AMERICA PRELUDIUM

Fitzwilliam Museum
Cambridge University
America A Prophecy
Plate 3, Preludium

America a Prophecy, Plate 1, (E 51)

                                "PRELUDIUM

The shadowy daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc.
When fourteen suns had faintly journey'd o'er his dark abode;
His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in cups of iron;
Crown'd with a helmet & dark hair the nameless female stood;
A quiver with its burning stores, a bow like that of night,
When pestilence is shot from heaven; no other arms she need:
Invulnerable tho' naked, save where clouds roll round her loins,
Their awful folds in the dark air; silent she stood as night;
For never from her iron tongue could voice or sound arise;
But dumb till that dread day when Orc assay'd his fierce embrace.

Dark virgin; said the hairy youth, thy father stern abhorr'd;
Rivets my tenfold chains while still on high my spirit soars;
Sometimes an eagle screaming in the sky, sometimes a lion,
Stalking upon the mountains, & sometimes a whale I lash
The raging fathomless abyss, anon a serpent folding              

Around the pillars of Urthona, and round thy dark limbs,
On the Canadian wilds I fold, feeble my spirit folds.
For chaind beneath I rend these caverns; when thou bringest food
I howl my joy! and my red eyes seek to behold thy face
In vain! these clouds roll to & fro, & hide thee from my sight." 
 

This poem is dated 1793. It was written between the American Revolution and the French Revolution, or as the British might say between the Rebellion of the Thirteen Colonies and The Reign of Terror. Blake was not writing about the American Revolution per se but about the periodic eruption of violent change to overthrow oppressive conditions by an awakened consciousness. Blake named the spirit of revolution Orc; the spirit which maintained the entrenched status quo he referred to as the Daughter of Urthona.

Orc had come of age and become empowered to flex his muscles. In his childhood he had been restrained by chains each link of which had been forged by Urthona. We later are told that his father was Los, the active form of Urthona through whom the cohesive spiritual force of the psyche is expressed. The immature Orc was not only chained mentally but he was physically restrained in an underground cavern which may be thought of as the body of a child before the age of puberty.

In his lonely prison Orc was fed by the aspect of Urthona which is known as the Daughter of Urthona. She supplied the food which nourished the developing unconscious of the restrained boy. Forms of rebellion (the eagle, the lion, the whale or the serpent) festered within the dormant child whom the voiceless female nourished. The Daughter of Urthona brought joy to Orc because there are constant eruptions of dissent within the status quo.

The table was being set for Orc to enjoy his feast of active expression as rebellion, war, and a 'reign of terror'.

We read in Blake's Visionary forms Dramatic, edited by David V. Erdman and John E. Grant, from chapter 5, America New Expanses:

"The action of the poem-picture is larger and more complex than would be indicated by the picture or the words taken separately, for these point not to each other (as in the usual picture book) but beyond themselves. The artifact only opens the sensory doors to the mental theater.

In other words, the text is not there to help us follow the picture, nor the picture to help us visualize the text; both lead us to an imaginative leap in the dark, a leap beyond the dark and the fire - from perception to Intellectual Vision, a last judgement in which fools perish.

We must attend to Blake's definition (Jerusalem 98) of true communication as practiced by humans in paradise:

And they conversed together in Visionary forms dramatic which bright
Redounded from their Tongues in thunderous majesty, in Visions
In new Expanses, creating exemplars...

Their converse involves mastery of all the arts of discourse, ornamentation, dramaturgy, exploration, and moral suasion (exemplars). Using only the arts of poetry and painting (and engraving) Blake must suggest all the others. And all must serve Intellectual Vision, seen through the window of the artifact." 

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