THE BIG PROPHETIC BOOKS
Blake's "three years' slumber," as he called it, hypnotized, I presume, by
Hayley's lulling kindness, were amongst the most important in his life. If
he slumbered, yet his dreams were unusually active; and, since feelings
are more intense in dreams than when wide-awake, it is not surprising that
Blake's inner life was in a violent commotion. Any stirring of his feeling
immediately set his supersensual faculty vigorously to work. Visible
persons and things were tracked back to invisible principalities and
powers, his cosmic consciousness quickened, the need to create possessed
him, and he found relief only in giving rhythmic expression to his
spiritual reading of mundane things.
This was the mental process that we saw at work in his _French Revolution_
and _America_. Now it was moving among the persons and things connected
with his own life; but it is not less important, for the same mighty
agencies govern individuals and nations alike, and link them up together,
so that they are interchangeable manifestations of eternal laws and
states.
The practical outcome was _Milton_, _Jerusalem_, and a revision of _The
Four Zoas_, begun some time about 1795. These claim our close attention,
for they contain, for those who have patience to probe their forbidding
exterior, the treasure of one who had run the road of excess, not of
profligacy but rebellion, and now reached the palace of wisdom.
On April 25th, 1803, Blake wrote to Thomas Butts: "I have written this
poem (_Milton_) from immediate dictation." Later in the same year (July
6th), he writes: "I can praise it, since I dare not pretend to be any
other than the secretary; the authors are in Eternity. I consider it the
grandest Poem that this world contains. Allegory addressed to the
intellectual powers, while it is altogether hidden from the corporeal
understanding, is my definition of the most sublime Poetry." In the
Preface to _Milton_ Blake asserts, in effect, that Shakespeare and Milton
were shackled by the Daughters of Memory, who must become the Daughters of
Inspiration before work of the highest creative order can be produced.
Here he regards Memory as a hindrance, and comparing the Preface with the
above quotations, we learn that he strove to put Memory aside while the
authors in Eternity were dictating to him.
But in the _Jerusalem_ there are, scattered throughout, references to what
he calls the Halls of Los, familiar to readers of mystical literature as
the Akashic or Etheric records, and called by Yeats the great Memory.
"All things acted on Earth are seen in the bright Sculptures of Los's
Halls, and every Age renews its powers from these Works."[4]
Here Memory serves to renew an age, and then becomes the recipient of the
age's inspired works.
These passages, taken together, open up again the great questions of
Inspiration, Memory, Creation, Mechanism, and since each one of these
words is now made to stand for differing conceptions, they are ambiguous,
and we may not use them without first defining sharply what we mean. We
speak of the true poet like Shakespeare, the true mystic like Blake, the
true saint like Catherine of Siena, and the true Book like the Bible as
all being inspired, yet in each case the inspiration is of a different
order. The common element which justifies the one word is originality.
Shakespeare's inspiration depends on the great Memory, on his own complex
nature, and his consuming spirit of observation; but at the moment of his
inspiration, all these things seem in abeyance, and the words well up as
if a spirit not himself had given them to him. His originality consists in
the unique impression that his rich understanding gives of the elements
supplied by the Past and Present, but not in the creation of a new
element. The same may be said of Dante, Milton, Shelley.
The inspiration of the Bible contains all these elements, which constitute
its purely human side, but there is something else which has given it its
supreme power in all ages. The writers of the Bible remember and observe
and think, but they also utter themselves as they are moved by the Holy
Ghost. It is this last mysterious happening that inspires the creative
element. The inspired poet has aided his observation and experience by
drawing on the great Memory, the inspired Bible has added to the great
Memory something that was not in it before. The poet can renew us, yet
keeps us within the circle of the cosmic consciousness. The Bible can
inspire us and lift us out of the circle far above the seven heavens of
the cosmos. And that is our rescue from that nightmare of eternal
recurrence which set Nietzsche's fine brain tottering down to its
foundations.
The inspiration of the poet is general, and that of the Bible unique; but
there still remains a special kind to which Blake, like many other
mystics, laid claim.
When Blake was perplexed at Felpham, he referred to his spiritual guides,
who were in their turn subject to God. They, according to him, were the
real authors and inspirers of his prophetic books. This sort of language
was rare in the eighteenth century, but is quite familiar to readers of
theosophical books, ancient or modern.
They teach that there are seven planes of consciousness from the physical
to the mahaparanirvanic, which together make up the cosmos. The two
highest planes are beyond the reach of human conception; but there are not
a few to-day who claim to have attained to the fifth nirvanic plane. Here
the consciousness is so finely developed, and its vibrations respond so
readily, that the subject comes into touch with other intelligences, and
often submits to them entirely for guidance.
In St Paul's day this teaching was familiar at Ephesus in the form of
gnosticism. He did not disbelieve in the reality of the seven planes, but
he disagreed with the gnostics in their blind faith in the trustworthiness
of the guides. He believed that many of them were so evil that when
Christians became conscious of them, they needed the whole armour of God
to protect them against their wiles. Here is the difference between the
Christian and pantheistic teaching. The pantheist thinks that because a
thing is spiritual it is therefore holy and good; Christianity believes in
fallen spiritual beings. The pantheist believes that to reach the nirvanic
plane is to attain to holiness; Christianity says that all the planes of
the cosmos are tainted, and if one reached even the seventh, one would
still have need of cleansing. Theosophy keeps one for ever within the
cosmic circle; Christianity lifts one beyond the circle into the ascended
Christ, and teaches that one is safe on the different subtle planes of
consciousness only while one abides in Him. Doubtless there are good
guides, but the danger is great because it is so difficult to try the
spirits.
Blake here as elsewhere wavers between the two views. With certain
reservations he dips on the Christian side. He travels round the cosmos,
but in a spiral; and the top of his spiral--his Jacob's Ladder--reaches
not to the seventh plane but to the Throne of God, which is far above the
charmed circle. Hence man is able to climb beyond the defiled cosmos into
the pure heaven of God. That is his redemption.
Blake's vision, then, ranging freely among the planes of consciousness,
gives him access to the great Memory which is within the cosmos; and at
rare moments he goes beyond the cosmos, and then his words proceed from
the highest inspiration.
In appraising the value of Blake's defamation of the Greeks' inspiration,
one must remember that he was not a profound Grecian. His studies with
Hayley cannot have carried him into the heart of the Greek genius. When he
limits its inspiration to Memory, there is no scholar, I imagine, that
would agree with him. The Greeks did make an invaluable contribution to
the world's memory; and while one source of their inspiration came from
the past, we must further admit that it was the past wedded to the present
which actually produced something new, that is, of the creative order.
Blake's own inspiration when it came from his spiritual guides is not of
such a high order as the Greek's at his highest. The so-called guides, if
we may trust St Paul, are inside of the cosmos, like the great Memory, and
their source of wisdom is from this world, which is the arena of the
Church in her militant course. It is only by watching her that they are
able to get glimpses of the manifold wisdom of God. Hence to place oneself
under their guidance is a hindrance to receiving that highest inspiration
that comes direct from the Spirit of God.
Blake was wrong, too, in his efforts to shut off Memory. Of course he
could not succeed. Every page of _Jerusalem_ shows that Memory was at work
though shackled. Memory alone could have made it coherent and a luminous
whole, as it had made _Paradise Lost_; but it was not free enough to keep
its different scenes, often very beautiful, from flying far apart, and the
imagination grows weary in trying to capture the complete picture.
The one thing in these poems that we can positively affirm to be new is
their symbolism, and that cannot be defended. Symbolism is beautiful only
as it is universal, or can become so. It should be one language against
many tongues. But Blake's is not even the tongue of a nation or a tribe.
It is his own private invention, and, incidentally, uncouth, forbidding,
unintelligible, and in actual fact a little insane. It is true that we can
learn his symbolism after much labour; but a beautiful and catholic
symbolism is the one thing that we have a right to understand, without
learning, through the imagination, which Blake always affirmed to be
divine.
Blake could not afford to indulge these idiosyncrasies. Like all mystics,
he found it difficult to adjust the inner things that were real to him to
the outer that were but a shadow. Since most people find the outer things
are the substantial reality, they are not only moving in a different world
from that of the mystic, but they are puzzled to know when the letter of
his statements is to be taken.
Ezekiel says that he ate his meat baked with cow's dung; Blake, that
Hayley, when he could not act upon his wife, hired a villain to bereave
his life. We know sufficient of Blake's relation to Hayley to understand
that Hayley's murderous purpose was towards Blake's spiritual life, not
his corporeal, and that he tried to prevail on Blake through his wife. We
may hope also that Ezekiel did not really eat "abominable flesh," or lie
for a preposterously long time on his left side. We mention the mystic's
hazy treatment of external actions, to explain Blake; but we hope the
mystic of the future will be more considerate of what his words are likely
to convey to others, and then clear them of all ambiguity.
Blake should have guarded himself perpetually here, but was too proud or
wilful to do so. Hence with his merging of inward and outward things, and
using the same language for both, added to his private symbolism, what
should have been his greatest poems have become submerged continents in
which you may discover endless treasures only if you dare to dive, and can
hold your breath under water.
Let us dive for the sake of understanding the growth of Blake's mind.
I will take _Milton_ separately, and _The Four Zoas_ and _Jerusalem_
together.
Blake's feelings towards Milton had always been divided. He saw in him the
highest order of poetic genius, but also, ominously present, the spirit of
reason (Urizen) enthroned in the wrong place, and a servile love of the
classics that placed him under the heel of the Daughters of Memory. To
change the metaphor, Milton's Pegasus was ridden by Urizen.
Blake's final criticism of Swedenborg was that he drew the line in the
wrong place between heaven and hell; and his amendment was to take his two
contraries and marry them. From that time forward his first question in
trying a man's religion was, Where do you draw the line? Popular religion
always draws it in the wrong place. Good things are reckoned evil and evil
things good. But as Blake continued to put his question to the world's
great spirits, he counted twenty-seven different answers that had produced
twenty-seven different churches, each church having its own particular
heaven and corresponding hell. He had hoped to unite all these contraries
as successfully as he had Swedenborg's; but when he came to Christ's
division, finding that nothing would unite His sheep and goats, and His
wheat and tares, he henceforth took Christ's dividing line as absolute,
and the line of any other as right only when it coincided with Christ's.
Applying this test to Milton, Blake saw that he wrongly divided heaven and
hell, and that this fatal mistake necessarily affected the characters of
his Messiah and Satan. Messiah, who should have stood for the supreme
poetic genius, was the embodiment of restrictive reason, and Satan, who by
immemorial tradition is absolute evil, was endowed with a marvellous
imagination that inevitably brought with it certain virtues. When Blake
inquired for the root cause of this perversion in Milton, he traced it to
the fact that Reason had largely usurped the place of Imagination. He then
took one more customary step. He set Milton in his imagination in the
light of the eternal order. Seen in this perspective, the prime fact about
him appeared that he had fallen in his encounter with Urizen and come
under his dominion, and the last was that his redemption would be effected
only by going down into self-annihilation and death with Christ, and then
rising again with the life of pure imagination. Once imagination (Los) is
supreme, then reason (Urizen) falls into his proper place, and the return
into the eternal order is accomplished.
During Blake's stay at Felpham, Milton was continually present in the
minds of both himself and Hayley. Hence he was for Blake an actual person
in the Felpham drama, Mr and Mrs Blake and Hayley being with him the chief
characters, and Skofield and his confederates the rabble. Then passing, as
in _The French Revolution_, from actual persons and events to the unseen
things of which they were the temporal manifestation, Blake saw each
person in his eternal state, and as a symbol of that state, and he lost
sight of the earthly puppets, as they were merged into their monstrous and
eternal counterparts. The transition made, the poem is no longer
intelligible to the corporeal understanding, and Hayley might read it a
hundred times without suspecting that he was the villain of the piece.
The characters are Los, Urizen, Palamabron and Rintrah, sons of Los,
Satan, and Skofield, who keeps his own name. Satan for a time is Hayley,
Palamabron by turns Blake and Wesley, Rintrah, Whitefield. This is a
seemingly harsh judgment of poor Hayley, akin to Michael Angelo's
treatment of Biagio da Cesena; but the harshness is humorously softened
when Satan is discovered decked with half the graces. He is kind, meek,
humble, and complains gently when his kindness fails to call forth
gratitude. He is the personification of Hayley's virtues, which together
make up (hypocritic) holiness.
Blake had made the startling discovery, which Nietzsche has popularized in
our time, that the graces in wrong places are vices. Nietzsche went on to
make the absurd assertions that humility and pity are the virtues of the
herd and are never right in any place. Blake believed that the graces
coupled with insight and understanding took on a new quality which made
them divine.
To give examples: Blake, while submissive to Hayley, was humble, but at
the risk of his birthright.
Hayley, exerting himself to find rich neighbours to sit for Blake to paint
in miniature, was kind, but he was suffocating his genius.
To the scribes and Pharisees, Christ meek would have been Christ weak.
Modesty in one who does not know that all things that live are holy is
prudery.
To pity oneself or another for the troubles that come through slackness is
effeminacy. The true virtue here is to damn. Hence the right place for a
man clothed from head to foot in hypocritic graces is hell, his right name
is Satan.
But when a man has stripped himself of his virtues, and annihilating
himself goes down with Christ into death, then he rises again into newness
of life and vision, and the graces of the new life, still called by their
old names, but now in their right places, are flaming, beautiful,
irresistible.
Once Blake saw his man in his setting in eternity, he escaped from his
initial resentment, and he could write calmly to Hayley and subscribe
himself, "Your devoted Will Blake."
I may remark that Blake did not think he had invented new values, like
Nietzsche, in his indictment of the virtues. His language was his own, but
his conclusions were precisely the same as those of Wesley, Whitefield,
Bunyan, St Paul, when they, in effect, speak of man's righteousness as
filthy rags, and of his need to be clothed with the _living_ righteousness
of Christ before his garment can be reckoned beautiful and clean.
A few quotations from _Milton_ may be given as Blake's final word on
Hayley. I will write Hayley for Satan, and Blake for Palamabron.
"Blake, reddening like the Moon in an eclipse,
Spoke, saying, You know Hayley's mildness and his self-imposition;
Seeming a brother, being a tyrant, even thinking himself a brother
While he is murdering the just."
"How should Hayley know the duties of another?"
"Hayley wept,
And mildly cursing Blake, him accused of crimes himself had wrought."
"So Los said: Henceforth, Blake, let each his own station
Keep; nor in pity false, nor in officious brotherhood, where
None needs be active."
"But Hayley, returning to his Mills (for Blake had served
The Mills of Hayley as the easier task), found all confusion,
And back returned to Los, not filled with vengeance, but with tears.
Himself convinced of Blake's turpitude."
"Blake prayed:
O God protect me from my friends."
"For Hayley, flaming with Rintrah's fury hidden beneath his own mildness,
Accused Blake before the Assembly of ingratitude and malice."
"When Hayley, making to himself Laws from his own identity,
Compelled others to serve him in moral gratitude and submission."
"Leutha said: 'Entering the doors of Hayley's brain night after night,
Like sweet perfumes, I stupefied the masculine perceptions,
And kept only the feminine awake; hence rose his soft
Delusory love to Blake.'"
"The Gnomes cursed
Hayley bitterly,
To do unkind thinks in kindness, with power armed; to say
The most irritating things in the midst of tears and love--
These are the stings of the Serpent!"
These are enough to show Blake's method, and his remorseless understanding
of Hayley. There is present an irresistible touch of humour which
preserves them from being too bitter.
For the rest, the poem narrates Milton's encounter with Urizen; his going
down into self-annihilation and death; his judgment, and final redemption
as he ascends to the heaven of the imagination. Milton's heaven is then
the heaven of Jesus, and his hell remains its irreconcilable contrary.
In this poem Blake's full-grown mythology appears. The mythical persons,
places, states are ominously present; but since they appear with much more
particularity in _The Four Zoas_ and _Jerusalem_, I may pass to them to
extract what is necessary for understanding the mature Blake.
_Jerusalem_ and _The Four Zoas_ should be studied together. The latter was
begun about 1795, and rewritten at Felpham. The early prophetic
books--_Urizen_, _Los_--stand as preliminary sketches to this large poem.
They are woven into it with scarcely a change of word.
Blake's great scheme is mainly in line with historical Christianity, which
of course is catholicism. He starts with the eternal order and unity.
Without attempting to explain the origin of evil, he narrates the fall out
of unity and order into diversity and disorder, and how as a consequence
of the fall creation appears. He is obliged to use the word "creation,"
but there is no real creation in his cosmogony. There are only three
possible theories of creation. Creation from within God, which is
pantheism, and makes the universe an emanation; creation from something
outside of God, which is dualism, and not likely to be accepted in the
West; and creation out of nothing, which is catholicism. Blake learnt from
Swedenborg the emanative theory. Swedenborg tried to avoid the pantheistic
conclusion of his foundation principle, and believed that he had
succeeded. His doctrine of the human God was certainly fine, and nearly
catholic. Blake sways between the two. His doctrine of creation is
pantheistic, but his affirmation that "God doth a human form display to
those that dwell in realms of day" is splendidly catholic, and so, on the
whole, is his doctrine of the fall. Since Blake's day the problem has
become enormously complicated, because we have to take account of the
vestiges in man's body of an animal ancestry, and the still more
infallible signs in his soul of a divine origin. Perhaps we shall
eventually all come to believe in both evolution and a special creation to
account for man's unique place in the universe. At any rate a denial of
the fall involves a definite departure from historical Christianity, and
it is important to see that it was an integral part of Blake's scheme and
without it that scheme falls to pieces. Not that he pressed the letter of
the Adam and Eve story. It stood for him as a divinely simple witness of
an ancient simplicity and unity from which man has departed by
disobedience and the assertion of a life and a self independent of God.
His way back into unity is by the cross of Jesus Christ, where the
self-hood dies, and the day of judgment, which finally separates in him
the gold from the dross, and presents him in his divine humanity perfect
before the human-divine God.
Between these two stupendous facts--the fall and the redemption--Blake
finds a place to say all that he wishes about the manifold things of
heaven and earth and hell.
The unity from which man departs is made up of four mighty ones--the Four
Zoas--who are the four beasts of the Apocalypse, taken from the four
beasts of Ezekiel, who probably appropriated four of the many monstrous
symbolical beasts of Assyria.
Blake invented names for them. Of these--Urizen, Urthona-Los, Luvah, and
Tharmas--Urizen and Los are by far the clearest conceived figures. Perfect
unity is maintained so long as Los is supreme. Reason is important in its
right place. It becomes an evil when it usurps the place of imagination
and thinks it can see as far. The essence of the fall is disorder.
Redemption restores order, which is unity. Science alone breaks down
because it is built up on observation and induction. Its observation is
insufficient, for it is the observation of a shrunk universe. It gathers
its materials through the five senses. But there are other avenues in
regenerated man. If science were built up on the observation or vision of
the whole instead of a very small part, it would become divine science and
coincident with religion.
Religion breaks down whether built on nature or experience. If on nature,
it is nature only as seen through limited vision; if on experience, it is
the experience of fallen man, and therefore it is of vital force only when
it transcends nature and becomes super-natural, and rests on a revelation
not from man's experience, however deep, but from God.
[Illustration: ALBION.
_From Jerusalem._]
Deism was the particular time-heresy of Blake's day. He came into direct
contact with it through his friend Tom Paine. Deistic religion, to be
adequate for man's need, must rest on perfect nature and perfect
experience. Paine, Voltaire, and Rousseau, in order to provide these
conditions which they saw to be necessary, were driven to make the wild
statement, contrary to all experience, that man is naturally holy and
good, and if he is not so as we know him, it is because he is everywhere
perverted by artificial civilization. Having swallowed this baseless
assumption, the rest was easy. They had only like Godwin to manufacture
some scheme of political justice, or like Rousseau to arrange a social
contract, and then the Millennium would come.
Against all this Blake protested, but without personal heat. He was well
aware of Paine's deism, when he helped him to escape to France; and of
Voltaire he wrote justly: "He has sinned against the Son of man, and it
shall be forgiven him." He protested and he affirmed: "Man is born a
Spectre, or Satan, and is altogether an Evil." In this uncompromising
affirmation, taken out of the heart of _Jerusalem_, written at the mature
age of forty-seven, he cuts himself off sharply, not only from the
humanitarian deism of his time, but from the pantheism that invaded so
many phases of his thought; he goes beyond the kindly catholic dogma which
allows a residuum of original righteousness in fallen man; and, with
Whitefield and the Calvinists, denies that he has any righteousness left
at all. Hence the utter failure of all empiricism, and the absolute need
of Revelation and a supernatural religion. How near he was getting to Dr
Johnson! Super-nature, of course, presupposes nature. Blake was obliged to
contemplate Nature, and meditate on the ancient difficulties that she
still presents.
There are many passages in _The Four Zoas_ to show how alive he was to
Nature's loveliness and cruelty. Her cruelty alone convinced him that she
could not be taken as a basis for religion. A natural man building his
character on a natural religion must be as cruel as his mother. The
cruelty finds periodic vent in the lust of war.
Yet why there is so much cruelty in Nature remains a mystery, even to the
man who has been driven by her to supernaturalism. Blake maintained that
there were two ways of regarding Nature. The natural man, with only five
senses to inform him, looks at her and sees a very small portion of the
infinite, without ever suspecting the infinite. If he sees her loveliness
it will arrest him and hold him fast. The spiritual man, on the contrary,
looks not at but through Nature, to the spiritual world of which it is a
vegetable mirror.
Here a difficulty presents itself. If Nature be a vegetable mirror of the
eternal world, then her cruelties must reflect eternal cruelties. The
spiritual man may see Nature far differently from the natural man, but
that does not mean that she is merely the picture thrown by man's
subjective self on the great abyss. If man were altogether exterminated
her cruelties would still continue. Since Blake did not deny all existence
to Nature, he was finally obliged to accept the old Christian explanation
so finely summed up by St Paul in the eighth chapter of his Epistle to the
Romans. Sin and disorder originate in the unseen heavens of the cosmos,
where the principalities and powers dwell. Man repeats their sins, and
Nature reflects the disorder of their cosmos. Hence there is no redemption
in the cosmic heavens. Man enters on his redemption only when he bows the
knee to Him who was raised above all heavens. And though "the whole
creation groaneth and travaileth together until now," yet at the great
manifestation of the sons of God she also "shall be delivered from the
bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God."
If the fall be denied, then the sufferings of nature and man must be
referred to evolution, which taken alone solves something, but not the
whole, of the ancient and baffling mystery.
All this explains finally why the great Memory to which Blake refers so
often in _Jerusalem_ cannot redeem a man. It is shut up in the cosmos.
Memory would keep man in the cosmos even though he were reincarnated a
million times. Memory's real work, whether for creative art or man's
redemption, is in the fact that she gives man standing ground amid the
horrors of infinity, until he takes strong hold of Him who overcame the
world, and is lifted by Him into His ascension glory beyond the maddening
whir of the cosmic wheels.
In these poems we get Blake's final attitude towards sex and passion.
Passion is always fire, and as such it is energy. To-day we are apt to use
the word only for sex. In the eighteenth century passion was of any kind,
and appetite stood for sex. With Blake, passion is man's vital worth. It
may flame along many forbidden avenues, but once it has mounted to the
imagination, and is controlled by spirit, then it is the driving force
that makes man's works beautiful and his character spontaneous.
The passion of sex is, no doubt, the strongest of all. In the early
prophetic books, when Blake was in a fever of rebellion, he affirmed that
the sex passion was holy and should be free. Now in these later
"prophecies" he still maintains, without wavering, the holiness of sex,
but he no longer insists on free-love. He has no place for perversions. He
steadily contemplates the normal impulse, and sees it as the principle of
life impelling to love and children.
Each man has to solve his own sex problem. Blake's nature was
exceptionally full and passionate. We caught a glimpse of him in his early
married life panting in the whirlwind of sexual desire. It is probably
true that he even contemplated following the patriarchal custom. But
inconveniently for man's theories he has it brought home to him sooner or
later that no man can live to himself alone. Mrs Blake had her feelings;
and though she was the most submissive and loyal of wives, yet she had the
instinctive and normal objection to sharing her husband with others. Blake
might argue that her objection was unreasonable, and that a truly
unselfish woman should rise above such appropriation. But the stubborn
fact remains that the woman who does so rise is either indifferent to her
husband or abnormal, and Mrs. Blake, at any rate, both loving and
unselfish to a heroic degree, was just here inflexible. King Solomon has
sung the praises of a virtuous wife. We may take it as granted that her
price is far above rubies. But the man who imperils his treasure by
putting into practice some theory of free-love, however good that theory
may seem in his own eyes, is worse than a fool; and if he cannot endure
some inconvenience for the sake of keeping the best gift that Heaven can
bestow, he is unworthy to receive it.
Besides these facts, which must have forced their full attention on Blake
as the years went by, time was modifying his early notions in other ways.
He was an indefatigable worker. When one realizes the immense energy
expended in creative work, and that Blake carried this on day after day,
one sees that much of the sex energy must pass into another channel to
supply the necessary power.
And lastly Blake's own spiritual life worked the change. As he learnt to
see through Nature to her antetype, so he learnt to see through physical
beauty. A beautiful face was a very transitory manifestation of eternal
beauty. When Blake with Plato had pierced through to the unseen fount of
beauty, then he was no longer a slave to externals. The passion remained,
but transmuted, and legitimate relief was found in the continuous creation
of beautiful things. Doubtless many will be disappointed that Blake's
experience brought him back to traditional morality; but after all the
terms on which he held it--a clean conception of sex, and faithfulness to
a woman worthy of all faith--were not so very narrow and rigorous. They
are terms that every man ought at once to accept, if ever he should be so
fortunate as to have them proposed to him.
The above ideas are culled from _The Four Zoas_ and _Jerusalem_. I do not
propose any detailed analysis here. This I have done at some length in
_Vision and Vesture_. I will merely point out in conclusion that although
these poems seem to ramble all over the universe inside and outside
without plan or order, there is, in fact, a connecting link in the figure
of Albion.
Albion is the personification of the divine humanity; but regarded
individually he is fallen man, bound with "the pale limbs of his Eternal
Individuality upon the Rock of Ages." His inward eyes are closed from the
Divine Vision, and so he may be reckoned dead in trespasses and sin. Blake
pronounced the natural man altogether an evil. But Albion is not an image
of total depravity. Within him are all the divine faculties in addition to
the five senses without, but they are closed. If he is to be redeemed,
there is no need to create new spiritual faculties, but to re-create and
make operative those that are already there. Hence Blake drives back of
regeneration to the first generation, when man was made in the image and
likeness of God. Regeneration is the renewal of the ancient image and
likeness through the cross of Christ and the breath of the Divine Spirit.
Albion, like Lazarus, is sick. "He whom Thou lovest is sick. He wanders
from his house of Eternity." His "exteriors are become indefinite, opened
to pain, in a fierce, hungry void, and none can visit his regions."
Pained and impotent, he laments like Job:
"Oh I am nothing if I enter into judgment with Thee.
If Thou withdraw Thy breath I die, and vanish into Hades;
If Thou dost lay Thy hand upon me, behold I am silent;
If Thou withhold Thy hand I perish like a leaf;
Oh I am nothing, and to nothing must return again.
If Thou withdraw Thy breath, behold I am oblivion."
"Eternal death haunts all my expectations. Rent from Eternal Brotherhood
we die and are no more."
And so Man like a corse
"lay on the Rock. The Sea of Time and Space
Beat round the rocks in mighty waves."
Even his limbs "vegetated in monstrous forms of death."
He is opaque and contracted. Yet mercifully there is a limit to his
opacity and contraction, named by Blake Satan and Adam; else he would
sleep eternally. The capacity remains to hear the Voice of the Son of God
and live, and until that moment he is guarded in tender care by the "mild
and gentle" Saviour.
It is Heaven's purpose to awake him.
"Then all in great Eternity, which is called the Council of God,
Met as one Man, even Jesus--to awake the fallen Man.
The fallen Man stretched like a corse upon the oozy rock,
Washed with the tide, pale, overgrown with the waves,
Just moved with horrible dreams."
Albion like Milton must tread the difficult way of self-annihilation and
judgment.
His Day of Judgment is given with marvellous wealth of detail in _The Four
Zoas_, Night IX. But there are still finer passages in _Jerusalem_ which
lead Albion to his final beatitude.
"Albion said: O Lord, what can I do? my selfhood cruel
Marches against Thee ...
I behold the visions of my deadly sleep of six thousand years,
Dazzling around Thy skirts like a serpent of precious stones and gold;
I know it is my self, O my Divine Creator and Redeemer.
Jesus replied: Fear not, Albion; unless I die thou canst not live,
But if I die I shall arise again and thou with Me.
This is Friendship and Brotherhood, without it Man Is Not.
Jesus said: Thus do Men in Eternity,
One for another, to put off by forgiveness every sin.
Albion replied: Cannot Man exist without mysterious
Offering of Self for Another? is this Friendship and Brotherhood?
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, and 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, and Self was lost in the contemplation of faith
And wonder at the Divine Mercy, and at Los's sublime honour."
Thus Blake leads man back into his ancient simplicity and unity. Order is
restored; and the four mighty ones that warred within to man's
distraction, led captive by Los, are content each to perform his proper
function, and so to prevent any further disturbance of the peace.
That is a fine consummation, but it is not Blake's last word. Perfect man
must have a perfect City to dwell in. Albion redeemed must build
Jerusalem. Blake began _Milton_ with the fond contemplation of England's
fields and meadows that he had loved in his youth. Calling for his weapons
of war, he sang:
"I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my Hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant Land."
That vision may seem as far off as the vision of the prophet who declared,
"The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters
cover the sea." But the world's master-spirits have never been content
that a man here and there should save his soul.
Plato imagined his Republic, Christ His Kingdom of God on earth, St John
his Holy City, St Augustine his City of God. And Blake, whose first dreams
had been in London's great city, still dreamed that man would return to
his ancient simplicity, and build Jerusalem in England's green and
pleasant land.