MEMORABLE FANCY

Harvard University, Houghton Library

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Plate 4, Copy G

The overall goal of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was to break down habitual patterns of thought which orthodox teachings instill. Blake used unorthodox techniques to tear down our paradigns of thinking which limit and restrict our ability to develop out imaginations. How better to teach us to think imaginatively than to display his own ability to create a work which introduces fresh and shocking means of writing poetry. He identified himself with the Devils instead of with the Angels; he provided the Proverbs of Hell to give question to traditional good advice; he created scenarios which invert accepted roles with which we identify. We may be left a bit confused but willing to consider whether "every thing that lives is Holy."

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 6, (E 35)

"A Memorable Fancy.                        

   As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the 
enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and
insanity. I collected some of their Proverbs: thinking that as
the sayings used in a nation, mark its character, so the Proverbs
of Hell, shew the nature of Infernal wisdom better than any
description of buildings or garments.
   When I came home; on the abyss of the five senses, where a
flat  sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty
Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock,
with cor[PL 7]roding fires he wrote the following sentence now
percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth. 

   How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
   Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?"

In Blake's Apocalypse Harold Bloom sheads light on Blake's statements in the above passage. On page 82 he states:

"To walk among those fires is to compose a poem or engrave a picture, and to collect the Proverbs of Hell, as Blake proceeds to do, is to express the laws of artistic creation in a series of aphorisms.  When Blake came home from his proverb-collecting "...on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds: hovering on the sides of the rock, with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth.    

How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,   

Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?"

Bloom, on page 83, continues to expand our understanding of Blake's poetic
language:

"The Devil is the artist William Blake, at work engraving the Marriage, and the 
corroding fires refer metaphorically both to his engraving technique and the satiric 
function of the Marriage. The flat sided steep, frowning over the present world, is 
fallen human consciousness... The stony cavern of the mind has been broken open 
by Blake's art; the imagination rises from the mind's abyss and seeks the more 
expanded senses than the five making up that abyss.
...The idea of raising our intensity of perception and so triumphing over nature 
through nature is the central idea of the Proverbs of Hell."