able to allow for the subtle intricate fashion in which Blake labours to
invert the weapons of his antagonists upon themselves. Neither can the
banns of marriage be published between heaven and hell with the voice of a
parish clerk. This prophet came to do what Swedenborg his precursor had
left undone, being but the watchman by the empty sepulchre, and his
writings as the grave-clothes cast off by the risen Christ. Blake's
estimate of Swedenborg, right or wrong, was, as we shall see, distinct and
consistent; to this effect; that his inspiration was limited and timid,
superficial and derivative; that he was content with leaves and husks, and
had not the courage to examine the root and the kernel of things; that he
clove to the heaven and shrank from the hell of other men; whereas, to men
in whom "a new heaven is begun," the one must not be terrible nor the
other desirable. To them the "flaming fire" wherein dwells a God whom men
call devil, must seem a purer element of life than the starry and cloudy
space wherein dwells a devil whom they call God. It must be remembered
that Blake uses the current terms of religion, now as types of his own
peculiar faith, now in the sense of ordinary preachers: impugning
therefore at one time what at another he will seem to vindicate. Vague and
violent as this overture may appear, it must be followed with care, that
the writer's intensity of spiritual faith may be hereafter kept in sight.
The senses, "the chief inlets of soul in this age" of brute doubt and
brute belief, are worthy only as parts of the soul. This, it cannot be too
much repeated and insisted on, this and no prurience of porcine appetite
for rotten apples, no vulgarity of porcine adoration for unctuous wash, is
what lies at the root of Blake's sensual doctrine. Let no reader now or
ever forget, that while others will admit nothing beyond the body, the
mystic will admit nothing outside the soul. That the two extremes, if
reduced to hard practice, might run round and meet, not without lamentably
curious consequences, those may assert who will; it is none of our
business to decide. Even granting that the result will be about equivalent
if one man does for his soul's sake all that another would do for his
body's sake, we might plead that the difference of thought and eye between
these two would remain great and important. Indulgence bracketed to faith
and vivified by that vigorous contact with things divine is not (we might
say) the same, whether seen from the actual side of life or from the
speculative, as indulgence cut loose and left to decompose. But these
pleas we will leave the mystic to advance, if it please him, on his own
behalf.
"A MEMORABLE FANCY.
"As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the
enjoyments of Genius, which to Angels look like torment and insanity,
I collected some of their Proverbs: thinking that as the sayings used
in a nation mark its character, so the Proverbs of Hell show the
nature of the Infernal wisdom better than any description of
buildings or garments. When I came home, on the abyss of the five
senses, where a flat-sided steep frowns over the present world, I saw
a mighty Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the
rock; with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence, now
perceived by the minds of men, and read by them on earth:--
"'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?'"
Here follow the "Proverbs of Hell," which give us the quintessence and the
most fine gold of Blake's alembic. Each, whether earnest or satirical,
slight or great in manner, is full of that passionate wisdom and bright
rapid strength proper to the step and speech of gods. The simplest give us
a measure of his energy, as this:--"Think in the morning, act in the noon,
eat in the evening, sleep in the night." The highest have a light and
resonance about them, as though in effect from above or beneath; a spirit
which lifts thought upon the high levels of verse.
From the ensuing divisions of the book we shall give full extracts; for
these detached sections have a grace and coherence which we shall not
always find in Blake; and the crude excerpts given in the _Life_ are
inadequate to help the reader much towards a clear comprehension of the
main scheme.
"The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or
Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the
properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and
whatever their enlarged and numerous senses could perceive.
"And, particularly, they studied the genius of each city and country,
placing it under its mental deity.
"Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of and enslaved
the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities
from their objects: thus began Priesthood,
"Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales;
"And at length they pronounced that the Gods had ordered such things.
"Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast."
From this we pass to higher tones of exposition. The next passage is one
of the clearest and keenest in the book, full of faith and sacred humour,
none the less sincere for its dramatic form. The subtle simplicity of
expression is excellently subservient to the intricate force of thought.
"A MEMORABLE FANCY.
"The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how
they dared so roundly to assert that God spoke to them; and whether
they did not think at the time that they would be misunderstood, and
so be the cause of imposition.
"Isaiah answered, 'I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite or
organical perception; but my senses discovered the infinite in
everything, and as I was then persuaded, I remain confirmed, that the
voice of honest indignation is the voice of God. I cared not for
consequences, but wrote.'
"Then I asked, 'Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it
so?'
"He replied, 'All poets believe that it does, and in ages of
imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains. But many are not
capable of a firm persuasion of anything.'
"Then Ezekiel said, 'The philosophy of the East taught the first
principles of human perception. Some nations held one principle for
the origin and some another. We of Israel taught that the Poetic
Genius (as you now call it) was the first principle, and all the
others merely derivative, which was the cause of our despising the
Priests and Philosophers of other countries, and prophesying that all
Gods would at last be proved to originate in ours, and to be the
tributaries of the Poetic Genius. It was this that our great poet
King David desired so fervently and invokes so pathetically, saying
by this he conquers enemies and governs kingdoms; and we so loved
our God, that we cursed in his name all the deities of surrounding
nations, and asserted that they had rebelled; from these opinions the
vulgar came to think that all nations would at last be subject to the
Jews.
"'This,' said he, 'like all firm persuasions, is come to pass, for
all nations believe the Jews' code and worship the Jews' God, and
what greater subjection can be?'
"I heard this with some wonder, and must confess my own conviction.
After dinner, I asked Isaiah to favour the world with his lost works.
He said none of equal value was lost.
"Ezekiel said the same of his.
"I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three years?
He answered, the same that made our friend Diogenes the Grecian.
"I then asked Ezekiel, why he eat dung, and lay so long on his right
and left side? he answered, the desire of raising other men into a
perception of the infinite. This the North American tribes practise;
and is he honest who resists his genius or conscience, only for the
sake of present ease or gratification?"
The doctrine of perception through not with the senses, beyond not in the
organs, as also of the absolute existence of things thus apprehended, is
again directly enforced in our next excerpt; in praise of which we will
say nothing, but leave the words to burn their way in as they may.
"The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the
end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.
"For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave
his guard at the tree of life; and when he does, the whole creation
will be consumed, and appear infinite and holy, whereas it now
appears finite and corrupt.
"This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.
"But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is
to be expunged; this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method,
by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting
apparent surfaces away and displaying the infinite which was hid.
"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to
man as it is, infinite.
"For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through
narrow chinks of his cavern."
After which corrosive touch of revelation there follows a vision of
knowledge; first, the human nature is cleansed and widened into shape,
then decorated, then enlarged and built about with stately buildings for
guest-chambers and treasure-houses; then the purged metal of knowledge,
melted into form with divine violence, is made fluid and vital, that it
may percolate and permeate the whole man through every pore of his spirit;
then the metal is cast forth and put to use. All forms and forces of the
world, viper and lion, half-human things and nameless natures, serve to
help in this work; all manner of aspiration and inspiration, wrath and
faith, love and labour, do good service here.
"The Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence, and now
seem to live in it in chains, are in truth the causes of its life and
the sources of all activity; but the chains are, the cunning of weak
and tame minds, which have power to resist energy; according to the
proverb, the weak in courage is strong in cunning.
"Thus one portion of being is the Prolific, the other, the Devouring;
to the devourer it seems as if the producer was in his chains; but it
is not so; he only takes portions of existence and fancies that the
whole.
"But the Prolific would cease to be Prolific, unless the Devourer as
a sea received the excess of his delights.
"Some will say, Is not God alone the Prolific?
"I answer, God only Acts and Is in existing beings or Men.
"These two classes of men are always upon earth, and they should be
enemies; whoever tries to reconcile them, seeks to destroy existence.
"Religion is an endeavour to reconcile the two.
"NOTE.--Jesus Christ did not wish to unite but to separate them, as
in the Parable of sheep and goats! and he says I came not to send
Peace but a Sword.
"Messiah or Satan or Tempter was formerly thought to be one of the
Antediluvians who are our Energies."
These are hard sayings; who can hear them? At first sight also, as we were
forewarned, this passage seems at direct variance with that other in the
overture, where our prophet appears at first sight, and only appears, to
speak of the fallen "Messiah" as the same with the Christ of his belief.
Verbally coherent we cannot hope to make the two passages; but it must be
remarked and remembered that the very root or kernel of this creed is not
the assumed humanity of God, but the achieved divinity of Man; not
incarnation from without, but development from within; not a miraculous
passage into flesh, but a natural growth into godhead. Christ, as the type
or sample of manhood, thus becomes after death the true Jehovah; not, as
he seems to the vulgar, the extraneous and empirical God of creeds and
churches, human in no necessary or absolute sense, the false and fallen
phantom of his enemy, Zeus in the mask of Prometheus. We are careful to
note and as far as may be to correct any apparent slips or shortcomings in
expression, only because if left without a touch of commentary they may
seem to make worse confusion than they do actually make. Subtle, trenchant
and profound as is this philosophy, there is no radical flaw in the book,
no positive incongruity, no inherent contradiction. A single consistent
principle keeps alive the large relaxed limbs, makes significant the dim
great features of this strange faith. It is but at the opening that the
words are even partially inadequate and obscure. Revision alone could have
righted and straightened them; and revision the author would not give.
Impatient of their insufficiency, and incapable of any labour that implies
rest, he shook them together and flung them out in an irritated hurried
manner, regardless who might gather them up or let them lie.
In the next and longest division of the book, direct allegory and
imaginative vision are indivisibly mixed into each other. The stable and
mill, the twisted root and inverted fungus, are transparent symbols
enough: the splendid and stormy apocalypse of the abyss is a chapter of
pure vision or poetic invention. Why "Swedenborg's volumes" are the
weights used to sink the travellers from the "glorious clime" to the
passive and iron void between the fixed stars and the coldest of the
remote planets, will be conceivable in due time.
"A MEMORABLE FANCY.
"An Angel came to me and said, 'O pitiable foolish young man! O
horrible! O dreadful state! Consider the hot burning dungeon thou art
preparing for thyself to all eternity, to which thou art going in
such career.'
"I said, 'Perhaps you will be willing to show me my eternal lot and
we will contemplate upon it and see whether your lot or mine is most
desirable.'
"So he took me through a stable and through a church and down into
the church vault at the end of which was a mill; through the mill we
went, and came to a cave; down the winding cavern we groped our
tedious way, till a void, boundless as a nether sky, appeared beneath
us, and we held by the roots of trees and hung over this immensity;
but I said, 'If you please, we will commit ourselves to this void,
and see whether Providence is here also; if you will not, I will.'
"But he answered, 'Do not presume, O young man, but as we here
remain, behold thy lot, which will soon appear when the darkness
passes away.'
"So I remained with him, sitting in the twisted root of an oak; he
was suspended in a fungus, which hung with the head downward into the
deep.
"By degrees we beheld the infinite Abyss, fiery as the smoke of a
burning city; beneath us at an immense distance was the sun, black
but shining; round it were fiery tracks on which revolved vast
spiders, crawling after their prey; which flew or rather swam in the
infinite deep, in the most terrific shapes of animals sprung from
corruption; and the air was full of them, and seemed composed of
them; these are Devils, and are called Powers of the air. I now asked
my companion which was my eternal lot? he said, between the black and
white spiders.
"But now, from between the black and white spiders a cloud and fire
burst and rolled through the deep blackening all beneath, so that the
nether deep grew black as a sea and rolled with a terrible noise:
beneath us was nothing now to be seen but a black tempest, till
looking east between the clouds and the waves, we saw a cataract of
blood mixed with fire, and not many stones' throw from us appeared
and sunk again the scaly fold of a monstrous serpent; at last, to the
east, distant about three degrees, appeared a fiery crest above the
waves; slowly it reared, like a ridge of golden rocks, till we
discovered two globes of crimson fire, from which the sea fled away
in clouds of smoke: and now we saw it was the head of Leviathan; his
forehead was divided into streaks of green and purple, like those on
a tiger's forehead: soon we saw his mouth and red gills hang just
above the raging foam, tinging the black deep with beams of blood,
advancing toward us with all the fury of a spiritual existence.
"My friend the Angel climbed up from his station into the mill; I
remained alone, and then this appearance was no more; but I found
myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moonlight,
hearing a harper who sung to the harp, and his theme was, The man who
never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles
of the mind.
"But I arose, and sought for the mill, and there I found my Angel,
who, surprised, asked me how I escaped?
"I answered, 'All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics: for when
you ran away, I found myself on a bank by moonlight hearing a harper.
But now we have seen my eternal lot, shall I show you yours?' He
laughed at my proposal: but I by force suddenly caught him in my
arms, and flew westerly through the night, till we were elevated
above the earth's shadow: then I flung myself with him directly into
the body of the sun; here I clothed myself in white, and taking in my
hand Swedenborg's volumes, sunk from the glorious clime, and passed
all the planets till we came to Saturn: here I staid to rest, and
then leaped into the void, between Saturn and the fixed stars.
"'Here,' said I, 'is your lot, in this space, if space it may be
called.' Soon we saw the stable and the church, and I took him to the
altar and opened the Bible, and lo! it was a deep pit, into which I
descended, driving the Angel before me; soon we saw seven houses of
brick; one we entered; in it were a number of monkeys, baboons, and
all of that species chained by the middle, grinning and snatching at
one another, but withheld by the shortness of their chains; however,
I saw that they sometimes grew numerous, and then the weak were
caught by the strong and, with a grinning aspect, first coupled with
and then devoured, by plucking off first one limb and then another,
till the body was left a helpless trunk; this, after grinning and
kissing it with seeming kindness, they devoured too; and here and
there I saw one savourily picking the flesh off of his own tail. As
the stench terribly annoyed us both, we went into the mill, and I in
my hand brought the skeleton of a body, which in the mill was
Aristotle's 'Analytics.'
"So the Angel said; 'Thy phantasy has imposed upon me, and thou
oughtest to be ashamed.'
"I answered; 'We impose on one another, and it is but lost time to
converse with you, whose works are only Analytics.'"
The "seven houses of brick" we may take to be a reminiscence of the seven
churches of St. John; as indeed the traces of former evangelists and
prophets are never long wanting when we track the steps of this one. Lest
however we be found unawares on the side of these hapless angels and
baboons, we will abstain with all due care from any not indispensable
analysis. It is evident that between pure "phantasy" and mere "analytics"
the great gulf must remain fixed, and either party appear to the other
deceptive and deceived. That impulsive energy and energetic faith are the
only means, whether used as tools of peace or as weapons of war, to pave
or to fight our way toward the realities of things, was plainly the creed
of Blake; as also that these realities, once well in sight, will reverse
appearance and overthrow tradition: hell will appear as heaven, and heaven
as hell. The abyss once entered with due trust and courage appears a place
of green pastures and gracious springs: the paradise of resignation once
beheld with undisturbed eyes appears a place of emptiness or bondage,
delusion or cruelty. On the humorous beauty and vigour of these symbols we
need not expatiate; in these qualities Rabelais and Dante together could
hardly have excelled Blake at his best. What his meaning is should by
this time be as clear as the meaning of a mystic need be; it is but
partially expressible by words, as (to borrow Blake's own symbol) the
inseparable soul is yet but incompletely expressible through the body.
Whether it be right or wrong, foolish or wise, we will neither inquire nor
assert: the autocercophagous monkeys of the mill may be left to settle
that for themselves with "Urizen."
We come now to a chapter of comments, intercalated between two
sufficiently memorable "fancies."
"I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of
themselves as the only wise; this they do with a confident insolence
sprouting from systematic reasoning.
"Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new, though it is only
the Contents or Index of already published books.
"A man carried a monkey about for a show, and because he was a little
wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and conceived himself as much wiser
than seven men. It is so with Swedenborg: he shows the folly of
churches and exposes hypocrites, till he imagines that all are
religious and himself the single one on earth that ever broke a net.
"Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth.
"Now hear another: He has written all the old falsehoods.
"And now hear the reason: He conversed with Angels who are all
religious and conversed not with Devils who all hate religion; for he
was incapable, through his conceited notions.
"Thus Swedenborg's writings are a recapitulation of all superficial
opinions, and an analysis of the more sublime, but no further.
"Hear now another plain fact: Any man of mechanical talents may, from
the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen, produce ten thousand
volumes of equal value with Swedenborg's; and from those of Dante or
Shakespeare, an infinite number. But when he has done this, let him
not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a
candle in sunshine."
This also we will leave for those to decide who please, and attend to the
next and final vision. That the fire of inspiration should absorb and
convert to its own nature all denser and meaner elements of mind, was the
prophet's sole idea of redemption: the dead cloud of belief consumed
becomes the vital flame of faith.
"A MEMORABLE FANCY.
"Once I saw a Devil in a flame of fire, who arose before an Angel
that sat on a cloud, and the Devil uttered these words.
"The worship of God is: Honouring his gifts in other men, each
according to his genius, and loving the greatest men best; those who
envy or calumniate great men hate God, for there is no other God.
"The Angel hearing this became almost blue, but mastering himself, he
grew yellow, and at last white, pink, and smiling; and then replied,
Thou Idolator, is not God one? and is not he visible in Jesus Christ?
and has not Jesus Christ given his sanction to the law of ten
commandments? and are not all other men fools, sinners, and nothings?
"The Devil answered; Bray a fool in a mortar with wheat, yet shall
not his folly be beaten out of him: if Jesus Christ is the greatest
man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree; now hear how he
has given his sanction to the law of the ten commandments: did he not
mock at the sabbath, and so mock the sabbath's God? murder those who
were murdered, because of him? turn away the law from the woman taken
in adultery? steal the labour of others to support him? bear false
witness when he omitted making a defence before Pilate? covet when he
prayed for his disciples, and when he bid them shake off the dust of
their feet against such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no
virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments. Jesus was
all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules.
"When he had so spoken, I beheld the Angel who stretched out his arms
embracing the flame of fire, and he was consumed, and arose as
Elijah.
"NOTE. This Angel, who is now become a Devil, 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 have also the Bible of Hell, which the world shall have, whether
they will or no."
Under this title at least the world was never favoured with it; but we may
presumably taste some savour of that Bible in these pages. After this the
book is wound up in a lyric rapture, not without some flutter and tumour
of style, but full of clear high music and flame-like aspiration. Epilogue
and prologue are both nearer in manner to the dubious hybrid language of
the succeeding books of prophecy than to the choice and noble prose in
which the rest of this book is written. The overture must be read by the
light of its meaning; of the mysterious universal mother and her son, the
latest birth of the world, we have already taken account. The date of 1790
must here be kept in mind, that all may remember what appearances of
change were abroad, what manner of light and tempest was visible upon
earth, when the hopes of such men as Blake made their stormy way into
speech or song.
"A SONG OF LIBERTY.
1. The Eternal Female groan'd! it was heard over all the Earth.
2. Albion's coast is sick silent; the American meadows faint!
3. Shadows of Prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers, and
mutter across the ocean. France, rend down thy dungeon;
4. Golden Spain, burst the barriers of old Rome;
5. Cast thy keys, O Rome, into the deep down falling, even to
eternity down falling;
6. And weep.
7. In her trembling hands she took the new-born terror howling:
8. On those infinite mountains of light now barred out by the
Atlantic sea, the new-born fire stood before the starry King!
9. Flag'd with grey-browed snows and thunderous visages the jealous
wings waved over the deep.
10. The speary hand burned aloft, unbuckled was the shield, forth
went the hand of jealousy among the flaming hair, and hurled the
new-born wonder thro' the starry night.
11. The fire, the fire is falling!
12. Look up! look up! O citizen of London, enlarge thy countenance: O
Jew, leave counting gold! return to thy oil and wine; O African!
black African! (go, winged thought, widen his forehead.)
13. The fiery limbs, the flaming hair, shot like the sinking sun into
the western sea.
14. Waked from his eternal sleep, the hoary element roaring fled
away.
15. Down rushed, beating his wings in vain, the jealous King; his
grey-browed councillors, thunderous warriors, curled veterans, among
helms and shields, and chariots, horses, elephants; banners, castles,
slings and rocks;
16. Falling, rushing, ruining! buried in the ruins, on Urthona's
dens;