William Blake 1757 1827 I cannot think of
William Blake 1757 -1827
I cannot think of death as more than the going out of one room into another.
Biographical Highlights I must Create a System or be enlsav’d by another Man’s’; I will not Reason and Compare: my Business Is to Create. Visions Dissenter Autodidact Artist Nervous Fear
Without contraries is no progression. Ratio and Poetic Genius Memory and Inspiration Innocence and Experience Heaven and Hell Finite and Infinite Division and Integration
There Is No Natural Religion (1788) [a] [b] The Argument. Man has no notion of moral fitness but from Education. Naturally he is only a natural organ subject to Sense. I. Man’s perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception; he percieves more than sense (tho’ ever so acute) can discover. I. Man cannot naturally Percieve but through his natural or bodily organs. II. Reason, or the ratio of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more. II. Man by his reasoning power can only compare & judge of what he has already perciev’d. III [lacking] III. From a perception of only 3 senses or 3 elements none could deduce a fourth or fifth. IV. The bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round even of a universe would soon become a mill with complicated wheels. IV. None could have other than natural or organic thoughts if he had none but organic perceptions. V. If the many become the same as the few when possess’d, More! is the cry of a mistaken soul. Less than All cannot satisfy Man. V. Man's desires are limited by his perceptions; none can desire what he has not perciev'd. VI. If any could desire what he is incapable of possessing, despair must be his eternal lot. VI. The desires & perceptions of man, untaught by any thing but organs of sense, must be limited to objects of sense. VII. The desire of Man being Infinite, the possession is Infinite & himself Infinite. Application. He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God. He who sees the Ratio only sees himself only. Conclusion. If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character the Philosophic & Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things, & stand still unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over again. Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is.
Songs of Innocence (1789)
Introduction Piping down the valleys wild Piper sit thee down and write Piping songs of pleasant glee In a book that all may read— On a cloud I saw a child. So he vanish'd from my sight. And he laughing said to me. And I pluck'd a hollow reed. Pipe a song about a Lamb; So I piped with merry chear, And I made a rural pen, And I stain'd the water clear, Piper pipe that song again— And I wrote my happy songs So I piped, he wept to hear. Every child may joy to hear Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe Sing thy songs of happy chear, So I sung the same again While he wept with joy to hear
Introduction Hear the voice of the Bard! O Earth return! Who Present, Past, & Future sees Arise from out the dewy grass; Whose ears have heard, Night is worn, The Holy Word, And the morn That walk'd among the ancient trees. Rises from the slumberous mass. Calling the lapsed Soul Turn away no more: And weeping in the evening dew: Why wilt thou turn away That might controll, The starry floor The starry pole; The watry shore And fallen light renew! Is giv'n thee till the break of day.
Earth’s Answer Earth rais'd up her head, Does spring hide its joy From the darkness dread & drear. When buds and blossoms grow? Her light fled: Does the sower? Stony dread! Sow by night? And her locks cover'd with grey despair. Or the plowman in darkness plow? Prison'd on watry shore Break this heavy chain, Starry Jealousy does keep my den That does freeze my bones around Cold and hoar Selfish! vain! Weeping o'er Eternal bane! I hear the Father of the ancient men That free Love with bondage bound. Selfish father of men Cruel, jealous, selfish fear Can delight Chain'd in night The virgins of youth and morning bear.
An example of Blake’s irony, “The Tyger”
Another Example, Book of Thel (1789)
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790 Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell THE VOICE OF THE DEVIL All Bibles or sacred codes, have been the causes of the following Errors. 1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul. 2. That Energy, call'd Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason, call'd Good, is alone from the Soul. 3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies. But the following Contraries to these are True. 1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age. 2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy. 3. Energy is Eternal Delight.
My Favorite Proverbs of Hell The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence. A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. Eternity is in love with the productions of time. Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion. The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. Exuberance is Beauty. Enough! or Too much!
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell. For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite, and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt. This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment. But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged: this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid. If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.
Blake’s Personal Mythology Blake created his own mythology beginning with America: A Prophecy, in 1793. He most fully developed his mythology—a stupendous mixture of his own visions with Gnosticism, Platonism, alchemy, and Jacob Boehme—in Milton and Jerusalem.
The Four Zoas THE FOUR ZOAS (Greek: living creatures) Unfallen (Living in creative [oppositional] harmony in Eternity or Eden) Urizen Luvah Tharmas Urthona Faculty Reason Passion Sensation Instinct Virtue Certainty Love Receptivity Creativity Vocation Ploughman Vintner Shepherd Blacksmith Tharmas Urthona Fallen (Existing in division in Space and Time) Urizen Luvah Form God, Priest, King Orc, Revolutionary Parent Power Los, Prophet Emanation Ahania Vala Enion Enitharmon Character Tyranny Rebellion Chaos Poetry
The Four Modes of Being Human: the highest state of perfection; the fourfold; all four zoas working together in creative harmony; androgyny; Edenic angle of vision; experience redeemed by innocence Emanation: the female portion of fallen man; the threefold; zoas at divisive odds with one another; male and female split asunder; the perspective of Beulah; innocence on threshold of Ulro or Eden Shadow: a repressed desire; the twofold; a forgotten zoa; associated with the repression of Generation, or natural instinct Spectre: the masculine portion of fallen man; controlling, tyrannical, jealous; the onefold; Urizen attempting to subdue what he fears; connected with Ulro
The Four Realms of Being Eden (Hebrew: paradise): eternity; region of life; four-fold humanity; place of mental warfare and hunting; creative opposition; “The Eternal Great Humanity Divine”; envisioned through “Poetic Genius” (Jesus); “inhabited” by the redeemed visionary Beulah (Hebrew: married land): the earthly garden; region of dream; threefold sexuality; place of rest; all opposites are equal; “Realms/ Of Terror & moony lustre. . . soft sexual delusions of varied beauty, to light the wanderer and repose/ His burning thirst & freezing hunger!”; pictured by the pastoral poet (Wordsworth); inhabited by children, dreamers, weary men, nurturing women Generation: organic nature; region of vegetative life and death; twofold instinct; place of struggle for existence; opposition between life and death; “the Vegetative Power”; observed by the “biologist”; inhabited by the natural man (Rousseau’s noble savage) Ulro (Greek ur=tail plus lo): inanimate matter; region of atoms in the void; onefold waste; place of destructive warfare; opposition between oppressor and oppressed; “Indefinite Druid rocks & snows of doubt & reasoning”; mapped by the Newtonian physicist, the tyrant, the priest; inhabited by Druids
The Three Classes of Men The Elect: those believing in predestined salvation or damnation; the pious, the orthodox, the “goody-goody”; Satan in Milton; the villain (sneaking serpent walking in mild humility) in Marriage of Heaven and Hell; the negative The Redeemed: those struggling to redeem a fallen world; the artist working within society, trying to reform it; Palamabron in Milton; the just, meek man in Marriage of Heaven and Hell; a contrary to the reprobate The Reprobate: those denouncing an corrupt world; the prophet in the wilderness forecasting destruction (John the Baptist); Rintrah in Milton and Marriage of Heaven and Hell; a contrary to the redeemed
Further Reading Peter Ackroyd, Blake Donald Ault, Visionary Physics: Blake’s Response to Newton G. E. Bentley, Jr. , Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake Harold Bloom, Blake’s Apocalypse S. Foster Damon, A Blake Dictionary Leo Damrosch, Eternity’s Sunrise: The Imaginative World of William Blake David V. Erdman, Blake: Prophet Against Empire Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry: A Study in William Blake W. J. T. Mitchell, Blake’s Composite Art: A Study of the Illuminated Poetry Kathleen Raine, Blake and Tradition E. P. Thompson, Witness Against the Beast: Blake and Moral Law Wilson, Eric G. , My Business Is to Create: Blake’s Infinite Writing
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