NIGHTMARE OF HISTORY

Glasgow Library
Europe
Title Plate

In illustrating Europe, A Prophecy Blake deviated from the text in several instances. He choose to focus attention on disasters which may befall mankind either as a result of his own decisions or because of circumstances beyond his control. In A Blake Dictionary, Damon names the full page illustrations Famine and Plague, and the Frontispiece illustration Ancient of Days showing the limits being set for man's activity. He mentions also images showing Treachery, Cruelty, War, Blighted Harvest and Imprisonment.

The narrative of the book places the historical events of Blake's own times into the structure of Blake's myth, but the illustrations show calamities which may plague mankind in any time or place. We see that man is a victim as a consequence of living in uncaring nature within a political structure which is imposed upon him. 
 
Famine
Fear 
Power
Plague 
Pestilence
Fire 
Treachery 
Limitation 
Cycles of Revolution 
Mildew, Blighted Harvest
Imprisonment 
Cruelty
War

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In his own city, London, around the time when this poem was being written Blake observed food shortages, military conscription, imprisonment for sedition, loyalty oaths, restrictions on assembly, and failures of Parliament and King to protect the citizens. In the previous century London had experienced the Black Plague and devastating Great Fire of London. Blake used the illustrations to emphasize the precarious situation in which mankind exists. 

From Blake's Apocalypse by Harold Bloom,
"In this unresolved intensity the most audacious poem Blake had yet written arrives at the the most inconclusive of his conclusions. The nightmare of history has been vividly exposed, but no cure for bad dreams has been suggested." (Page 161)

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