Anyone who has followed this blog
has seen many images from the watercolours which Blake painted
to illustrate Young's Night Thoughts. From the time I
first noticed them in the website of the British Museum I have
posted many as visual images of the pictures Blake painted with
poetic words. Since there are over 500 watercolours illustrating
Night Thoughts, they offer a versatile source for complementing
ideas implied by written words.
The image illustrating Night Three,
Narcissa superficially indicates contradictory ideas since the
female who represents the achievement of a state of bliss is
surrounded by the serpent who epitomizes evil. The meaning was
clarified by reading the explanation which was supplied when the
book was published in 1797. In William Blake: Book Illustrator
by Easson and Essick, the explanations are included. The serpent
is in the form of a ouroboros which is a recognized ancient
symbol of eternity. There is always a deeper level of meaning in
Blake if one continues to dig into the depths and seek what is
hidden below the surface.
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Wikimedia Commons
Night Thoughts
Engraving, Page 43 |
From William Blake: Book Illustrator:
"The Explanation of the
Engravings...quoted in the descriptions of the plates, is
occasionally found at the end of the book, after p. [96].
...Frontispiece to Night the
Third. A female figure, who appears from the crescent beneath
her feet to have surmounted the trials of this world, is
admitted to an eternity of glory: eternity is represented by its
usual emblem - a serpent with its extremities united."
This issue of Night Thoughts provided by Gutenberg is prefaced with a biography of
Young. It elucidates some of the sources of Young's extended
narrative:
..."At length, sick of dissipation, of
the stage, of bad odes, and good satires, Young determined to
become wise, and enter into orders. An irresistible current had
long been carrying him on, with many a convulsive recalcitration
on his part, to this determination. That great intellect and
heart, [x] over which,
already, the shadow of the “Night Thoughts” was beginning to
gather, could not be satisfied with the society of “peers,
poets,” and demireps; with the applause of sweltering crowds
collected in theatres; or with the ebullitions of its own giant
spleen, in the shape of epigrammatic satires. The world, which
once seemed to his eye so fresh and fair, had withered gradually
to a skeleton, with sockets for eyes, with eternal baldness for
hair, with a “stench instead of a sweet savour, and burning
instead of beauty.” He resolved to proclaim the particulars of
this painful yet blessed disenchantment to the ends of the
earth, and to all classes of mankind. And for this purpose, he
first of all mounted the pulpit, and then began to wield what
was even then the mightier engine of the press.
...And, in order to be able to write
the “Night Thoughts,” Young must be plunged in the deepest gloom
of affliction—“Thrice flew the shaft, and thrice his peace was
slain.” In 1736, a daughter of his wife, by a former husband,
died. This was Mrs Temple—the Narcissa of his great poem. Her
disease was a lingering one. Young accompanied her to Lyons,
where she died, and where her remains were brutally denied
sepulture, as the dust of a Protestant. Her husband, Mr Temple,
or Philander, died four years later; and in 1741, Young’s wife,
or Lucia, also expired. He now felt himself alone, and blasted
in his solitude. But his grief did not sink into sullen
inactivity. He made it oracular, and distilled his tears into
song. The “Night Thoughts” were immediately commenced, and
published between 1742 and 1744. This marvellous poem was all
composed either at night, or when riding on horseback—an
exercise, by the way, which gives a sense of mastery and
confidence, stirs the blood, elevates the animal spirits, and
has been felt by many to be eminently favourable to thought and
mental composition. It inspired, we know, such men as Burns,
Byron, Shelley, and Delta. We love to think of Young riding
through the green lanes of his parish, and cooing out to himself
his plaintive minstrelsies. We love better still to watch his
lonely lamp shining at midnight, like a star, through the
darkness, and seeming to answer the far signal of those mightier
luminaries which are burning above in the Great Bear and
Orion—the poet the while now dipping his pen to indite his
ardent immortalities—now leaning his head on his widowed arm,
and surrendering himself to paroxysms of uncontrollable [xvi] anguish—and now looking
out upon the Night as the “Lord is abroad” on the wings of the
tempest, or as He is silently shining out his name in suns and
galaxies—those unwearied “Watchers” and unbaptized “Holy Ones.”
These few lines from
Young's poem reveal the role Narcissa played for Young:
"Aid me, Narcissa! aid me
to keep pace
With Destiny; and ere her
scissors cut
My thread of life, to
break this tougher thread
Of moral death, that ties
me to the world."
Easson and Essick point
to the early biography of Blake by Alexander Gilchrist and Anne Gilchrist as a
source for Blake's involvement with Night Thoughts:
Page 135
"Edwards, of New Bond Street, at
that day a leading bookseller, engaged Blake, in 1796, to
illustrate an expensive edition, emulating Boydell's Shakspere
and Milton, of Young's Night Thoughts. The Night
Thoughts was then, as it had been for more than half a
century, a living classic, which rival booksellers delighted to
re-publish. Edwards paid his designer and engraver 'a despicably
low sum,' says Smith, which means, I believe, a guinea a plate.
And yet the prefatory Advertisement, dated December 22, 1796,
tells us that the enterprise had been undertaken by the
publisher not as a speculation of advantage, but as an
indulgence of inclination, in which fondness and partiality
would not permit him to be curiously accurate in adjusting the
estimate of profit and loss;' undertaken also from the wish 'to
make the arts in their most honourable agency subservient to the
purposes of religion.' In the same preface, written with
Johnsonian swing, by Fuseli probably—the usual literary help of
fine-art publishers in those days—and who I suspect had
something to do with Edwards' choice of artist, 'the merit of
Mr. Blake' is spoken of in terms which show it to have been not
wholly ignored then: 'to the eyes of the discerning it need not
be pointed out; and while a taste for the arts of design shall
continue to exist, the original conception, and the bold and
masterly execution of this artist cannot be unnoticed or
unadmired.' The edition, which was to have been issued in parts,
never got beyond the first; public encouragement proving
inadequate. This part extends to ninety-five pages,—to the end
of Night the Fourth,—and includes forty-three designs.
It appeared in the autumn of 1797.
These
forty-three plates occupied Blake a year. A complete set of
drawings for the Night Thoughts had been made, which
remained in the family of Edwards, the publisher, till quite
recently, when it passed into the hands of Mr. Bain, of the
Haymarket. 'Altogether this enormous series reaches the aggregate
of five hundred and thirty-seven designs, of which, as has been
said, only forty-three were given in the Engraved Selection."
Page 137
"To each of the four Nights
was prefixed an introductory design or title. The illustrations
have one very acceptable aid, and that is, a written
'explanation of the engravings' at the end; drawn up or put into
shape by another hand than Blake's—the same possibly which had
penned the Advertisement. It would be well if all
his designs had this help. For at once literal in his
translation of word into line, daring and unhacknied in his
manner of indicating his pregnant allegories, Blake's
conceptions do not always explain themselves at a glance, and
without their meaning, half their beauty too must needs be
lost."
The symbol of the serpent in Blake's
poetry included multiple facets. Perhaps it is most important to
remember that the Serpent as a personification of evil was capable of
transformation. He was not created evil. Whatever evil was in him,
entered because of choices and actions. When the Divine Humanity in man
is restored, all things resume the pristine state of harmonious unity.
The circle which is drawn by the Golden Compass is complete.
Europe, Plate 10, (E 63)
"In thoughts perturb'd, they rose from the bright ruins silentmfollowing
The fiery King, who sought his ancient temple serpent-form'd
That stretches out its shady length along the Island white.
Round him roll'd his clouds of war; silent the Angel went,
Along the infinite shores of Thames to golden Verulam.
There stand the venerable porches that high-towering rear
Their oak-surrounded pillars, form'd of massy stones, uncut
With tool; stones precious; such eternal in the heavens,
Of colours twelve, few known on earth, give light in the opake,
Plac'd in the order of the stars, when the five senses whelm'd
In deluge o'er the earth-born man; then turn'd the fluxile eyes
Into two stationary orbs, concentrating all things.
The ever-varying spiral ascents to the heavens of heavens
Were bended downward; and the nostrils golden gates shut
Turn'd outward, barr'd and petrify'd against the infinite.
Thought chang'd the infinite to a serpent; that which pitieth:
To a devouring flame; and man fled from its face and hid
In forests of night; then all the eternal forests were divided
Into earths rolling in circles of space, that like an ocean rush'd
And overwhelmed all except this finite wall of flesh.
Then was the serpent temple form'd, image of infinite
Shut up in finite revolutions, and man became an Angel;
Heaven a mighty circle turning; God a tyrant crown'd."
Jerusalem, Plate 98, (E 257)
"And they conversed together in Visionary forms dramatic which bright
Redounded from their Tongues in thunderous majesty, in Visions
In new Expanses, creating exemplars of Memory and of Intellect
Creating Space, Creating Time according to the wonders Divine
Of Human Imagination, throughout all the Three Regions immense
Of Childhood, Manhood & Old Age[;] & the all tremendous unfathomable Non Ens
Of Death was seen in regenerations terrific or complacent varying
According to the subject of discourse & every Word & Every Character
Was Human according to the Expansion or Contraction, the Translucence or
Opakeness of Nervous fibres such was the variation of Time & Space
Which vary according as the Organs of Perception vary & they walked
To & fro in Eternity as One Man reflecting each in each & clearly seen
And seeing: according to fitness & order. And I heard Jehovah speak
Terrific from his Holy Place & saw the Words of the Mutual Covenant Divine
On Chariots of gold & jewels with Living Creatures starry & flaming
With every Colour, Lion, Tyger, Horse, Elephant, Eagle Dove, Fly, Worm,
And the all wondrous Serpent clothed in gems & rich array Humanize
In the Forgiveness of Sins according to the Covenant of Jehovah. They Cry
Where is the Covenant of Priam, the Moral Virtues of the Heathen
Where is the Tree of Good & Evil that rooted beneath the cruel heel
Of Albions Spectre the Patriarch Druid! where are all his Human Sacrifices
For Sin in War & in the Druid Temples of the Accuser of Sin: beneath
The Oak Groves of Albion that coverd the whole Earth beneath his Spectre
Where are the Kingdoms of the World & all their glory that grew on Desolation"
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