REVELATIONS

In the last 20 years of his life, after the completion of Jerusalem, Blake became more of a painter than a poet. He attempted to initiate a project which would have placed murals and tempers in public places and private homes. When this was unsuccessful he turned to creating illustrations for the literature he loved, Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer, Bunyan and the Bible. Blake began "to illustrate other poets' visions so the their readers may more easily understand their archetypal significance." (Fearful Symmetry, by Northrup Frey, Page 415)

This illustration for the Book of Revelation is an example of attention he paid to the text he was illustrating and the freedom he used to clarify the significance by his imaginative presentation.

Revelation or the apocalypse was of particular interest to Blake. The Orc cycle or the Circle of Destiny would end when the new age of the spirit begins. The imagery of the Book of Revelation is frightening and hopeful as would be expected when a new age is being born.

Near the climax of Jerusalem we find these words which relate to the image and words from Revelation:
Jerusalem, Plate 98, (E 257)

"And every Man stood Fourfold, each Four Faces had. One
to the  West
One toward the East One to the South One to the North.
the Horses  Fourfold
And the dim Chaos brightend beneath, above, around! Eyed
as the  Peacock
According to the Human Nerves of Sensation, the Four
Rivers of the Water of Life"

This watercolor represents the vision in the fifth and sixth chapters of the Book of Revelation. Two of the horses of the apocalypse and their riders are represented. Above is the Lamb opening the scroll. The threat of death and destruction is represented in the dark lower half of the picture with Death Riding on a Pale Horse. The hope and promise of the new Jerusalem appears in the Lamb of God surrounded by the light of the sun and the feathers of protection.

Blake's image captures the contrast between the threat and the promise.

Book of Revelations
5:10 They sang a new song and these are the words they sang, "You are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals; for you were slain, and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God; and we shall reign on the earth."
...
6:1 - Then I watched while the Lamb broke one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice of thunder, "Come out!"
6:2 - I looked, and before my eyes was a white horse. Its rider carried a bow, and he was given a crown. He rode out conquering and bent on conquest.
6:3 - Then, when the Lamb broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature, cry, "Come out!"
6:4 - And another horse came forth, red in colour. Its rider was given power to deprive the earth of peace, so that men should kill each other. A huge sword was put into his hand.
6:5a - When the Lamb broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, "Come out!"
6:5b-6 - I looked again and there before my eyes was a black horse. Its rider had a pair of scales in his hand, and I heard a voice which seemed to come from the four living creatures, saying, "A quart of wheat for a shilling, and three quarts of barley for a shilling - but no tampering with the oil or the wine!"
6:7 - Then, when he broke the fourth seal I heard the voice of the fourth living creature cry, "Come out!"
6:8 - Again I looked, and there appeared a horse sickly green in colour. The name of its rider was death, and the grave followed close behind him. A quarter of the earth was put into their power, to kill with the sword, by famine, by violence, and through the wild beasts of the earth.

TIME / ETERNITY

Larry recently posted a blog concerning the Created Good and the Creative Event. This is a follow-up on the concept of the Created Good presented in Weiman's book.

Quotes from The Source of Human Good, By Henry Nelson Wieman:

"The mere passing through the mind of innumerable meanings is not the creative event. These newly communicated meanings must be integrated with meanings previously acquired or natively developed if the creative event is to occur. This integrating is largely subconscious, unplanned and uncontrolled by the individual, save only as he may provide conditions favorable to its occurrence." Page 59

"The creative event is one that brings forth in the human mind, in society and history, and in the appreciable world a new structure of interrelatedness, whereby events are discriminated and related in a manner not before possible. It is a structure whereby some events derive from other events, through meaningful connection with them, an abundance of quality that events could not have had without this new creation." Page 65

Milton, Plate 28 [30], (E 125)
"But others of the Sons of Los build Moments & Minutes & Hours
And Days & Months & Years & Ages & Periods; wondrous buildings
And every Moment has a Couch of gold for soft repose,
(A Moment equals a pulsation of the artery) ,
And between every two Moments stands a Daughter of Beulah
To feed the Sleepers on their Couches with maternal care.
And every Minute has an azure Tent with silken Veils.
And every Hour has a bright golden Gate carved with skill.
And every Day & Night, has Walls of brass & Gates of adamant,
Shining like precious stones & ornamented with appropriate signs:
And every Month, a silver paved Terrace builded high:
And every Year, invulnerable Barriers with high Towers.
And every Age is Moated deep with Bridges of silver & gold.
And every Seven Ages is Incircled with a Flaming Fire.
Now Seven Ages is amounting to Two Hundred Years
Each has its Guard. each Moment Minute Hour Day Month & Year.
All are the work of Fairy hands of the Four Elements
The Guard are Angels of Providence on duty evermore
Every Time less than a pulsation of the artery
Is equal in its period & value to Six Thousand Years.
PLATE 29 [31]
For in this Period the Poets Work is Done: and all the Great
Events of Time start forth & are concievd in such a Period
Within a Moment: a Pulsation of the Artery."

This is the creative event, Eternity exploding into time's framework.

James Rieger in Sublime Allegory, Page 272, in trying to explain Los' work, has this to say:
"Narrative time is a mere device in Milton and Jerusalem, a sequential representation of two eternal moments that by definition lack extension. Nevertheless, Frye correctly regards one as Resurrection and the other as the Last Judgment, corresponding to the first and second coming of Jesus. Each is its own split-second but one follows the other."

Not the created good but the creative event! Recurring whenever Eternity breaks into time!

Blake and the Bible

(Look also at Blake's Bible.)

If you think the Bible is inerrant, and that every word has one and only one meaning, then you don't need to read this any further.

Blake had an unparalleled freedom with the Bible. Northrup Frye referred to him as a Bible soaked protestant. He was Bible soaked, but the meanings he found in most of the Bible were distinctive and often unique: "Both read the Bible day and night,But thou read’st black where I read white."

Blake's 'white' reading will excite you and/or repel you. Or perhaps you will add your Blake to the canon; that happens.

1. The idea of Nobodaddy implies an explicit and emphatic rejection of the "sub-Christian" elements of the O.T.

Blake spent half his life figuring out who/what Christ was, after which he measured the quality and value of everything in the Bible in accordance with Christ's identity.

He rejected the thump on the head for the "healing balm".

2. He put the same value on his own visions (and vision) as he did the Bible. In visions he conversed with Isaiah and Ezekiel (see the second Memorable Fancy). My wife's favorite Blake quoted Ezekiel's conversation with Blake thusly: when Blake asked him why he behaved so erratically re living in his underwear and spending 3 months on his left side, etc., Ezekiel responded "'the desire of raising other men into a perception of the infinite". That has in fact became our calling in life.

To use slightly more orthodox terminology we could say the desire to get people thinking about Heaven (in it's larger meaning). That's a good subject for another post.

When our youngest was married (an outdoor Catholic marriage, I had a chance to read some scripture. I finished with the quotation from "Saint William Blake":
"Throughout Eternity I forgive you, you forgive me;
as the dear Redeemer said, this the wine and this the bread."

Blake was very free with his use of the Bible, as I, too strive to be, God willing.

There's much further information on this subject at Chapter Six of my Blake website.

7 PERSPECTIVES

The seven writers who have been of the most help to me in attempting to understand Blake's poetry and thought have dramatically different perspectives on discerning the meaning in Blake's work.

Northrup Frey, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake - reveals the symbolic language of Blake within a literary context.

David V. Erdman, Blake: Prophet against Empire - explores historical and political significance of Blake's writing.

Milton O. Percival, William Blake's Circle of Destiny - relates Blake's myth to esoteric symbols, including those in the Bible, Alchemy, and Astrology.

George Wingfield Digby, William Blake: Symbol and Image - sheds light on psychological implications and symbolic meanings through commentary on The Gates of Paradise and the Arlington Tempera.

John Middleton Murry, William Blake - expounds the teachings of Blake and includes the influence of Blake's personal experience on his work.

S. Foster Damon, A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbols of William Blake - provides information on the major ideas in Blake's writing with references to locations of passages where they occur.

Kathleen Raine, Blake and Tradition - shows classical and literary sources and influences for Blake's ideas and images by placing him within traditional metaphysics.

It is because Blake thought and wrote over as broad a field of intellectual knowledge as was possible in London in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, that scholars have been able to study his work from so many points of view. These authors have immersed themselves in the whole body of Blake's work and found themselves able to focus on specific areas where their interest and expertise could shed light onto what Blake communicated. There are more books to be written, perhaps you will write one.

You are invited to read Larry Clayton's unpublished book, Ram Horn'd with Gold, focusing on Blake's spiritual development.

Writing Books

Blake's Bible

You might say that how you read the Bible is a key to
how you understand Blake. Blake honored the Bible, but
he considered bibliolatry to be anathema:

A young theologian asked his O.T. professor if he
believed God told the Israelites to exterminate
the Canaanites; "yes" was the reply, "because they
were totally depraved" (Ah!, the babies, too?)

Blake read it differently. Quoting Fearful
Symmetry, p. 109: "Jehovah often urges a ferocious
cruelty extremely repugnant to the civilized mind.
If one gives up the attempt to extract a unified
moral code out of the Bible, this becomes a
profoundly true vision of a false god..."

Plate 11 of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:
" 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 & numerous senses could percieve. And particularly they studied the genius of each city &country. placing it under its mental deity. Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav'd 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 orderd such things. Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast."

And "Everything possible to be believ'd is an image of truth"
(MHH: Proverbs of Hell).

The Bible of course is about God; it portrays a
great many visions of God: those of primitive
savages and those of wise men like Abraham,
Moses, and Isaiah. They are the "Ancient Poets"
of MHH.

Until Jesus! he came into the picture when Blake
got to the N.T. Although Blake may not have
focused on it, the vision of the Loving Heavenly
Father should be more acceptable to the "civilized
mind."

Blake of course memorialized the moments when
Jesus "came into the picture"; look again at the
First Vision of God. There are many others.

For years Blake attempted to explicate what Jesus
meant to him. For years he worked on The Everlasting 
Gospel. But as we all know Jesus cannot be explicated; 
for me and perhaps for Blake that of God in everyone 
was about as close as you can get.

Blake's poetic gift was at the service of his Art and
his Religion (both very changeable throughout his
lifetime).

"Prayer is the Study of Art praise is the Practise of Art
Fasting &c. all relate to Art
The outward Ceremony is Antichrist
Without Unceasing Practise nothing can be done
Practise is Art If you leave off you are Lost
A Poet a Painter a Musician an Architect:
the Man Or Woman who is not one of these is not a Christian"
(The Lacoon; Erdman 274)

Blake's Bible

You might say that how you read the Bible is a key to
how you understand Blake. Blake honored the Bible, but
he considered bibliolatry to be anathema:

A young theologian asked his O.T. professor if he
believed God told the Israelites to exterminate
the Canaanites; "yes" was the reply, "because they
were totally depraved" (Ah!, the babies, too?)

Blake read it differently. Quoting Fearful
Symmetry, p. 109: "Jehovah often urges a ferocious
cruelty extremely repugnant to the civilized mind.
If one gives up the attempt to extract a unified
moral code out of the Bible, this becomes a
profoundly true vision of a false god..."

Plate 11 of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:
" 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 & numerous senses could percieve. And particularly they studied the genius of each city &country. placing it under its mental deity. Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav'd 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 orderd such things. Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast."

And "Everything possible to be believ'd is an image of truth"
(MHH: Proverbs of Hell).

The Bible of course is about God; it portrays a
great many visions of God: those of primitive
savages and those of wise men like Abraham,
Moses, and Isaiah. They are the "Ancient Poets"
of MHH.

Until Jesus! he came into the picture when Blake
got to the N.T. Although Blake may not have
focused on it, the vision of the Loving Heavenly
Father should be more acceptable to the "civilized
mind."

Blake of course memorialized the moments when
Jesus "came into the picture"; look again at the
First Vision of God. There are many others.

For years Blake attempted to explicate what Jesus
meant to him. For years he worked on The Everlasting 
Gospel. But as we all know Jesus cannot be explicated; 
for me and perhaps for Blake that of God in everyone 
was about as close as you can get.

Blake's poetic gift was at the service of his Art and
his Religion (both very changeable throughout his
lifetime).

"Prayer is the Study of Art praise is the Practise of Art
Fasting &c. all relate to Art
The outward Ceremony is Antichrist
Without Unceasing Practise nothing can be done
Practise is Art If you leave off you are Lost
A Poet a Painter a Musician an Architect:
the Man Or Woman who is not one of these is not a Christian"
(The Lacoon; Erdman 274)

The Word within the Word

Northrup Frye was a very famous literary critic,
and a great deal can be found about him on the
web. A Canadian, Frye went to seminary and became
a parish minister; then he went to Oxford and got
an M.A. in English Literature. He wrote his
thesis on William Blake.

A great many books came from his pen; the first
one was Fearful Symmetry (1944). Frye opens the
door to a depth understanding of Blake's poetry (and
pictures). It took five readings of Fearful Symetry
(30 years ago) to open my mind to William Blake.

In the eighties, near the end of his life, Frye
published two monumental volumes of "The Bible as
Literature"; they speak directly to the depth
understanding of our poet.

Some of the statements in 'The Word with the Word'
(chapter five of Fearful Symmetry) may sound
enigmatic; just stay with them, and light will come.
This chapter is a lucid description of Frye's primary
gift to literature, to meaning and religion.

All words are metaphors; the meanings they convey
depend upon the author's mind - and frame of mind
when he writes them; and upon the reader's (or
hearer's) mind when he reads or hears them. (Most
of the purposeless arguments over virtually anything
stem from failure to understand this basic fact.)

For Western culture the Bible is the Great Code of
Art; it embodies the Universal Myth, basically
fourfold: Creation, The Fall, Redemption,
Apocalypse. Blake believed that it was the
guiding myth undergirding virtually all discourse.

"Blake's poetry is all related to a central myth...
and the primary basis of this myth is the Bible.
...
The Bible is therefore the archetype of Western
culture, and the Bible...provides the basis for most
of our major art" (Fearful Symmetry, p. 109).

The word of God was Jesus (cf John 1). Anything
that you say or write may be the Word of God-- the
Jesus in you (Paul).

In Plate 3 of Jerusalem (Erdman p. 145) we can read:
"I also hope the Reader will be with me, wholly One in
Jesus our Lord, who is the God [of Fire] and Lord [of
Love] to whom the Ancients look'd and saw his day afar off,
with trembling & amazement. The Spirit of Jesus is continual
forgiveness of sin"

This is the Word in Blake's consciousness.
Jerusalem, (Erdman p. 180):
"Saying. Albion! Our wars are wars of life, & wounds of love,
With intellectual spears, & long winged arrows of thought:
Mutual in one anothers love and wrath all renewing
We live as One Man; for contracting our infinite senses
We behold multitude; or expanding: we behold as one,
As One Man all the Universal Family; and that One Man
We call Jesus the Christ: and he in us, and we in him,
Live in perfect harmony in Eden the land of life,
Giving, receiving, and forgiving each others trespasses.
He is the Good shepherd, he is the Lord and master:
He is the Shepherd of Albion, he is all in all,
In Eden: in the garden of God: and in heavenly Jerusalem."

LOS AND ORC

Northrop Frey wrote on page 251 of FEARFUL SYMMETRY:
"The rising Orc has been visualized as killing a dragon and as pushing a rock from his tomb, but neither if these images is really exact. When a new life is born, a new form emerges from unorganized matter, and the "victory" of the rising Orc is the only kind of victory that is possible: the conquest of the creator over his material, the reduction of a monster to a shape. We must now superimpose another pattern on this one. Just as Satan or the monster of death is overcome by Orc, so Orc himself is a monster of natural life (hence his association with the serpent) who must be in turn be overcome, or shaped into a form, by someone else. And as Orc shapes life out of death, so this someone shapes the conscious vision out of life which is the imagination proper, the character or identity, and so constructs a Being from the Becoming. Orc brings life into time; the shaper brings life in time into eternity, and as Orc is the driving power of Generation, so his shaper is the power of Regeneration. This shaper is the driving force of all of Blake's later poems, Los the blacksmith, the divine artificer, the spiritual form of time, the Holy Spirit which spoke by the prophets."

Los at the forge with Enitharmon and Orc

MILTON Plate 24 reads:
"Los is by mortals nam'd Time. Enitharmon is nam'd Space
But they depict him bald and aged who is in eternal youth
All powerful and his locks flourish like the brows of morning
He is the Spirit of Prophecy, the ever apparent Elias.
Time is the mercy of Eternity; without Times swiftness
Which is the swiftest of all things: all were eternal torment:
All the Gods of the Kingdoms of Earth labour in Los's Halls.
Every one is a fallen Son of the Spirit of Prophecy
He is the Fourth Zoa, that stood arou[n]d the Throne Divine."

Frey continues:
"Orc, the amorphous cub whom Los has to lick into shape, is Los' first-born son, as Los is the Holy Spirit or incubating power from whom all life proceeds. And as no life reaches eternity without first going through the physical world, the young Orc is bound by Los to the latter."

So through the fall, Los and Orc each become the prisoner of the other that the work of regeneration may ultimately be accomplished.

LOS AND ORC

Northrop Frey wrote on page 251 of FEARFUL SYMMETRY:
"The rising Orc has been visualized as killing a dragon and as pushing a rock from his tomb, but neither if these images is really exact. When a new life is born, a new form emerges from unorganized matter, and the "victory" of the rising Orc is the only kind of victory that is possible: the conquest of the creator over his material, the reduction of a monster to a shape. We must now superimpose another pattern on this one. Just as Satan or the monster of death is overcome by Orc, so Orc himself is a monster of natural life (hence his association with the serpent) who must be in turn be overcome, or shaped into a form, by someone else. And as Orc shapes life out of death, so this someone shapes the conscious vision out of life which is the imagination proper, the character or identity, and so constructs a Being from the Becoming. Orc brings life into time; the shaper brings life in time into eternity, and as Orc is the driving power of Generation, so his shaper is the power of Regeneration. This shaper is the driving force of all of Blake's later poems, Los the blacksmith, the divine artificer, the spiritual form of time, the Holy Spirit which spoke by the prophets."

Los at the forge with Enitharmon and Orc

MILTON Plate 24 reads:
"Los is by mortals nam'd Time. Enitharmon is nam'd Space
But they depict him bald and aged who is in eternal youth
All powerful and his locks flourish like the brows of morning
He is the Spirit of Prophecy, the ever apparent Elias.
Time is the mercy of Eternity; without Times swiftness
Which is the swiftest of all things: all were eternal torment:
All the Gods of the Kingdoms of Earth labour in Los's Halls.
Every one is a fallen Son of the Spirit of Prophecy
He is the Fourth Zoa, that stood arou[n]d the Throne Divine."

Frey continues:
"Orc, the amorphous cub whom Los has to lick into shape, is Los' first-born son, as Los is the Holy Spirit or incubating power from whom all life proceeds. And as no life reaches eternity without first going through the physical world, the young Orc is bound by Los to the latter."

So through the fall, Los and Orc each become the prisoner of the other that the work of regeneration may ultimately be accomplished.

The Circle of Destiny

In Night One of The Four Zoas, after a disheartening relationship with Enion, his emanation [wife?], Tharmas reluctantly
"Turnd round the circle of Destiny with tears & bitter sighs,
And said. Return O Wanderer when the Day of Clouds is oer" (Night 1; chapter 5, lines 11 and 12).

The Day of Clouds? Another name for the Circle of Destiny? Or we might call it 'this vale of tears'.

The Circle of Destiny! Percival wrote a book with that name, actually more elementary and hence better for new Blakeans than Fearful Symmetry by Northrup Frey.

The circle of destiny encapsulates Blake's myth perhaps more concisely than any thing else. The rest of The Four Zoas describes the journey Albion (and all of us as well) went through to get back to the Eden he had lost.

Well another concise statement of Blake's purpose came in Plate 12 of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: When Blake asked Ezekiel the reason for some of his bizarre behavior, he replied with "the desire of raising others [humans] into a perception of the infinite".

So what is the Circle of Destiny that Blake charged his character, Tharmas with? One of the best answers comes in Blake's magnificent Arlington Tempera.
Click on the picture for an enlargement.
More to come!
Tell me what you think.

The Circle of Destiny

In Night One of The Four Zoas, after a disheartening relationship with Enion, his emanation [wife?], Tharmas reluctantly
"Turnd round the circle of Destiny with tears & bitter sighs,
And said. Return O Wanderer when the Day of Clouds is oer" (Night 1; chapter 5, lines 11 and 12).

The Day of Clouds? Another name for the Circle of Destiny? Or we might call it 'this vale of tears'.

The Circle of Destiny! Percival wrote a book with that name, actually more elementary and hence better for new Blakeans than Fearful Symmetry by Northrup Frey.

The circle of destiny encapsulates Blake's myth perhaps more concisely than any thing else. The rest of The Four Zoas describes the journey Albion (and all of us as well) went through to get back to the Eden he had lost.

Well another concise statement of Blake's purpose came in Plate 12 of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: When Blake asked Ezekiel the reason for some of his bizarre behavior, he replied with "the desire of raising others [humans] into a perception of the infinite".

So what is the Circle of Destiny that Blake charged his character, Tharmas with? One of the best answers comes in Blake's magnificent Arlington Tempera.
Click on the picture for an enlargement.
More to come!
Tell me what you think.

Ah! Sunflower

"Ah! sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller’s journey is done;

Where the youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves and aspire;
Where my sunflower wishes to go."
(Songs of Experience, Erdman 25)

Frye tells us that this may be seen to reflect biblical
passages about work, such as "work for the night is coming".

"In Ah! Sunflower the flower that turns its face to the sun
through its passage across the sky is the emblem of all those
who have repressed or frustrated their desires to the point
at which they all consolidate into a desire for the sunset of death".

Once again:
"Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done."

(from Frye in Words with Power p. 90-91)

The passage of the sun symbolizes our journey through life
(through this vale of tears.) Focusing on the sun, as the
flower does, indicates preoccupation with the objective, the
material; Blake considered that a much lesser way to live.

In Visions of the Last Judgment Blake wrote:

"Error is Created Truth is Eternal Error or Creation
will be Burned Up & then & not till then Truth
or Eternity will appear It is Burnt up the Moment Men
cease to behold it I assert for My self that I do not
behold the Outward Creation & that to me it is
hindrance & not Action it is as the Dirt upon
my feet No part of Me. What it will be Questiond When
the Sun rises do you not see a round

Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea O no no I see an Innumerable
company of the Heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord
God Almighty I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any
more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight I look
thro it & not with it." (VLJ-N95; E565-6)

Christ Ministered to by Angels

Ah! Sunflower also reflects a passage in Gate of Paradise:

"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"
(Gates of Paradise 39-42; E269)

Ah! Sunflower

"Ah! sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller’s journey is done;

Where the youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves and aspire;
Where my sunflower wishes to go."
(Songs of Experience, Erdman 25)

Frye tells us that this may be seen to reflect biblical
passages about work, such as "work for the night is coming".

"In Ah! Sunflower the flower that turns its face to the sun
through its passage across the sky is the emblem of all those
who have repressed or frustrated their desires to the point
at which they all consolidate into a desire for the sunset of death".

Once again:
"Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done."

(from Frye in Words with Power p. 90-91)

The passage of the sun symbolizes our journey through life
(through this vale of tears.) Focusing on the sun, as the
flower does, indicates preoccupation with the objective, the
material; Blake considered that a much lesser way to live.

In Visions of the Last Judgment Blake wrote:

"Error is Created Truth is Eternal Error or Creation
will be Burned Up & then & not till then Truth
or Eternity will appear It is Burnt up the Moment Men
cease to behold it I assert for My self that I do not
behold the Outward Creation & that to me it is
hindrance & not Action it is as the Dirt upon
my feet No part of Me. What it will be Questiond When
the Sun rises do you not see a round

Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea O no no I see an Innumerable
company of the Heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord
God Almighty I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any
more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight I look
thro it & not with it." (VLJ-N95; E565-6)

Christ Ministered to by Angels

Ah! Sunflower also reflects a passage in Gate of Paradise:

"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"
(Gates of Paradise 39-42; E269)

Read Blake or About Blake

People interested in Blake are more apt to read
about Blake than to read Blake. Reading The Four
Zoas, Milton, or Jerusalem are awesome undertakings.
Until you've begun to understand the man's language,
it's a losing proposition. There's a core set of
metaphors that he used repeatedly, although like all
metaphors his are subject to various entonations, and
often used for an object or its opposite.

To enable intelligent reading of the major prophecies
there is a great abundance of interpretations of his
works. Where to begin??? Those of us who have made a
few steps in that direction can perhaps give a bit of
guidance to the beginning student.

Northrup Frye's Fearful Symmetry was the work that
made me a life long lover of Blake's poetry. It's not
easy; I read it five times before I was able to get
more than a few glimmers of light. But it's very
rewarding; you're likely smarter than me, in which
case one or two readings may get you well into the
big poems.

Frye was a celebrated literature critique; after
finishing Fearful Symmetry he said that if he had it
to do over, he would have written more of an
introduction than what he actually did.

The one who gave the simplest introduction for me
was Milton Percival's Circle of Destiny; it's more
systematic and more elementary.

But Kathleen Raine's Blake and Tradition was what made
me a real enthusiast. That's the most easily readable
one, and it's filled with some of Blake's loveliest
pictures. Unfortunately Blake and Tradition is out of
print now, but a fairly good substitute may be found
in her little book, Blake and Antiquity.

Put any books recommended here in Amazon's website,
and you'll find they may have an advanced price, but
page down and you most often see other copies (used
or new) on sale much more cheaply (that's the virtue
of Amazon's farm system).

There is also an amazing amount of valuable information
on line; and this website is here to help you with
any questions you may have.

Good luck with your study of William Blake.

Read Blake or About Blake

People interested in Blake are more apt to read
about Blake than to read Blake. Reading The Four
Zoas, Milton, or Jerusalem are awesome undertakings.
Until you've begun to understand the man's language,
it's a losing proposition. There's a core set of
metaphors that he used repeatedly, although like all
metaphors his are subject to various entonations, and
often used for an object or its opposite.

To enable intelligent reading of the major prophecies
there is a great abundance of interpretations of his
works. Where to begin??? Those of us who have made a
few steps in that direction can perhaps give a bit of
guidance to the beginning student.

Northrup Frye's Fearful Symmetry was the work that
made me a life long lover of Blake's poetry. It's not
easy; I read it five times before I was able to get
more than a few glimmers of light. But it's very
rewarding; you're likely smarter than me, in which
case one or two readings may get you well into the
big poems.

Frye was a celebrated literature critique; after
finishing Fearful Symmetry he said that if he had it
to do over, he would have written more of an
introduction than what he actually did.

The one who gave the simplest introduction for me
was Milton Percival's Circle of Destiny; it's more
systematic and more elementary.

But Kathleen Raine's Blake and Tradition was what made
me a real enthusiast. That's the most easily readable
one, and it's filled with some of Blake's loveliest
pictures. Unfortunately Blake and Tradition is out of
print now, but a fairly good substitute may be found
in her little book, Blake and Antiquity.

Put any books recommended here in Amazon's website,
and you'll find they may have an advanced price, but
page down and you most often see other copies (used
or new) on sale much more cheaply (that's the virtue
of Amazon's farm system).

There is also an amazing amount of valuable information
on line; and this website is here to help you with
any questions you may have.

Good luck with your study of William Blake.

Blake and the Bible

(Look also at Blake's Bible.)

If you think the Bible is inerrant, and that every word has one and only one meaning, then you don't need to read this any further.

Blake had an unparalleled freedom with the Bible. Northrup Frye referred to him as a Bible soaked protestant. He was Bible soaked, but the meanings he found in most of the Bible were distinctive and often unique: "Both read the Bible day and night,But thou read’st black where I read white."

Blake's 'white' reading will excite you and/or repel you. Or perhaps you will add your Blake to the canon; that happens.

1. The idea of Nobodaddy implies an explicit and emphatic rejection of the "sub-Christian" elements of the O.T.

Blake spent half his life figuring out who/what Christ was, after which he measured the quality and value of everything in the Bible in accordance with Christ's identity.

He rejected the thump on the head for the "healing balm".

2. He put the same value on his own visions (and vision) as he did the Bible. In visions he conversed with Isaiah and Ezekiel (see the second Memorable Fancy). My wife's favorite Blake quoted Ezekiel's conversation with Blake thusly: when Blake asked him why he behaved so erratically re living in his underwear and spending 3 months on his left side, etc., Ezekiel responded "'the desire of raising other men into a perception of the infinite". That has in fact became our calling in life.

To use slightly more orthodox terminology we could say the desire to get people thinking about Heaven (in it's larger meaning). That's a good subject for another post.

When our youngest was married (an outdoor Catholic marriage, I had a chance to read some scripture. I finished with the quotation from "Saint William Blake":
"Throughout Eternity I forgive you, you forgive me;
as the dear Redeemer said, this the wine and this the bread."

Blake was very free with his use of the Bible, as I, too strive to be, God willing.

There's much further information on this subject at Chapter Six of my Blake website.