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'How enlightened was
the Enlightenment?' Week 10: the arts
William Blake (1757 – 1827)
Blake
was a complex writer, but his central message was that we should trust our
natural imagination and our emotions and not repress them.
Since I very much admire Blake, and think his ideas
are similar to those expressed in these notes, I include some points gathered
together over a few years, and not (yet?) put together into a coherent paper –
a ‘work in progress’ perhaps.
Points here:
1. Reason and the imagination
2. Blake’s criticisms of the
mechanical philosophy of
3. The evolution of his ideas
4. Some well-known quotations
5. Blake and the Sixties
6. Philip Pullman on Blake
7. Blake and politics.
8. Notes from the Tate.
1. Reason and the imagination:
As W.H. Stevenson puts it in his introduction to Blake’s Selected Poetry (Penguin, 1988): Blake lived in
revolutionary times: the impact of industrialisation especially, but also the
time of the French revolution of 1789 which he supported, and the American
Revolution. He was also ‘writing at a time when the Age of Reason was turning
into an Age of Enthusiasm.’ In other words he was a precursor of the Romantic
movement.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(another pre-romantic) stressed the importance of sensibilité – or feeling/sensitivity – rather than reason; but
whilst Rousseau was a philosopher, and developed complex arguments about
society, morality and politics, Blake was a visionary artist who saw reason and imagination as two opposed
faculties. Imagination is liberating,
whilst reason imprisons us.
His views on the Bible and
Christianity were highly original. For Raine, “Jesus, the Imagination” (a liberator therefore) is opposed in
Blake’s scheme to “Reason… (and law)
[which is] call’d Satan.” And: “Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse,
not from rules” (Raine op cit p 57). For Blake, the Bible (especially the
Old Testament), and other myths, taught something different to what Christ
taught. That is, Christ taught love and forgiveness, whilst the Old Testament
and the institutionalised church taught the imposition of law. Consequently,
Blake rejected all this and worked out his own elaborate mythology (see below).
2. Blake’s criticisms of the mechanical philosophy of
Given the importance to Blake
of the imagination, and the spiritual side of life, it is hardly surprising
that he attacked
[in
the] “Schools and Universities of
“… the Loom of Locke whose Woof rages
dire
In heavy wreathes folds over every
Nation; cruel Works
Of many Wheels I view, wheel without
wheel, with cogs tyrannic
Moving by compulsion each other: not as
those in
Wheel within wheel in freedom revolve in
harmony & peace.”
(ed. Stevenson, 1988, p 209, from ‘
It is often not realised that
in the better-known poem which is also called ‘Jerusalem’ – but which is in
fact from another long poem called Milton (see ed. Stephenson p 161) – the
references to ‘clouded hills’ and ‘Satanic mills’ are not just to the
industrial revolution, but at the same time to spiritual blindness and the
shackles of the mind.
Additional point, from a Tate
exhibition: For Blake,
Martin Butlin (see below):
the print shows
Note that in Blake’s print of
3. The evolution of his ideas:
Stevenson suggests that we
will find our way through Blake’s ideas better if we think of him as having
gone through several ‘enthusiasms’ one after another.
First (and perhaps foremost,
in that it produced tangible artifacts which we can still admire) he was an
illustrator, who worked out his own way of producing prints that were combined
with poems, using the skills of an engraver. The themes and the style were
heavily influenced by medieval art, and in this also he took up a practice that
was an essential part of the romantic movement (and of William Morris). It is worth mentioning, too, Stevenson’s
suggestion that this way of working enabled him to take control and not to rely
on others – for he was not an easy person to get along with, it is argued.
Apart from his Songs of
Innocence and Experience, his poems are written in a style based on the ‘cloudy
medievalism of Chatterton and Ossian’ (Stevenson p 13), and given that he
created his own mythological figures to convey his ideas, they are
unfortunately very difficult to read.
At first he associated with
other radicals of the time - such as Mary Wollstonecraft - and supported the
drive for political change. Later he became convinced (as Stevenson puts it) “that art, the works of the imagination,
not political revolution, were the key to [the world’s] renovation.” In fact he went so far as to say, in 1809
(from Raine, 1970, p 52): “I am really
sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics… If men were wise,
the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them; if they are not wise, the
freest government is compelled to be a tyranny.”
In writings such as Thel, and
The Bible, and other
myth-makers, had emphasised law – when they should have dwelt on ‘freedom,
love, innocent happiness and (above all) the imagination’… (Stevenson p 14).
However, his ideas evolved,
and instead of seeing the world as a conflict between rival forces he next
describes how the original perfect human broke up into separate fragments, none
of which are perfectly god or evil, and how the fragments need to be brought
together again. (See 8 below).
Later he came to believe that
original humans had a harmonious balance to their natures – after the Fall
(which Blake saw as meaning the failure of human imagination) our natures
became fragmented – reason, the imagination, the spirit; our good and our bad
sides.
Eventually he returned to
themes of a more religious tone, arguing that (as Stevenson puts it) “the
solution to the disintegration of man is reconciliation through forgiveness”,
and Christ represents the “Eternal Human” (i.e. the integrated, whole person).
4. Some well-known quotations:
“Everything that lives is
holy”
“The hours of folly are
measured by the clock; but the hours of wisdom no clock can measure.”
In one of his most famous and
beautiful poems he says we should try:
“To
see a world in a grain of sand,
And
heaven in a wild flower,
Hold
infinity in the palm of our hand
And
eternity in an hour.”
“Energy is eternal delight.” The energy of life should be allowed
to flow freely – if impeded or suppressed it will become violent and
destructive: a subtle explanation of the origins of evil…
“The tigers of wrath are
wiser than the horses of instruction.” He opposed the institutionalised church and
its restrictive moralizing.
“Without Contraries there is
no progression.. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and
Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from
energy.” (From the Marrriage of Heaven and Hell) (cited in Butlin p 9).
5. Blake and the Sixties:
Note that the hippies and
others in the ‘60s argued that rationality had brought about an irrational
world: the extraordinary and insane destruction of two world wars (and Nazism,
Stalinism and Maoism), Hiroshima/Nagasaki and the atom bomb – together with the
possibility of the human race destroying itself. Perhaps some who warn of the
effects of climate change are arguing much the same: our
scientific-technical-rational mastery of nature could destroy us. See Social Movements: Youth and the
'counter-culture'.
6. Philip Pullman on Blake:
I like some of the things that
Philip Pullman says (New Statesman 18.12.06): what lured him to Blake was
‘intoxication’, the visionary qualities (as with Allen Ginsberg). The poetry
works ‘as poetry always does, on the ear and in the mouth, before it lets
itself be disentangled by the mind’… and though a lot of poetry leaves only a
faint taste, Blake’s lyrics ‘disclose tough, dense and sinewy argument, always
original, always surprising, always disturbing’ (as in Tyger…). The lyrics have
an incantatory power. Blake also has a prophetic quality – warning, with moral
force.
For
… shew you all alive
The world, where every particle of dust
Breathes forth its joy
- ‘this world, this
extraordinary universe in which we live and of which we are made, is material;
and it is amorous by nature. Matter rejoices in matter, and each atom of it
falls in love with other atoms and delights to join up with them to form
complex and even more delightful structures.’
Man has no Body distinct from his Soul;
For that call’d Body is a portion of Soul discern’d by
the five senses…
- non-material things arise
from ‘matter-in-love-with-matter’ – such as thoughts (of which ‘you cannot say
where one begins and another ends’)
How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense World of delight, clos’d by your senses
five?
- ‘Consciousness is a normal
property of the physical world, and much more widely present than human beings
think’
Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and
Reason is the bound or outward circumference of energy.
Energy is Eternal Delight.
- The ‘mental templates on
which are formed such things as metaphor, the very ways we understand and
interpret our experience, are based on the ways our bodies move around in the
world and interact with other physical entities.’
A dog starved at his Master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
- ‘The visionary and the
imaginative are not different realms from the political, but the very ground on
which politics stands, the nourishing soil from which political awareness and
action grow.’
- ‘The fullest and most
important subject of our study and our work is human nature and its
relationship to the universe.’
God Appears and God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night,
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of Day.’
- ‘Lastly, we should not
forget that the work we do is infinitely worth doing.’
In the same feature, Tracy
Chevalier (writer) refers to what Blake called ‘contraries’: fire in the dark,
sweetness amidst dread… His poems and pictures never get resolved…
In The Guardian 26.11.11
Pullman quotes Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell: [there is an] ‘Angel, who
is now become a Devil [and] is my particular friend; we often read the Bible
together in its infernal or diabolical sense, which the world shall have if
they behave well. I also have the Bible of Hell, which the world shall have
whether they will or no.’
Further on he likens Blake to
Occupy: Blake asks Isaiah and Ezekiel how they dare to assert so roundly that
God spoke to them. Isaiah replies: ‘My senses discovered the infinite in
everything, and as I was then perswaded, and remain confirm’d, that the voice
of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences, but
wrote.’
See also: Christopher
Rowland: Blake and the Bible (Yale)
(ii) Guardian Review,
Observer New review,
7. Blake and politics:
In an article in ‘Post-16
Educator’ No 40, Dave Welsh, reviewing the Tate Britain exhibition, [Blake,
Slavery and the Radical Mind] writes of how Blake’s verse was ‘full of images
condemning the political, moral and economic system of his time: from the
‘chartered streets’ and ‘mind-forged manacles’ of London, to his re-working of
Milton’s ‘Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves’ or his call to ‘Look up!
Look up! Empire is no more!’
Blake’s poetry was put to
music in Adrian Mitchell’s 1971 Glad Day….
Above all, Blake represented
the fiercely independent spirit of the London radical artisan... [The exhibition has] ‘a “family tree” of the
1790s [which] shows that Blake was part of the radical movement that included
the philosopher William Godwin… Mary Wollstonecraft, Tom Paine and Joseph
Johnson the bookseller…
Blake opposed slavery here
and in the Caribbean, stressing the links between the different forms of
oppression:
‘All the Slaves from every Earth in the wide Universe
Sing a New Song drowning confusion in its happy
notes.’
Blake was not an isolated
visionary as Ackroyd portrays him, but the times were ripe for revolution: the
Gordon Riots, unrest caused by food shortages, wars with France, mounting
repression, the rise of trade unions, the London Correspondence Society,
Combination Laws and the fight against land enclosure… As this is missing from
the exhibition, Welsh describes the picture of Blake as a ‘sanitised,
post-modern’ version…
8. Notes from the Tate:
http://www.tate.org.uk/search/William%20Blake
In a booklet first published
in 1966 (revised 1983, reprinted 1993) Martin
Butlin says: ‘Blake’s philosophy found written expression in a series of
epic Prophetic Books. In these he evolved what can be called his own mythology.
Personages such as Urizen, Los, Enitharmon and Orc struggle in a primeval world
of frozen depths, tormenting fires... They symbolize the successive
subdivisions of the original, innocent man into the individual elements that
make up his unified being. The most important are his reason, his imagination, his passions and his senses, which, once
divided, war jealously against each other. Blake regarded this process of
subdivision as the real Fall of Man, and the orthodox doctrine of Original Sin
and the whole idea of a vengeful Jehovah were repugnant to him. (My
emphasis).
According to Butlin:
Urizen seems to be Jehovah –
see the print The House of Death where Jehovah/Urizen is ‘presiding over the
ultimate decay of his material creation.’
(p 7)
Los is the Eternal Prophet (p
8) and Enitharmon is Pity – formed when Los is so overcome with pity that ‘the
first female form’ separates itself from his body and is called Pity or
Enitharmon, once again subtracting from the completeness of the original
man.’
Blake regarded pity as a
negative virtue, as shown by the opening lines of The Human Abstract (from
Songs of Experience):
Pity would be no more,
If we did not make somebody
Poor:
And Mercy no more would be,
If all were as happy as we.
Orc is the son of Los and
Enitharmon, and represents boundless energy – in Los and Orc, the latter is
bound to a rock by the chain of Los’s jealousy. (See the poem America).
Vala and Enion (two female
figures) represent Nature.
In the painting ‘Dante in the
Empyrean, drinking from the River of Light’ - Enion and Vala are on the right
symbolizing Nature, there is a scene of artists at work (on the left, above
Dante), tiny figures or ‘infant joys’ on the left, and an aged poet, perhaps
the regenerate Urizen. The whole scene represents ‘the regeneration of Art and
Nature in the Eternal World as a result of the poet’s drinking at the River of
Life or Divine Imagination.’
Butlin concludes: ‘The state
of ultimate salvation, unlike the original state of innocence, accepts and
transcends the full gamut of experience.’