage I've quoted it
at length, and you might do well to study pages 375-6 at length:
"Urizen heard the Voice & saw the Shadow. underneath
His woven darkness & in laws & deceitful religions
Beginning at the tree of Mystery circling its root
She spread herself thro all the branches in the power of Orc
A shapeless & indefinite cloud in tears of sorrow incessant
Steeping the Direful Web of Religion swagging heavy it fell
From heaven to heavn thro all its meshes altering the Vortexes
Misplacing every Center hungry desire & lust began
- 375 -
Gathering the fruit of that Mysterious tree till Urizen
Sitting within his temple furious felt the num[m]ing stupor
Himself tangled in his own net in sorrow lust repentance
Enitharmon wove in tears Singing Songs of Lamentations
And pitying comfort as she sighd forth on the wind the spectres
And wove them bodies calling them her belovd sons & daughters
Employing the daughters in her looms & Los employd the Sons
In Golgonoozas Furnaces among the Anvils of time & space
Thus forming a Vast family wondrous in beauty & love
And they appeard a Universal female form created
From those who were dead in Ulro from the Spectres of the dead"
(Erdman 375-76)
10 "For this Lake is formd from the tears & sighs & death sweat of
the Victims
Of Urizens laws. to irrigate the roots of the tree of Mystery
They unweave the soft threads then they weave them anew in the
forms
Of dark death & despair & none from Eternity to Eternity could
Escape
But thou O Universal Humanity who is One Man blessed for Ever
Recievest the Integuments woven Rahab beholds the Lamb of God"
11 "Thus was the Lamb of God condemnd to Death
They naild him upon the tree of Mystery weeping over him
And then mocking & then worshipping calling him Lord & King
Sometimes as twelve daughters lovely & sometimes as five
They stood in beaming beauty & sometimes as one even Rahab
Who is Mystery Babylon the Great the Mother of Harlots
Jerusalem saw the Body dead upon the Cross She fled away
Saying Is this Eternal Death Where shall I hide from Death
Pity me Los pity me Urizen & let us build
A Sepulcher & worship Death in fear while yet we live
Death! God of All from whom we rise to whom we all return
And Let all Nations of the Earth worship at the Sepulcher
With Gifts & Spices with lamps rich embossd jewels & gold
Los took the Body from the Cross Jerusalem weeping over
They bore it to the Sepulcher which Los had hewn in the rock
Of Eternity for himself he hewd it despairing of Life Eternal"
(Erdman 379)
12 "In the fierce flames the limbs of Mystery lay consuming with
howling
And deep despair. Rattling go up the flames around the Synagogue
Of Satan Loud the Serpent Orc ragd thro his twenty Seven
Folds. The tree of Mystery went up in folding flames
Blood issud out in mighty volumes pouring in whirlpools fierce
From out the flood gates of the Sky The Gates are burst down pour
The torrents black upon the Earth the blood pours down incessant
Kings in their palaces lie drownd"
(4Z Night 9; Erdman 388)
Blake has come to end of his Myth; it is the Apocalypse,
the Parousia, the Second Coming, whatever you will.
It'important to realize that Blake is thinking psychologically
and poetically. If you take it literally it likely seems
grotesque. It's about Blake's life, his destiny, mine and yours
as well. These figure are mental constructs, not prophecies
or future events.
After completing The Four Zoas Blake moved on the use of other
metaphors. The Tree of Mystery is heard no longer; we might
wonder why; did his theology change to the point where it no
longer seemed appropriate?
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Blake's Good and Evil
Blake was very conversant with what the Bible has to say about Good and Evil:
Gen 1:31 "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day." It seems that everything was very good; there's no polarity here.;
But in Gen 2:8-9 we come to a complication:
"And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil."
This seems to infer that Good and Evil came into existence as a consequence of the (biblical) Fall. In the pristine Garden before Adam and Eve's fatal mistake Evil had not entered the picture. (Some Bible scholars have concluded that the 'fatal mistake' was a culpa felix (Augustine, Aquinas, Ambrose). However it's generally understood as the cause of all unhappiness in our poor World. Imagine how it would be if the 'fatal mistake' had not occurred. Would we be more like the animals? or the angels?
With The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake put an entirely new slant on the subject. (The cavalier way Blake used the biblical Fall here illustrates the use Blake put to the Bible in general: like any other document everything was grist for his mill.) Speaking ironically he described Good as being sheeplike and Evil as being active and creative. He described good people as the Elect and active, creative people as Reprobate (btw he included Jesus among the Reprobates- following Isaiah 53:12).
The Elect were the angels in MHH; the Reprobates were the devils.
But Blake didn't stick to these definitions; MHH was the work of an angry young man. The mature Blake returned to more conventional meanings for 'angel' and 'devil'.
Returning to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil we may read in Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience:
"SONGS 47
The Human Abstract.
Pity would be no more,
If we did not make somebody Poor:
And Mercy no more could be,
If all were as happy as we;
And mutual fear brings peace;
Till the selfish loves increase.
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.
He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the ground with tears:
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.
Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;
And the Catterpiller and Fly,
Feed on the Mystery.
And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat;
And the Raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.
The Gods of the earth and sea,
Sought thro' Nature to find this Tree
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brain"
(Erdman p. 27)
We may see here the origin of the Tree of Mystery, which in Blake corresponds to the Tree of the Knowlede of Good and Evil; Blake has tried to explain the meaning of the Tree he had read about in Genesis.
Good and Evil are a polarity, and a contrary of the pristine oneness of the original Garden. We may see it as the first contrary, from which all others sprang. We live in a dualistic world, and people in general can only see things in black and white (like infants do). To perceive things as a spectrum, such as 'Good, less good, still less good,' etc. is a step away from the fatal tree, but still a long way from the primeval oneness from which we came and to which we are destined to return.
Gen 1:31 "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day." It seems that everything was very good; there's no polarity here.;
But in Gen 2:8-9 we come to a complication:
"And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil."
This seems to infer that Good and Evil came into existence as a consequence of the (biblical) Fall. In the pristine Garden before Adam and Eve's fatal mistake Evil had not entered the picture. (Some Bible scholars have concluded that the 'fatal mistake' was a culpa felix (Augustine, Aquinas, Ambrose). However it's generally understood as the cause of all unhappiness in our poor World. Imagine how it would be if the 'fatal mistake' had not occurred. Would we be more like the animals? or the angels?
With The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake put an entirely new slant on the subject. (The cavalier way Blake used the biblical Fall here illustrates the use Blake put to the Bible in general: like any other document everything was grist for his mill.) Speaking ironically he described Good as being sheeplike and Evil as being active and creative. He described good people as the Elect and active, creative people as Reprobate (btw he included Jesus among the Reprobates- following Isaiah 53:12).
The Elect were the angels in MHH; the Reprobates were the devils.
But Blake didn't stick to these definitions; MHH was the work of an angry young man. The mature Blake returned to more conventional meanings for 'angel' and 'devil'.
Returning to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil we may read in Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience:
"SONGS 47
The Human Abstract.
Pity would be no more,
If we did not make somebody Poor:
And Mercy no more could be,
If all were as happy as we;
And mutual fear brings peace;
Till the selfish loves increase.
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.
He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the ground with tears:
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.
Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;
And the Catterpiller and Fly,
Feed on the Mystery.
And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat;
And the Raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.
The Gods of the earth and sea,
Sought thro' Nature to find this Tree
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brain"
(Erdman p. 27)
We may see here the origin of the Tree of Mystery, which in Blake corresponds to the Tree of the Knowlede of Good and Evil; Blake has tried to explain the meaning of the Tree he had read about in Genesis.
Good and Evil are a polarity, and a contrary of the pristine oneness of the original Garden. We may see it as the first contrary, from which all others sprang. We live in a dualistic world, and people in general can only see things in black and white (like infants do). To perceive things as a spectrum, such as 'Good, less good, still less good,' etc. is a step away from the fatal tree, but still a long way from the primeval oneness from which we came and to which we are destined to return.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Blake's Sun
In the presence of the Sun (of Righteousness) there is no thing, no Education, no rituals. Blake's Sun was God; to that thing he was obsessed, to the exclusion of every other thing. If he had been a mystic, he would have stopped there; as a visionary every thing served to express and reflect God; it's all reflected by the Sun. Blake was not a pantheist; everything was a creature of the Sun.
The Word of God extends far beyond the Bible
("And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen" John 21:25).
One of those books was
The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake; another might be called Words and Picture of William Blake. Your dealings with Jesus might be another book.
Blake's formal education was minimal. Everyone remembers that story of the young Blake on his first day in school. The Schoolmaster flogged a boy; Blake rose and exited, never to return. He escaped the social conditioning (actually the primary purpose) of School. Henceforth his education came through his own reading; he read the Bible, probably many times (such that it influenced almost all of his creations). School makes us conventional, but not Blake!
School introduces the malleable mind to various rituals, by which most of us live; but not Blake. Religion involves an enormous store of rituals, but not Blake. Raised by dissenters, he escaped the many rituals of the State Church; he rejected most of the rituals of the Dissenters. Every thing Blake observed was subjected to his pure, crystalline mind.
Obsessed with God Blake's life recreated the Bible (which is about God). The myth of the Bible was the story of his myth- and his life. His creations centered about the visions of God that had come to him, from the Angry God in the window to the Savior who dominates the final conclusions of his major prophetic works.
On his way there was Nobodaddy and Urizen. He shares his own personal crisis with the stories of the final battle between Urizen and Los; One of these occurred near the end of Night 7 of The Four Zoas (Erdman 371) One might speculate that this represented Blake's resolution of the healing of the breach between Old and New Testaments, of Jehovah with Jesus, the Eternal Forgiveness.
The Sun Blake looked up to was the Perception of the Infinite: "it will be Questiond When the Sun rises do you not see a round Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea O no no I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty" (Erdman 555-56).
Look again at the picture in the post called Oedipus & Albion. Speaking crudely we might call the small figure Blake with a (natural) setting sun around him. The larger figure we call Jesus with a small crown of thorns, but overlaying that is the Sun of Righteousness-- Blake's Sun.
Eternity' Sun:
"He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise" (Eternity; Erdman 470; repeated on 474)
In America (Erdman 53):
"The Sun has left left his blackness, & has found a fresher morning "
(The blackness of course bespeaks the colonialism under which the colonies were oppressed. As for the fresher morning? well as Reagan used to say "it's morning in America". Had he read Blake?????????)
This verse is repeated in Night 9 of The Four Zoas (Erdman 406)
"This Earth breeds not our happiness
Another Sun feeds our lifes streams"
(Letter 23 to Butts; E722)
Many other references to Blake's Sun are available if you want to research them in Concord
The Word of God extends far beyond the Bible
("And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen" John 21:25).
One of those books was
The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake; another might be called Words and Picture of William Blake. Your dealings with Jesus might be another book.
Blake's formal education was minimal. Everyone remembers that story of the young Blake on his first day in school. The Schoolmaster flogged a boy; Blake rose and exited, never to return. He escaped the social conditioning (actually the primary purpose) of School. Henceforth his education came through his own reading; he read the Bible, probably many times (such that it influenced almost all of his creations). School makes us conventional, but not Blake!
School introduces the malleable mind to various rituals, by which most of us live; but not Blake. Religion involves an enormous store of rituals, but not Blake. Raised by dissenters, he escaped the many rituals of the State Church; he rejected most of the rituals of the Dissenters. Every thing Blake observed was subjected to his pure, crystalline mind.
Obsessed with God Blake's life recreated the Bible (which is about God). The myth of the Bible was the story of his myth- and his life. His creations centered about the visions of God that had come to him, from the Angry God in the window to the Savior who dominates the final conclusions of his major prophetic works.
On his way there was Nobodaddy and Urizen. He shares his own personal crisis with the stories of the final battle between Urizen and Los; One of these occurred near the end of Night 7 of The Four Zoas (Erdman 371) One might speculate that this represented Blake's resolution of the healing of the breach between Old and New Testaments, of Jehovah with Jesus, the Eternal Forgiveness.
The Sun Blake looked up to was the Perception of the Infinite: "it will be Questiond When the Sun rises do you not see a round Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea O no no I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty" (Erdman 555-56).
Look again at the picture in the post called Oedipus & Albion. Speaking crudely we might call the small figure Blake with a (natural) setting sun around him. The larger figure we call Jesus with a small crown of thorns, but overlaying that is the Sun of Righteousness-- Blake's Sun.
Eternity' Sun:
"He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise" (Eternity; Erdman 470; repeated on 474)
In America (Erdman 53):
"The Sun has left left his blackness, & has found a fresher morning "
(The blackness of course bespeaks the colonialism under which the colonies were oppressed. As for the fresher morning? well as Reagan used to say "it's morning in America". Had he read Blake?????????)
This verse is repeated in Night 9 of The Four Zoas (Erdman 406)
"This Earth breeds not our happiness
Another Sun feeds our lifes streams"
(Letter 23 to Butts; E722)
Many other references to Blake's Sun are available if you want to research them in Concord
Monday, February 14, 2011
Blake's Myths VII
Here we see clearly the moral species. Blake used it to express his emphatic displeasure at the notion that a raped girl is 'damaged goods' and no longer worthy of the love of her erswhile lover. He considered that a high degree of immorality, another expression of the Jealousy that was for Blake the primary sin; and to perceive a woman as property, all too prevalent in Blake's day and still quite common in ours.
- "Father of jealousy. be thou accursed from the earth!" (And 4 lines earlier:)
Are not these the places of religion, the rewards of continence?
Otherwise the metaphysical (or mythological) 'species' presents an early (1793) version of the myth of the Kore. Oothoon is of course Persephone":
- "The Golden nymph replied; pluck thou my flower Oothoon the mild"
This poem has a lot to say about human sexuality, but won't be dwelt with further here. It's discussed more fully at chapter 8.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Blake's Psyche
Be Still and know that I am God
The young Blake doesn't appear (to me) to be a very silent type. From earliest years his mind was gifted with a marvelous intellect and a unique imagination. He revealed it in the visions that seemed to continuously fill his mind.Blade must have had a prodigious reading gift; it led him to a familiar acquaintance with the treasures of a wide gamut of cultures. No wonder he despised Locke with his tabula raza; Blake knew in his bones that it just wasn't so.
"I give you the end of a golden string, only wind it into a ball;
It will let you in at Heaven's Gate, built in Jerusalem's Wall."
Blake had a long string, which he had built feverishly over his first twenty odd years. Then his Vision stopped; what happened?
Angels had been coming to his door, but now they didn't; he was too busy making a living; but as a poet and an artist, he was an oddball. For most of us angels come in the silence; but Blake wasn't silent, still feverish, but feverish for a different purpose. For the purpose he had adopted (which he called the Main Chance) the only angels were dark ones.
What happened at the Truchsessian Gallery?
(You must read the link if you want to know what this picture of Nebuchadnezzar means here.)I think Blake had gotten silent. He remembered "be still and know that I am God"; he heard the still small voice; and his purpose changed; he no longer strived to "get ahead" (in the materialistic dimension); henceforth he would create!! The angels started coming to Blake, not the dark ones that ensue from worry and striving.
The first step for most of us is silence; get quiet; stop thinking; open the door to your Unconscious; the angels will start coming; not the dark ones, the angels from Heaven.
Is silence impossible for you? for many it's anathema, something to be avoided at all costs. The Unconscious is a can of worms; it's where God and the Devil fight for your soul (or in Blake's case where Urizen and Los fought).
The natural development of a person is from extraversion to introversion, from dependence upon mom and daddy, or buddy, or whoever to self-reliance and hopefully individuality. This movement took place in Blake's life; like ours as well. In the fullness of time; his visit to the Truchsessian Gallery was the acceptable time.
Blake put aside mundane affairs and concentrated on the One thing that matters. He gave his whole mind (and his gifts) to the Angels (he called them Visions of Eternity) and he left us magnificent visions to enjoy (and live by!). So he climbed Jacob's ladder, leaving behind for us the Golden Thread.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Blake's Myth VI
There are many ways to interpret the two "Little Girl" poems in Songs of Experience. Following Raine I have focused on the neoPlatonic viewpoint:
Little Girl Lost
"In futurity I prophesy
That the earth from sleep
(Grave the sentence deep)
Shall arise, and seek
For her Maker meek;
And the desert wild [this mortal world]
Become a garden mild."
This is a capsule statement of Blake's myth; Here in Blake's inimitable poetry we have the biblical New Heaven and New Earth. It is also a promise of the happy outcome of his myth. For that look at Jerusalem, plates 96-99. Here's a fragment at the Beginning of Plate 97:
"Awake! Awake Jerusalem! O lovely Emanation of Albion
Awake and overspread all Nations as in Ancient Time
For lo! the Night of Death is past and the Eternal Day
Appears upon our Hill: Awake Jerusalem..."
But to continue the second poem:
"In the southern clime, [the Eternal Realm]
Where the summer's prime
Never fades away,
Lovely Lyca lay.
Seven summers old
Lovely Lyca told.
She had wandered long,
Hearing wild birds' song.
Sweet sleep, come to me,
Underneath this tree;
Do father, mother, weep?
[like Demeter wept when she discovered what had happened to her daughter, Persephone.]
Where can Lyca sleep?
'Lost in desert wild
Is your little child.
How can Lyca sleep
If her mother weep?
'If her heart does ache,
Then let Lyca wake;
If my mother sleep,
Lyca shall not weep.
'Frowning, frowning night,
O'er this desert bright
Let thy moon arise,
While I close my eyes.'
Sleeping Lyca lay,
While the beasts of prey,
Come from caverns deep,
Viewed the maid asleep."
The kingly lion stood, [lion=Pluto, king of the underworld]
And the virgin viewed:
"Then he gambolled round
O'er the hallowed ground.
Leopards, tigers, play
Round her as she lay;
While the lion old
Bowed his mane of gold,
And her bosom lick,
And upon her neck,
From his eyes of flame,
Ruby tears there came;"
Why was the lion sorrowful? Did he mourn the descent of the soul?
"While the lioness
"Loosed her slender dress,
And naked they conveyed
To caves the sleeping maid."
Such was one of the Songs of Innocence; now look at a Song of Experience:
Little Girl Found
"All the night in woe
Lyca's parents go
Over valleys deep,
While the deserts weep.
Tired and woe-begone,
Hoarse with making moan,
Arm in arm, seven days
They traced the desert ways.
Seven nights they sleep
Among shadows deep,
And dream they see their child
Starved in desert wild.
Pale through pathless ways
The fancied image strays,
Famished, weeping, weak,
With hollow piteous shriek.
Rising from unrest,
The trembling woman pressed
With feet of weary woe;
She could no further go.
In his arms he bore
Her, armed with sorrow sore;
Till before their way
A couching lion lay.
Turning back was vain:
Soon his heavy mane
Bore them to the ground,
Then he stalked around,
Smelling to his prey;
But their fears allay
When he licks their hands,
And silent by them stands.
They look upon his eyes,
Filled with deep surprise;
And wondering behold
A spirit armed in gold.
On his head a crown,
On his shoulders down
Flowed his golden hair.
Gone was all their care.
'Follow me,' he said;
'Weep not for the maid;
In my palace deep,
Lyca lies asleep.'
Then they followed
Where the vision led,
And saw their sleeping child
Among tigers wild.
To this day they dwell
In a lonely dell,
Nor fear the wolvish howl
Nor the lion's growl."
(Shades of Narnia; both authors depended on Isaiah (11:6 and 65:25).
Was Blake aware of Paul's statement in Romans 8:28:
"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose."
The poems considered together illustrate once again Blake's myth of a Fall and a Return.
Little Girl Lost
"In futurity I prophesy
That the earth from sleep
(Grave the sentence deep)
Shall arise, and seek
For her Maker meek;
And the desert wild [this mortal world]
Become a garden mild."
This is a capsule statement of Blake's myth; Here in Blake's inimitable poetry we have the biblical New Heaven and New Earth. It is also a promise of the happy outcome of his myth. For that look at Jerusalem, plates 96-99. Here's a fragment at the Beginning of Plate 97:
"Awake! Awake Jerusalem! O lovely Emanation of Albion
Awake and overspread all Nations as in Ancient Time
For lo! the Night of Death is past and the Eternal Day
Appears upon our Hill: Awake Jerusalem..."
But to continue the second poem:
"In the southern clime, [the Eternal Realm]
Where the summer's prime
Never fades away,
Lovely Lyca lay.
Seven summers old
Lovely Lyca told.
She had wandered long,
Hearing wild birds' song.
Sweet sleep, come to me,
Underneath this tree;
Do father, mother, weep?
[like Demeter wept when she discovered what had happened to her daughter, Persephone.]
Where can Lyca sleep?
'Lost in desert wild
Is your little child.
How can Lyca sleep
If her mother weep?
'If her heart does ache,
Then let Lyca wake;
If my mother sleep,
Lyca shall not weep.
'Frowning, frowning night,
O'er this desert bright
Let thy moon arise,
While I close my eyes.'
Sleeping Lyca lay,
While the beasts of prey,
Come from caverns deep,
Viewed the maid asleep."
The kingly lion stood, [lion=Pluto, king of the underworld]
And the virgin viewed:
"Then he gambolled round
O'er the hallowed ground.
Leopards, tigers, play
Round her as she lay;
While the lion old
Bowed his mane of gold,
And her bosom lick,
And upon her neck,
From his eyes of flame,
Ruby tears there came;"
Why was the lion sorrowful? Did he mourn the descent of the soul?
"While the lioness
"Loosed her slender dress,
And naked they conveyed
To caves the sleeping maid."
Such was one of the Songs of Innocence; now look at a Song of Experience:
Little Girl Found
"All the night in woe
Lyca's parents go
Over valleys deep,
While the deserts weep.
Tired and woe-begone,
Hoarse with making moan,
Arm in arm, seven days
They traced the desert ways.
Seven nights they sleep
Among shadows deep,
And dream they see their child
Starved in desert wild.
Pale through pathless ways
The fancied image strays,
Famished, weeping, weak,
With hollow piteous shriek.
Rising from unrest,
The trembling woman pressed
With feet of weary woe;
She could no further go.
In his arms he bore
Her, armed with sorrow sore;
Till before their way
A couching lion lay.
Turning back was vain:
Soon his heavy mane
Bore them to the ground,
Then he stalked around,
Smelling to his prey;
But their fears allay
When he licks their hands,
And silent by them stands.
They look upon his eyes,
Filled with deep surprise;
And wondering behold
A spirit armed in gold.
On his head a crown,
On his shoulders down
Flowed his golden hair.
Gone was all their care.
'Follow me,' he said;
'Weep not for the maid;
In my palace deep,
Lyca lies asleep.'
Then they followed
Where the vision led,
And saw their sleeping child
Among tigers wild.
To this day they dwell
In a lonely dell,
Nor fear the wolvish howl
Nor the lion's growl."
(Shades of Narnia; both authors depended on Isaiah (11:6 and 65:25).
Was Blake aware of Paul's statement in Romans 8:28:
"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose."
The poems considered together illustrate once again Blake's myth of a Fall and a Return.
Blake's Myth V
Persephone
(Kathleen Raines' book Blake and Tradition gives a good source for interpretation of The Myth of the Kore (Persephone), as used by Blake.)(Kore: Greek Persephone: Roman)
Here is a simple version of Persephone's story. We are told that Blake became interested in the Eleusinian Mysteries in about 1790.
I suppose the original and oldest story of Persephone may have been from the pen of Homer.
Demeter(Kore) was the goddess of agriculture and marriage. Her daughter was Persephone (Prosepine). This fair maiden plucked a special flower and had the fortune to be abducted by Pluto to be queen of his Underworld. Demeter appealed to Zeus about this outrage; as a consequence Persephone was granted dual citizenship in the Underworld and the World with the freedom to move from one to the other twice a year.
The natural "species" of this myth is the natural arrangement of the yearly sequence of seasons. Persephone spent winter in Hades and the warmer months in the World. The metaphysical points toward the dual nature of man: made in the image of God, but made of clay.
Psychologically we have the angelic impulse and the devilish one. (They generally alternate more frequently than twice a year.) The literal "species" is kind of self evident: a girl raped and kidnapped-- all too common in 2007. Whether she's ever recovered is problematic.
(This little lesson in the species of myths illustrates something that will become more and more obvious if you continue reading Blake: what his words mean superficially is often (or usually) far from his most significant intention.)
In the early centuries of the Christian era a close relationship existed between the "followers of Jesus" and "those of Persephone". They had much in common-- particularly salvation, which (at least ritually) was achieved in remarkably similar fashions.
Persephone in Blake
In Blake Vala represents woman until Jerusalem (redeemed Vala.)
In Lyca (The Little Girl Lost), we see Vala in microcosm (as Persephone). Two poems in Songs of Experience tell her story, a lovely miniature statement of the myth in all the large myths already described here described. Blake spent the next 30 years expanding, enlarging, journaling, commenting on, etc. the basic myth which we've called his 'system', namely the descent of the soul (humankind) into the world (matter) and it's return to Eternity:
The are many ways to interpret the two "Little Girl" poems in Songs of Experience. Following Raine I have focused on the neoPlatonic viewpoint:
Blake's Myth V
Kathleen Raines' book Blake and Tradition gives a good source for interpretation of The Myth of the Kore (Persephone), as used by Blake. (The Greek word is Kore and the Latin word is Persephone).
We are told that Blake became interested in the Eleusinian Mysteries in about 1790. (I suppose the original and oldest story of Persephone may have been from the pen of Homer.):
Demeter (Kore) was the goddess of agriculture and marriage. Her daughter was Persephone (Prosepine). This fair maiden plucked a special flower and had the fortune to be abducted by Pluto to be queen of his Underworld. Demeter appealed to Zeus about this outrage; as a consequence Persephone was granted dual citizenship in the Underworld and the World with the freedom to move from one to the other twice a year.
The natural "species" of this myth is the natural arrangement of the yearly sequence of seasons. Persephone spent winter in Hades and the warmer months in the World. Many mythologies point toward the dual nature of man: made in the image of God, but made of clay.
Psychologically we have the angelic impulse and the devilish one. (They generally alternate more frequently than twice a year.) The literal "species" is kind of self evident: a girl raped and kidnapped-- all too common in the 21st century.
(This little lesson in the species of myths illustrates something that will become more and more obvious if you continue reading Blake: what his words mean superficially is often (or usually) far from his most significant intention.)
In the early centuries of the Christian era a close relationship existed between the "followers of Jesus" and "those of Persephone". They had much in common-- particularly salvation, which (at least ritually) was achieved in remarkably similar fashions.
In Blake Vala represents woman until Jerusalem (redeemed Vala.) Here is a simple version of Persephone's story:
In Lyca (The Little Girl Lost), we see Vala in microcosm (as Persephone). Two poems in Songs of Experience tell her story, a lovely miniature statement of the myth in all the large myths already described here described. Blake spent the next 30 years expanding, enlarging, journaling, commenting on, etc. the basic myth which we've called his 'system', namely the descent of the soul (humankind) into the world (matter) and it's return to Eternity.
We are told that Blake became interested in the Eleusinian Mysteries in about 1790. (I suppose the original and oldest story of Persephone may have been from the pen of Homer.):
Demeter (Kore) was the goddess of agriculture and marriage. Her daughter was Persephone (Prosepine). This fair maiden plucked a special flower and had the fortune to be abducted by Pluto to be queen of his Underworld. Demeter appealed to Zeus about this outrage; as a consequence Persephone was granted dual citizenship in the Underworld and the World with the freedom to move from one to the other twice a year.
The natural "species" of this myth is the natural arrangement of the yearly sequence of seasons. Persephone spent winter in Hades and the warmer months in the World. Many mythologies point toward the dual nature of man: made in the image of God, but made of clay.
Psychologically we have the angelic impulse and the devilish one. (They generally alternate more frequently than twice a year.) The literal "species" is kind of self evident: a girl raped and kidnapped-- all too common in the 21st century.
(This little lesson in the species of myths illustrates something that will become more and more obvious if you continue reading Blake: what his words mean superficially is often (or usually) far from his most significant intention.)
In the early centuries of the Christian era a close relationship existed between the "followers of Jesus" and "those of Persephone". They had much in common-- particularly salvation, which (at least ritually) was achieved in remarkably similar fashions.
In Blake Vala represents woman until Jerusalem (redeemed Vala.) Here is a simple version of Persephone's story:
In Lyca (The Little Girl Lost), we see Vala in microcosm (as Persephone). Two poems in Songs of Experience tell her story, a lovely miniature statement of the myth in all the large myths already described here described. Blake spent the next 30 years expanding, enlarging, journaling, commenting on, etc. the basic myth which we've called his 'system', namely the descent of the soul (humankind) into the world (matter) and it's return to Eternity.
Friday, February 11, 2011
The are many ways to interpret the two "Little Girl" poems in Songs of Experience. Following Raine I have focused on the neoPlatonic viewpoint:
Little Girl Lost
- In futurity I prophesy
That the earth from sleep
(Grave the sentence deep)
Shall arise, and seek
For her Maker meek;
And the desert wild [this mortal world]
Become a garden mild.
Here in Blake's inimitable poetry we have the biblical New Heaven and New Earth. It is also a promise of the happy outcome of Blake's myth. (Look at Jerusalem, plates 96-99.)
Where the summer's prime
Never fades away,
Lovely Lyca lay.
Seven summers old
Lovely Lyca told.
She had wandered long,
Hearing wild birds' song.
'Sweet sleep, come to me,
Underneath this tree; [the Elm of Hades]
Do father, mother, weep? [like Demeter wept.]
Where can Lyca sleep?
'Lost in desert wild
Is your little child.
How can Lyca sleep
If her mother weep?
'If her heart does ache,
Then let Lyca wake;
If my mother sleep,
Lyca shall not weep.
'Frowning, frowning night,
O'er this desert bright
Let thy moon arise,
While I close my eyes.'
Sleeping Lyca lay,
While the beasts of prey,
Come from caverns deep,
Viewed the maid asleep.
The kingly lion stood, [lion=Pluto, king of the underworld]
And the virgin viewed:
Then he gambolled round
O'er the hallowed ground.
Leopards, tigers, play
Round her as she lay;
While the lion old
Bowed his mane of gold,
And her bosom lick,
And upon her neck,
From his eyes of flame,
Ruby tears there came; [Why was the lion sorrowful? Did he mourn the descent of the soul?]
While the lioness [the lioness?]
Loosed her slender dress,
And naked they conveyed
To caves the sleeping maid.
Little Girl Found
- All the night in woe
Lyca's parents go
Over valleys deep,
While the deserts weep.
Tired and woe-begone,
Hoarse with making moan,
Arm in arm, seven days
They traced the desert ways.
Seven nights they sleep
Among shadows deep,
And dream they see their child
Starved in desert wild.
Pale through pathless ways
The fancied image strays,
Famished, weeping, weak,
With hollow piteous shriek.
Rising from unrest,
The trembling woman pressed
With feet of weary woe;
She could no further go.
In his arms he bore
Her, armed with sorrow sore;
Till before their way
A couching lion lay.
Turning back was vain:
Soon his heavy mane
Bore them to the ground,
Then he stalked around,
Smelling to his prey;
But their fears allay
When he licks their hands,
And silent by them stands.
They look upon his eyes,
Filled with deep surprise;
And wondering behold
A spirit armed in gold.
On his head a crown,
On his shoulders down
Flowed his golden hair.
Gone was all their care.
'Follow me,' he said;
'Weep not for the maid;
In my palace deep,
Lyca lies asleep.'
Then they followed
Where the vision led,
And saw their sleeping child
Among tigers wild.
To this day they dwell
In a lonely dell,
Nor fear the wolvish howl
Nor the lion's growl.
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The are many ways to interpret the two "Little Girl" poems in Songs of Experience. Following Raine I have focused on the neoPlatonic viewpoint:
Little Girl Lost
- In futurity I prophesy
That the earth from sleep
(Grave the sentence deep)
Shall arise, and seek
For her Maker meek;
And the desert wild [this mortal world]
Become a garden mild.
Here in Blake's inimitable poetry we have the biblical New Heaven and New Earth. It is also a promise of the happy outcome of Blake's myth. (Look at Jerusalem, plates 96-99.)
Where the summer's prime
Never fades away,
Lovely Lyca lay.
Seven summers old
Lovely Lyca told.
She had wandered long,
Hearing wild birds' song.
'Sweet sleep, come to me,
Underneath this tree; [the Elm of Hades]
Do father, mother, weep? [like Demeter wept.]
Where can Lyca sleep?
'Lost in desert wild
Is your little child.
How can Lyca sleep
If her mother weep?
'If her heart does ache,
Then let Lyca wake;
If my mother sleep,
Lyca shall not weep.
'Frowning, frowning night,
O'er this desert bright
Let thy moon arise,
While I close my eyes.'
Sleeping Lyca lay,
While the beasts of prey,
Come from caverns deep,
Viewed the maid asleep.
The kingly lion stood, [lion=Pluto, king of the underworld]
And the virgin viewed:
Then he gambolled round
O'er the hallowed ground.
Leopards, tigers, play
Round her as she lay;
While the lion old
Bowed his mane of gold,
And her bosom lick,
And upon her neck,
From his eyes of flame,
Ruby tears there came; [Why was the lion sorrowful? Did he mourn the descent of the soul?]
While the lioness [the lioness?]
Loosed her slender dress,
And naked they conveyed
To caves the sleeping maid.
Little Girl Found
- All the night in woe
Lyca's parents go
Over valleys deep,
While the deserts weep.
Tired and woe-begone,
Hoarse with making moan,
Arm in arm, seven days
They traced the desert ways.
Seven nights they sleep
Among shadows deep,
And dream they see their child
Starved in desert wild.
Pale through pathless ways
The fancied image strays,
Famished, weeping, weak,
With hollow piteous shriek.
Rising from unrest,
The trembling woman pressed
With feet of weary woe;
She could no further go.
In his arms he bore
Her, armed with sorrow sore;
Till before their way
A couching lion lay.
Turning back was vain:
Soon his heavy mane
Bore them to the ground,
Then he stalked around,
Smelling to his prey;
But their fears allay
When he licks their hands,
And silent by them stands.
They look upon his eyes,
Filled with deep surprise;
And wondering behold
A spirit armed in gold.
On his head a crown,
On his shoulders down
Flowed his golden hair.
Gone was all their care.
'Follow me,' he said;
'Weep not for the maid;
In my palace deep,
Lyca lies asleep.'
Then they followed
Where the vision led,
And saw their sleeping child
Among tigers wild.
To this day they dwell
In a lonely dell,
Nor fear the wolvish howl
Nor the lion's growl.
The are many ways to interpret the two "Little Girl" poems in Songs of Experience. Following Raine I have focused on the neoPlatonic viewpoint:
Little Girl Lost
- In futurity I prophesy
That the earth from sleep
(Grave the sentence deep)
Shall arise, and seek
For her Maker meek;
And the desert wild [this mortal world]
Become a garden mild.
Here in Blake's inimitable poetry we have the biblical New Heaven and New Earth. It is also a promise of the happy outcome of Blake's myth. (Look at Jerusalem, plates 96-99.)
Where the summer's prime
Never fades away,
Lovely Lyca lay.
Seven summers old
Lovely Lyca told.
She had wandered long,
Hearing wild birds' song.
'Sweet sleep, come to me,
Underneath this tree; [the Elm of Hades]
Do father, mother, weep? [like Demeter wept.]
Where can Lyca sleep?
'Lost in desert wild
Is your little child.
How can Lyca sleep
If her mother weep?
'If her heart does ache,
Then let Lyca wake;
If my mother sleep,
Lyca shall not weep.
'Frowning, frowning night,
O'er this desert bright
Let thy moon arise,
While I close my eyes.'
Sleeping Lyca lay,
While the beasts of prey,
Come from caverns deep,
Viewed the maid asleep.
The kingly lion stood, [lion=Pluto, king of the underworld]
And the virgin viewed:
Then he gambolled round
O'er the hallowed ground.
Leopards, tigers, play
Round her as she lay;
While the lion old
Bowed his mane of gold,
And her bosom lick,
And upon her neck,
From his eyes of flame,
Ruby tears there came; Why was the lion sorrowful? Did he mourn the descent of the soul?]
While the lioness [the lioness?]
Loosed her slender dress,
And naked they conveyed
To caves the sleeping maid.
Little Girl Found
- All the night in woe
Lyca's parents go
Over valleys deep,
While the deserts weep.
Tired and woe-begone,
Hoarse with making moan,
Arm in arm, seven days
They traced the desert ways.
Seven nights they sleep
Among shadows deep,
And dream they see their child
Starved in desert wild.
Pale through pathless ways
The fancied image strays,
Famished, weeping, weak,
With hollow piteous shriek.
Rising from unrest,
The trembling woman pressed
With feet of weary woe;
She could no further go.
In his arms he bore
Her, armed with sorrow sore;
Till before their way
A couching lion lay.
Turning back was vain:
Soon his heavy mane
Bore them to the ground,
Then he stalked around,
Smelling to his prey;
But their fears allay
When he licks their hands,
And silent by them stands.
They look upon his eyes,
Filled with deep surprise;
And wondering behold
A spirit armed in gold.
On his head a crown,
On his shoulders down
Flowed his golden hair.
Gone was all their care.
'Follow me,' he said;
'Weep not for the maid;
In my palace deep,
Lyca lies asleep.'
Then they followed
Where the vision led,
And saw their sleeping child
Among tigers wild.
To this day they dwell
In a lonely dell,
Nor fear the wolvish howl
Nor the lion's growl.
The are many ways to interpret the two "Little Girl" poems in Songs of Experience. Following Raine I have focused on the neoPlatonic viewpoint:
Little Girl Lost
In futurity I prophesy
That the earth from sleep
(Grave the sentence deep)
Shall arise, and seek
For her Maker meek;
And the desert wild [this mortal world]
Become a garden mild.
Here in Blake's inimitable poetry we have the biblical New Heaven and New Earth. It is also a promise of the happy outcome of Blake's myth. (Look at Jerusalem, plates 96-99.)
*****************
In the southern clime, [the eternal realm]
Where the summer's prime
Never fades away,
Lovely Lyca lay.
Seven summers old
Lovely Lyca told.
She had wandered long,
Hearing wild birds' song.
'Sweet sleep, come to me,
Underneath this tree; [the Elm of Hades]
Do father, mother, weep? [like Demeter wept.]
Where can Lyca sleep?
'Lost in desert wild
Is your little child.
How can Lyca sleep
If her mother weep?
'If her heart does ache,
Then let Lyca wake;
If my mother sleep,
Lyca shall not weep.
'Frowning, frowning night,
O'er this desert bright
Let thy moon arise,
While I close my eyes.'
Sleeping Lyca lay,
While the beasts of prey,
Come from caverns deep,
Viewed the maid asleep.
The kingly lion stood, [lion=Pluto, king of the underworld]
And the virgin viewed:
Then he gambolled round
O'er the hallowed ground.
Leopards, tigers, play
Round her as she lay;
While the lion old
Bowed his mane of gold,
And her bosom lick,
And upon her neck,
From his eyes of flame,
Ruby tears there came; [Why was the lion sorrowful? Did he mourn the descent of the soul?]
While the lioness [the lioness?]
Loosed her slender dress,
And naked they conveyed
To caves the sleeping maid.
Little Girl Found
All the night in woe
Lyca's parents go
Over valleys deep,
While the deserts weep.
Tired and woe-begone,
Hoarse with making moan,
Arm in arm, seven days
They traced the desert ways.
Seven nights they sleep
Among shadows deep,
And dream they see their child
Starved in desert wild.
Pale through pathless ways
The fancied image strays,
Famished, weeping, weak,
With hollow piteous shriek.
Rising from unrest,
The trembling woman pressed
With feet of weary woe;
She could no further go.
In his arms he bore
Her, armed with sorrow sore;
Till before their way
A couching lion lay.
Turning back was vain:
Soon his heavy mane
Bore them to the ground,
Then he stalked around,
Smelling to his prey;
But their fears allay
When he licks their hands,
And silent by them stands.
They look upon his eyes,
Filled with deep surprise;
And wondering behold
A spirit armed in gold.
On his head a crown,
On his shoulders down
Flowed his golden hair.
Gone was all their care.
'Follow me,' he said;
'Weep not for the maid;
In my palace deep,
Lyca lies asleep.'
Then they followed
Where the vision led,
And saw their sleeping child
Among tigers wild.
To this day they dwell
In a lonely dell,
Nor fear the wolvish howl
Nor the lion's growl.
Little Girl Lost
In futurity I prophesy
That the earth from sleep
(Grave the sentence deep)
Shall arise, and seek
For her Maker meek;
And the desert wild [this mortal world]
Become a garden mild.
Here in Blake's inimitable poetry we have the biblical New Heaven and New Earth. It is also a promise of the happy outcome of Blake's myth. (Look at Jerusalem, plates 96-99.)
*****************
In the southern clime, [the eternal realm]
Where the summer's prime
Never fades away,
Lovely Lyca lay.
Seven summers old
Lovely Lyca told.
She had wandered long,
Hearing wild birds' song.
'Sweet sleep, come to me,
Underneath this tree; [the Elm of Hades]
Do father, mother, weep? [like Demeter wept.]
Where can Lyca sleep?
'Lost in desert wild
Is your little child.
How can Lyca sleep
If her mother weep?
'If her heart does ache,
Then let Lyca wake;
If my mother sleep,
Lyca shall not weep.
'Frowning, frowning night,
O'er this desert bright
Let thy moon arise,
While I close my eyes.'
Sleeping Lyca lay,
While the beasts of prey,
Come from caverns deep,
Viewed the maid asleep.
The kingly lion stood, [lion=Pluto, king of the underworld]
And the virgin viewed:
Then he gambolled round
O'er the hallowed ground.
Leopards, tigers, play
Round her as she lay;
While the lion old
Bowed his mane of gold,
And her bosom lick,
And upon her neck,
From his eyes of flame,
Ruby tears there came; [Why was the lion sorrowful? Did he mourn the descent of the soul?]
While the lioness [the lioness?]
Loosed her slender dress,
And naked they conveyed
To caves the sleeping maid.
Little Girl Found
All the night in woe
Lyca's parents go
Over valleys deep,
While the deserts weep.
Tired and woe-begone,
Hoarse with making moan,
Arm in arm, seven days
They traced the desert ways.
Seven nights they sleep
Among shadows deep,
And dream they see their child
Starved in desert wild.
Pale through pathless ways
The fancied image strays,
Famished, weeping, weak,
With hollow piteous shriek.
Rising from unrest,
The trembling woman pressed
With feet of weary woe;
She could no further go.
In his arms he bore
Her, armed with sorrow sore;
Till before their way
A couching lion lay.
Turning back was vain:
Soon his heavy mane
Bore them to the ground,
Then he stalked around,
Smelling to his prey;
But their fears allay
When he licks their hands,
And silent by them stands.
They look upon his eyes,
Filled with deep surprise;
And wondering behold
A spirit armed in gold.
On his head a crown,
On his shoulders down
Flowed his golden hair.
Gone was all their care.
'Follow me,' he said;
'Weep not for the maid;
In my palace deep,
Lyca lies asleep.'
Then they followed
Where the vision led,
And saw their sleeping child
Among tigers wild.
To this day they dwell
In a lonely dell,
Nor fear the wolvish howl
Nor the lion's growl.
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