Northrup Frye

This from an article in Wikipedia:
"it was in reflecting on the similarity between Blake and Milton that Frye first stumbled upon the "principle of the mythological framework," the recognition that "the Bible was a mythological framework, cosmos or body of stories, and that societies live within a mythology" (Hart 18). Blake thus led Frye to the conviction that the Bible provided Western societies with the mythology which informed all of Western literature. As Hamilton asserts, "Blake's claim that 'the Old and New Testaments are the Great Code of Art' became the central doctrine of all [Frye's] criticism" (39). This 'doctrine' found its fullest expression in Frye's appropriately named The Great Code, which he described as "a preliminary investigation of Biblical structure and typology" whose purpose was ultimately to suggest "how the structure of the Bible, as revealed by its narrative and imagery, was related to the conventions and genres of Western literature" (Words with Power xi)."

The magnitude of the significance of Fearful Symmetry (in my mind at least) led me to wonder just who Frye was; where did he come from? who was he? How did it happen that he should write such a book?

Writing Fearful Symmetry

It was a thesis, I understood, and something he took ten years writing:
"..in 1929. He enrolled in Victoria College of the University of Toronto.

While still an undergraduate, he developed a deep fascination with the complex poetic prophecies of William Blake, particularly Milton, The Four Zoas, and Jerusalem, considered by many scholars to be the product of an eccentric, possibly insane, visionary. In Frye's first year of graduate work, in which he took concurrent training as a minister for the United Church of Canada (primarily Methodist), Frye decided to write a definitive book on Blake which would break Blake's difficult symbolic code. This near obsession sustained him through two unhappy years of graduate work at Merton College, Oxford, where he studied with poet Edmund Blunden in 1936-1937 and 1938-1939, after which he taught English at Victoria College for over four decades.

Ten-Year Labor on Blake

Heavily influenced by British scholars of myth, particularly James Frazer, he worked diligently on the Blake book from 1934 to 1945, finally producing Fearful Symmetry. Published in 1947, it is still considered the definitive reading of Blake. It shows that Blake's poetic universe was not psychotically personal but had close affinities with other major poetry. Basically Frye proposed that all literature fit into a grand apocalyptic pattern of heaven and hell. Aspects of literary expression such as tragedy (the Fall), irony (unrelieved hell), romance (resurrection), and comedy (communal reconciliation) form an interconnected circular pattern analogous to the Last Judgment or the wheel of fortune motifs common in medieval art."

Here's a study guide on Frye's The Educated Imagination, a more elementary version of Frye's masterpiece, an Anatomy of Criticism

Blake's Job

Job

Job is the Universal Man, Albion, you and me, the cosmos. In American culture Man may be thought of as getting and spending, or more comprehensively as a radical materialist, lacking a spiritual outlook. Reading The Book of Job, Blake found these same qualities in Job, particularly a legalistic religion of self satisfaction. He also found them in the Zoas, fractured parts of the Universal Man, Albion, when he descended from Eternity and went to sleep.

Blake did his Job illustrations in his sixties, near the end of a long and productive life. It contains in essence, but comprehensive and succinct, the same myth as do all the others. Job is the story of Albion, of Blake and his world, of you and me and ours. If you study nothing Blakean but Job, it will yield an accurate picture of Blake's system of thought, what he is about, and what he feels and believes most deeply.

Kathleen Raine, near the end of her life published a little book called Golgoonza. It contains a very good treatment of Blake's Job. Beginning with Plate One Blake wrote this quote from II Corinthians 3:6: "the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life". We see a self-satisfied looking family with their musical instruments hanging from the tree, but not used. This family lives by the law.

And the law killed Job's children ("Our children are dead to us when we cease to love them and pass moral judgements upon them"; page 127). Job has not learned that the Spirit of God is 'the continual forgiveness of sins', which is to say that Job doesn't know God.

On page 127 she wrote, "It is clear that the figure of Albion is to a great extent derived from the Book of Job", although he didn't get around to dealing with it artistically until very late in his career.

There are many good presentations of Blake's Job on the web. The most helpful one might be in a work emanating from Boston College.

This one has a frame with the King James Version of the Bible pointed to by Blake in his magnificent production. Remarkably the text spread around Blake's pictures appear to have almost verbatim copies of various parts of the Bible Book of Job.

Here is the initial picture of another of the Job series. Click on the Next to see the successive pictures one by one. Here is the last picture. These pictures, like most of Blake's pictorial art are largely diagrammatic, designed to convey spiritual meaning.

Blake's Theology

Blake would have scorned the idea of talking about Theology, which meant less than nothing to his artistic creations. However theologians may also find Blake of interest.
Systematizing was anathema to him; nevertheless he created a system of his own, and we may properly organize it in terms of theological ideas. We might begin our analysis with the theological dimension of the four elements of his myth:


Creation and Fall
The Biblical account of Creation (one of the most commonly familiar portions of the Bible) tell us that God created the World, and Man in six days and rested on the seventh. Blake wrote a number of parodies of that. Perhaps the most systematic of his accounts of Creation can be found in what might be called the first book of his 'Bible of Hell', The Book of Urizen. Creation had occurred when Albion retreated from Eternity to 'Beulah', and not just Creation, but the Fall as well.

Urizen, Blake's demiurge sets out to give fallen properties to Man in seven ages of a state of dismal woe" (Erdman 75-76). This is in considerable contrast to Genesis Three where the serpent uses his evil methods to seduce Eve (and then Adam) to choose the Way of the World rather than the Way of God.

In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake chose to identify himself and John Milton as well with 'the devils party'. In that early work Blake saw the devil as a form of active energy contrasting with the passive angels. (In later years his satanic theology moved closer to the conventional mode.)




Redemption


The Eternal

Blake's Tyger

Among Blake's Songs of Experience is a poem called The Tyger, which is placed in opposition to The Lamb, from Songs of Innocence. Among a multitude of commonly studied and analyzed poems, The Tyger is interpreted here as "an intriguing moral critique of Protestant Christianity, or more specifically, a theological query into the motivations of Creation itself."

Blake frequently used the image of the Lamb referring to the Lamb of God (Jesus!) In contrast the carnivorous Tyger has an obvious association with Satan. So he's posing the age old question "did God create the Savior and the Devil." Blake emphatically questioned it and disbelieved it to the point of denial. He stated it later in this picturesque way:
" Thinking as I do that the Creator of this World is a very Cruel Being & being a Worshipper of Christ I cannot help saying the Son O how unlike the Father First God Almighty comes with a Thump on the Head Then Jesus Christ comes with a balm to heal it"
(Description of the Last Judgment Erdman 565)

If you were not already aware how radically Blake's theology diverges from 'conventional religion', this should certainly convince you. The Lamb and the Tyger, or similar metaphors oppose one another throughout Blake's myth until eventually Satan can be perceived as a State rather than a Person, a state that can be happily annihilated as Time ends, passing into Eternity.

The Book Of Urizen

The Book of Urizen

We find the earliest organized statement of Blake's myth in a medium sized poem written in 1794. The Book of Urizen served as a prototype for 'The Four Zoas', which was to follow. It contains among other things a parody of Genesis. Blake found the orthodox doctrine of creation unsatisfying, as many other people have to this day, so he set out to present an alternative. He followed 'Paradise Lost' and the Gnostics in placing the Fall before Creation.

In his myth the Fall of Man involved a fall in part of the divine nature and led to the creation of a fallen world. Such a Creation Story represents a sophistication of the elemental biblical one. P.L. is an obvious recreation of the Bible story, and B.U. is a recreation of P.L., beginning as a simple inversion.

The doctrine of contraries, which we found in MHH, appears in B.U. in the form of two Eternals, Urizen and Los. The poem develops their careers in nine chapters. Following closely some of the Gnostic texts Urizen separates from the other Eternals, writes the Book of Brass, and declares himself God, whereupon he is shut out of Eternity and Los appointed his watchman (Chapters 1-3). Los confines Urizen with the limits of time and space and in "seven ages of dismal woe" binds him down into the five shriveled senses of the human body (Chapter 4).

This frightful condition leads Los to pity, which divides his soul and results in the separation of his emanation, Enitharmon. Eternity shudders at this further breakup of Man into the sexual contraries. Even more shocking to the Eternals, Los begets his likeness on his own divided image. The Eternals shut out this fallenness from Eden, and Los becomes blind to Eternity (Chapter 6)Section 10. Los binds his son, Orc, with the Chain of Jealousy. Urizen explores his dens, discovers that no one can obey or keep his iron laws for one minute and that life lives upon death.

There in barest outline is 'The Book of Urizen'. Volumes have been written to interpret it. At this point we note that Urizen, Orc (also called Luvah in later works), and Los emerge as the three principles of the psyche. In Jungian terms we would call them Reason, Feeling, and Intuition. With the addition of Tharmas, the body or Instinct, they make up the four Zoas of the complete myth. B.U. is the earliest sketch of their relationships, which form the primary subject matter of Blake's evolving myth until the critical moment when Jesus became All and Jerusalem his Bride.

Keep in mind that here, as in later writings, Blake's poetry has many levels. We are especially interested in the cosmic and psychological levels, and the most compelling dimension of the psychological is the autobiographical. In B.U. as in all the prophecies Blake tells us a great deal about himself. He lived intensely in the spiritual realm; this means that visions, motifs, attitudes come and go with great rapidity. The poetry reveals to us the course of his life. At the same time sober reflection on his biography casts light on the dynamic evolution of the myth. The student might spend time with B.U. before tackling 4Z, for it gives in outline form much of the action of the larger poem. However Urizen is hard to understand, written before the complete vision o Blake's myth had crystallized in his mind; one might question the value to spending much time on this early work.

The Universal Symbols

Blake's greatest gift to any of us may be the Faculty of perceiving the realities around us in terms of the Universal Symbols:

For example the character Jane in Jane Eyre may serve as a Christ Symbol (or
in Blake's lexicon as Eternity). Rochester represents Everyman; the flossie, whom he was considering marriage to, is the Way of the World, the purely material.

The half cousin who wanted Jane to marry him and go to Africa with him represents Conventional Religion; his daughters are the Blakean Redeemed.

Rochester's wife is the victim of his accumulated moral failings, which led to spiritual blindness.

The happy ending is echoed by the ending of most Detective Stories. The crime is solved, the detective enjoys real life, the harm remains, but it no longer affects him. In the Sacred Story every tear has been wiped away.

In this post I've expressed the reality of the story in terms of the Blakean universal symbols. That's only one of many ways you might find universal meaning is a work of art.

Northrup Frye introduced the Blake community (in 1947) to an understanding of Blake's use of symbols,images, metaphor; armed with that knowledge understanding of his poetry, his myth, the import of his pictures proceeded apace. But that's appropriate for another post.

Enlightenments

We all reach God in some way, but among those closest to God were several Soldiers of the Cross. These examples all show a long continued inner turmoil
and struggle rewarded in due course by that special gift that Eternity offers to the most faithful.

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His heart leapt for joy

“Now after I had received that opening from the Lord that to be trained at Oxford or Cambridge was not enough to equip a man to be a minister of Christ, I respected the priests less, and looked more after the dissenting Christians. And among them I saw there was some tenderness, and many of them came afterwards to be convinced, for they had some openings from God. But as I had forsaken all the priests, so I left the separatist Preachers, also, together with those called the most experienced people. For I saw there was no one among them all who could speak to my condition. And when all my hope in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could I even tell what to do, then, Oh then, I heard a voice which said, “There is one — even Christ Jesus — who can speak to thy condition!” And when I heard it, my heart leapt for joy. Then the Lord showed me why there was no one on the earth who could speak to my condition. The reason was that I was to give him all the glory. For all are concluded under sin, and shut up in unbelief as I had been, so that Jesus Christ might have the pre-eminence, as the one who enlightens, and gives grace, faith and power. So, when God works, who shall prevent it? And I knew this experimentally through my experiences.”"
(From the Journal of George Fox)
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The Loss of the Burden in Pilgrims Progress

The Loss of the Burden in Pilgrim's ProgressChristian is at the Cross; his burden is cast off (at the lower left of the picture):
"To take my cross up day by day,
And serve the Lord with fear.
Now I saw in my dream, that they went on,
and Great-Heart before them. So they went,
and came to the place where Christian's
burden fell off his back and tumbled into a
sepulchre. Here then they made a pause; and
here also they blessed God."
(from Pilgrim's Progress)

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His Heart was strangely warmed

.John Wesley was a super-Christian at Oxford. He demanded rigorous adherence to certain practices, carried out by his disciples; they were called methodists.
Once ordained he went to Georgia to save the heathen, but he came to realize that
he needed salvation himself.

Returning to England there was a terrible storm at sea and everyone quailed with fear for their lives; everyone that is except a group of Moravians who continued in prayer and showed great equanimity.

Back in London Wesley continued to worry about his salvation until, in 1738:
"In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."

He was generally considered to be the greatest man in the 18th century and was thought by many to have saved England from Revolution.
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The Truchsessian Museum

The Enlightenment of William Blake was on this wise:
"O lovely Felpham, parent of Immortal Friendship, to thee I am eternally
indebted for my three years rest from perturbation and the strength I now
enjoy. Suddenly, on the day after visiting the Truchsessian Gallery of
pictures, I was again enlightened with the light I enjoyed in my youth, and
which has for exactly twenty years been closed from me as by a door and by window-shutters. Consequently I can, with confidence, promise you ocular demonstration of my altered state on the plates I am now engraving after
Romney, whose spiritual aid has not a little conduced to my restoration to
the light of Art." (Erdman 756)
He wrote this in Letter 51 (To William Hayley) 23 October 1804.

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Renunciation

".....Albert Schweitzer's biography of J. S. Bach, written in 1905, had also proved an immediate success. At 30 years of age Schweitzer was tall, broad-shouldered, darkly handsome, and a witty, charismatic writer, preacher, and lecturer: clearly, a bright future lay before him. However, one spring morning in 1905, he experienced a stunning religious revelation: it came to him that at some point in the years just ahead he must renounce facile success and devote himself unsparingly to the betterment of mankind's condition.

Accordingly, several years later, Schweitzer threw over his several careers as author, lecturer, and organ recitalist and plunged into the study of medicine - his aim being to go to Africa as a medical missionary. He won his medical degree in 1912. The year before, he had married Helene Bresslau, a professor's daughter who had studied nursing in order to work at his side in Africa; in 1919 the couple had a daughter, Rhena.

In 1913 the Schweitzers journeyed to what was then French Equatorial Africa. There, after various setbacks, they founded the Albert Schweitzer Hospital at Lambaréné, on the Ogooué River, "at the edge of the primeval forest." This area now lies within the independent West African republic of Gabon. Funds were scarce and equipment primitive, but native Africans thronged to the site, and in the decades that followed, many thousands were treated." (From Answers.Com)