On page 379 of The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist cites his evidence that Blake wrote and illustrated under the influence of the right hemisphere of his brain. McGilchrist used one of Blake's earliest illuminated works There is No Natural Religion, to demonstrate that Blake had a firm grasp on the workings of the right hemisphere as determined by exploration on the functioning of the human brain by neuroscientists. Blake intuitively knew the characteristics which were later attributed to right brain activity.
THERE is NO NATURAL RELIGION, b, VII, (E 3) "VII The desire of Man being Infinite the possession is Infinite
& himself Infinite
Conclusion, If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic
character. the Philosophic & Experimental would soon be at the
ratio of all things & stand still, unable to do other than repeat
the same dull round over again
Application. He who sees the Infinite in all things sees
God. He who sees the Ratio only sees himself only.
Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is"
McGilchrist wrote:
"The very titles of Blake's major work's Songs of Innocence and Experience and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, allude to the reality that, in the lived world of the right hemisphere, opposites are not 'in opposition'. Blake's visionary poetry nontheless dramatises in various forms a battle between two powerful forces that adopt different guises: the single-minded, limiting, measuring, mechanical power of what Blake called Ratio, the God of Newton, and the myriad-minded, liberating power of creative imagination, the God of Milton. This opposition persists despite the right hemispheres unification of opposites, for the same reason that a tolerant society cannot secure the co-operation of the intolerant who would undermine it, and may ultimately find itself in the paradoxical situation of having to be intolerant of them.
Blake .. voices, without being aware of it, the brain's struggle to ward off domination by the left hemisphere. For instance, in THERE is NO NATURAL RELIGION he writes:
[Blue text provided by McGilchrist.]
THERE is NO NATURAL RELIGION, VII, (E 3)"Conclusion, If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic
character. the Philosophic & Experimental would soon be at the
ratio of all things & stand still, unable to do other than repeat
the same dull round over again [to reach outside the known one needs the right
hemisphere: the left hemisphere can only repeat the known].
Application. He who sees the Infinite [looks outward to the ever becoming with
the right hemisphere] in all things sees God. He who sees the Ratio only [looks at the self-defined world brought into being by the left hemisphere] sees himself only. [the left hemisphere is self-reflective].
Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is [through the right hemispere gives us access to imagination/metaphor, the bridge whereby the divine reaches us, and liberates us from ourselves].
Blake, too, saw himself as inspired by a return to a great figure of the pre-Augustan era, not so much in his case Shakespeare or Michelangelo (though he was undoubtedly indebted to both), but to the spirit of Milton, which, with charecteristic specificity and a wonderful refusal to be nonplussed, he believed had entered his body through the instep of his left foot:
'Then first I saw him in the Zenith as a falling star,
Descending perpendicular, swift as the swallow or swift;
And on my left foot falling on the tarsus, enterd there ...'
Milton, Plate 15 [17], (E 110)
- thereby gaining literally direct access to the right hemisphere. And so thunderstruct was he by the experience that fortunately he illustrated the event."
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Huntington Art Gallery Milton Plate 29, Copy B |
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