LIKE A BEAST

British Museum

Illustrations to Young's Night Thoughts

The King and the Corpse: Tales of the Soul's Conquest of Evil, by Heinrich Zimmer, Edited by Joseph Campbell attempts to provide means through which the reader can 'converse with the fascinating figures of folklore and myth.' Zimmer seeks to give opportunities to delight in encountering the 'well known symbols of life.'

Included in the book is the fifteenth century legend of Saint John Chrysostom who was the fourth century bishop of Constantinople. John was brought up by a pope to be the vehicle for relieving the suffering of a man in hell who had appealed to the pope. The innocent John was ordained a priest at the age of sixteen in order to offer masses for the condemned man. Realizing that his youth disqualified him communing with God as an intermediary for others, John withdrew to the wilderness to live as a hermit. 

However when a girl appeared at his cell he allowed her in and he fell into sin. His remorse drove him to push the girl over a cliff, committing a worse sin. He sought forgiveness from the pope who had raised him like a son but he received only condemnation. Returning to the wilderness he resolved to live on all-fours like a beast until God would accept his atonement.

Years later through another miraculous intervention John was released to resume his priestly role and become a bishop 'serving God with the utmost devotion.'

On page 62 Zimmer wrote:

"He comprehended that the highest human office - that of communicating with God and dispensing God's grace in the form of the Eucharist - was meant to be held not by an 'innocent' but by one who had had 'experience.' 'I am yet too young! This must be very much against the Heavenly will.'...And the required experience John subsequently learned, was of those dark and evil forces which it is the virtue of the Holy Sacrament to overcome. The young priest's feeling of unworthiness sent him to the wilderness - but it was the wilderness of life. 

...John's intuitive realization of his actual spiritual state and the sincere humility of his character prevent his seduction. His genius knows how important it is to integrate the wisdom of the dark powers from which he has been defended both by his clerical upbringing and by the innocence of his unassuming nature. Yet he cannot anticipate the humiliations, suffering and iniquities that the rugged path of integration through experience is going to entail. Nobody can ever anticipate such things...Such ignorance is basic - not only basic, actually salutary; for without it there can be no fructifying impact of experience, no 'new thing,' to take root, grow up, and mature through life into wisdom. Only he who is honestly ignorant can grow really wise."   

---

Four Zoas, Night VI, Page 72, (E 349)

  "O thou poor ruind world   
Thou horrible ruin once like me thou wast all glorious
And now like me partaking desolate thy masters lot
Art thou O ruin the once glorious heaven are these thy rocks
Where joy sang in the trees & pleasure sported on the rivers
Page 73 
And laughter sat beneath the Oaks & innocence sported round
Upon the green plains & sweet friendship met in palaces
And books & instruments of song & pictures of delight
Where are they whelmd beneath these ruins in horrible destruction                                                t
And if Eternal falling I repose on the dark bosom              
Of winds & waters or thence fall into a Void where air
Is not down falling thro immensity ever & ever
I lose my powers weakend every revolution till a death
Shuts up my powers then a seed in the vast womb of darkness
I dwell in dim oblivion. brooding over me the Enormous worlds    
Reorganize me shooting forth in bones & flesh & blood
I am regenerated to fall or rise at will or to remain
A labourer of ages a dire discontent a living woe
Wandring in vain. Here will I fix my foot & here rebuild
Here Mountains of Brass promise much riches in their dreadful bosoms

So he began to dig forming of gold silver & iron  
And brass vast instruments to measure out the immense & fix
The whole into another world better suited to obey
His will where none should dare oppose his will himself being King
Of All & all futurity be bound in his vast chain" 

 ALL RELIGIONS are ONE, (E 1)  

 "The Voice of one crying in the Wilderness

  The Argument    As the true method of knowledge is experiment
the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty which
experiences.  This faculty I treat of." 

Four Zoas, Night II, Page 35, (E 325)

"What is the price of Experience do men buy it for a song
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath his house his wife his children
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy
And in the witherd field where the farmer plows for bread in vain

It is an easy thing to triumph in the summers sun
And in the vintage & to sing on the waggon loaded with corn
It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted
To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer
Page 36 
To listen to the hungry ravens cry in wintry season
When the red blood is filld with wine & with the marrow of lambs

It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements
To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter house moan
To see a god on every wind & a blessing on every blast           
To hear sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies house
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field, & the sickness that cuts off his children
While our olive & vine sing & laugh round our door & our children bring fruits & flowers

Then the groan & the dolor are quite forgotten & the slave grinding at the mill
And the captive in chains & the poor in the prison, & the soldier in the field
When the shatterd bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead

It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity
Thus could I sing & thus rejoice, but it is not so with me!" 

Songs and Ballads, Notebook, (E 467)

"I saw a chapel all of gold
That none did dare to enter in
And many weeping stood without
Weeping mourning worshipping

I saw a serpent rise between               
The white pillars of the door
And he forcd & forcd & forcd
Down the golden hinges tore    

And along the pavement sweet
Set with pearls & rubies bright                    
All his slimy length he drew
Till upon the altar white

Vomiting his poison out
On the bread & on the wine
So I turnd into a sty                                  
And laid me down among the swine"

Annotations to Swedenborg's Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, (E602) 

  "Understanding or Thought is not natural to Man it is
acquired by means of Suffering & Distress i.e Experience.  Will,
Desire, Love, Rage, Envy, & all other Affections are Natural. but
Understanding is Acquired   But Observe. without these is to be
less than Man.  Man could never have received light from
heaven without aid of the affections" 

---

More posts about episodes of Living Like A Beast:

Nebuchadnezzar

Seeking Oblivion 

Blake' Crisis 

MUNDANE SHELL

New York Public Library 

Milton

Plate 32

The Mundane Shell represents the skull which encloses the brain in which consciousness resides. It provides a field for interaction between exterior data and the processing through which the brain makes use of the data. Blake realized that the individual requires experience to evolve into an integrated being capable of discerning truth from falsehood, spirit from matter, eternity from time.  

Within the brain Blake discerned the Four Zoas, four ways which the brain had devised to make use of information it received. He was aware that his own brain was inclined to react to various input in any of these four ways.  

Blake saw Experience to be the tool provided for synthesizing four competing methods into a single cooperating unity. Each of Blake's Zoas travels a convoluted path because he is unable to discern the ways of thinking which are automatic to the other Zoas. Blake's solution is in 'offering of Self for Another': through 'forgiveness,' 'brotherhood' and 'every kindness.' Every part of ourselves must learn to give oneself for every other.

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 3, (E 34) 

" Without Contraries is no progression.  Attraction and
Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to
Human existence."

Songs of Innocence, Plate 9, (E 9) 

"And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love,
And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face      
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove." 

Jerusalem, Plate 96, (E 255)

"Jesus replied Fear not Albion unless I die thou canst not live
But if I die I shall arise again & thou with me            
This is Friendship & Brotherhood without it Man Is Not

So Jesus spoke! the Covering Cherub coming on in darkness
Overshadowd them & Jesus said Thus do Men in Eternity
One for another to put off by forgiveness, every sin

Albion replyd. Cannot Man exist without Mysterious          
Offering of Self for Another, is this Friendship & Brotherhood
I see thee in the likeness & similitude of Los my Friend

Jesus said. Wouldest thou love one who never died
For thee or ever die for one who had not died for thee
And if God dieth not for Man & giveth not himself           
Eternally for Man Man could not exist. for Man is Love:
As God is Love: every kindness to another is a little Death
In the Divine Image nor can Man exist but by Brotherhood"

Quote from Livewired, by David Eagleman, Page 20-21:

"[F]or humans at birth, the brain is remarkably unfinished, and interaction with the world is necessary to complete it... 

The flexibility of your brain allows the events of your life to stitch themselves directly into the neural fabric. Its a great trick on the part of Mother Nature...all from the seeds of a small collection of genes. Our DNA is not a blueprint: it is merely the first domino which kicks off the show.

[N]euronal networks require interaction with the world for their proper development."

Milton, Plate 17 [19], (E 110) 

"But Miltons Human Shadow continu'd journeying above
The rocky masses of The Mundane Shell; in the Lands
Of Edom & Aram & Moab & Midian & Amalek.                         

The Mundane Shell, is a vast Concave Earth: an immense
Hardend shadow of all things upon our Vegetated Earth
Enlarg'd into dimension & deform'd into indefinite space,
In Twenty-seven Heavens and all their Hells; with Chaos
And Ancient Night; & Purgatory. It is a cavernous Earth          
Of labyrinthine intricacy, twenty-seven folds of opakeness
And finishes where the lark mounts; here Milton journeyed
In that Region calld Midian among the Rocks of Horeb
For travellers from Eternity. pass outward to Satans seat,
But travellers to Eternity. pass inward to Golgonooza.           

Milton, Plate 34 [38], (E 134) 

"Around this Polypus Los continual builds the Mundane Shell

Four Universes round the Universe of Los remain Chaotic
Four intersecting Globes, & the Egg form'd World of Los
In midst; stretching from Zenith to Nadir, in midst of Chaos.
One of these Ruind Universes is to the North named Urthona       
One to the South this was the glorious World of Urizen
One to the East, of Luvah: One to the West; of Tharmas.
But when Luvah assumed the World of Urizen in the South
All fell towards the Center sinking downward in dire Ruin

Here in these Chaoses the Sons of Ololon took their abode"        

A Blake Dictionary by S Foster Damon states: "Los creates the mundane egg as a protection."

 Milton, Plate 25, (E 122)

"For in every Nation & every Family the Three Classes are born    
And in every Species of Earth, Metal, Tree, Fish, Bird & Beast.
We form the Mundane Egg, that Spectres coming by fury or amity
All is the same, & every one remains in his own energy"

Milton, Plate 2, (E 96) 

"Come into my hand    
By your mild power; descending down the Nerves of my right arm
From out the Portals of my Brain, where by your ministry
The Eternal Great Humanity Divine. planted his Paradise,
And in it caus'd the Spectres of the Dead to take sweet forms
In likeness of himself."

Milton, Plate 28 [30], (E 126) 

"Antamon takes them into his beautiful flexible hands,
As the Sower takes the seed, or as the Artist his clay
Or fine wax, to mould artful a model for golden ornaments,      
The soft hands of Antamon draw the indelible line:
Form immortal with golden pen; such as the Spectre admiring
Puts on the sweet form; then smiles Antamon bright thro his windows
The Daughters of beauty look up from their Loom & prepare.
The integument soft for its clothing with joy & delight."  Jerusalem, Plate 58, (E 208) 

Jerusalem, Plate 59, (E 208) 

"This Los formed into the Gates & mighty Wall, between the Oak    
Of Weeping & the Palm of Suffering beneath Albions Tomb,
Thus in process of time it became the beautiful Mundane Shell,
The Habitation of the Spectres of the Dead & the Place
Of Redemption & of awaking again into Eternity

For Four Universes round the Mundane Egg remain Chaotic          
One to the North; Urthona: One to the South; Urizen:
One to the East: Luvah: One to the West, Tharmas;
They are the Four Zoas that stood around the Throne Divine" 

 

THE ADOLECENT

            Fitzwilliam Museum

           Songs of Experience

              Garden of Love

Plate 44, Copy AA

Since adolescence is a period of transition between childhood and adulthood it requires many adjustments and adaptations. Few of us do not experience some trauma as we seek to cast aside values and behaviors which were suitable to the child but would be inappropriate to the mature person. We find our lives disrupted when we lose one set of standards before we find another which is reliable and trustworthy.  

We have been taught to live in certain ways by parents, teachers, and other authorities but must decide on the way that is harmonious with our inmost being if we are to live honestly and with authenticity. Here are some common experiences of adolescence which can be discerned in poems of Blake's Songs of Experience.

1 disillusion

2 realizing the end of childhood

3 facing harsh reality

4 alienation

5 confronting restraints 

6 readjusting value structure 

7 suffering consequences of non-conformity 

8 breaking sexual mores 

9 rejecting societies norms 

Disillusion 

Songs of Experience, Plate 32, (E 20)

"The CLOD & the PEBBLE         

Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hells despair.

     So sang a little Clod of Clay,  
     Trodden with the cattles feet:
     But a Pebble of the brook,
     Warbled out these metres meet.

Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to Its delight:
Joys in anothers loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heavens despite." 

Realizing the end of childhood 

Songs of Experience, Plate 38, (E 23)

"NURSES Song                          

When the voices of children, are heard on the green
And whisprings are in the dale:
The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind, 
My face turns green and pale.

Then come home my children, the sun is gone down
And the dews of night arise
Your spring & your day, are wasted in play
And your winter and night in disguise.

Facing harsh reality 

Songs of Experience, Plate 40, (E 23)
"THE FLY.                            

Little Fly
Thy summers play,              
My thoughtless hand            
Has brush'd away.               
 
Am not I 
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink & sing: 
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life                    
And strength & breath:
And the want                        
Of thought is death;

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die." 

Alienation  

Songs of Experience, Plate 44, (E 26) 

"The GARDEN of LOVE           
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen: 
A Chapel was built in the midst,  
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,  
And Thou shalt not. writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,            
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be: 
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires."

Confronting restraints 

Songs of Experience, Plate 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.

In every cry of every Man, 
In every Infants cry of fear,         
In every voice: in every ban,   
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear 

How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,     
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear 
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse"

Readjusting value structure 

Songs of Experience, Plate 47, (E 27)
"The Human Abstract.                 
 
Pity would be no more,        
If we did not make somebody Poor:  
And Mercy no more could be,
If all were as happy as we;

And mutual fear brings peace;
Till the selfish loves increase.
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.         

He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the ground with tears:
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;
And the Catterpiller and Fly,
Feed on the Mystery.

And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat; 
And the Raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.

The Gods of the earth and sea,
Sought thro' Nature to find this Tree
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brain"

Suffering consequences of non-conformity 

Songs of Experience, Plate 50, (E 28) 
"A Little BOY Lost                

Nought loves another as itself
Nor venerates another so.
Nor is it possible to Thought
A greater than itself to know:

And Father, how can I love you,      
Or any of my brothers more?          
I love you like the little bird     
That picks up crumbs around the door.

The Priest sat by and heard the child.
In trembling zeal he siez'd his hair: 
He led him by his little coat:            
And all admir'd the Priestly care.    

And standing on the altar high,   
Lo what a fiend is here! said he:
One who sets reason up for judge 
Of our most holy Mystery.

The weeping child could not be heard.
The weeping parents wept in vain:
They strip'd him to his little shirt.    
And bound him in an iron chain.          
And burn'd him in a holy place,          
Where many had been burn'd before:
The weeping parents wept in vain.
Are such things done on Albions shore."    

Breaking sexual mores 

Songs of Experience, Plate 51, (E 29) 
"A Little GIRL Lost

 Children of the future Age,
Reading this indignant page;
Know that in a former time.
Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime. 

In the Age of Gold,
Free from winters cold:
Youth and maiden bright,
To the holy light,
Naked in the sunny beams delight.

Once a youthful pair
Fill'd with softest care:
Met in garden bright,
Where the holy light,
Had just removd the curtains of the night.

There in rising day,
On the grass they play:
Parents were afar:
Strangers came not near:
And the maiden soon forgot her fear.

Tired with kisses sweet
They agree to meet,
When the silent sleep
Waves o'er heavens deep;
And the weary tired wanderers weep.

To her father white 
Came the maiden bright:
But his loving look,
Like the holy book,
All her tender limbs with terror shook.

Ona! pale and weak!
To thy father speak:
O the trembling fear!
O the dismal care!
That shakes the blossoms of my hoary hair" 

Rejecting societies norms 

Songs of Experience, Plate 55, (E 32) 
"A DIVINE IMAGE

[An early Song of Experience included in one late copy]  

Cruelty has a Human Heart
And Jealousy a Human Face
Terror, the Human Form Divine
And Secrecy, the Human Dress

The Human Dress, is forged Iron
The Human Form, a fiery Forge.
The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd
The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge."  

Fitzwilliam Museum

Songs of Experience

Nurses Song

Plate 38, copy AA

Fitzwilliam Museum

Songs of Experience

Human Abstract

Plate 47, copy AA

 

SUFFERING

Small Book of Designs

from Book of Urizen, Plate 11

Object 19

"I sought Pleasure and found Pain/Unutterable"

 In his conversations with Crabb Robinson, Blake revealed more of himself than was stated in his poetry or in his visual images. He tried to express himself in language that Robinson could understand but it was usually a losing battle. Fortunately Robinson attempted to record Blake's words although the meaning was often opaque to him.

Blake did not want to do what he accused Swedenborg of doing in the first sentence of this quote, but it was difficult to reach a man who depended upon his reasoning function to understand spiritual realities. Blake was concerned that Wordsworth sought God through Natural Religion which makes the error of seeking God through sense and reason excluding love and imagination as essential to the consciousness of the presence. Perhaps Blake saw the passage from "The Excursion" as showing these two deficits in Wordsworth's ability to perceive the infinite, eternal realities. 

Blake pointed out to Robinson examples of men who comprehended a higher truth: Boehme, Law, Michael Angelo. By shifting to a recognition of the role of suffering along the journey to the consciousness of being in the presence of God, Blake went a step further than Robinson was prepared to take.  

Henry Crabb Robinson, Reminiscences, Page 27  

"Yet Swedenborg was wrong in endeavoring to explain to the rational faculty what the reason cannot comprehend. He should have left that." Blake, as I have said, thinks Wordsworth no Christian, but a Platonist. He asked me whether Wordsworth believed in the Scriptures. On my replying in the affirmative, he said he had been much pained by reading the Introduction to “ The Excursion .” It brought on a fit of illness. The passage was produced and read :  

" Jehovah, with his thunder and the choir
Or shouting angels, and the empyreal thrones,
I pass them unalarmed .”

This “pass them unalarmed” greatly offended  Blake. Does Mr. Wordsworth think his mind can surpass Jehovah? I tried to explain this passage in a sense in harmony with Blake's  own theories, but failed, and Wordsworth was finally set down as a Pagan; but still with high praise, as the greatest poet of the age. Jacob Boehme was spoken of as a divinely inspired man. Blake praised, too, the figures in Law's translation as being very beautiful. Michael Angelo could not have done better. Though he spoke of his happiness, he also alluded to past sufferings, and to suffering as necessary. There is suffering in heaven, for where there is the capacity of enjoyment, there is also the capacity of pain."

---

Auguries of Innocence, (E 491)

"It is right it should be so 
Man was made for Joy & Woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro the World we safely go
Joy & Woe are woven fine
A Clothing for the soul divine 
Under every grief & pine
Runs a joy with silken twine
The Babe is more than swadling Bands
Throughout all these Human Lands"

Songs and Ballads, (E 472)
[How to know Love from Deceit]        

"Love to faults is always blind
Always is to joy inclind                             
Lawless wingd & unconfind             
And breaks all chains from every mind

Deceit to secresy confind             
Lawful cautious & refind              
To every thing but interest blind     
And forges fetters for the mind"       

Songs and Ballads,(E 481)

"I rose up at the dawn of day
Get thee away get thee away
Prayst thou for Riches away away
This is the Throne of Mammon grey

Said I this sure is very odd                                     
I took it to be the Throne of God
For every Thing besides I have
It is only for Riches that I can crave

I have Mental Joy & Mental Health
And Mental Friends & Mental wealth   
Ive a Wife I love & that loves me
Ive all But Riches Bodily
                
I am in Gods presence night & day    
And he never turns his face away
The accuser of sins by my side does stand                      
And he holds my money bag in his hand

For my worldly things God makes him pay            
And hed pay for more if to him I would pray
And so you may do the worst you can do
Be assurd Mr Devil I wont pray to you                         
                
Then If for Riches I must not Pray
God knows I little of Prayers need say
So as a Church is known by its Steeple             
If I pray it must be for other People                

He says if I do not worship him for a God                     
I shall eat coarser food & go worse shod
So as I dont value such things as these
You must do Mr Devil just as God please"

Milton, Plate 33 [36], (E 132)
"And the Divine Voice was heard in the Songs of Beulah Saying     

When I first Married you, I gave you all my whole Soul
I thought that you would love my loves & joy in my delights
Seeking for pleasures in my pleasures O Daughter of Babylon
Then thou wast lovely, mild & gentle. now thou art terrible      
In jealousy & unlovely in my sight, because thou hast cruelly
Cut off my loves in fury till I have no love left for thee
Thy love depends on him thou lovest & on his dear loves
Depend thy pleasures which thou hast cut off by jealousy
Therefore I shew my jealousy  & set  before you Death.     
Behold Milton descended to Redeem the Female Shade

From Death Eternal; such your lot, to be continually Redeem'd
By death & misery of those you love & by Annihilation"

LARGE COLOR PRINTS 9

 First posted Feb 2014

National Gallery of Scotland
Large Color Printed Drawings 
Night of Enitharmon's Joy

Although the return journey had begun with this image of the Night of Enitharmon's Joy, progress would be slow. The eighteen Christian centuries from the birth of Christ to Blake's day were ruled by the outward feminine will. When the message of Jesus was subverted by organized religious institutions, Enitharmon began her reign. It is she who spread the doctrines that 'Woman's love is Sin' and that the return to Eternity takes place only after death.
 
The error that Enitharmon represented could not be ended until man had experienced it to the degree that he was convinced of its futility. Blake tells us that the imagination, man's ability to perceive intuitively, had taken 'his rest.' His power had been transferred to the 'Eternal Female' who exercised her intuition to please herself and control men. Until man was able to behold the truth of his own intuitive abilities he would subject himself to control by the female will.  

Vision of Last Judgment, (E 565)

"Error is Created Truth is Eternal Error or Creation will be Burned Up &
then & not till then Truth or Eternity will appear It is Burnt up
the Moment Men cease to behold it I assert for My self that I do
not behold the Outward Creation & that to me it is hindrance &
not Action it is as the Dirt upon my feet No part of Me. What it
will be Questiond When the Sun rises  do  you  not  see  a  round 
Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea O no no I see an Innumerable
company of the Heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord
God Almighty I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any
more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight I look
thro it & not with it."     

Europe, Plate 3, (E 61)
"Again the night is come  
That strong Urthona takes his rest,                              
And Urizen unloos'd from chains                                  
Glows like a meteor in the distant north
Stretch forth your hands and strike the elemental strings!
Awake the thunders of the deep."

Europe, Plate 4, (E 62)
"Arise O Orc from thy deep den,                                   
First born of Enitharmon rise!
And we will crown thy head with garlands of the ruddy vine;
For now thou art bound;
And I may see thee in the hour of bliss, my eldest born.

The horrent Demon rose, surrounded with red stars of fire,
Whirling about in furious circles round the immortal fiend.

Then Enitharmon down descended into his red light,
And thus her voice rose to her children, the distant heavens reply.
Plate 5
Now comes the night of Enitharmons joy!                          
Who shall I call? Who shall I send?
That Woman, lovely Woman! may have dominion?
Arise O Rintrah thee I call! & Palamabron thee!
Go! tell the human race that Womans love is Sin!                 
That an Eternal life awaits the worms of sixty winters
In an allegorical abode where existence hath never come:
Forbid all joy, & from her childhood shall the little female
Spread nets in every secret path.

My weary eyelids draw towards the evening, my bliss is yet but
     new." 

Jerusalem, Plate 87, (E 246)    
"Enitharmon answerd [Los]. No! I will sieze thy Fibres & weave
Them: not as thou wilt but as I will, for I will Create
A round Womb beneath my bosom lest I also be overwoven
With Love; be thou assured I never will be thy slave          
Let Mans delight be Love; but Womans delight be Pride
In Eden our loves were the same here they are opposite
I have Loves of my own I will weave them in Albions Spectre
Cast thou in Jerusalems shadows thy Loves! silk of liquid
Rubies Jacinths Crysolites: issuing from thy Furnaces. While   
Jerusalem divides thy care: while thou carest for Jerusalem
Know that I never will be thine:"

____________________

 John 4
[24] "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." 

 

 

LARGE COLOR PRINTS

 First posted Feb 2014

In 1795 the creative juices were flowing so copiously in William Blake that he hadn't finished one project before he started another. The printings of illuminated books led to his creating the series of painting know as The Large Color Printed Drawings. The group is held together by their large size, in the range of dimensions of 12 to 24 inches, compared to the illuminated books whose pages were typically under 9 inches in size, sometimes only 4 or 5 inches. In addition the method of production was unusual and fairly uniform for the group. The technique was that of a monoprint, although two or three prints were made from each painted drawing created. This was facilitated by the additional work Blake put into the image after it was pulled from the painted surface which made it into a highly finished painting. 
 
Although the paintings are much admired, there has been little agreement on the theme which Blake intended in deciding on the subject matter of particular images. Individual pictures are associated with Shakespeare, Milton, the Old and New Testament of the Bible, and events of Blake's own time.
 
By arranging the series from creation to resurrection it is possible to see in the series the habitual structure of creation, fall and return which Blake discerns as the paradigm of human or spiritual development. The order I will follow in later posts is:

1. Elohim Creating Adam
2. Satan Exaulting Over Eve
3. The Good  and Evil Angels
4. God Judging Adam
5. Lamech and His Two Wives
6. Nebuchadnezzar
7. The House of Death
8. Hecate or The Night of Enitharmon's Joy
9. Newton
10. Naomi Entreating Ruth
11. Pity
12. Christ Appearing to the Apostles

Blake uses the term fresco to refer to his painting in watercolor harkening back to Michelangelo's technique on plaster.

Public Address, (E 577)
 "Fresco Painting is properly Miniature, or Enamel Painting;
every thing in Fresco is as high finished as Miniature or Enamel,
although in Works larger than Life.  The Art has been lost: I
have recovered it.  How this was done, will be told, together
with the whole Process, in a Work on Art, now in the Press.  The
ignorant Insults of Individuals will not hinder me from doing my
duty to my Art.  Fresco Painting, as it is now practised, is like
most other things, the contrary of what it pretends to be.
  The execution of my Designs, being all in Water-colours,
(that is in Fresco) are regularly refused to be exhibited by the
Royal Academy, and the British Institution has, 
this year, followed its example, and has effectually excluded me 
by this Resolution; I therefore invite those Noblemen and 
Gentlem[e]n, who are its Subscribers, to inspect what they have 
excluded: and those who have been told that my Works are
but an unscientific and irregular Eccentricity, a Madman's
Scrawls, I demand of them to do me the justice to examine before
they decide.
  There cannot be more than two or three great Painters or
Poets in any Age or Country; and these, in a corrupt state of
Society, are easily excluded, but not so easily obstructed.  They
have ex[c]luded Watercolours; it is therefore become necessary
that I should exhibit to the Public, in an Exhibition of my own,
my Designs, Painted in Watercolours.  If Italy is enriched and
made great by RAPHAEL, if MICHAEL ANGELO is its supreme glory, if
Art is the glory of a Nation, if Genius and Inspiration are the
great Origin and Bond of Society, the distinction my Works have
obtained from those who best understand such things, calls for my
Exhibition as the greatest of Duties to my Country."
May 15. 1809
                                             WILLIAM BLAKE

Yale Center for British Art

Jerusalem

Plate 40

In The Illuminated Blake, Erdman tells us that in the right border of this plate we can see William and Catherine Blake at work creating the designs we so enjoy. "These two are Los and Enitharmon working in line and color, but in their mundane vehicles ... i.e. William and Catherine Blake...Here he is walking in the line...which his right foot sends down to Catherine's arms and feet. This leaves the poet's writing arm free while his sixfold printing arm can fill the sky with grape leaves in three color varieties and spin a tight wiry coil of communication to break past its limit...Catherine's influence turns the vine to green ribbons; a spare paintbrush with five red dipped fingers and a flower brush curls at her other side."  

 

INNOCENCE/EXPERIENCE

Wikipedia Commons

Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Copy L, Plate 40

Quoting from William Blake: Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Edited by Andrew Lincoln:

Introduction, Page 10

"The Songs of Innocence and of Experience rarely offer simple choices - as between moral absolutes - but tend to emphasize the relativity of particular images and points of view. 'Mercy, Pity, Love and Peace' can reveal the innate divinity of all human life, or mask the selfishness of the natural heart. To accept the one view and refuse the alternative would be to turn away from an unpleasant truth or to accept a reductive view of human feeling. Some poems contain contradictory views within them, and as we shall see, Blake's technique generates ambiguities that repeatedly complicate interpretation. Few books offer such a challenge with such a disarming appearance of simplicity."

When I learned that Bono and U2 had named their tour in 2014-15 Songs of Innocence and had followed up with Songs of Experience in 2017, I wanted to learn the connection between Bono and Blake. They topped it off with a combined tour Innocence and Experience in 2018.

Here is what Bono had to say in an Interview with Rolling Stones:

What are the common themes that tie the songs on Songs of Experience together?
"I try not to talk about William Blake too much because it sounds pretentious quoting such a literary giant but it was his great idea I pinched to compare the person we become through experience to the person who set out on the journey. If you’re talking about innocence, you’ve probably already lost it but I do believe at the far end of experience, it’s possible to recover it with wisdom. I’m not saying I have much of that but what little I have, I wanted to cram into these songs. I know U2 go into every album like it’s their last one but even more this time I wanted the people around me that I loved to know exactly how I felt. So a lot of the songs are kind of letters, letters to Ali [wife], letters to my sons and daughters, actually our sons and daughters."
...
And one that I didn’t realize until too late that I was writing to myself, “It’s the Little Things Give You Away.” In all of these advice type songs, you are of course preaching what you need to hear. In that sense, they’re all written to the singer. One other piece on Blake, I don’t know if I’m explaining too much here but the best songs for me are often arguments with yourself or arguments with some other version of yourself. Even singing our song “One,” which was half fiction, I’ve had this ongoing fight. In “Little Things,” innocence challenges experience: “I saw you on the stairs, you didn’t notice I was there, that’s cause you were busy talking at me, not to me. You were high above the storm, a hurricane being born but this freedom just might cost you your liberty.”

At the end of the song, experience breaks down and admits his deepest fears, having been called out on it by his younger, braver, bolder self. That same conversation also opens the album with a song called ”Love Is All We Have Left.” My favorite opening line to a U2 album: “There’s nothing to stop this being the best day ever.” In the second verse, innocence admonishes experience: “Now you’re at the other end of the telescope, seven billion stars in her eyes, so many stars so many ways of seeing, hey, this is no time not to be alive.” It’s a chilling moment – in the chorus I was pretending to be Frank Sinatra singing on the moon, a sci-fi torch song “love, love is all we have left, a baby cries on the doorstep, love is all we have left.”

Here is a quote from Hopeful Symmetry: A Blakeian Look at U2’s Songs Of Experience:

"But as with U2’s Songs of Innocence, and much of U2’s music, out of the darkness comes light.  Joyful defiance.

You see now why we cry: the raw honesty of the letters to loved ones, the thought of losing Bono, the thought of losing things we hold dear – like freedom, democracy… the empathy for what Bono might have gone through during and after his scare, the empathy with refugees. This album is an emotional juggernaut.  It hits you with all the feels…"

---

Bono sings Let your love be known

It seems clear to me that Blake's goal was that readers of Songs of Innocence and of Experience not approach the poems as an intellectual exercise. Although the poems can yield much insight to the intellect, they speak just a powerfully to the emotions and to the Soul or Imagination (to use Blake's term.) Symbolic language necessarily connects differently to each mind that it enters according to the gifts of the beholder. It is not surprising that a musician responds to the Songs as an intuitive, emotional experience. 

Bono and U2 seem to have assimilated Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience and produced in their own media and style, groups of songs based on themes and techniques used by Blake. But the musicians work is directed toward involving the audience in emotional responses. Bono uses what he is familiar with, his own life experience, to drive home his feelings of sorrow and joy, anger and delight, fear and trust. Blake wanted to show the two contrary states of the human soul; Bono aims to do the same. As rock music, innocence and experience become insistent and visceral.    

Jerusalem, Plate 91, (E 251)
"Go, tell them that the Worship of God, is honouring his gifts
In other men: & loving the greatest men best, each according
To his Genius: which is the Holy Ghost in Man; there is no other
God, than that God who is the intellectual fountain of Humanity; 
He who envies or calumniates: which is murder & cruelty,
Murders the Holy-one: Go tell them this & overthrow their cup,
Their bread, their altar-table, their incense & their oath:
Their marriage & their baptism, their burial & consecration:
I have tried to make friends by corporeal gifts but have only    
Made enemies: I never made friends but by spiritual gifts;
By severe contentions of friendship & the burning fire of thought."

Jerusalem, Plate 53, (E 203)
"loud the Furnaces & loud the Anvils          
Of Death thunder incessant around the flaming Couches of
The Twentyfour Friends of Albion and round the awful Four
For the protection of the Twelve Emanations of Albions Sons
The Mystic Union of the Emanation in the Lord; Because   
Man divided from his Emanation is a dark Spectre                 
His Emanation is an ever-weeping melancholy Shadow
But she is made receptive of Generation thro' mercy
In the Potters  Furnace, among the Funeral Urns of Beulah
From Surrey hills, thro' Italy and Greece, to Hinnoms vale.
PLATE 54
In Great Eternity, every particular Form gives forth or Emanates
Its own peculiar Light, & the Form is the Divine Vision
And the Light is his Garment This is Jerusalem in every Man
A Tent & Tabernacle of Mutual Forgiveness Male & Female Clothings.
And Jerusalem is called Liberty among the Children of Albion" 

Four Zoas, Night I, Page 13, (E 308)
"But purple night and crimson morning & golden day descending  
Thro' the clear changing atmosphere display'd green fields among
The varying clouds, like paradises stretch'd in the expanse
With towns & villages and temples, tents sheep-folds and pastures
Where dwell the children of the elemental worlds in harmony,     
Not long in harmony they dwell, their life is drawn away    
And wintry woes succeed; successive driven into the Void
Where Enion craves: successive drawn into the golden feast

And Los & Enitharmon sat in discontent & scorn             
The Nuptial Song arose from all the thousand thousand spirits 
Over the joyful Earth & Sea, and ascended into the Heavens
For Elemental Gods their thunderous Organs blew; creating
Delicious Viands. Demons of Waves their watry Eccho's woke!
Bright Souls of vegetative life, budding and blossoming      
Page 14
Stretch their immortal hands to smite the gold & silver Wires
And with immortal Voice soft warbling fill all Earth & Heaven.
With doubling Voices & loud Horns wound round sounding
Cavernous dwellers fill'd the enormous Revelry, Responsing!
And Spirits of Flaming fire on high, govern'd the mighty Song.   

And This the Song! sung at The Feast of Los & Enitharmon"

Four Zoas, Night I, Page 12, (E 307)
"The Earth spread forth her table wide. the Night a silver cup
Fill'd with the wine of anguish waited at the golden feast
But the bright Sun was not as yet; he filling all the expanse
Slept as a bird in the blue shell that soon shall burst away

Los saw the wound of his blow he saw he pitied he wept   
Los now repented that he had smitten Enitharmon he felt love
Arise in all his Veins he threw his arms around her loins
To heal the wound of his smiting

They eat the fleshly bread, they drank the nervous wine" 

Although William Blake never had the opportunity to attend a rock concert, he may have been able to appreciate the vitality of a multimedia production of poetry which had the capacity to console as well as disturb.

 

CYCLE - RETURN

New York Public Library

Milton  

Plate 29, copy C

 

We are following simplest cycle that is discernible in Blake - that of Fall, Return and Judgment. Man falls from the idyllic state of innocence, passes through experience and reaches a transformative event where all that can be annihilated is annihilated. 

 

The second stage, Return, can also be named Experience, Regeneration, or Renewal. 

 

In William Blake's Circle of Destiny by Milton O Percival, on Page 219 writes:

"The course of experience, which is at once the course of error and the process by which Satan is revealed and regeneration accomplished, is in the hands of Los and Enithrmon. Feeble as their light may be, selfish and misguided as their purposes often are, they nevertheless embody the instinct for preservation which the Poetic Genius - the imagination - can never entirely lose, and which enables man slowly yet surely to turn the experience of error into the apprehension of truth." 

Percival further states on page 273)

"Since there is no chasm, in Blake's system, between man and nature, the struggle toward regeneration in the natural world must be thought of, equally with the struggle in the spiritual world, as the work of Los. Los with his hammer vehemently constricting, hardening and fixing, eternally creating only to destroy the false work he has created, is Blake's dramatization as the process as he saw it constantly at work. For destruction is as essential as creation. For this reason the natural world is cast in mortal form. Death and decay are its attributes. Its vegetable life, like Los's systems is 'continually building and continually decaying.' The invisible fires in which these vegetable forms consume are the fires of vegetation or generation which also light the furnaces of Los. Just as the soul of man is purified by the 'furnaces of affliction' so is the physical world destroyed and renewed in the fires of 'generation or vegetation.' The necessary change is in both cases accomplished by death in fire."

RETURN - REDEMPTION - REGENERATION

CATHEDRON II

BEAUTIFUL FEET

BLAKE & MIRACLE

LEVELS OF EXISTENCE

 

WATER & STONE

Once years ago when we were visiting the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, we discovered that park service folks has constructed a tub mill near a cabin in a cove surrounded by steep slopes. The settlers in what became the park had scratched out meager livings along the creeks traversing the rugged and rocky terrain. Corn had been one of the crops they were able to grow. Although a portion of the harvest went to producing 'white lightning' there was a need also for meal to feed the 'young'uns'.
 
The  park service had reconstructed a simple mill to replicate one an ingenious farmer had built from the supplies at hand so that he could avoid transporting his corn to be ground at a larger commercial mill with a waterwheel.
 
Later park visitors would be prevented form operating the mill but we were lucky enough to find it unsecured but not in operation. The challenge was to figure out how it worked and set the water from the nearby creek running through the sluice and turning the millstone. Although we properly directed the water, the stone, of course, remained immobile until we gave it a push to overcome inertia.
 
We didn't grind any meal that day but I learned first hand the power of water to move stone, and the need to give the reluctant stone a push so that the water could do it's work.

Illustrations to Dante
Drinking at the River of Light

Religious writers and poets have found water and stone to be appropriate images to convey contrary states of consciousness. Since the stone is hard and inflexible it becomes a symbol for the state of mind which is rigid and unyielding. The fluidity of water which takes the shape of the container makes it symbolic of a mind which is malleable and accepting of new ideas and new modes of thinking. The mind that is prepared to receive expressions of truth in whatever form they come is not rigid or static but moving and yielding. The lesson of the water mill is that stone submits to the force that is incorporated in the energetic movement of the water.

Blake uses the water as symbolic of a liberating force. Those imprisoned by the law, convention, sense based reasoning, blindness to the Divine Vision, fear, or any other devise of Satan can be liberated by washing in the cleansing waters of the river of life. Blake's answer to the dilemma of humanity was accepting the message of Christ which released man from the stone-built prison of the law to the liberty of spiritual consciousness. 

Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Plate 3, (E 47)
"Silent I hover all the night, and all day could be silent.
If Theotormon once would turn his loved eyes upon me;            
How can I be defild when I reflect thy image pure?
Sweetest the fruit that the worm feeds on. & the soul prey'd on by woe
The new wash'd lamb ting'd with the village smoke & the bright swan
By the red earth of our immortal river: I bathe my wings.
And I am white and pure to hover round Theotormons breast." 
 

Milton, Plate 40 [46], (E 142)
"The Negation must be destroyd to redeem the Contraries
The Negation is the Spectre; the Reasoning Power in Man
This is a false Body: an Incrustation over my Immortal           
Spirit; a Selfhood, which must be put off & annihilated alway
To cleanse the Face of my Spirit by Self-examination.
PLATE 41 [48]
To bathe in the Waters of Life; to wash off the Not Human
I come in Self-annihilation & the grandeur of Inspiration" 

Four Zoas, Night IX, Page 134, (E 402)
"Rise & look out his chains are loose his dungeon doors are open
And let his wife & children return from the opressors scourge
They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream
Are these the Slaves that groand along the streets of Mystery    
Where are your bonds & task masters are these the prisoners
Where are your chains where are your tears why do you look around
If you are thirsty there is the river go bathe your parched limbs
The good of all the Land is before you for Mystery is no more

Then All the Slaves from every Earth in the wide Universe        
Sing a New Song drowning confusion in its happy notes"

Songs and Ballads, From Notebook, (E 473)
"Why should I care for the men of thames
Or the cheating waves of charterd streams
Or shrink at the little blasts of fear
That the hireling blows into my ear

Tho born on the cheating banks of Thames     
Tho his waters bathed my infant limbs
The Ohio shall wash his stains from me                          t
I was born a slave but I go to be free"  

Annotations to Berkley's Siris, (E 663)
    "The Four Senses are the Four Faces of Man & the Four Rivers
of the Water of Life"

Jerusalem, Plate 74, (E 229)
"The Spectre is the Reasoning Power in Man; & when separated      
From Imagination, and closing itself as in steel, in a Ratio
Of the Things of Memory. It thence frames Laws & Moralities
To destroy Imagination! the Divine Body, by Martyrdoms & Wars

Teach me O Holy Spirit the Testimony of Jesus! let me
Comprehend wonderous things out of the Divine Law" 

.

RHYTHM OF LIFE

Life is a gift for the individual to put to use for his own benefit and for the benefit of mankind. If we were to plot life over time it would be more of a sine curve than a straight line. We experience a rhythm in life of assent and descent. There are events which which draw us into the pits and events which allow us to soar. The highs and lows are equally necessary to learn the Eternal lessons from temporal experience.
 
Blake writes of learning experiences by which his characters thread their way through difficulties and delights. His point is to make his reader ever more capable of living in the Eternal dimension by learning to discard the impediments which he accumulates in the temporal world. By failing to see the direction he is headed because of the ups and downs of natural existence, man may lose sight of the Divine Guidance. Blake's advice is change one's perspective:

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour" (Auguries of Innocence)
 

Marriage of Heaven & Hell, Plate 5, (E 35)
"In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy."

Jerusalem, Plate 56, (E 206)
"O daughters of despair!
Rock the Cradle, and in mild melodies tell me where found
What you have enwoven with so much tears & care? so much
Tender artifice: to laugh: to weep: to learn: to know;
Remember! recollect what dark befel in wintry days               

O it was lost for ever! and we found it not: it came
And wept at our wintry Door: Look! look! behold! Gwendolen
Is become a Clod of Clay! Merlin is a Worm of the Valley!

Then Los uttered with Hammer & Anvil"

Europe, Plate iii, (E 60)
"Then tell me, what is the material world, and is it dead?
He laughing answer'd: I will write a book on leaves of flowers,
If you will feed me on love-thoughts, & give me now and then    
A cup of sparkling poetic fancies; so when I am tipsie,
I'll sing to you to this soft lute; and shew you all alive
The world, when every particle of dust breathes forth its joy.

Milton, Plate 25 [27], (E 122)
"Go forth Reapers with rejoicing. you sowed in tears
But the time of your refreshing cometh, only a little moment     
Still abstain from pleasure & rest, in the labours of eternity
And you shall Reap the whole Earth, from Pole to Pole! from Sea to Sea
Begining at Jerusalems Inner Court, Lambeth ruin'd and given
To the detestable Gods of Priam, to Apollo: and at the Asylum
Given to Hercules, who labour in Tirzahs Looms for bread    
Who set Pleasure against Duty: who Create Olympic crowns
To make Learning a burden & the Work of the Holy Spirit: Strife.
T[o] Thor & cruel Odin who first reard the Polar Caves 
Lambeth mourns calling Jerusalem. she weeps & looks abroad
For the Lords coming, that Jerusalem may overspread all Nations  
Crave not for the mortal & perishing delights, but leave them
To the weak, and pity the weak as your infant care; Break not
Forth in your wrath lest you also are vegetated by Tirzah
Wait till the Judgement is past, till the Creation is consumed
And then rush forward with me into the glorious spiritual    
Vegetation; the Supper of the Lamb & his Bride; and the
Awaking of Albion our friend and ancient companion.

So Los spoke. But lightnings of discontent broke on all sides round"

Jerusalem, Plate 49, (E 199)
"Remove from Albion, far remove these terrible surfaces.          
They are beginning to form Heavens & Hells in immense
Circles: the Hells for food to the Heavens: food of torment,
Food of despair: they drink the condemnd Soul & rejoice
In cruel holiness, in their Heavens of Chastity & Uncircumcision
Yet they are blameless & Iniquity must be imputed only           
To the State they are enterd into that they may be deliverd:
Satan is the State of Death, & not a Human existence:
But Luvah is named Satan, because he has enterd that State.
A World where Man is by Nature the enemy of Man
Because the Evil is Created into a State. that Men               
May be deliverd time after time evermore. Amen.
Learn therefore O Sisters to distinguish the Eternal Human
That walks about among the stones of fire in bliss & woe
Alternate! from those States or Worlds in which the Spirit travels:
This is the only means to Forgiveness of Enemies[.]              
Therefore remove from Albion these terrible Surfaces
And let wild seas & rocks close up Jerusalem away from
Plate 50
The Atlantic Mountains where Giants dwelt in Intellect;
Now given to stony Druids, and Allegoric Generation
To the Twelve Gods of Asia, the Spectres of those who Sleep:
Sway'd by a Providence oppos'd to the Divine Lord Jesus:
A murderous Providence! A Creation that groans, living on Death." 

Descriptive Catalogue, Page 52, (E 546)
"they possess
themselves of the bodies of mortal men, and shut the doors of
mind and of thought, by placing Learning above Inspiration, O
Artist! you may disbelieve all this, but it shall be at your own
peril." 

______________________________________________________

Luke 3
[2] ... the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.
[3] And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins;
[4] As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
[5] Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth;
[6] And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

Romans 5
[3] ...we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;
[4] And patience, experience; and experience, hope:
[5] And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. 
.