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

WANDERERS

I think that Blake makes a distinction between the traveler and the wanderer. The traveler goes with a purpose, he enters experience with a goal - that of finding a better understanding of himself and the cosmos. The wanderer finds herself/himself is a world not of his choosing. Having no goal nor purpose he is easily enticed by the most glittery items and opportunities. There is a feeling of lostness and confusion that characterizes the wanderer. The wanderer causes trouble for himself as well as being a disruptive force wherever he goes.

Thel
Thel, Page 6, (E 6)
"She wanderd in the land of clouds thro' valleys dark, listning
Dolours & lamentations: waiting oft beside a dewy grave
She stood in silence. listning to the voices of the ground,"

Blake in London
Songs of Experience, SONG 46, (E 26)
LONDON
"I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe."

Oothoon
Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Plate 1, (E 45)
"For the soft soul of America, Oothoon wanderd in woe,
Along the vales of Leutha seeking flowers to comfort her;
And thus she spoke to the bright Marygold of Leutha's vale"

Urizen
Book of Urizen, Plate 25, (E 82)
"6. Cold he wander'd on high, over their cities
In weeping & pain & woe!
And where-ever he wanderd in sorrows
Upon the aged heavens
A cold shadow follow'd behind him"

Ahania
Book of Ahania, Plate 2, (E 85)
"8: She fell down a faint shadow wandring
In chaos and circling dark Urizen,
As the moon anguishd circles the earth;
Hopeless! abhorrd! a death-shadow,
Unseen, unbodied, unknown,
The mother of Pestilence."

Milton
Milton, Plate 15, (E 109)
"But to himself he seemd a wanderer lost in dreary night.
Onwards his Shadow kept its course among the Spectres; call'd
Satan, but swift as lightning passing them, startled the shades
Of Hell beheld him in a trail of light as of a comet
That travels into Chaos: so Milton went guarded within."

Man
Jerusalem, Plate 20, (E 165)
"Vala replied weeping & trembling, hiding in her veil.
When winter rends the hungry family and the snow falls:
Upon the ways of men hiding the paths of man and beast,
Then mourns the wanderer: then he repents his wanderings & eyes
The distant forest; then the slave groans in the dungeon of
stone. "

Milton, Plate 2
"Daughters of Beulah! Muses who inspire the Poets Song
Record the journey of immortal Milton thro' your Realms
Of terror & mild moony lustre, in soft sexual delusions
Of varied beauty, to delight the wanderer and repose
His burning thirst & freezing hunger!"

The Pickering Manuscript, The Mental Traveller, (E484)
"I traveld thro' a Land of Men
A Land of Men & Women too
And heard & saw such dreadful things
As cold Earth wanderers never knew"

Vala
Jerusalem, Plate 43 [29], (E 192)
"Then frownd the fallen Man, and put forth Luvah from his presence
Saying. Go and Die the Death of Man, for Vala the sweet wanderer."

Jerusalem
Jerusalem, Plate 86, (E 245)
"Thus Los sings upon his Watch walking from Furnace to Furnace.
He siezes his Hammer every hour, flames surround him as
He beats: seas roll beneath his feet, tempests muster
Arou[n]d his head. the thick hail stones stand ready to obey
His voice in the black cloud, his Sons labour in thunders
At his Furnaces; his Daughters at their Looms sing woes
His Emanation separates in milky fibres agonizing
Among the golden Looms of Cathedron sending fibres of love
From Golgonooza with sweet visions for Jerusalem, wanderer."

Enion
Four Zoas, Page 5,(E 302)
"Enion said Farewell I die I hide. from thy searching eyes
So saying--From her bosom weaving soft in Sinewy threads
A tabernacle for Jerusalem she sat among the Rocks
Singing her lamentation. Tharmas groand among his Clouds
Weeping, then bending from his Clouds he stoopd his innocent head
And stretching out his holy hand in the vast Deep sublime
Turnd round the circle of Destiny with tears & bitter sighs
And said. Return O Wanderer when the Day of Clouds is oer"

Noteworthy is that the wanderers tend to be female. Three of the emanations of the four Zoas are wanderers. When they become separated from their male counterparts they are without guidance or direction. Wandering with Urizen is an exploration but unproductive. When the active male principle is absent, the receptive female tends to wander without direction. The wanderer is not headed for a destination but slated to return to the point of origin. Oothoon is the exception, she starts out as a wanderer but develops a strong ego and in the end independent of male support.

LOST & FOUND

Early in 2010 the Tate gallery announced that it was purchasing a set of Blake prints which had long been lost. The group of eight prints was in the possession of Blake when he died and was inherited by his wife Catherine. An inscription on the back of one of the pictures indicates that they were given by Catherine to Frederick Tatum with whom Catherine lived after William's death. They did not surface again into public view until the were found in a secondhand railway timetable purchased in a used book sale in 1978. The owner offered them for sale as a set to the Tate Gallery which purchased them for 441000 pounds.

The group of eight includes six images from the Book of Urizen, one from the Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and one from The Book of Thel. The images are etchings from plates produced for the earlier works. They are finished with pen and ink, watercolor and tempera to be viewed as individual works of art. Text was left off of the engravings. Have a look for yourself courtesy of the BBC.

Keri Davies has studied the pictures since they were first shown at the Tate in 2007 and suggests that they were a part of Copy B of the Small Book of Designs. She provides the captions which appear on the newly discovered set which are absent in the set called Copy A. The pictures go on exhibit at the Tate this month and will be included in an exhibit at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art, Moscow in November 2011.

Heaven's Gate

Among other things this abiding image provides a
link between Blake and Dylan.

Once again:
I give you the end of a golden string
Only wind it into a ball:
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate
Built in Jerusalem's wall.
Jeusalem (E 231)

What about the gate? Can you go in? go out?
The Arlington Tempera offers visual instruction
in the matter. From the beginning of time
there have been two passages: to and from
Heaven. The northern passage leads down into
the Sea of Time and Space; the southern passage
leads back up to Eternity. This is the crux of
Blake's myth, and of the Judeo-Chistian one as
well.

If you apply 'gate' to the concordance, you
will find 262 of them. Quite a few gates of
Hell! Two noteworthy gates are (1) at the little
poem, To Morning (E410):

"O holy virgin! clad in purest white,
Unlock heav's' golden gates, and issue forth;
Awake the dawn that sleeps in heaven; let light..."

And then Thel notably traversed the gate in
both directions. From the Vales of Thar (a
region in Heaven) Thel considered the subject
of mortal life, and decided to give it a whirl:
" The eternal gates' terrific porter lifted the
northern bar. Thel enter'd in & saw the
secrets of the land unknown."

But seeing the horrors of 'this vale of tears'
Thel screamed and "Fled back unhinder'd till
she came into the vales of Har."

From the Arlington Tempera you may notice a
maiden holding her bucket and making her way
upward against the stream. Like Thel she had
seen enough and refused mortality.

-----------------------------

"O Christ who holds the open gate,
O Christ who drives the furrow straight,
O Christ, the plough, 0 Christ, the laughter
Of holy white birds flying after,
Lo, all my heart’s field red and torn,
And Thou wilt bring the young green corn,
The young green corn divinely springing,
The young green corn forever singing;
And when the field is fresh and fair
Thy blessed feet shall glitter there,
And we will walk the weeded field,
And tell the golden harvest’s yield,
The corn that makes the holy bread
By which the soul of man is fed,
The holy bread, the food unpriced,
Thy everlasting mercy, Christ."

Hymn by John Masefield. How Blakean can you get!