ENCOUNTERS

British Museum

Illustrations to Young's Night Thoughts

Henry Crabb Robinson was a journalist and a lawyer, but he is remembered for his interest in interviewing exceptional people, especially people of genius. Blake was in his waning years when he became acquainted with Robinson through a supporter - Mrs Aders.

Since Robinson was a devoted Diarist he recorded accounts of his visits with Blake whom he found both interesting and perplexing. Blake had spent his lifetime meditating on the relationship between God and man. Although his ideas were startling to Robinson, they were well reasoned on the basis of his own experience of the spiritual dimension. The thinkers who had influenced Blake were foreign to Robinson. But because Robinson continued to visit him and engage in conversation, Blake expressed his unconventional ideas and Robinson preserved them in his dairy. There is no evidence that Robinson ever really grasped what Blake was talking about.

DIARY REMINISCENCES AND CORRESPONDENCE of HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

Vol 2 - including Blake

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Robinson wrote:

December 10th [1825] - Dined with Aders. A very remarkable and interesting evening. The party at dinner, Blake the painter, and Linnell a painter. In the evening Miss Denman and Miss Flaxman came. Shall I call Blake artist, genius, mystic or madman. Probably he is all. I will put down without method what I can recollect of the conversation of this remarkable man. He has a most interesting appearance. He is now old (sixty eight), pale with a Socratic countenance and an expression of great sweetness though with something of languor about it except when animated, and then he has about him an air of inspiration The conversation turned on art, poetry, and religion. He brought with him an engraving of his Canterbury Pilgrims. One of the figures in it is like a figure in a picture to Mr Aders. "They say I stole it from this picture said Blake but I did it twenty years before. I knew of this picture in my youth I was always studying paintings of this kind, wonder there is a resemblance." In this he seemed to explain humanly what he had done. But at another time he spoke of paintings as being what he had seen in his visions And when he said my visions it was in the ordinary unemphatic tone in which speak of every day matters. In the same tone he said repeatedly, "The Spirit told me." I took occasion to say, "You express as Socrates used to do." What resemblance do you suppose there between your spirit and his. "The same as between our countenances." He paused and added, "I was Socrates" and then as correcting himself said, "a sort of brother. I must have had conversations with him. So I had with Jesus Christ, I have an recollection of having been with both of them." I suggested on philosophical grounds the impossibility of supposing an immortal being created, an eternity à parte post without an eternity à parte ante. His eye brightened at this and he fully concurred with me. "To sure it is impossible. We are all co existent with God members the Divine body. We are all partakers of the Divine nature." In this by the by Blake has but adopted an ancient Greek idea connected with this idea.

I will mention here though it formed of our talk as we were walking homeward that on my asking in what light he viewed the great question concerning the deity of Jesus Christ he said, "He is the only God." But then he added' "and so am I and so are you." He had just before and that occasioned question been speaking of the errors of Jesus Christ. "Jesus Christ should not have allowed himself to be crucified and should not have attacked the Government." On my inquiring how this view could be reconciled with the sanctity and Divine qualities of Jesus. Blake said, "He was not then become the Father." Connecting well as one can these fragmentary sentiments it would be hard to fix Blake's station between Christianity, Platonism, and Spinozism. Yet he professes to be very hostile to Plato and reproaches Wordsworth with being not a Christian but a Platonist.   

...

"There is no use in education. I hold it to be wrong It is the great sin It is eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This was the fault of Plato He knew of nothing but the virtues and vices and good and evil. There is nothing in all that Everything is good in God's eyes." On my putting the obvious question, "Is there nothing absolutely evil in what men do" - "I am no judge of that. Perhaps not in God s eyes." He sometimes spoke as if he denied altogether the existence of evil and as if we had nothing to do with right and wrong; it being sufficient to consider all things as alike the work of God. Yet at other times he spoke of there being error in heaven. I asked about the moral character of Dante in writing his "Vision" - was he pure? "!Pure!" said Blake; "do you think there is any purity in God's eyes. The angels in heaven are no more so than we. 'He chargeth his angels with folly.'" He afterwards represented the Supreme Being as liable to error. "Did he not repent him that he had made Nineveh?" It is easier to repeat the personal remarks of Blake than these metaphysical speculations, so nearly allied to the most opposite systems of philosophy. Of himself he said he acted by command. The Spirit said to him, "Blake be an artist and nothing else." In this is felicity. His eye glistened while he spoke of the joy of himself solely to divine art. Art is inspiration. When Michael or Raphael or Mr Flaxman does any of his fine things, he does them in the Spirit." Blake said, "I should be sorry if I had earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy." 

...

February 2nd [1827]- Götzenberger the young painter from Germany and I accompanied him to Blake. We looked over Blake's Dante. Götzenberger was highly gratified by the designs. I interpreter between them. Blake seemed gratified by the visit said nothing remarkable.

It was on this occasion that I saw Blake for the last. He died on the 12th of August. His genius as an artist was by Flaxman and Fuseli, and his poems excited great interest in. His theosophic dreams bore a close resemblance to those Swedenborg. I have already referred to an article written by me on Blake for the Hamburg Patriotic - Annals 5. My interest in remarkable man was first excited in 1806. Dr Malkin our Grammar School head master published in that year a memoir of a very precocious child who died. An engraving of a portrait of him by Blake was prefixed. Dr Malkin gave an account of Blake as a painter and poet and of his visions and added some specimens his poems including the Tiger.

...

Late 1827 - visit to Catherine

She had the wife's virtue of virtues, an implicit reverence for her husband. It is quite certain that she believed in all his visions. On one occasion speaking of his visions she said, "You know, dear, the first time you saw God was when you were four years old and he put his head to the window and set you a screaming." In a word she was formed on the Miltonic model, and, like the first wife, Eve, worshipped God in her husband.

  "He for God only she for God in him"  

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From Blake's Notebook, (E481)
"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"

BLAKE & DANTE

"The Vestibule of Hell and the Souls Mustering to Cross the Acheron"

Plate 5

Dante, Cato III

To enlarge image, right click on picture, select open in a new window, move cursor around picture to show detail. Close window to return.

 

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Blake and Dante were at opposite poles in regard to their understanding of the nature of God. Blake reached the conclusion that God's love could reconcile the world to himself. Dante perceived of a God of vengeance who related to humanity by devising punishments for man's transgressions. Although Blake recognized Dante as a  gifted poet who was capable of receiving visions, he objected to the way Dante understood God. When Blake was commissioned to illustrate the Divine Comedy, he undertook it with enthusiasm but with reservations. Blake used his illustrations to show the punishments that Dante had imagined for his enemies and for those who had broken the rules of their society. He also showed how perverse were the tortures which Dante devised.

Blake's illustration for Canto III which he created with a high degree of skill and thought, illustrates the classical final step of the entry into Hell of those who deserve to experience the torments of Hell - the crossing of the river Acheron . Those who have not received the grace of Baptism remain in the limbo of neither enduring Hell of being received in Heaven.

Across the top of the picture are the angels who had not joined either side in the war in Heaven which Milton described in Paradise Lost. On the right side are the individuals who have not aligned themselves with either good of evil in their journey through life, either through not being Baptized by the Church or by being indecisive. Those in the foreground are those whom Dante places in the category of individuals whose sinfulness makes them unfit for Heaven until punishment (torture) induces repentance.

Blake knew that struggles took place within individuals, between the forces of good and evil, between life and death, between Eternity and the fallen world. Blake pursued the theme that mankind was capable of regeneration through casting off error and assimilating truth: that Truth when revealed in the depth of the soul is irresistible.

However, like Dante, Blake saw the danger of being wishy-washy of being immersed in the lake of Udan-Adan which he called a "Lake not of Waters but of Spaces Perturbd black & deadly." Blake took great stock in the definite. To be defined and organized and articulated is the condition of men who are aware of their own Eternal being and that of their fellow men.

S. Foster Damon, A Blake Dictionary
"Udan-Adan
The condition of formlessness, of the indefinite."

Milton Klonsky, Blake's Dante, Page 138
"Drifting aimlessly across the sky are the feckless and pusillanimous angels who refused to take sides in the civil war in Heaven between God and Satan."

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 541)
"A Spirit and a Vision are not, as the 
modern philosophy supposes, a cloudy vapour or a
nothing: they are organized and minutely articulated beyond all
that the mortal and perishing nature can produce.  He who does
not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger
and better light than his perishing mortal eye can see does not
imagine at all.  The painter of this work asserts that all his
imaginations appear to him infinitely more perfect and more
minutely organized than any thing seen by his
mortal eye.  Spirits are organized men."

Annotations to Watson, (E 613)
"The Man who pretends to be a modest enquirer into the truth of a
self evident thing is a Knave   The truth & certainty of Virtue &
Honesty i.e Inspiration needs no one to prove it   it is Evident
as the Sun & Moon  He who stands doubting of what he
intends whether it is Virtuous or Vicious knows not what Virtue
means. no man can do a Vicious action & think it to be Virtuous.
no man can take darkness for light. he may pretend to do so & may
pretend to be a modest Enquirer. but is a Knave"

Jerusalem, Plate 5 (E 148)
"But all within is open'd into the deeps of Entuthon Benython
A dark and unknown night, indefinite, unmeasurable, without end.
Abstract Philosophy warring in enmity against Imagination
(Which is the Divine Body of the Lord Jesus. blessed for ever)."

Jerusalem, Plate 7, (E 149)
"They put forth their spectrous cloudy sails; which drive their 
Constellations over the deadly deeps of indefinite Udan-Adan
Kox is the Father of Shem & Ham & Japheth, he is the Noah
Of the Flood of Udan-Adan".

Jerusalem, Plate 55, (E 205)
"And the voices of the Living Creatures were heard in the clouds of heaven
Crying: Compell the Reasoner to Demonstrate with unhewn Demonstrations
Let the Indefinite be explored. and let every Man be judged
By his own Works, Let all Indefinites be thrown into Demonstrations
To be pounded to dust & melted in the Furnaces of Affliction:
He who would do good to another, must do it in Minute Particulars 
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel hypocrite & flatterer:
For Art & Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars
And not in generalizing Demonstrations of the Rational Power.
The Infinite alone resides in Definite & Determinate Identity
Establishment of Truth depends on destruction of Falshood continually    
On Circumcision: not on Virginity, O Reasoners of Albion

So cried they at the Plow. Albions Rock frowned above
And the Great Voice of Eternity rolled above terrible in clouds
Saying Who will go forth for us! & Who shall we send before our face?"

Jerusalem, Plate 80, (E 237)
"And Rahab like a dismal and indefinite hovering Cloud
Refusd to take a definite form. she hoverd over all the Earth
Calling the definite, sin: defacing every definite form;"

Letters, to Cumberland, (E 783)
"For a Line or Lineament is not formed by Chance a Line is a Line in its
Minutest Subdivision[s] Strait or Crooked It is Itself & Not
Intermeasurable with or by any Thing Else Such is Job but since
the French Revolution Englishmen are all Intermeasurable One by
Another Certainly a happy state of Agreement to which I for One
do not Agree.  God keep me from the Divinity of Yes & No too The
Yea Nay Creeping Jesus from supposing Up & Down to be the same
Thing as all Experimentalists must suppose"

Four Zoas, Night IV, PAGE 52, (E 334) 
"I will compell thee to rebuild by these my furious waves
Death choose or life thou strugglest in my waters, now choose life
And all the Elements shall serve thee to their soothing flutes"

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Revelation 3
[15] I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
[16] So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
[17] Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind,
and naked:

2nd Corinthians 5
[18] And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;
[19] To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

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Divine Comedy
Inferno

Cato III
"Then looking farther onwards I beheld
A throng upon the shore of a great stream:
Whereat I thus: "Sir! grant me now to know
Whom here we view, and whence impell'd they seem
So eager to pass o'er, as I discern
Through the blear light?"  He thus to me in few:
"This shalt thou know, soon as our steps arrive
Beside the woeful tide of Acheron."
...
Then with eyes downward cast and fill'd with shame,
Fearing my words offensive to his ear,
Till we had reach'd the river, I from speech
Abstain'd.  And lo! toward us in a bark
Comes on an old man hoary white with eld,
...
Then all together sorely wailing drew
To the curs'd strand, that every man must pass
Who fears not God.  Charon, demoniac form,
With eyes of burning coal, collects them all,
...
Thus go they over through the umber'd wave,
And ever they on the opposing bank
Be landed, on this side another throng
Still gathers.  "Son," thus spake the courteous guide,
"Those, who die subject to the wrath of God,
All here together come from every clime,
And to o'erpass the river are not loth:
For so heaven's justice goads them on, that fear
Is turn'd into desire.  Hence ne'er hath past
Good spirit.  If of thee Charon complain,
Now mayst thou know the import of his words."
...
Then to me
The gentle guide: "Inquir'st thou not what spirits
Are these, which thou beholdest?  Ere thou pass
Farther, I would thou know, that these of sin
Were blameless; and if aught they merited,
It profits not, since baptism was not theirs,
The portal to thy faith.  If they before
The Gospel liv'd, they serv'd not God aright;
And among such am I. For these defects,
And for no other evil, we are lost;"

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BIOGRAPHY 6

From Chapter 1 of Larry's book Ram Horn'd With Gold.

  Jerusalem

      The primary monument of Blake - the new man - is the epic poem, 'Jerusalem'. The old man wrote of fallenness; the new man continues to describe the world as it is, but the note of grace runs like a thread through all the hell of fallen life and leads us out in the last pages into heaven. 'Jerusalem' is for the reader who knows Blake; he can rejoice. Others are well advised not to invest much in the poem until they have some grounding in Blake's myth and his symbolic language. However any reader acquainted with the Book of Revelation may find joy in Blake's closing vision of the end of time and the moral principle upon which it rests.

       Apocalyptic yearnings were the staple diet of the religious radical mind and the school which Blake most nearly approached. After his awakening in 1800 his vision of apocalypse was fleshed out and glorified by his positive faith in Jesus, who died for our sins. He saw all the fallenness fall away like a cloud when following Jesus' example of self giving love.

Jerusalem, Plate 96, (E 256)

"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

So saying. the Cloud overshadowing divided them asunder
Albion stood in terror: not for himself but for his Friend     
Divine, & Self was lost in the contemplation of faith
And wonder at the Divine Mercy & at Los's sublime honour

Do I sleep amidst danger to Friends! O my Cities & Counties
Do you sleep! rouze up! rouze up. Eternal Death is abroad

So Albion spoke & threw himself into the Furnaces of affliction 
All was a Vision, all a Dream: the Furnaces became
Fountains of Living Waters Howing from the Humanity Divine
And all the Cities of Albion rose from their Slumbers, and All
The Sons & Daughters of Albion on soft clouds Waking from Sleep
Soon all around remote the Heavens burnt with flaming fires    
And Urizen & Luvah & Tharmas & Urthona arose into
Albions Bosom: Then Albion stood before Jesus in the Clouds
Of Heaven Fourfold among the Visions of God in Eternity"

British Museum
Jerusalem
Plate 76

No one has ever looked more deeply into the evil of the world and discovered so glorious an outcome. It has cheered all of the sorrowful who have known Blake, and it will cheer many more in the future. It's in this that he most vividly resembled his Lord, who suffered crucifixion and death and gave back life and love.

Wikipedia Commons
Illustrations of the Book of Job
Plate 18

With the completion of 'Jerusalem' Blake's poetic work was done, but his crowning work of art came in a series of pictures created as Illustrations of the Book of Job. That Biblical work has mystified many through the ages, and many diverse interpretations of it have been offered. Blake seized upon it for one last telling of his story. A picture is worth a thousand words, and these 21 pictures speak with simple eloquence of the man who had the whole world, saw it turn to ashes, and saw a new and better world take its place. In the course of these events Job's vision of God turned to Satan, and a new and more real vision took its place. The most vivid image for me is the picture and moment when Job and his wife intently watch Satan falling from Heaven and by his side fall two small figures who may be identified as old Job and old wife; two new creatures have taken their place. These pictures merit much study, and they yield a simple but profound understanding of Blake's life and myth, and, if he is right, the life of every man and of the world.

In his last years a small group of liberal and progressive artists gathered around Blake, and he at last enjoyed a modest measure of that human acceptance which had eluded him for most of his life. John Linnell assumed the loving care supplied in earlier days by Thomas Butts; all but two of our last series of letters are addressed to this young artist and his wife. Illness overtook Blake in 1826, but he remained in high spirits and had a song of praise on his lips, an original of course, at the moment of his departure from this world.

1 John 4
[11] Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
[12] No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
[13] Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.  

 

BIOGRAPHY 5

From Chapter 1 of Larry's book Ram Horn'd With Gold.

 

Milton

      Next to the Bible the poet John Milton was Blake's most formative spiritual influence. 'Paradise Lost' was the great religious epic in the English language, and Blake's calling as an epic poet is closely related to his affinity with Milton. As early as 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' he commented on Milton's vision. Quotations from 'Paradise Lost' and allusions to it fill the pages of 4Z. The evolving myth of Urizen, Orc, and Los may be understood at one level as a meditation upon Milton's leading characters--the Almighty, Satan, and Messiah.

       In the first six nights of 4Z Blake had exhausted his vision and didn't know at first how to proceed. Then he was surprised by joy and enabled to construct a Christian conclusion to the myth. But he didn't bother to engrave 4Z because his interests had changed. In the next long poem, 'Milton', he worked through and meditated upon the Moment of Grace and savored the new spiritual world which he had inherited. 'Milton' is a record of Blake's Christian honeymoon.

       In the first part of 'Milton', called the 'Bard's Song', Blake deals with the dramatic years at Felpham. Here we find Blake's definitive and full bodied portrait of Satan. Blake had come full circle from his ironic identification with the Devil in MHH. Now he identified Hayley with Satan, which seems rather uncharitable. We need to bear in mind that there were two Hayleys in Blake's mind. The first Hayley was a corporeal friend who had lured him to Felpham and tried to 'do him in' spiritually: "Corporeal friends are spiritual enemies". This Hayley served as tempter in what we may call Blake's last temptation. The other Hayley was a fellow sufferer with Blake, an artist whom Blake continued to encourage and nurture, as the letters attest.

       In the remainder of 'Milton' Blake's hero, John Milton, after a hundred years in Eternity, reenacts the kenosis (self emptying) of Christ and descends to redeem his successor - Blake - and mankind. This of course is a climactic moment in the poem. An unheard of thing! One leaves Heaven to return to 'this vale of tears'. Well, not quite unprecedented; Milton simply followed the path of Jesus. In that way Blake gave Milton (the man) the highest approval possible.

The Bard's Song led to a loud murmuring in the Heavens of Albion, and "the loud voic'd Bard terrify'd took refuge in Miltons bosom;" then Milton "took off the robe of the promise, & ungirded himself from the oath of God."

New York Public Library

Milton  

Plate 13

 

Milton, Plate 14, (E 108)

"And Milton said, I go to Eternal Death! The Nations still
Follow after the detestable Gods of Priam; in pomp
Of warlike selfhood, contradicting and blaspheming.
When will the Resurrection come; to deliver the sleeping body
From corruptibility: O when Lord Jesus wilt thou come?
Tarry no longer; for my soul lies at the gates of death.
I will arise and look forth for the morning of the grave.
I will go down to the sepulcher to see if morning breaks!
I will go down to self annihilation and eternal death,
Lest the Last Judgment come & find me unannihilate."
And I be siez'd & giv'n into the hands of my own Selfhood
The Lamb of God is seen thro' mists & shadows, hov'ring
Over the sepulchers in clouds of Jehovah & winds of Elohim
A disk of blood, distant; & heav'ns & earth's roll dark between
What do I here before the Judgment? without my Emanation?
With the daughters of memory, & not with the daughters of inspiration
I in my Selfhood am that Satan: I am that Evil One!
He is my Spectre! in my obedience to loose him from my Hells
To claim the Hells, my Furnaces, I go to Eternal Death."

Blake's myth was to a large degree patterned after Paradise Lost. His difference with Milton resembled one of those "severe contentions of Friendship." Milton had spoken; Blake replied in MHH; now he replies again! That's the shape of the poem as far as Blake himself was concerned.

Thereafter Milton allied himself with Los, giving, with Blake a triumvirate against which none could stand. Milton is an essay describing the triumph of Jesus over all the forces of the world.

Between the end of Songs of Innocence and the Moment of Grace, Blake had seen and described nature as corrupt, as groaning in travail. Now in 'Milton' he sees creation redeemed just as Paul had said that it would be:

Romans 8
[21] Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
[22] For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
[23] And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.

The poem is full of a beauty and joy which had been largely absent from Blake's pen since 'Songs of Innocence'. It contains some of his finest nature poetry. 

 Milton, Plate 31 [34], (E 139) 
  "Thou hearest the Nightingale begin the Song of Spring.
  The Lark sitting upon his earthy bed, just as the morn
  Appears, listens silent; then springing from the waving Cornfield, loud
  He leads the Choir of Day: trill, trill, trill, trill,
  Mounting upon the wings of light into the Great Expanse,
  Reecchoing against the lovely blue & shining heavenly Shell,
  His little throat labours with inspiration; every feather
  On throat & breast & wings vibrates with the effluence Divine.
  All Nature listens silent to him, & the awful Sun
  Stands still upon the Mountain looking on this little Bird
  With eyes of soft humility & wonder, love & awe.
  Then loud from their green covert all the Birds begin their Song:
  The Thrush, the Linnet & the Goldfinch, Robin & the Wren
  Awake the Sun from his sweet reverie upon the Mountain.
  The Nightingale again assays his song, & thro' the day
  And thro' the night warbles luxuriant, every Bird of Song
  Attending his loud harmony with admiration & love." 

  Blake's Milton is difficult to immediately grasp, but yields immense returns to anyone determined enough to come to an understanding of it.

 

 

BIOGRAPHY 4

                                    Four Zoas 

Page 5

Four Zoas, Night 1, PAGE 5, (E 302)
"In Eden,Females sleep the winter in soft silken veils 
Woven by their own hands to hide them in the darksom grave
But Males immortal live renewd by female deaths.     in soft
Delight they die & they revive in spring with music & songs
Enion said Farewell I die     I hide. from thy searching eyes    

So saying--From her bosom weaving soft in Sinewy threads
A tabernacle for Jerusalem she sat among the Rocks  
Singing her lamentation. Tharmas groand among his Clouds
Weeping, then bending from his Clouds he stoopd his innocent head 
And stretching out his holy hand in the vast Deep sublime        
Turnd round the circle of Destiny with tears & bitter sighs
And said.     Return O Wanderer when the Day of Clouds is oer

So saying he sunk down into the sea a pale white corse
In torment he sunk down & flowd among her filmy Woof  
His Spectre issuing from his feet in flames of fire
In gnawing pain drawn out by her lovd fingers every nerve 
She counted. every vein & lacteal threading them among
Her woof of terror. Terrified & drinking tears of woe
Shuddring she wove--nine days & nights Sleepless her food was tears
Wondring she saw her woof begin to animate. & not  
As Garments woven subservient to her hands but having a will
Of its own perverse & wayward Enion lovd & wept

Nine days she labourd at her work. & nine dark sleepless nights
But on the tenth trembling morn the Circle of Destiny Complete 
Round rolld the Sea Englobing in a watry Globe self balancd

A Frowning Continent appeard Where Enion in the Desart
Terrified in her own Creation      viewing her woven shadow
Sat in a dread intoxication of Repentance & Contrition 

There is from Great Eternity a mild & pleasant rest
Namd Beulah a Soft Moony Universe feminine lovely 
Pure mild & Gentle given in Mercy to those who sleep
Eternally. Created by the Lamb of God around
On all sides within & without the Universal Man
The Daughters of Beulah follow sleepers in all their Dreams
Creating Spaces lest they fall into Eternal Death                

The Circle of Destiny complete they gave to it a Space
And namd the Space Ulro & brooded over it in care & love
They said The Spectre is in every man insane & most
Deformd     Thro the three heavens descending in fury & fire
We meet it with our Songs & loving blandishments & give          
To it a form of vegetation But this Spectre of Tharmas
Is Eternal Death What shall we do O God pity & help    
So spoke they & closd the Gate of the Tongue in trembling fear 

What have I done! said Enion accursed wretch! What deed. 
Is this a deed of Love I know what I have done. I know
Too late now to repent. Love is changd to deadly Hate  
A [ll] life is blotted out & I alone remain possessd with Fears
I see the Shadow of the dead within my Soul wandering
In darkness & solitude forming Seas of Doubt & rocks of Repentance 
Already are my Eyes reverted. all that I behold                  
Within my Soul has lost its splendor & a brooding Fear
Shadows me oer & drives me outward to a world of woe
So waild she trembling before her own Created Phantasm" 

BIOGRAPHY 4 - From Chapter 1 of Larry's book Ram Horn'd With Gold.

Four Zoas
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood... (Ephesians 6:12)         The study of anyone's life from a distance of two centuries requires a lot of reading between the lines. In Blake's case we fortunately have a detailed spiritual journal reflecting the most critical years of his life. It exists in the form of an epic poem that he worked on for many years but never finished. Northrup Frye called 'The Four Zoas' "the greatest abortive masterpiece in English literature". Anyone who takes the trouble to read it three times is likely to agree with Frye; the first two readings may mystify more than enlighten.

       Once you know the man and his language, the poem takes on a fascinating personal dimension; it records the journey of a soul from darkness to light. Scholars tell us that Blake wrote, revised, cancelled, renewed, rewrote 4Z. The historical interpreters fancy that they can see the European military scene changing from line to line. But two centuries later the personal dimension, universalized into the metaphysical, is more gripping.

       In the prophetic poems between MHH and 4Z (called the Lambeth Books) we see Blake's spiritual capital running out. Even his secular critics observed the flagging of his vision and his enthusiasm during the period. He was struggling with the forces of darkness; moreover he was aware of the nature of the struggle, and he used the Ephesian epigram accordingly at the beginning of the poem.

       In 4Z Blake tells how the universal man lost Eden and fell into sleep and division and how his many selves struggled in the "torments of love and jealousy". But in the midst of these torments something happened, the selves worked through their trials, man awoke, and Eden returned. Here we have a personal adventure which is an expression of the history of mankind.

       In the first six nights we see a spiritual genius grappling with the Fall. Blake reflected in excruciating detail on the nature of fallenness. Why and how is mankind and the individual psyche so horribly messed up? The question haunts every spiritual genius and afflicts us all in varying degrees. Then in the midst of this darkness we see something strange: there are sudden glimmerings of light for a line or two, and we begin to realize that this may not be hell but purgatory. Few writers have more magnificently described the light shining among the people who walked in darkness. The really fascinating thing about 4Z is that right in the middle of it the writer suddenly changes into a new man. The exact moment is recorded in the action, and then the poem becomes a testament of faith.

Four Zoas, Night VII, Page 131, (E 400)  

"As when the wind sweeps over a Corn field the noise of souls 
Thro all the immense borne down by Clouds swagging in autumnal heat
Muttering along from heaven to heaven hoarse roll the human forms
Beneath thick clouds dreadful lightnings burst & thunders roll
Down pour the torrent Floods of heaven on all the human harvest
Then Urizen sitting at his repose on beds in the bright South 
Cried Times are Ended he Exulted he arose in joy he exulted
He pourd his light & all his Sons & daughters pourd their light
To exhale the spirits of Luvah & Vala thro the atmosphere
And Luvah & Vala saw the Light their spirits were Exhald
In all their ancient innocence the floods depart the clouds 
Dissipate or sink into the Seas of Tharmas   Luvah sat
Above in the bright heavens in peace. the Spirits of Men beneath 
Cried out to be deliverd & the Spirit of Luvah wept
Over the human harvest & over Vala the sweet wanderer"

 Milton, Plate 35 [39]  

"There is a Moment in each Day that Satan cannot find
Nor can his Watch Fiends find it, but the Industrious find
This Moment & it multiply. & when it once is found
It renovates every Moment of the Day if rightly placed" 

In 4Z Blake described the Moment of Grace in terms that closely 

resemble those of Jungian psychology: Shadow and Anima (Blake 

calls them spectre and emanation) are integrated into the Self. But without

question Blake described here a personal spiritual event of the greatest

importance. It was the moment when the divided selves found

themselves reconciled into a new being under a new Lord; it marked

a radical alteration of consciousness.

       Blake had shared with mankind a consciousness which had fallen through a decision for the world, and his senses constricted through turning his back upon the Divine Vision. Less guilty than most of us, he had not reached the level of spiritual blindness which characterizes true worldliness; nevertheless he was guilty. But in his brokenness he opened himself to unmerited grace, with the inevitable gracious consequences.

       In Night vii of 4Z Urizen, the ice man, the great opposer of change, effects the metamorphosis of fierce and fiery Orc, personification of change, into a serpent who crawls up the Tree of Mystery. An earlier prophet had written about a serpent and a tree at the dawn of history, and since that day the two figures have served as the basic symbols of the Fall. But Moses had used the same combined image to symbolize healing, and Jesus harked back to it in predicting his own impending exit from the world and its purpose.

       Knowledge of the full weight of meaning carried by serpent and tree alerts us to an impending climax in Blake's story. Back in Night i Los, the spirit of prophecy, the personification of creativity, was estranged from his emanation, Enitharmon. In Night v she gave birth to Orc, but Los chained him to earth with the Chain of Jealousy, a sort of reverse Oedipus myth. This left the creative selves a sorry shambles. But now in Night vii Enitharmon's shadow meets and unites with Los' spectre, and their issue is twofold, the Whore and the Lamb. The Whore will burn, and the Lamb will find a spotless bride.

       There's no way anyone can fully appreciate the joy of this moment without having participated deeply in the agony and travail which preceded it. This is but a way of saying that there's no way anyone can appreciate the salvation of the world without having first quenched the cup of the fallenness of the world. Long ago a book appeared entitled No Cross, No Crown, suggesting that we don't appreciate what God has done simply because we refuse the cup. Jesus accepted it on our behalf, and Blake did too in his way, as does every artist or prophet or saint who follows the narrow path.

       At the Moment of Grace the narrow path opens out into the limitless expanse of eternity. The last half of Night vii marks that moment in Blake's life and describes his own personal experience of Easter. Once it happened, he went on to what Kathleen Raine called the Christianizing of his myth. In Night viii he told the old, old story in the old, old terms, but the new creation had taken place in Night vii.

Four Zoas, Night vii, Page 95 [87], (E 368)  

"But if thou dost refuse Another body will be prepared

PAGE 86 
For me & thou annihilate evaporate & be no more
For thou art but a form & organ of life & of thyself
Art nothing being Created Continually by Mercy & Love divine

Los furious answerd. Spectre horrible thy words astound my Ear
With irresistible conviction I feel I am not one of those 
Who when convincd can still persist. tho furious.controllable
By Reasons power. Even I already feel a World within
Opening its gates & in it all the real substances
Of which these in the outward World are shadows which pass away
Come then into my Bosom & in thy shadowy arms bring with thee   
My lovely Enitharmon. I will quell my fury & teach
Peace to the Soul of dark revenge & repentance to Cruelty

So spoke Los & Embracing Enitharmon & the Spectre
Clouds would have folded round in Extacy & Love uniting"

Four Zoas, Night viii, Page 98 [90], (E 371) 

"Startled was Los he found his Enemy Urizen now 

In his hands. he wonderd that he felt love & not hate 

His whole soul loved him he beheld him an infant 

Lovely breathd from Enitharmon he trembled within himself"

BIOGRAPHY 3

 This is a portion of Larry's Ram Horn'd with Gold.

British Museum

Illustrations to Young's Night Thoughts

        These pages may suggest that Blake was something of a nonconformist with his decisions not to go to school, not to accept his father's generous offer of expensive artistic training, not to pursue the rewards of friendship with Rev. Mathews or Sir Joshua Reynolds, and finally not to teach drawing to the royal children. All these decisions taken together forced a man of out- standing artistic ability into a drab livelihood engraving other men's designs. They reduced him to a life of penury. He might look like a misanthrope except that the decisions were all based on something positive.

       Blake knew a secret. He was possessed by realities foreign to the general mind. He knew that trees were full of angels. He knew and vividly experienced an inner world so real that it made the external world by comparison a thing of shadows. He even had some support for his ideas. He discovered that the Gnostics , Plotinus, Paracelsus, Boehme, and a host of others had reported on those realities, not to mention Elijah, John, Stephen, and a few other such types. To the conditioned mind of his day (and ours) all these reports were just stories, but to Blake they were imaginative realities. Imagination was more real to him than any cold blooded materiality.

       With such a psyche how could he possibly trust himself to the sense deadening compromises by which most of us make our way in the world? When the chips were down, he always chose principle, conviction, imagination, and never mind the cost. The surprising thing is not that he failed to make his way, but that he managed to survive in this world for almost seventy years. He did have a strong instinct for survival.

       So Blake lived in the world without becoming a worldling, and he learned to fight back. His defense mechanism was telling about his own world. In fact he turned it into a counteroffensive, which he launched with a bang in 1789. He wrote a strange document called The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in which he stood the dominant consciousness on its head. (This work probably contains more famous Blake quotes than any other.)

       "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' embodies new communicative skills which Blake used to raise consciousness, not among his contemporaries, few of whom ever saw it, but among later generations. In MHH and in subsequent prophecies he describes a world of thought, imagination and reality foreign to the socially conditioned mind. He deconditions us and reprograms us, or in his language he attempts to raise us "into a perception of the infinite." (Cf Blake's conversation with Ezekiel in MHH: in the first of the Memorable Fancies)

       MHH celebrates Blake's discovery of his identity as a prophet and of the use of irony, which he likely learned from Isaiah. He called himself a devil, but that does not have the satanic implications that simpletons have ascribed to it; all his life Blake showed implacable enmity to Satan. Still perhaps his greatest weapon was the ability to turn conventional ideas upside down and let us see another reality beside the prevailing group- think. "Without Contraries is no progression". (MHH Plate 3; Erdman p. 34)

       For example laws are for the protection of society--or sometimes for the advantage of those who make them. Wealth is virtue--or sometimes thievery. Worship is life giving--unless it's idolatrous. War is terrible--but also profitable. These are called antinomies. Blake called them contraries, and the Proverbs of Hell in MHH express his realization that much of the world's thinking is illegitimately one sided. In a strange way Blake's vision showed him the other side of the coin. This is what he shared in the decades when he fought back.

       In a letter written to William Hayley Blake indicated that he had lost his vision about 1783 and regained it exactly twenty years later. From this we may surmise that Blake had chosen the world (or attempted to) when vision left him, but he apparently had a large reservoir of visionary capital which he lived on during his twenty years in the wilderness.

       He also had a Christian friend, Thomas Butts, a minor civil servant who saw something in Blake that most people had missed. (In this letter Blake explained to Butts, with great poetic brilliance his experience "on the sands at Felpham". Though Butts probably had no unusual visionary gifts himself, he did recognize them in his friend Blake. To encourage him he occasionally purchased Blake's pictures. As Butts became more aware of Blake's poverty, he commissioned him to paint fifty pictures at a guinea each and gave him complete freedom to choose his subjects. Butts' financial generosity made it possible for Blake and his wife to survive; in all likelihood his spiritual support was even more decisive.

      A series of letters which Blake wrote Butts suggest a relationship of mutual warmth. Major Butts affirmed Blake in such a way that in these letters Blake dropped the cryptic and enigmatic style which had become almost a part of him and reverted to the limpid clarity seen in the 'Songs of Innocence'. Blake made every effort to explain himself to Butts, and we are rewarded in the Butts correspondence with some of the most revealing glimpses of his mind and being.

       Blake tried to repay Butts for his kindness by offering him spiritual direction. However it seems likely that the relationship was the reverse, at least until the moment when Blake became confirmed in the Lordship of Christ. If Blake had a spiritual midwife, it must have been the humble customs officer.

      As the century drew to a close, in spite of his friendship with Butts Blake's spirits began to sink. Cash and work were scarce. He began to suffer from melancholy, avoid his friends and shrink from social scenes.

      Then in 1800 he received an invitation from a wealthy popular poetaster named William Hayley to move to Felpham, a village by the sea, and to collaborate in some artistic projects. Hayley in fact took Blake under his wing and set out to make a success of him. In particular he set him to painting miniature portraits and secured numbers of commissions for him. At the same time he strongly discouraged Blake's interest in writing.

       This proved to be Blake's last temptation. Naturally he felt grateful for Hayley's interest and sponsorship, but as time went on it became increasingly clear that Hayley meant for him to become a man of the world (painting portraits) and to turn his back on the eternal (stop writing poetry). It was the climactic struggle between the two principles for possession of the artist's soul. We find the struggle aptly expressed in the extravagant words of a spiritual report which Blake wrote to Butts on January 10, 1803. 

Letters, To Butts (E 724)

"But if we fear to do the dictates of our
Angels & tremble at the Tasks set before us. if we refuse to do
Spiritual Acts. because of Natural Fears or Natural Desires!  Who
can describe the dismal torments of such a state!--I too well
remember the Threats I heard!--If you who are organized by Divine
Providence for Spiritual communion.  Refuse & bury your Talent in
the Earth even tho you should want Natural Bread. Sorrow &
Desperation
pursues you thro life! & after death shame & confusion of face to
eternity--Every one in Eternity will leave you aghast at the Man
who was crownd with glory & honour by his brethren & betrayd
their cause to their enemies.  You will be calld the base Judas
who betrayd his Friend!--Such words would make any Stout man
tremble & how then could I be at ease? But I am now no longer in
That State & now go on again with my Task Fearless. and tho my
path is difficult.  I have no fear of stumbling while I keep it."

        A more reasoned explanation of this archetypal problem came in a letter to George Cumberland in July 1800:

I myself remember when I thought my pursuits of Art a kind of Criminal Dissipation and neglect of the main chance which I hid my face for not being able to abandon as a Passion which is forbidden by Law & Religion.

       By the main chance he meant of course seeking conventional success.       

After three years at Felpham it appears that Butt's support helped Blake to make the right final decision. An unpleasant altercation with a drunken soldier leading to a trial for sedition also helped. In 1803 he returned to London, richer only in experience, but confirmed in his determination to give his spiritual visions priority in his life.

BIOGRAPHY 2

Wikipedia Commons

Illustrations to Blair's The Grave

Object 19

From Chapter 1 of Larry's book Ram Horn'd With Gold.   

For the next five years Blake spent his days in this and other religious monuments communing with the images of legend and history. His imagination was nurtured and strengthened by the spiritual treasures of his country. One day he saw Jesus walking with the Twelve--and painted them. On another occasion he was present, the sole artist as it happened, when the embalmed body of a King Edward of the 15th Century was exhumed for inspection by the Antiquary Society.

       Some of Blake's formative experiences he shared with his contemporaries but not with us. For example 18th Century measures against crime were rather repressive by modern standards; petty crimes such as picking pockets were punished by hanging. A few blocks from Blake's home was Tyburn, the public gallows. In all likelihood on at least one occasion the impressionable lad witnessed a ten year old child being hung for his crimes. Tyburn became one of the mature poet's continually recurring symbols; he often equated it with Calvary, and he conceived of Satan as Accuser and Avenger.

       When Blake was nineteen, the American colonies declared their independence. His feelings, like those of many other Londoners, resembled the feelings of American liberals 190 years later about another war. At 23 he was swept along with a crowd that stormed Newgate Prison and set the prisoners free, eleven years before Bastille Day. Many in London devoutly hoped that the American revolution might spread to England. Blake saw this in his mind's eye because thirteen years later in his poem, America, he imaginatively described it.

       Blake's religious world was dominated by the State Church. Bishops were civil servants, appointed by the Crown; the religious establishment existed to all intents and purposes as part of the oppressive bureaucracy. This yoke had been thrown off briefly in the Puritan Revolution of the 17th Century, but the Restoration once again fastened it upon the people. Many of the established religious leaders of the age were corrupt and venal. Blake knew this from childhood and set his pen and artist's vision against religious hypocrisy.

       In Blake's day a strong sense of religious expectancy filled the air, especially within the dissenting community to which he belonged. He and many of his contemporaries hoped that an oppressive tyranny would shortly be replaced by the New Age of freedom and creativity. Today that hope has dimmed, but perhaps even in this dark age a few might get from Blake's poetry a glimpse of radiant possibilities.

       In 1782 the twenty-five year old poet married Catherine Boucher, the illiterate but beautiful daughter of a gardener. Blake taught her to read, draw, and assist him in many of his artistic endeavours, and she provided a full measure of faithful emotional support to him over a long and often trying creative career.

      In his younger days Blake often voiced the prevailing counter culture opinions about what was called free love. However all the evidence suggests that he was a devoted and faithful husband throughout the forty five years of their life together. Her only complaint was that he spent so much time in heaven. She made every effort to accompany him on those journeys. She frequently sat patiently with him through the long hours of the night while he pursued his rapturous visions. In a notebook poem, which he wrote after twenty five years of marriage he said, "I've a Wife I love and that loves me;/I've all but Riches Bodily." (Erdman, 481)

       Fortunate in parents, employer and wife Blake embarked in his twenties upon perilous paths and times. He suffered a fate common to many artists: economic necessities loomed as a dark shadow over the creative impulse. Like most young idealists he still had hopes of making his way in the world, and he began to confront the painful tension between creative work as an artist and a comfortable income.

       Some of Blake's students believe that a grim, traumatic event of some sort led to his disillusionment. If there was any one thing, we have lost sight of it. We do know that by 1784 his mind and thought had broadened beyond the pellucid innocence of his Poetical Sketches  to include the satirical stories of 'An Island in the Moon'. In these he lampooned the polite society in which he moved. The work probably served a healthy outlet for the frustration of conventional conformities.

       Interpreters most often use the 'Songs of Innocence' and 'Songs of Experience' to demonstrate the contrast between Blake's poetry before and after disillusionment. But the poem called 'Thel', written in 1789, illustrates that contrast in itself with startling abruptness. The first five plates of 'Thel' express the transparent radiance of child like faith as vividly as has been done in English. In 'Thel' the Lilly, the Cloud and finally the Clod of Clay all witness with ethereal beauty and clarity the reality of a warm and loving universe and their transparent destiny to move into yet greater glory. Hear the Clod of Clay as she speaks to the maiden, Thel:

'O beauty of the vales of Har, we live not for ourselves.
Thou seest me the meanest thing, and so I am indeed:
My bosom of itself is cold, and of itself is dark,
But he that loves the lowly pours his oil upon my head,
And kisses me, and binds his nuptial bands around my breast,
And says: "Thou mother of my children, I have loved thee,
And I have given thee a crown that none can take away."
But how this is, sweet maid, I know not, and I cannot know;
I ponder, and I cannot ponder, yet I live and love.'

       But Plate Six is a shrieking, although its symbolism is too complex to deal with here. It does appear that Blake wants us in 'Thel' to experience the full shock of the contrast between the Garden and the Fall. And we must conclude that he himself experienced it in personal trauma, although we can't pinpoint it. Henceforth for the next twenty years fallenness was to be his major theme.       

A good case can be made for the idea that Blake's personal fall came after a conscious decision for the world; it led to two decades of trouble-economic and spiritual. Luckily for us it was the one decision he couldn't make stick. With his very best efforts he could never quite become a worldling; there were too many angels knocking on his door. But for twenty years he proceeded to "kick against the pricks" (Acts 9.5).

       As a responsible husband Blake made a valiant effort to conform to the social exigencies and to make his way in the world. He won some success as an artist and was even ashamed of his versifying because he knew that it was against what he called the "main chance" . He tried to be worldly and sophisticated, but he was always coming up against compromises which he simply couldn't make.

       For a while he and Catherine frequented the salon of a Rev. Mathews, an intellectual and artistic dilettante. This good man even brought out Blake's 'Poetical Sketches' in a small private printing. But Blake's ideas about organized religion were much too inflammatory to afford him the freedom of any parsonage for long. Soon he and Catherine drifted away.

       Blake found a more congenial group gathering for weekly dinners with the publisher, Joseph Johnson, his employer. Here Blake met some of the most prominent radicals of the day, among them Tom Paine. Blake deeply admired the republican activism of Paine, and he liked Paine's general iconoclasm, although he and Paine disagreed about spirit and matter. In this piquant relationship Blake might have learned how to open infinity to the deist mind. Unfortunately before it could develop, Paine was hounded out of the country.

       Blake enrolled in the Royal Academy of Art during the hegemony of Sir Joshua Reynolds. He even had several exhibits there, but he couldn't quite conform his aesthetic values to the prevailing taste as represented by Sir Joshua. As a consequence he found himself shut out of the lucrative popular market. In simplest terms the popular market was fallen, then as now; Blake refused to stoop to it, and he paid the price of poverty.

       Blake's gifts were well recognized, and he developed quite a reputation as a teacher of drawing. One day an invitation came to teach the children of the royal family. That assignment would have established him in the world of fashion. But at that awesome crossroad he chose the lower path; he declined. He knew too well how he felt about royalty, and he also knew that he could never enjoy the royal bounty. At that critical point he was true to himself, and he definitively unmade the decision which had begun his troubles; he chose spiritual values and rejected the world. Afterward things got better spiritually, although for the moment they worsened financially.

BIOGRAPHY 1

This is a portion of Larry's Ram Horn'd with Gold.

Wikipedia Commons

Gates of Paradise 

Frontispiece

CHAPTER ONE
  Spiritual Biography

       "But when once I did descry
       The Immortal Man that cannot die,
       Thro' evening shades I haste away
       To close the labours of my day."
(From Gates of Paradise)

       The artist, Samuel Palmer, who knew our poet well, called him a man without a mask. With an acquaintance based only upon Blake's Songs of Innocence the reader may well agree. His later mythological poems in contrast appear cryptic and enigmatic. Nevertheless at the deepest level Blake was utterly transparent. The myth which he created faithfully reflects his life. Like a symphony or a quartet, myth and life had four movements.

       Begin with a childhood innocence recapitulating the dawn of the race, the primeval Garden of Paradise. Every loved child has this experience. In Blake's life it was protracted by a strange set of circumstances pointing to a peculiar, almost unique quality of love. We socialize children through the painful laying down of the law, but Blake's parents seem to have reared him with an absolute minimum of fear, a minimum of law, of prohibitions. The young Blake was considerate, aware of the needs of others, but not coerced. We know little about his childhood, but the shape of his mind points compellingly to these circumstances. Throughout his childhood and adolescence his psyche was largely protected from the destructive influences of the world, although he was very much a part of it.

       The inevitable fall, when it did occur, proved all the more traumatic. A youth with his head full of heaven came up against the sudden realization that earthly life is directed, ruled, and regulated by those at the other end of the cosmos. The rulers of this world are by and large the most devoted and loyal servants of the God of this World. The young, idealistic, sensitive poet and artist experienced this sinking realization suddenly and acutely. Thereafter the most gruesome visions of fallenness filled the pages of his creations. (The same could be said of Isaiah or Jeremiah.) Taking their cue from Blake's popular 'Songs' the critics have called this stage 'experience', but a more illuminating and descriptive term is 'fallenness'.

       The third stage embodies struggle. He who lives in the fallen world without becoming a worldling learns to fight back in some way. He develops defense mechanisms; he learns to preserve his individuality short of martyrdom. To some extent he defies the God of this World, and he pays a price for that defiance. On the basis of his ironies in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake has been called a Satanist, but that evaluation reflects a shallow grasp of his true moral stance. With MHH Blake discovered new powers of expression which he used to fight the true satanic kingdom, the fallen order of society in which he lived.

       For the fortunate few there comes a moment when grace reaches consciousness and glorifies the struggle. It's the moment when one realizes that truth is on the side of the angels, and he is one of them. He meets a God to whom he can give his allegiance. Once he was on the losing side with his defense mechanisms and his defiance; suddenly he realizes that the universe is basically okay, and he's in tune with it. Happy the person who makes that glad discovery. It came to Blake at 43 with a fundamental alteration of consciousness.

       As a new man Blake became a gospel preacher and a Christian prophet. He had always possessed the most intense faith in his vision; now he gained the ability to make it good news, at least to himself and to a few devoted artists, themselves relatively unaffected by the downward drag. They caught the gleam in his eye and the lilt in his voice as he sang his songs. What more could a man hope for than a small group, perhaps twelve or so, tuned and attentive to the truth which he embodies with his life? That was the Saviour's lot, too.

i

O why was I born with a different face? (from the poem, Mary, in The Pickering Manuscript, Erdman p. 487)      

Blake was different from earliest times, and he knew it well. Partly it was innate: his sheer intellectual quotient had to be awesome. The concept of a spiritual quotient (in a child!) is problematic, but in this case it should be looked at. A unique upbringing removed him further from his contemporaries. And finally he inhabited a social environment very different from anything we know today.

______________________________________________________________

How Did He Get That Way

FIRST: he came into the world with a tremendous endowment; some people are simply born with unusual gifts. SECOND: Leaving school on the first day his mind was never subjected to the indoctrination most of us got from our teachers. "The primary object of primary education is to socialize the pupil to the conventions of the culture we belong to." That never happened to Blake. Instead he .... THIRD: he read! and read! and read! He read the things that had fallen out of the national consciousness which was dominated by an extremely materialistic culture: the Bible, Behmen (Boehme) and hundreds of others, each in his own way representing the Perennial Philosophy. And he saw the Great Painters, not those favored by the Establishment. FOURTH: the population didn't read anything beyond the fourth grade level. When Paine asked Blake if people read him, he replied, "before the people can read it, they have to be able to read" (very much like today!). So there was a chasm between his mind and theirs (and ours).

The aforementioned video shows Tom Paine represented as the soul of rationality and Bill Blake the feeling, and above all the imagination. So Blake's relationships were with God: Meister Eckhart, Mohammed, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Boehme, Jesus, other men who had had similar visions. He honored God with the "severe contentions of friendship & the burning fire of thought." (Jerusalem Plate 91, E 251) His faith came up the hard way: Molech, Elohim, Nobodaddy, Urizen, and finally the Dear Saviour. How many of us good people can say we came to our faith like that?

Thank God we have the benefit of Blake's experience.

______________________________________________________________       

At the age of four young William ran screaming from his nursery to report to his mother that he had seen God looking in the window. That was the first of many such bizarre confrontations. (They went on for forty years before he satisfactorily and definitively identified God.) A happier event occurred at the age of eight when he sighted a tree full of angels. Eagerly he reported this vision as well; this would have earned him paternal chastisement except for the intercession of a compassionate mother. No doubt he learned from the experience that in social intercourse one must take into account differences of perceptibility.

---

Thank God I never was sent to school
To be Flogd into following the Style of a Fool
       (Satiric Verses Erdman 510)

       We know little about Blake's parents, but their care of him proves unusual understanding; they must have been fully aware that they had a genius on their hands. Perhaps their most important decision came on William's first day in school. In accordance with prevailing pedagogical custom the schoolmaster severely birched a student. Young Blake, acting upon his keen sense of moral outrage, rose from his desk and made an immediate exit. It was his first and last experience with formal education. His father showed amazing respect for the child's judgment.

  That decision meant that Blake missed the usual brainwashing, or call it social conditioning, that modern psychologists understand as the primary function of general education. It meant that he never learned to think society's way. Instead he thought, he saw, heard, tasted, and touched through his own doors of perception,  and they retained their childlike clarity throughout his life. Child, youth, or old man he always knew whether or not the emperor had clothes on.

       Instead of school he directed his own education, primarily centered in the Bible. In the place of ordinary social conditioning Blake was Bible soaked. The stories of Ezra and Ezekiel were as real to him as childhood games. He must have known large portions of the Bible word for word because line after line, digested, assimilated, and recreated, appear in the poetry he wrote throughout his life. You can bet that made a difference!  

       Although by no means wealthy Blake's father enrolled him at the age of ten in Pars Drawing School. He intended to give the boy first class training as an artist, but William with characteristic sensitivity declined to be favored this way at the expense of his brothers. Instead he proposed apprenticeship to an engraver, a more modest financial undertaking. His father took him to see William Ryland, the Royal engraver, and prepared to put down a princely sum for the apprenticeship, but the child objected on the basis of Ryland's looks; he told his father that he thought the man would live to be hanged. Once again the elder Blake respected the child's judgment, and sure enough, twelve years later Ryland was hanged for forgery.

       At fourteen Blake began a seven year apprenticeship with James Basire, an old fashioned but respectable engraver. Blessed with understanding parents the young artist was equally fortunate in his choice of a master. Basire, too, carefully preserved the boy's individuality and sensitivity against the downward drag of the world. When he found his other apprentices exploiting Blake's innocence, he sent the child to Westminster Abbey to sketch the gothic art found there.