The Garden of Love

This Picture represents one of the Songs of Innocence and Experience:

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BLAKE & 'DEAD MAN' II

Read the first post on BLAKE & 'DEAD MAN'.

These are some Blake quotes which were used in the movie Dead Man.

Auguries of Innocence (E 492)
"Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born
Every Morn & every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to Endless Night"

Marriage of Heaven and Hell , Plate 8, (E 37)
"The eagle never lost so much time, as when he submitted to learn
of the crow."

Marriage of Heaven and Hell , Plate 5, (E 35)
"Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead."

Everlasting Gospel, (E 525)
"The Vision of Christ that thou dost see
Is my Visions Greatest Enemy"

Innocence is the state in which the character William Blake begins his journey in the movie Dead Man. The destination to which he is traveling is the end of the railroad line - a town named Machine. The optimistic innocence of William Blake has been disrupted even before he disembarks from the train. The disappointment of finding the promised employment unavailable leaves him destitute of hope and resources. Another innocent crosses his path: Thel, who makes and sells paper flowers. The two are outcasts who find each other. William Blake, the poet wrote a short book about Thel - the lovely innocent who refused to enter the world of generation and embark on the path of experience. In the scenario of the movie Thel is killed by the same bullet which lodges in the dead or dying William Blake. Her innocence is preserved but he proceeds along the road of experience.

A Native American who has been trained in white man's ways assumes the care of William Blake because he has read the poet Blake and found his writing the only thing he understood in the white culture. Blake is a hunted man, fleeing from the law, hired killers and the vengeance of father of the man he shot. The Native American, who calls himself Nobody, acts as guide and protector of William Blake supplying wisdom from the poet Blake along with tribal insights as the pair head for completion of William Blake's return to his origin.

We can look at William Blake's journey in the movie in the light of the journey Milton took to redeem the errors of his life in Blake's Milton .

Milton, PLATE 14 [15], (E 108)
[Milton speaking]
"I will arise and look forth for the morning of the grave.
I will go down to the sepulcher to see if morning breaks!
I will go down to self annihilation and eternal death,
Lest the Last Judgment come & find me unannihilate
And I be siez'd & giv'n into the hands of my own Selfhood
The Lamb of God is seen thro' mists & shadows, hov'ring
Over the sepulchers in clouds of Jehovah & winds of Elohim
A disk of blood, distant; & heav'ns & earth's roll dark between"

One haunting image from the film pictures William Blake whose 'life' is slowly draining from his body lying beside a dead fawn. It is easy to see the fawn as a reminder of the 'Lamb of God', a term which occurs frequently in Jerusalem and the Four Zoas. The appearance of the Lamb of God in Blake's poetry is a portent of redemption.Picture by William James Linton after William Blake from Gilchrist's Life,

Watch images from the movie along with the soundtrack by Neil Young.

BLAKE BIO

Michael Bedard has written a biography of William Blake which is directed to young adults. Although it is easy to read, it is thorough and reliable. He titled it William Blake: The Gates of Paradise and he organized it around the plates in Blake's poem of that title. He follows Blake's life by using an image from Gates of Paradise (which was originally addressed 'For Children') as a preface to each chapter of the book.

Chapter Six titled Lambeth: The Figure on the Stairs uses Plate 8 showing the infant emerging from the egg, captioned "At Length for Hatching Ripe He Breaks the Shell." The text deals with the economic and social situation which was disrupting the lives of the people through industrialization in Blake's day. Of the vision of the figure on the stairs Bedard says: "Perhaps the grim figure on the staircase hailed from the dark world that occupied Blake's mind so much at that time. For now he was busy putting together the poems that would depict the contrary state to the joyful vision of Songs of Innocence."

The cost of the book was kept down by not using color illustrations, but the pictures are numerous and well chosen. The book is indexed, contains source notes and a bibliography. Bedard's book is an ideal introduction to Blake for anyone not acquainted with the rigors of the life of one whose imagination belied his outward circumstances.

CRYSTAL CABINET

Blake's illustration to Milton's Comus commissioned by Thomas Butts dated 1815


Thomas Butts was a principal patron of William Blake during the leanest of times in his life. It is hard to conceive of how Blake could have continued his imaginative work without the financial support which sales to Butts provided. Mary Butts, the great-granddaughter of Thomas Butts had the childhood experience of growing up under the influence of William Blake whose pictures adorned the walls of a room in her home. In her autobiography The Crystal Cabinet: My Childhood at Salterns, she applies the metaphor of Blake's poem to understanding her adolescent years. Her book was first published in 1937, shortly before her death, over objections from her fractious family. It was reissued in 1988 including material which had formerly been deleted.

Joel Hawkes of the University of Bristol wrote an article on Mary Butts's book which he called Inside The Crystal Cabinet: Truth, Lies and Vision in Mary Butts’s Autobiography of Place. On page 3 of the article we read:
"The title The Crystal Cabinet is borrowed from William Blake’s poem of the same name. In understanding Butts’s interpretation of Blake’s poem, and of Blake’s art more generally, one begins to see how Butts searches for truth and for vision through the creation of place within her writing. Salterns, as a place, is a means to this vision. Butts had grown up at Salterns – a large 21 acre estate near Poole – surrounded by Blake’s work. Butts’s great grandfather, Thomas Butts, was patron to William Blake, and in Mary’s childhood, in a room known as the ‘Blake room’, there hung a large number of Blake’s paintings, now found at the Tate Britain (Butts 1988, p.13). The house was also reportedly filled with other works of art, particularly those of the Pre-Raphaelites – the Rossettis were friends of her father’s (p.142). Butts, with good reason, writes that her early life was ‘saturated’ with art (1988, p.31)."

Hawkes' article on page 5 comments on the poem which Butts used to create a framework for her autobiography:

"Blake’s ‘The Crystal Cabinet’ explores the movement from Beulah to Generation. In the poem, a young man is taken away from the ‘Wild’, where he tells us he was ‘dancing merrily’ – a place of innocence. He is caught by a maiden, taken into the cabinet, and locked up with a ‘golden Key’ (1972, p.429, ll. 1-4). In the cabinet he sees another England, another London and Thames (ll. 9-12). They are like the one he knows, but different. A sexual and imaginative development takes place with the maiden, and during his experience the youth strives to ‘seize the inmost form’ of this event (l. 21). Doing so, he bursts the cabinet, becoming a ‘Weeping Babe’ – born into our world of experience (l. 24). The youth of the poem is moving from one realm to another through sexual and imaginative experience. It is a passage, indeed a rite of passage, from innocence to experience – one that unites the two opposites. It may seem like a fall in the tradition of Adam and Eve, but for Blake one must move from the innocence of the earthly paradise of Beulah into Generation, in order to progress spiritually. To not allow oneself this sexual and imaginative route, leads one only to Ulro, where Thel in Blake’s Book of Thel falls. With no imaginative and sexual experience one becomes half dead, a ghost in ‘a schizoid second infancy or idiocy’ (Bloom 1971, p.57)."

Blake's Crystal Cabinet is open to interpretation, at which many have tried their hand. We will have a further look at in later posts.

SEEK LOVE

Seldom do we find Blake making a simple direct statement which we immediately understand. These few lines seem to be such a statement. The love found in the light of day is the love in the time of innocence - undeveloped consciousness. In the darkness of the night is found the love of experience which has been tested by suffering and had learned compassion. The gift of love is more likely to be received and given among those who have encountered not only light but darkness.

Pickering Manuscript, William Bond, (E 497)
"I thought Love livd in the hot sun Shine
But O he lives in the Moony light
I thought to find Love in the heat of day
But sweet Love is the Comforter of Night

Seek Love in the Pity of others Woe
In the gentle relief of anothers care
In the darkness of night & the winters snow
In the naked & outcast Seek Love there"

The journey from innocence to experience draws us from the unadulterated light into the shadows or darkness. Blake wrote The Book of Thel from the perspective of an innocent who looked ahead to the journey of acquiring experience and declined to take the next step.

Thel, PLATE 1, (E 3)
"The daughters of Mne Seraphim led round their sunny flocks.
All but the youngest; she in paleness sought the secret air.
To fade away like morning beauty from her mortal day:
Down by the river of Adona her soft voice is heard:
And thus her gentle lamentation falls like morning dew.

O life of this our spring! why fades the lotus of the water?
Why fade these children of the spring? born but to smile & fall.
Ah! Thel is like a watry bow. and like a parting cloud.
Like a reflection in a glass. like shadows in the water.
Like dreams of infants. like a smile upon an infants face,
Like the doves voice, like transient day, like music in the air;
Ah! gentle may I lay me down, and gentle rest my head.
And gentle sleep the sleep of death. and gentle hear the voice
Of him that walketh in the garden in the evening time."

To experience life implies becoming acquainted with death; entering the field of time inevitably exposes one to the experience of change; pain is introduced as a pedagogue to guide development. Thel avoided these threatening things by remaining in a state of innocence instead of transitioning into an adult who knew from experience the meaning of sacrifice, brotherhood, redemption and compassion. Blake proposes that participating in the experience of division, and living in an imperfect world is the way to completeness, to the realization of the infinite and to Eternity. Thel choose the 'sleep of death' rather than the sleep of life.

____________________________ Picture from Song of Los, Plate 6

INTRODUCTION TO OUR BLOG

This is a repost of an earlier post intended to help Blake students get started:

An anonymous reader has asked that we provide more information in our posts. So I will try to explain what we are attempting to do in our Blake blog.

First we want to focus our attention on William Blake and his writing.

We are not experts but students of Blake. We follow our own interests. We are interested in sharing what we have learned of Blake and would would like to tailor our posts to the interests of the reader. We hope readers will let us know what interests them about Blake.

There have been posts which attempt to introduce the reader to studying Blake especially using the resources on the internet. The links to the text of Blake's poetry and prose, and to his graphic works are provided. A link to Larry's online book which includes a primer is also a useful tool. (These files can be electronically searched for specific topics.) Within the posts we often provide links to external files which expand the study to wider sources.

None of Blake's work is simple to understand. Beginners can start with Songs of Innocence and Experience. Marriage of Heaven and Hell grabs the attention of many with its irony. The major prophecies can be approached a little at a time rather than entire. If you are visually oriented, the visual images can be used as an avenue to draw you into reading the poetry.

Blake's body of work is large and complex. On our blog we have not attempted a systematic study. We are giving clues to solving the mystery. Analysts of Blake's work often tell us that Blake expected the reader to go beyond what was stated in the text, to perceive the underlying meaning. We hope our readers will sift through the blog posts looking for cracks or doors or highways through which they may enter Blake's mind and heart and imagination.

Reading Blake may expand your mind, nourish your spirit, or enrich your imagination; don't expect it to put money in your pocket, expand your social circle or impress your professors.

Here are some earlier posts which may help the neophyte.

Bible
Perception
Vision
Emphasis
Help
Fourfold
Idealism
Reader
Plates
4Z's




I can't end without a quote from Blake as well as the picture.
Liberty or Stems of Vegetation

Jerusalem, Plate 60, (E 209)

"within the Furnaces the Divine Vision appeard

On Albions hills: often walking from the Furnaces in clouds
And flames among the Druid Temples & the Starry Wheels
Gatherd Jerusalems Children in his arms & bore them like
A Shepherd in the night of Albion which overspread all the Earth

I gave thee liberty and life O lovely Jerusalem
And thou hast bound me down upon the Stems of Vegetation"

The Happy Child

Before the loss of innocence the average child has an inner vision absent to most adults; it's generally stripped away by the age of six. Under the influence of early public education a socialization or social conditioning process takes place, and conventional thought forms take the place of the child's inner thoughts.

Most Blake students remember the vision of the angry God that Blake found in his window at the age of four. You can be sure that such a fancy is likely to be trained out of a small child-- in most cases but not in Blake's. We know very little about his parents other than a generally dissenting faith (Swedenborgians, Moravians, etc.).

But they must have had liberal ideas about child rearing because a few years later when he reported seeing a tree filled with angels, his mother talked his father out of a disciplinary response. Another liberal idea was their permission for him to leave school after the first day (when the schoolmaster flogged a boy).

All this leads to the conclusion that Blake never lost the faculty of inner vision, which has been conditioned out of most of us. With no hindrance to his childhood visions and freedom from organized schooling Blake became an autodidact; in all likelihood regarding pre-Enlightenment thought he became the most learned man of his generation.

Jesus is reported to have said, "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein" in Mark 10:15. That's often thought to mean that the child trusts his father, but might it not also mean he has a child's imagination?

One might say Blake remained like a child his entire life. The four year old who had seen the angry God in his window, who a bit later had seen the tree full of angels continued to see those sorts of things as the years went by.

In the course of time the 'angry God' became Nobodaddy and a large variety of other 'god-like' figures. And the 'tree full of angels'? who knows.

How could that be? Unlike you and me Blake (after the first day) never went to school, the place where most of the 'child' has been drilled out of us. For Blake? no! "I must Create a System or be enslav'd by another Mans". He didn't heed what the priests told him about God; he already knew the God within (the Quaker Way). He spent twenty years wrestling with the God he knew.

In Songs of Innocence he gave delightful portraits of the child within himself, and in Songs of Experience he showed us what this cruel vale in tears where we live had done to those lovely children. Look at Version 1 and Version 2 of Holy Thursday and at Version 1 and 2 of the Chimney Sweeper.

The Little Black Boy showed a child put upon by a cruel society, but not embittered thereby. Blake's poetry is often bitter, ironic, satiric, condemnatory! "Blake's poetry has the unpleasantness of great poetry" (T.S.Eliot). So much like Isaiah and Jeremiah: pages and pages of bitter excoriation.

But in the midst of the cries, just like Isaiah, you suddenly find passages of ethereal beauty and joy. Like a child: either delighted or miserable!

Finally the child is creative! I haven't found any poet who matches Blake's creativity; his System is like discovering another planet.