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.
For a hypertext version of this post click here.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
BLAKE & HIS READER
Blake's Sublime Allegory, Essays on The Four Zoas, Milton, & Jerusalem, Edited by Stuart Curran & Joseph Anthony Wittreich, Jr. is an excellent book to add to your library or download to your computer. Of interest is Roger R. Easson's essay, Blake and His Reader in Jerusalem.
In attempting to assist Blake students in making sense out of Jerusalem, Roger Easson says that "Jerusalem may be read as a poem about the experience of reading Jerusalem; it is a poem which enjoins the reader to participate in the creative process." Easson uses Blake's metaphor of the Golden String to demonstrate that the reader is expected to break down his dependence of reasoning and analysis in trying to work his way through the labyrinth or Jerusalem.
"...recalling the string metaphor in the Theseus myth, where Ariadne shows Theseus how to escape from the labyrinth after he has killed the Minotaur - he is to wind up the ball of string he unwound as he entered. Traditionally, the guide gives the ball of string to the adventurer as he enters the confusion of the labyrinth. Here however, Blake hands the reader the end of the string, which is unwound, indicating that the reader is in the depths of the labyrinth already. In this case, though, to follow the mythic parallel to its conclusion, before the reader can wind up the ball of string, he must conquer his spiritual Minotaur, the selfhood. At that point, winding the string may, in fact lead 'in Heavens gate,/Built in Jerusalem's wall'; for he will then be traveling in the 'Spirit of Jesus' which is 'continual forgiveness of Sin.' If however the reader does not subdue the selfhood, then the essential task enjoined by the metaphor - the destruction of the Minotaur - is unfulfilled and the reader succumbs to the selfhood, leaving Jerusalem a literary puzzle without solution.
As we have noted before, Jerusalem mirrors the state of the reader; and if the reader is still dominated by the spectral reason when he attempts to thread his way through the verbal maze, then he will be led deeper and deeper into the enigma, into the darkness of Blake's allegoric night." ( page 314).
AMERICA, Plate 11
Easson's view is that Blake's aim is to transform the accusing, rational reader to the forgiving, faithful reader by altering his perception.
On our blog we have often returned to the metaphors of Golden String from the 77th plate of Jerusalem. Read more.
Heaven's Gate in Jerusalem's Wall
Ariadne's Thread
Return to the Fount of Life
Door to Heaven
Following the String
The Gate in the Arlington Tempera
In attempting to assist Blake students in making sense out of Jerusalem, Roger Easson says that "Jerusalem may be read as a poem about the experience of reading Jerusalem; it is a poem which enjoins the reader to participate in the creative process." Easson uses Blake's metaphor of the Golden String to demonstrate that the reader is expected to break down his dependence of reasoning and analysis in trying to work his way through the labyrinth or Jerusalem.
"...recalling the string metaphor in the Theseus myth, where Ariadne shows Theseus how to escape from the labyrinth after he has killed the Minotaur - he is to wind up the ball of string he unwound as he entered. Traditionally, the guide gives the ball of string to the adventurer as he enters the confusion of the labyrinth. Here however, Blake hands the reader the end of the string, which is unwound, indicating that the reader is in the depths of the labyrinth already. In this case, though, to follow the mythic parallel to its conclusion, before the reader can wind up the ball of string, he must conquer his spiritual Minotaur, the selfhood. At that point, winding the string may, in fact lead 'in Heavens gate,/Built in Jerusalem's wall'; for he will then be traveling in the 'Spirit of Jesus' which is 'continual forgiveness of Sin.' If however the reader does not subdue the selfhood, then the essential task enjoined by the metaphor - the destruction of the Minotaur - is unfulfilled and the reader succumbs to the selfhood, leaving Jerusalem a literary puzzle without solution.
As we have noted before, Jerusalem mirrors the state of the reader; and if the reader is still dominated by the spectral reason when he attempts to thread his way through the verbal maze, then he will be led deeper and deeper into the enigma, into the darkness of Blake's allegoric night." ( page 314).
AMERICA, Plate 11
Easson's view is that Blake's aim is to transform the accusing, rational reader to the forgiving, faithful reader by altering his perception.
On our blog we have often returned to the metaphors of Golden String from the 77th plate of Jerusalem. Read more.
Heaven's Gate in Jerusalem's Wall
Ariadne's Thread
Return to the Fount of Life
Door to Heaven
Following the String
The Gate in the Arlington Tempera
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Blake's Myth IV
Blake had read Taylors' translation of Apuleius' Marriage of Cupid and Psyche. (Blake could not have read Bullfinch's version , but that may be easier for us to begin on.)
As you read 4Z it becomes more and more apparent that Tirzah is the type of Vala fallen. Jerusalem represent's Vala redeemed.
(4Z is a notebook; Jerusalem is a magnificent (and very long!) poem.)
In her discussion of Blake's use of Cupid and Psyche Raine refers us to a passage in Night ii of The Four Zoas:
- "And I commanded the Great deep to hide her in his hand.
Till she became a little weeping Infant a span long
I carried her in my bosom as a man carries a lamb
I loved her I gave her all my soul & my delight
I hid her in soft gardens & in secret bowers of Summer
Weaving mazes of delight along the sunny Paradise
Inextricable labyrinths, She bore me sons & daughters
And they have taken her away & hid her from my sight." (E317)
This is a "paradise of shadows" (Raine 24). Blake described here the coming of an eternal soul into generation, which in Blake's myth is always a misfortune. (However in this (long!) poem Blake provided a creative rational for 'generation' (the descent of the soul).
In this passage Luvah has (more or less) created Vala, and then (for an unknown reason here) found himself shut off from her and she from him.
Cupid provides a magnificent house for Psyche, and Luvah does the same thing for Vala, just as Solomon had done (your house is traditionally a symbol of your body). Cupid, Luvah, Solomon build houses for Psyche, Vala, and the Shulamite respectively. They made a house for them, just as God makes a house for us all.Here is
Pysche's House from Apuleius
- "And when she had refreshed her selfe sufficiently with sleepe, she rose with a more quiet and pacified minde, and fortuned to espy a pleasant wood invironed with great and mighty trees. Shee espied likewise a running river as cleare as crystall : in the midst of the wood well nigh at the fall of the river was a princely Edifice, wrought and builded not by the art or hand of man, but by the mighty power of God : and you would judge at the first entry therin, that it were some pleasant and worthy mansion for the powers of heaven. For the embowings above were of Citron and Ivory, propped and undermined with pillars of gold, the walls covered and seeled with silver, divers sorts of beasts were graven and carved, that seemed to encounter with such as entered in. All things were so curiously and finely wrought, that it seemed either to be the worke of some Demy god, or of God himselfe. The pavement was all of pretious stones, divided and cut one from another, whereon was carved divers kindes of pictures, in such sort that blessed and thrice blessed were they that might goe upon such a pavement : Every part and angle of the house was so well adorned, that by reason of the pretious stones and inestimable treasure there, it glittered and shone in such sort, that the chambers, porches, and doores gave light as it had beene the Sunne."
And here are the words of Vala:
- "My Luvah here hath placd me in a Sweet & pleasant Land
And given me fruits & pleasant waters & warm hills & cool valleys
Here will I build myself a house & here Ill call on his name
Here Ill return when I am weary & take my pleasant rest
So spoke the Sinless Soul and laid her head on the downy fleece
Of a curld Ram who stretchd himself in sleep beside his mistress
And soft sleep fell upon her eyelids in the silent noon of day
Then Luvah passed by & saw the sinless Soul
And said Let a pleasant house arise to be the dwelling place
Of this immortal Spirit growing in lower Paradise
He spoke & pillars were builded & walls as white as ivory
The grass she slept upon was pavd with pavement as of pearl. Beneath her rose a downy bed & a cieling coverd all"
(Night 9 of 4Z 128:20-33; quoted by Raine on page 26)
The pleasant house has the symbolic meaning of the Beloved's (that's us!) body. In the Song of Solomon we have this duet:
- Solomon: "If she is a wall, we will build towers of silver on her. If she is a door, we will enclose her with panels of cedar."
Shulamite: "I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers. Thus I have become in his eyes like one bringing contentment." Song of Solomon 8:9-10
Each of these three ladies (Psyche, Vala, and the Shulamite) mourns the absence of her husband. Each lady's husband acts as a surrogate for God. Descending into mortal life is a downer that stays with us until the mortal end.
With a rhapsodic verse from the Song of Solomon re his "beloved" in Blake and Tradition (but not Blake and Antiquity) Raine makes for us an extremely significant revelation:
- 6:4 "Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem,"
(4Z is a notebook; Jerusalem is a magnificent (and very long!) poem.)
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
DEAR MOTHER
Songs of Experience, Song 45, (E 26)
The Little Vagabond
"Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold,
But the Ale-house is healthy & pleasant & warm;
Besides I can tell where I am use'd well,
Such usage in heaven will never do well.
But if at the Church they would give us some Ale.
And a pleasant fire, our souls to regale;
We'd sing and we'd pray, all the live-long day;
Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray,
Then the Parson might preach & drink & sing.
And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring:
And modest dame Lurch, who is always at Church,
Would not have bandy children nor fasting nor birch.
And God like a father rejoicing to see,
His children as pleasant and happy as he:
Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the Barrel
But kiss him & give him both drink and apparel."
The gentle father welcomes the penitent son in the picture for The Little Vagabond but the poem is not about Luke's story (verses 11-32) of the prodigal being welcomed home by a forgiving father. It is about the need for forgiveness, and becoming aware of the need to be forgiven on the part of the church. If a penitent is to be received into the arms of the father, it is the church.
"Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold," addresses the poem to the mother church herself, the church of the world. Blake was not known to be a church attender; his membership was in the Church Eternal, the Body of Christ which is the Church Universal.
He found fault with a worldly church which was cold, judgmental, exclusive and cruel. The name of the poem which is not overtly about a vagabond, calls our attention to the outsider, the lost and needy whom the church in Blake's day (as in our own day) neglected and rejected.
The Gentle Father's desire is to take into his arms not only the vagabonds and outcasts, but a church who is becoming a true expression of Christ's Body.
The Little Vagabond
"Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold,
But the Ale-house is healthy & pleasant & warm;
Besides I can tell where I am use'd well,
Such usage in heaven will never do well.
But if at the Church they would give us some Ale.
And a pleasant fire, our souls to regale;
We'd sing and we'd pray, all the live-long day;
Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray,
Then the Parson might preach & drink & sing.
And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring:
And modest dame Lurch, who is always at Church,
Would not have bandy children nor fasting nor birch.
And God like a father rejoicing to see,
His children as pleasant and happy as he:
Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the Barrel
But kiss him & give him both drink and apparel."
The gentle father welcomes the penitent son in the picture for The Little Vagabond but the poem is not about Luke's story (verses 11-32) of the prodigal being welcomed home by a forgiving father. It is about the need for forgiveness, and becoming aware of the need to be forgiven on the part of the church. If a penitent is to be received into the arms of the father, it is the church.
"Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold," addresses the poem to the mother church herself, the church of the world. Blake was not known to be a church attender; his membership was in the Church Eternal, the Body of Christ which is the Church Universal.
He found fault with a worldly church which was cold, judgmental, exclusive and cruel. The name of the poem which is not overtly about a vagabond, calls our attention to the outsider, the lost and needy whom the church in Blake's day (as in our own day) neglected and rejected.
The Gentle Father's desire is to take into his arms not only the vagabonds and outcasts, but a church who is becoming a true expression of Christ's Body.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Blake's Myth III
(Kathleen Raines' book Blake and Tradition gives a good source for interpretation of the Cave of the Nymphs. A condensation of Raines' great work may be found at Blake and Antiquity, which contains considerable stuff on The Sea of Time and Space.
Three things stand out prominently in this wonderful picture:
On the right is the cave of the nymphs who conduct innocent souls by the northern gate down into mortal life.
Below the cave spread across the bottom is the Sea of Time and Space.
On the upper left you see a representation of the Heavenly Realm.
Homer wrote about the Cave of the Nymphs in the 13th book of the Odyssey:
- At the head of this harbour there is a large olive tree, and at no great distance a fine overarching cavern sacred to the nymphs who are called Naiads. There are mixing bowls within it and wine-jars of stone, and the bees hive there. Moreover, there are great looms of stone on which the nymphs weave their robes of sea purple--very curious to see--and at all times there is water within it. It has two entrances, one facing North by which mortals can go down into the cave, while the other comes from the South and is more mysterious; mortals cannot possibly get in by it, it is the way taken by the gods.
The Arlington Tempera contains virtually all of the items in Homer's description. Blake faithfully followed Homer in furnishing his cave. The Naiads use the mixing bowls and stone jars to prepare provisions for the descending souls. On the looms the nymphs weave bodies for them; the purple indicates these bodies contain blood.
Blake loved the looms and used them repeatedly in his prophecies; in his larger prophecies he described the "nymphs" as vicious wicked women; in fact there are pages of these wicked women.
(The feminine of course connotes the earthly (under the moon), and the masculine heavenly (under the sun) (As offensive as this may be to many readers, I don't know any help for it. It might be considered the guideline that men used in their subjugation of women. Blake wasn't responsible; he adopted all the ancient symbols, including this one.)
Blake's picture portrays the two realms, connected by two passsages, sometimes called gates or bars or stairs. The picture shows them as stairs. The prominent gate on the right, called the northern bar, is especially rich in symbols that Blake used over and over as he wrote, etched, drew and painted.
Immediately to the left of the northern gate is the southern gate of 'return' where worthy mortals ascend into the higher realm of Eternity.
In the upper part of the picture the nymphs prepare souls for the descent into the "sea of time and space". The northern gate is filled with a stream, the current moving downward into the sea.
Blake shows two souls scheduled for mortal life; each possesses a tub or pail which the nymphs prepared for them containing spiritual truth and power for the hazardous journey into the world.
At the bottom of the cave one of these 'women' lies in the water blissfully asleep; her tub is turned on its side, all the spiritual things spilled and replaced by the water of mortal life.
The other woman has carefully protected her pail and against the opposition of the nymphs turned decisively back toward the higher realm; following Heraclitus she may be said to be a dry soul. (This scene evokes Jesus' story of the wise and foolish virgins. The dry soul also suggests Thel, who crossed the northern bar, but drew back in horror at the miry clay ahead. The two imaginary humans represent the choices that each of us make every moment: to go the heavenly way or the worldly way, the two ways that Jesus spoke of ).
In the symbolic language water denotes matter, the inferior, the worldly. Souls in the higher realm are attracted by the moisture. 'Time and space' is a sea where mortal creatures suffer adventures that may be creative or destructive.
Similar and closely related to dry and moist souls are those awake and those sleeping (this runs like a current throughout the Bible and through Blake as well.)
The River of Adonis in the cave issues into the Sea of Time and Space (one of the common titles of Blake's tempera). There is (relatively) little to report about the sea; it's just about life, about my life and your life and every brother or sister's life.
But emerging from the sea we find Odysseus, the hero of Homer's Odyssey on the near shore; with his back to the shore he is putting something in the water: in accordance with Leucothea's instructions he is returning her (magic) girdle which she had lent him so he could swim ashore. In the distance Leucothea appears getting her girdle and dissolving "in a spiral of radiant cloud" (Blake and Antiquity page 6).
Behind Odysseus stands his protector goddess, Athena (or Luvah or Jesus) pointing him to the courts above.
(The return of Odysseus to his home closely parallels Elijah's ascent on the fiery chariot into Heaven, and of course the Ascension of Our Lord. The thing to remember is that rather than material events these are metaphors. Our metaphors are spacious and temporal; not so in Eternity.)
The upper left of the picture shows God upon a chariot, driven by the four zoas and surrounded by the immortals. God appears to be a right sleepy god; the import is that it's the inner God who goes to sleep when the soul finds the couch of death and awakens to mortal life (Blake and Antiquity page 15). Raine quotes from The Gates of Paradise:
"My Eternal Man set in Repose
The Female from his darkness rose"
Once you've grasped the whole of this story you may notice how closely it parallels the primary Bible myth of Creation, Fall and eventual Redemption. It's the old, old story, and in the end there's only one story. (Jesus gave us an abbreviated version of it with The Prodigal Son.)
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Blake's Myth: The Beginning and the Fall
Originally you were only an Idea in the mind of Your Maker. In the
Beginning, Like the Nymphs of you came down the Northern
Gate to a Life of Joy and Woe into the Sea of Time and Space (you
put on the garment, or entered the Tent (or Grave); the Garment, the
Tent, the Sea is the World in which we find ourselves: (Ulro)).
But before that happened completely, you lived a Life of Innocence
when you were still One (still a part of the Infinite Oneness of Eternal
Reality). People exposed to Blake rarely get beyond the Songs of
Innocence-- loved by everyone.
We might say that Blake remained writing songs of innocence until
about the time he was married.
Beginning, Like the Nymphs of you came down the Northern
Gate to a Life of Joy and Woe into the Sea of Time and Space (you
put on the garment, or entered the Tent (or Grave); the Garment, the
Tent, the Sea is the World in which we find ourselves: (Ulro)).
But before that happened completely, you lived a Life of Innocence
when you were still One (still a part of the Infinite Oneness of Eternal
Reality). People exposed to Blake rarely get beyond the Songs of
Innocence-- loved by everyone.
We might say that Blake remained writing songs of innocence until
about the time he was married.
JERUSALEM'S SORROW
Illustration of Robert Blair's The Grave (1808), painted by William Blake and engraved by Luigi Schiavonetti.
I've tried to discern what Blake is saying psychologically in this passage about Jerusalem. It seems he is describing the awakening of an archetype from the unconscious. The idea of Jerusalem existed in a mind which was unified, in which there was no duality, in which the contraries were equally true. Blake is describing his vision of Eternity or of the unconscious when he talks of 'sports of intellect', 'Thunder in the midst of kindness', 'love that kills', death 'for a period.'
Jerusalem, Plate 48, (E 196)
"Beneath the bottoms of the Graves, which is Earths central joint,
There is a place where Contrarieties are equally true:
(To protect from the Giant blows in the sports of intellect,
Thunder in the midst of kindness, & love that kills its beloved:
Because Death is for a period, and they renew tenfold.)
From this sweet Place Maternal Love awoke Jerusalem
With pangs she forsook Beulah's pleasant lovely shadowy Universe
Where no dispute can come; created for those who Sleep.
Weeping was in all Beulah, and all the Daughters of Beulah
Wept for their Sister the Daughter of Albion, Jerusalem:
When out of Beulah the Emanation of the Sleeper descended
With solemn mourning out of Beulahs moony shades and hills:
Within the Human Heart, whose Gates closed with solemn sound.
And this the manner of the terrible Separation
The Emanations of the grievously afflicted Friends of Albion
Concenter in one Female form an Aged pensive Woman.
Astonish'd! lovely! embracing the sublime shade: the Daughters of Beulah
Beheld her with wonder! With awful hands she took
A Moment of Time, drawing it out with many tears & afflictions
And many sorrows: oblique across the Atlantic Vale
Which is the Vale of Rephaim dreadful from East to West,
Where the Human Harvest waves abundant in the beams of Eden
Into a Rainbow of jewels and gold, a mild Reflection from
Albions dread Tomb. Eight thousand and five hundred years
In its extension. Every two hundred years has a door to Eden
She also took an Atom of Space, with dire pain opening it a Center
Into Beulah: trembling the Daughters of Beulah dried
Her tears. she ardent embrac'd her sorrows. occupied in labours
Of sublime mercy in Rephaims Vale. Perusing Albions Tomb
She sat: she walk'd among the ornaments solemn mourning.
The Daughters attended her shudderings, wiping the death sweat
Los also saw her in his seventh Furnace, he also terrified
Saw the finger of God go forth upon his seventh Furnace:
Away from the Starry Wheels to prepare Jerusalem a place.
When with a dreadful groan the Emanation mild of Albion.
Burst from his bosom in the Tomb like a pale snowy cloud,
Female and lovely, struggling to put off the Human form
Writhing in pain. The Daughters of Beulah in kind arms reciev'd
Jerusalem: weeping over her among the Spaces of Erin,
In the Ends of Beulah, where the Dead wail night & day."
The awakening of Jerusalem is a way to express the differentiation of her archetype from the undifferentiated, fluid, malleable, expandable unconscious. The pangs she suffered as the 'forsook' the 'shadow Universe' are indicative of the struggle to bring content from the unconscious to the conscious mind. The gates of the unconscious closed behind her; passage between the two is restricted. Entering the conscious mind exposes the archetype to time and space which were unknown in the unconscious. Jerusalem whose character is developed as Unified Man's spiritual awareness is being given form, the Human Form. The conscious mind can now begin to understand the meaning of the archetype, how it functions, what it brings to the totality.
Los has a fond appreciation for Jerusalem which he expresses on Plate 86:
Jerusalem, PLATE 86, (E 244)
"I see thy Form O lovely mild Jerusalem, Wingd with Six Wings
In the opacous Bosom of the Sleeper, lovely Three-fold
In Head & Heart & Reins, three Universes of love & beauty
Thy forehead bright: Holiness to the Lord, with Gates of pearl
Reflects Eternity beneath thy azure wings of feathery down
Ribbd delicate & clothd with featherd gold & azure & purple
From thy white shoulders shadowing, purity in holiness!"
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