SLEEP OF DEATH

British Museum

Descent into Death

At the entrance of the cavern of many chambers stands an angel with a lighted candle for comfort and guidance. Behind her we see a stream of people on their way to the opening, including those entering the sleep of death and those who are already asleep. In the uppermost chamber is a man whose spirit is leaving his body as his beloved rejoices. On the stair below the angel is a woman carrying an infant to a chamber where it will sleep. To her right  a group who await awakening at the completion of their  journey lie peacefully in a tomb. In the center are two figures who are alone: a strong, young man rushing down the stair, and a bent old man seeking a place to rest. Traveling downward is a mother leading three children - one sobbing - to their appointed chamber. An old couple look into a room where a young couple - perhaps their younger selves - recline. In the lower left chamber lies a male body and three female figures - two mourning the death of the body and one rejoicing at the release of the spirit. 

Earlier post.

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In Lilith by George MacDonald there is an echo of Blake's poetic understanding of awakening from the sleep of death. Before souls can fully awake MacDonald's characters go to the house of death where they sleep to be healed in order to awake to life. None goes to the house of death who wish to die, "for no one can die who does not long to live." As stated in the Prayer of St Francis "it is in dying that one is raised to eternal life." 

Lilith, Page 217:

"There Lilith is the bed I have prepared for you!"

She glanced at her daughter lying before her like a statue carved in semi-transparent alabaster, and shuddered from head to foot. "How cold it is," she murmured. 

"You will soon enough find comfort in the cold." answered Adam. 

"Promises to the dying are easy!" she said. 

"But I know it: I too have slept. I am dead!"

"I believed you dead long ago, but I see you alive!"

"More alive than you know, or are able to understand. I was scarce alive when you first knew me. I have slept, and am now awake; I am dead, and live indeed!" 

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Thel, Plate 1, (E 3)

"O life of this our spring! why fades the lotus of the water?
Why fade these children of the spring? born but to smile & fall.
Ah! Thel is like a watry bow. and like a parting cloud.
Like a reflection in a glass. like shadows in the water.
Like dreams of infants. like a smile upon an infants face,       
Like the doves voice, like transient day, like music in the air;
Ah! gentle may I lay me down, and gentle rest my head.          
And gentle sleep the sleep of death. and gentle hear the voice 
Of him that walketh in the garden in the evening time." 

Jerusalem, Plate 14, (E 158)

"Enitharmon is a vegetated mortal Wife of Los:
His Emanation, yet his Wife till the sleep of death is past."

Jerusalem, Plate 43 [29], (E 191)

"Albion must Sleep
The Sleep of Death, till the Man of Sin & Repentance be reveald."

Jerusalem, Plate 77, (E 233) 

"England! awake! awake! awake!
  Jerusalem thy Sister calls!
Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death?
  And close her from thy ancient walls."

Four Zoas, Night II, Page 23, (E 313)

"Rising upon his Couch of Death Albion beheld his Sons
Turning his Eyes outward to Self. losing the Divine Vision
Albion calld Urizen & said. Behold these sickning Spheres  
Whence is this Voice of Enion that soundeth in my Porches  
Take thou possession! take this Scepter! go forth in my might    
For I am weary, & must sleep in the dark sleep of Death    
Thy brother Luvah hath smitten me but pity thou his youth  
Tho thou hast not pitid my Age   O Urizen Prince of Light" 

BLAKE'S STARS

New York Public Library
Milton 
Plate 4

There are the sun, the moon, the stars and the planets; the sources of light in the mundane world. The sun is associated with reason or Urizen, one of the four aspects of the Eternal Man. The aspect we call emotion was the precinct of Luvah or the moon, a passive source of light which provided repose or rest from the severe contentions of reason. But the balance was broken and Urizen fell, splitting his light into factions, the stars, which provide dim light. As remnants of reason, the stars form a chain of rationality expressed as law which restrains the fall of man into the abyss. The planets are the wanderers among the constellations of the Zodiac.  

Four Zoas, Night II, Page 33, (E 321)
"For the Divine Lamb Even Jesus who is the Divine Vision
Permitted all lest Man should fall into Eternal Death

For when Luvah sunk down himself put on the robes of blood
Lest the state calld Luvah should cease. & the Divine Vision
Walked in robes of blood till he who slept should awake 
Thus were the stars of heaven created like a golden chain
To bind the Body of Man to heaven from failing into the Abyss 
Each took his station, & his course began with sorrow & care 
In sevens & tens & fifties, hundreds, thousands, numberd all 
According to their various powers. Subordinate to Urizen 
And to his sons in their degrees & to his beauteous daughters 
Travelling in silent majesty along their orderd ways 
In right lined paths outmeasurd by proportions of number weight
And measure. mathematic motion wondrous. along the deep"

William Blake's Circle of Destiny by Milton Percival, on Page 148, visualizes Blake's process of using astronomical symbols in the fall of Albion:

"When the starry mundane shell crashes into the darkness of the abyss, the planets moving irregularly eastward, made their appearance. To counteract their maleficent influence Los creates a temporal sun and a temporal moon, feeble but indispensable replicas of their eternal counterparts.

The first diminution of light is indicated as we have just said, by the star world. This world was created to keep the body of man from falling into the abyss, when both the sun and moon had failed. When knowledge ceased to be intuitive and love ceased to be spontaneous, when, in astrological imagery, the departure of Urizen, the sun, into the north (the realm sacred to Urthona), and of Luvah, the moon, into the south (the realm sacred to Urizen), the diminished reason became Albion's guiding light. Out of fear it built the world of law that Albion might not descend into chaos. The ordered world of constellations is Blake's beautiful and appropriate symbol for the order imposed by law upon a world from which unity had fled. The symbol draws an added value from the Stoics' association of the stars with reason's ethereal fires. The star world of the law is the great rational achievement."   

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LAMENT II

Four Zoas, Night II
Page 36

Enion's second lament focuses on the consequences of her withdrawal from Tharmas. Life in the external world does not work out like she may have expected it to. Her intentions may have been good but the results are the opposite. She knew that it was the decisions that she made which have led to suffering. Although the spoiled world may have been providing her with the experience she needed to arrive at wisdom, was the price too high if all that she had was required in exchange?

Enion was more than an observer in the world of life, she was the means by which the life inhabiting her world was generated. The multitude of lifeforms were her children. She understood that life lives on death but she couldn't grasp why that must be so. She was not one who found it easy to rejoice in a world where all do not share in the prosperity.

Four Zoas, Night II, Page 34,  (E 324) 
"Thus livd Los driving Enion far into the deathful infinite

That he may also draw Ahania's spirit into her Vortex
Ah happy blindness Enion sees not the terrors of the uncertain 
Thus Enion wails from the dark deep, the golden heavens tremble
PAGE 35
I am made to sow the thistle for wheat; the nettle for a nourishing dainty
I have planted a false oath in the earth, it has brought forth a poison tree
I have chosen the serpent for a councellor & the dog
For a schoolmaster to my children
I have blotted out from light & living the dove & nightingale    
And I have caused the earth worm to beg from door to door
I have taught the thief a secret path into the house of the just
I have taught pale artifice to spread his nets upon the morning
My heavens are brass my earth is iron my moon a clod of clay
My sun a pestilence burning at noon & a vapour of death in night 

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!"

What Enion experienced when she was separated from Tharmas was consciousness of mortality in a mortal world. What was within Enion, was what she beheld in the void which she inhabited.

Paul of Tarsus, in the seventh chapter of Romans, reported experience of the same agony as portrayed in Enion's lament. He was conscious of being unable to act from the good which he mentally sought to follow. He also was conscious that he did the things that he hated. Blake explicitly stated the choices of Enion whose results were abhorrent to her. Her dilemma was that knowing what she had wrought, and finding it unacceptable; she hadn't the wisdom to find an escape. The best she could do was attempt to ignore the devastation which surrounded her. The easy way to gain experience is to ignore the unpleasant things that are generated by decisions to aggrandize oneself while others bear heavy burdens.
   
To some extent Enion's solution is one we often choose when confronted with conditions which are too upsetting for us to allow ourselves to fully comprehend. Larry confessed to finding himself confronted with a level of suffering of which he had no experience when he saw Calcutta. As a young man he had traveled the world as a merchant seaman. He was 19 or 20 in 1946 when his ship reached Calcutta:

"At Calcutta we saw people whose only home was the street, people dying of cholera, etc. A rich man had opened his home to the Allies; it was like a museum, certainly not the kind of place you would want to live, but with European masterworks of art on the walls, big overstuffed sofas, everything associated with western affluence. We heard that he fed 150 beggars every day. We visited a temple with carvings of sexual intercourse in 50 different positions. We visited the burning ghats where the dead were brought. We saw one corpse being burned; the heat caused the tendons to contract and the poor body started to rise up. The attendant grabbed a stick and beat it back down. The sacred river was right there with all sorts of dead things in it and people bathing.

Dozens of children followed us around begging. I bought a leather suitcase from a merchant on the sidewalk. He asked $100 for it, but sold it for $10. I could probably have gotten it for less, but I had gotten tired of dickering with him.

Calcutta made a powerful impression on me. I felt the intense need to help that so many others had felt there. I knew that I had a choice, to dedicate the rest of my life to trying to help them, or to harden my heart. It's obvious which choice I took, since I left a few days later and never went back."

But he didn't forget. He couldn't rejoice in his own prosperity by wiping out consciousness of the suffering world.

Romans 7 (RSV)
[18] For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.
[19] For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.
[20] Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me.
[21] So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
[22] For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self,
[23] but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members.
[24] Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
[25] Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. 
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BROKEN LINKS

You may have noticed a number of links on our pages have recently led nowhere. This is because the University of Georgia is no longer supporting the material by Nelson Hilton which was provided through their domain. Professor Hilton gave us access to many resources including his work on the Blake Digital Text Project. Our links on our sidebar to Blake's Contents, Blake's Index and the Concordance to Complete Works have disappeared because of the loss of links to his works. 

I personally am most disappointed because the links Hilton provided to images in the Four Zoas are not longer available. The page images on a number of pages of the Four Zoas which I posted, no longer have images because the files they were linked to are unavailable. I can replace the images with those which the crawler picked up when the posts were published, but the images there are of lower resolution. Hilton's images allowed us to read Blake's text as he wrote and edited it, as well as view the sketches which illuminated his pages.

The manuscript for the Four Zoas resides in the British Library. The library provides digital imagery for a portion of the book starting at page 44. Using Professor Hilton's files for the early pages of the manuscript and the British Library's images for later pages, I published posts on 80 of the 138 pages of the Four Zoas. There is always more work to be done but there are many hands and minds who are contributing to the effort.

Professor Hilton graciously replied to my plea for help with a copy of his file for the 4ZS.

Keep watching for further developments.

British Library
Four Zoas Manuscript
Page 94

Four Zoas, Night VII, Page 94, (E 367)
"Tho all those fair perfections which men know only by name
In beautiful substantial forms appeard & served her
As food or drink or ornament or in delightful works
To build her bowers for the Elements brought forth abundantly    
The living soul in glorious forms & every One came forth
Walking before her Shadowy face & bowing at her feet" 

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NOT SO WITH ME [36]

British Library
Four Zoas Manuscript
Page 36

Four Zoas, Night II, PAGE 36, (E 325) 
"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!

Ahania heard the Lamentation & a swift Vibration
Spread thro her Golden frame. She rose up eer the dawn of day 

When Urizen slept on his couch. drawn thro unbounded space
Onto the margin of Non Entity the bright Female came
There she beheld the Spectrous form of Enion in the Void   
And never from that moment could she rest upon her pillow

          End of the Second Night"

The focus of Enion's lament turns to the suffering in the world among its creatures and in the destruction brought about by natural disasters. Next she turns to the suffering inflicted on humans by other humans.

Tharmas is the 'parent power' the originator of the proliferation of entities man perceives. Tharmas symbolically is represented by the father, his emanation Enion bears the characteristics of the mother. She is led to lament over the fallen world because it is her children who comprise it. The irony of Enion's position is that her inclination to grieve over the straits of her children created a vast distance between her and them. Her original function would have included rejoicing in the instinctual output of the psyche; her fallen appearance is the mourner blinded by her grief.

Her lamenting led to a further decline in the unity of Albion. Ahania, Urizen's emanation, responded to Enion's song by discarding her role as the pleasure enjoyed by the reasoning mind. Having empathized with the suffering world, Enion could not 'rejoice in the tents of prosperity'. Ahania resonated to Enion's realization and had her consciousness simultaneously transformed.

We have seen Albion incrementally losing the ideal functioning of his psyche. He loses:
Tharmas - his instinct to live as a finely tuned body;
Enion - his ability to maintain an image of himself as healthy and happy;
Enitharmon - his impulse to create forms which could embody his thoughts;
Ahania - his delight in forms which his mind created.

PRICE OF EXPERIENCE [35]

British Library
Four Zoas Manuscript
Page 35

Four Zoas, Night II, Page 34, (E 324)
"Ah happy blindness Enion sees not the terrors of the uncertain 
Thus Enion wails from the dark deep, the golden heavens tremble
Page 35
I am made to sow the thistle for wheat; the nettle for a nourishing dainty
I have planted a false oath in the earth, it has brought forth a poison tree
I have chosen the serpent for a councellor & the dog
For a schoolmaster to my children
I have blotted out from light & living the dove & nightingale    
And I have caused the earth worm to beg from door to door
I have taught the thief a secret path into the house of the just
I have taught pale artifice to spread his nets upon the morning
My heavens are brass my earth is iron my moon a clod of clay
My sun a pestilence burning at noon & a vapour of death in night 

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"
 

Mary Lynn Johnson and John Grant selected portions of Blake's writing to include in their 1979 book Blake's Poetry and Designs. We shall continue working through the Four Zoas by following their selection of exerpts. Their introduction to the Four Zoas includes these statements: 

 
Page 214
"It is an attempt to coordinate and expand the separate stories told in Blake's earlier books into one grand story of mankind from his origins to the end of time. As  in the earlier prophecies, the action seems to take place simultaneously within the consciousness of the human race over the course of history and within the mind of each individual during his lifetime."

Page 218, Note 6
"Enion's song, written in Blake's fine copperplate hand, has apparently been carefully revised. Enion, the emanation of Tharmas, falls furthest into nonentity and her fall draws Ahania away from Urizen. Enion's poignant laments are heard at the ends of Nights II, III and VIII, the latter two in antiphony with Ahania. These female voices, drifting up from nonexistence, serve as choral commentary on the main  action."  

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Enion's lament begins by her acknowledging the erroneous choices she has made. She sees specific consequences of turning away from her role as Tharmas' emanation. Each decision which resulted from her misguided attempt to escape from Tharmas forced her further into a world where her existence was precarious.

She has learned from her suffering but is still trapped in her dilemma. She could turn from her bitter experience if she were not so weak, so hungry, so desperate to be in the right.  

ALBION CALLED URIZEN [23]

British Library
Four Zoas Manuscript
Page 23

Blake originally began the Four Zoas with the title Vala. Night II was the first of the Nights in the early manuscript. On page 209 of Blake's Apocalypse, Harold Bloom explains Blake's rationale in restructuring his poem to include the fall of Tharmas as described in Night I:

"The account of Night I of The Four Zoas has emphasized intellectual symbolism mostly by explicit translation. Yet as one reads on in the poem, or rereads Night I, one feels less and less the need for such translation. The Four Zoas does not reduce to a structure of ideas; indeed the poem is primarily a series of dramatic scenes or dialectic encounters, illustrating "the torments of Love and Jealousy" that brought about and continue to maintain the suffering condition of mankind. But since the encounters are utterly within the self, Blake does insist upon the reader's firm grip on the argument.
...
Night I has described the fall of Tharmas, or catastrophe as seen from the perspective of the lost power of Innocence, the lost ability to move instantly from desire to realization. Night II changes this perspective to the self-induced ruin of desire itself. The loss of Eden is followed by the darkening of the next stage of Man, the agony of passion deprived of every generous impulse once primal to it. Night II of The Four Zoas was once Night I of Vala, and contains more poetry of the highest order than the present Night I does. Yet Blake was correct in creating the new first book of his poem, though he sacrificed rhetorical immediacy in doing so. The fall of Tharmas is fundamental for everything that comes after it, and the comparative abstractness of much in Night I allows the subsequent parts of the poem to concentrate their energies on a vividness and directness in presentation that could not otherwise be achieved."

Four Zoas, Night II, PAGE 23, (E 313)
                        "VALA
                  Night the [Second]          
Rising upon his Couch of Death Albion beheld his Sons
Turning his Eyes outward to Self. losing the Divine Vision
Albion calld Urizen & said. Behold these sickning Spheres  
Whence is this Voice of Enion that soundeth in my Porches  
Take thou possession! take this Scepter! go forth in my might    
For I am weary, & must sleep in the dark sleep of Death     
Thy brother Luvah hath smitten me but pity thou his youth   
Tho thou hast not pitid my Age   O Urizen Prince of Light

Urizen rose from the bright Feast like a star thro' the evening sky
Exulting at the voice that calld him from the Feast of envy     
First he beheld the body of Man pale, cold, the horrors of death
Beneath his feet shot thro' him as he stood in the Human Brain
And all its golden porches grew pale with his sickening light
No more Exulting for he saw Eternal Death beneath
Pale he beheld futurity; pale he beheld the Abyss                
Where Enion blind & age bent wept in direful hunger craving"

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