As a tenet of Blake's theory of art, the idea that the outline or lineament was necessary to produce a good work of art, was the most important. He found fault with artists who did not use the technique of outlining the body in their images of human beings. Those familiar with other great artists may find this dictum strange. But Blake had his reason, as usual, related to his ideas of the spiritual being primary, the material secondary.
>From the definition of lineament in Webster's 1913 volume, we learn that lineament is:
"One of the outlines, exterior features, or distinctive marks, of a body or figure, particularly of the face; feature; form; mark;"
>WordNet suggests that lineament is "a characteristic property that defines the apparent individual nature of something."
>From a current usage of lineament in geology we learn that "A lineament is a linear feature in a landscape which is an expression of an underlying geological structure such as a fault."
From Blake's usage it seems he was applying all of these understandings of the word. The outline presented the distinctive features of the object, but not just in an exterior sense. The very individual nature of the thing was inherent in the lineaments. The underlying structure became visible through the outline. Now we see why there is a spiritual dimension to portraying faces, insects, trees, serpents or bodies as outlined; to assist us in seeing not 'with but through the eye.'
A mighty Polypus growing from Albion
Blake on outline and lineament:
Annotations to Reynolds, p 178, (E 657) :
"What does Precision of Pencil mean? If it does not mean Outline it means Nothing"
A Descriptive Catalogue of Blake's Exhibition, Number XV, (E 549):
"When Mr. B. formerly painted in oil colours his Pictures were shewn to certain painters and connoisseurs, who said that they were very admirable Drawings on canvass; but not Pictures: but they said the same of Rafael's Pictures. [P 63] Mr. B. thought this the greatest of compliments, though it was meant otherwise. If losing and obliterating the outline constitutes a Picture, Mr. B. will never be so foolish as to do one. Such art of losing the outlines is the art of Venice and Flanders; it loses all character, and leaves what some people call, expression: but this is a false notion of expression; expression cannot exist without character as its stamina; and neither character nor expression can exist without firm and determinate outline."
A Descriptive Catalogue of Blake's Exhibition, Number XV, (E 550) :
"How do we distinguish the oak from the beech, the horse from the ox, but by the bounding outline? How do we distinguish one face or countenance from another, but by the bounding line and its infinite inflexions and movements? What is it that builds a house and plants a garden, but the definite and determinate? What is it that distinguishes honesty from knavery, but the hard and wirey line of rectitude and certainty [P 65] in the actions and intentions. Leave out this l[i]ne and you leave out life itself; all is chaos again, and the line of the almighty must be drawn out upon it before man or beast can exist."
Jerusalem, Plate 73, (E 229)
"The Sons of Albion are Twelve: the Sons of Jerusalem Sixteen
I tell how Albions Sons by Harmonies of Concords & Discords
Opposed to Melody, and by Lights & Shades, opposed to Outline
And by Abstraction opposed to the Visions of Imagination"
Milton, PLATE 21 [23], (E 115)
"But I knew not that it was Milton, for man cannot know
What passes in his members till periods of Space & Time
Reveal the secrets of Eternity: for more extensive
Than any other earthly things, are Mans earthly lineaments."
Milton, Plate 32, (E 132)
"Judge then of thy Own Self: thy Eternal Lineaments explore
What is Eternal & what Changeable? & what Annihilable!"
Modern science tells us that the brain has structures activated very early in life which give us the ability to recognize faces. This ability could be related to the ability to discern lineament as characteristic of underlying identity or spiritual nature.
Showing posts with label Imagination. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Imagination. Show all posts
Thursday, January 16, 2025
Friday, March 12, 2010
Blake's worm
Blake used the worm as a minor but important symbol in his poetry; you may find 87 occurrences of the word in his Complete Works. He used it to express many different, contrasting or even opposite things. Let's begin with Thel:
Thel, Plate 3, (E 5)
" ...Every thing that lives
Blake has been telling us something about ourselves, our psyche, our community, nation, world.
Another important facet of Blake's worm occurs in the Gates of Paradise: (E 269)
"15. The Door of Death I open found, And the Worm weaving in the ground:
16. Thou'rt my Mother, from the womb; Wife, Sister, Daughter, to the tomb;
Among other ideas this evokes something Jesus said about his mother at Matthew 12:46-50:
46While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him.
47Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee.
48But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?
49And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!
50For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.
But here we find worm used in a virtually opposite sense,.
Look at Jerusalem Plate 29, (Erdman 175) where the Spectre of Albion pronounces this:
"I am your Rational Power O Albion & that Human Form
You call Divine, is but a Worm seventy inches long
That creeps forth in a night & is dried in the morning sun"
What does the big worm suggest? a purely conventional life, with no imagination or creativity, a kind of man in whom Los and Luvah are simply absent. A man ruled body and soul by the Selfhood.
In Genesis we read that God created Man in his own image, and also that he formed man out of the dust. And following Digby we have two kinds of men: the one represented by Glad Day and the one represented by the worm of 70 inches. But God includes 'Men' and 'worms' as part of the 'whole Creation' that will be redeemed.
Thel, Plate 3, (E 5)
" ...Every thing that lives
Lives not alone nor for itself. Fear not, and I will call
The weak worm from its lowly bed, and thou shalt hear its voice,
Come forth, worm of the silent valley, to thy pensive queen."
The helpless worm arose, and sat upon the Lily's leaf,
And the bright Cloud sail'd on, to find his partner in the vale.
Then Thel astonish'd view'd the Worm upon its dewy bed.
"Art thou a Worm? Image of weakness, art thou but a Worm?
I see thee like an infant wrapped in the Lily's leaf
Ah! weep not, little voice, thou canst not speak, but thou canst weep.
Is this a Worm? I see thee lay helpless and naked, weeping,
And none to answer, none to cherish thee with mother's smiles."
The Clod of Clay heard the Worm's voice and rais'd her pitying head:
She bow'd over the weeping infant, and her life exhal'd
In milky fondness: then on Thel she fix'd her humble eyes.
Blake has been telling us something about ourselves, our psyche, our community, nation, world.
Another important facet of Blake's worm occurs in the Gates of Paradise: (E 269)
"15. The Door of Death I open found, And the Worm weaving in the ground:
16. Thou'rt my Mother, from the womb; Wife, Sister, Daughter, to the tomb;
Among other ideas this evokes something Jesus said about his mother at Matthew 12:46-50:
46While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him.
47Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee.
48But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?
49And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!
50For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.
But here we find worm used in a virtually opposite sense,.
Look at Jerusalem Plate 29, (Erdman 175) where the Spectre of Albion pronounces this:
"I am your Rational Power O Albion & that Human Form
You call Divine, is but a Worm seventy inches long
That creeps forth in a night & is dried in the morning sun"
What does the big worm suggest? a purely conventional life, with no imagination or creativity, a kind of man in whom Los and Luvah are simply absent. A man ruled body and soul by the Selfhood.
In Genesis we read that God created Man in his own image, and also that he formed man out of the dust. And following Digby we have two kinds of men: the one represented by Glad Day and the one represented by the worm of 70 inches. But God includes 'Men' and 'worms' as part of the 'whole Creation' that will be redeemed.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
BLAKE & TRADITION
This video of Kathleen Raine, a renowned Blake scholar, talking about Blake can be viewed on youtube. Seen in the video along with Raine is the actor who played Blake in the production about Thomas Paine and William Blake. The actor is Mark Rylance who is known for being the Artistic Director of the Globe Theater.
Video - 'God is the Imagination'
Seeing Kathleen reminds me of how Larry first discovered Kathleen Raine's Blake and Tradition when he was in the sitting room of the National Gallery in Washington DC waiting for me to finish looking at pictures. The Melons were instrumental in envisioning and financing the museum and also sponsored the publication of Raine's book. So that may explain why the book was available there. After that we would sometimes go to the National Gallery just so Larry could read the book, since our local Arlington library didn't have a copy. One cold and rainy Saturday morning we went to the museum but were disappointed - the sitting room was overflowing with anti-war protesters who were looking for a warm spot to dry their clothes and feed their babies. A friend who had a friend who had borrowing privileges at the Library of Congress, borrowed the book for us so that Larry could get a longer look at it.
Read Kathleen Raine's book online.
Of this Title Page of Jerusalem, Raine says: "The soul is depicted under the classical emblem of Psyche, the butterfly. The natural universe of sun, moon, and stars is represented as 'dust on the Fly's wing' of the soul, with whose life they live. The figure at the top of the plate is, following another traditional emblem, bee-winged."
Video - 'God is the Imagination'
Seeing Kathleen reminds me of how Larry first discovered Kathleen Raine's Blake and Tradition when he was in the sitting room of the National Gallery in Washington DC waiting for me to finish looking at pictures. The Melons were instrumental in envisioning and financing the museum and also sponsored the publication of Raine's book. So that may explain why the book was available there. After that we would sometimes go to the National Gallery just so Larry could read the book, since our local Arlington library didn't have a copy. One cold and rainy Saturday morning we went to the museum but were disappointed - the sitting room was overflowing with anti-war protesters who were looking for a warm spot to dry their clothes and feed their babies. A friend who had a friend who had borrowing privileges at the Library of Congress, borrowed the book for us so that Larry could get a longer look at it.
Read Kathleen Raine's book online.
Of this Title Page of Jerusalem, Raine says: "The soul is depicted under the classical emblem of Psyche, the butterfly. The natural universe of sun, moon, and stars is represented as 'dust on the Fly's wing' of the soul, with whose life they live. The figure at the top of the plate is, following another traditional emblem, bee-winged."
Friday, February 26, 2010
IMAGINATION
Songs of Innocence and Experience, Nurse's Song (E 15)"When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And every thing else is still
Then come home my children, the sun is gone down
And the dews of night arise
Come come leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies
No no let us play, for it is yet day
And we cannot go to sleep
Besides in the sky, the little birds fly
And the hills are all coverd with sheep
Well well go & play till the light fades away
And then go home to bed
The little ones leaped & shouted & laugh'd
And all the hills ecchoed"
Here is a simple poem about playing children. But there is more than that. It is about the life of the imagination which to Blake is not a state but existence itself. We get a clue in the first verse: 'My heart is at rest within my breast, And every thing else is still.' This is the moment Blake speaks about in Milton:
PLATE 29 [31] (E 127)
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.
Blake calls the Human Imagination the 'Divine Vision & Fruition In which Man liveth eternally.'
Imagination in children needs to recognized and cultivated, allowed expression in play and dreaming and creating. But the imagination is not outgrown. We shouldn't put our imaginations to sleep when we put away childish things. The world may try to take away our playfulness and creativity but we don't have to let it.
Romans12:2
"Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity."
Jerusalem, Plate 77 (E 231)
"I know of no other
Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body
& mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination.
Imagination the real & eternal World of which this Vegetable
Universe is but a faint shadow & in which we shall live in our
Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies
are no more."
Friday, February 19, 2010
BLAKE & PAINE
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is an animated picture worth? Available on youTube is a video from a play by Jack Shepherd called In Lambeth. The play shows an encounter between William Blake and Thomas Paine two revolutionaries through writing. The encounter was reported in an early biography of Blake although it has been fictionalized in the video. Perhaps watching the portrayal will expand your understanding of Blake as a human being.
Video of Blake and Paine (The are 5 segments to this video)
Among the things I noticed about the portrayal of Blake was the rapid movement of his psychic state during the span of the action. He went from what seemed like ordinary social consciousness, to an accelerated state, to his visionary experience, to anxiety resulting from the visionary experience, to a rational discussion of politics and potential solutions to philosophical and social problems, and through other states as well. He went from introversion, to extroversion; from rational to emotional; from self centeredness to other centeredness. I think this rapid movement of states derived from what the author of the play had surmised about his personality from the style of his writing. The hyperactivity in his behavior and the constant movement in the poetry reflect a mind that didn't stay still. I like the way author and actor presented a personality for Blake that is consistent with how he wrote.
There was an interesting contrast between Blake and Paine in personality and philosophy. Blake the younger, more emotional and animated was more conservative in his attitude toward starting revolution. Paine was steady and rational but willing to set off the spark without knowing what outcome might ensue. The line about each rarely having someone with whom to talk about the things that interested him, spoke volumes. A big difference between the two men was that Paine spoke to ears which were ready to hear his message, and Blake's message is still waiting for receptive ears.
'to clothe him with Imagination'
The video may have gotten more viewership if the the first part of the play had been included. The first scene is said to have been of Bill and Kate naked in the branches of a tree, reminiscent of figures in in the illuminations and of the occasion when they were said to have been surprised in their garden 'playing Adam and Eve'.
Video of Blake and Paine (The are 5 segments to this video)
Among the things I noticed about the portrayal of Blake was the rapid movement of his psychic state during the span of the action. He went from what seemed like ordinary social consciousness, to an accelerated state, to his visionary experience, to anxiety resulting from the visionary experience, to a rational discussion of politics and potential solutions to philosophical and social problems, and through other states as well. He went from introversion, to extroversion; from rational to emotional; from self centeredness to other centeredness. I think this rapid movement of states derived from what the author of the play had surmised about his personality from the style of his writing. The hyperactivity in his behavior and the constant movement in the poetry reflect a mind that didn't stay still. I like the way author and actor presented a personality for Blake that is consistent with how he wrote.
There was an interesting contrast between Blake and Paine in personality and philosophy. Blake the younger, more emotional and animated was more conservative in his attitude toward starting revolution. Paine was steady and rational but willing to set off the spark without knowing what outcome might ensue. The line about each rarely having someone with whom to talk about the things that interested him, spoke volumes. A big difference between the two men was that Paine spoke to ears which were ready to hear his message, and Blake's message is still waiting for receptive ears.
'to clothe him with Imagination'
The video may have gotten more viewership if the the first part of the play had been included. The first scene is said to have been of Bill and Kate naked in the branches of a tree, reminiscent of figures in in the illuminations and of the occasion when they were said to have been surprised in their garden 'playing Adam and Eve'.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
TO OUR READERS
An anonymous reader has asked that we provide more information in our posts. So I will try to explain what we are attempting to do in our Blake blog.
First we want to focus our attention and on William Blake and his writing.
We are not experts but students of Blake. We follow our own interests. We are interested in sharing what we have learned of Blake and would would like to tailor our posts to the interests of the reader. We hope readers will let us know what interests them about Blake.
There have been posts which attempt to introduce the reader to studying Blake especially using the resources on the internet. The links to the text of Blake's poetry and prose, and to his graphic works are provided. A link to Larry's online book which includes a primer is also a useful tool. (These files can be electronically searched for specific topics.) Within the posts we often provide links to external files which expand the study to wider sources.
None of Blake's work is simple to understand. Beginners can start with Songs of Innocence and Experience. Marriage of Heaven and Hell grabs the attention of many with its irony. The major prophecies can be approached a little at a time rather than entire. If you are visually oriented, the visual images can be used as an avenue to draw you into reading the poetry.
Blake's body of work is large and complex. On our blog we have not attempted a systematic study. We are giving clues to solving the mystery. Analysts of Blake's work often tell us that Blake expected the reader to go beyond what was stated in the text, to perceive the underlying meaning. We hope our readers will sift through the blog posts looking for cracks or doors or highways through which they may enter Blake's mind and heart and imagination.
Reading Blake may expand your mind, nourish your spirit, or enrich your imagination; don't expect it to put money in your pocket, expand your social circle or impress your professors.
Here are some earlier posts which may help the neophyte.
Bible
Perception
Vision
Emphasis
Help
Fourfold
Idealism
Reader
Plates
4Z's
_________________
I can't end without a quote from Blake and a picture.
Jerusalem, Plate 60, (E 209)
"within the Furnaces the Divine Vision appeard
On Albions hills: often walking from the Furnaces in clouds
And flames among the Druid Temples & the Starry Wheels
Gatherd Jerusalems Children in his arms & bore them like
A Shepherd in the night of Albion which overspread all the Earth
I gave thee liberty and life O lovely Jerusalem
And thou hast bound me down upon the Stems of Vegetation
Liberty or Stems of Vegetation
First we want to focus our attention and on William Blake and his writing.
We are not experts but students of Blake. We follow our own interests. We are interested in sharing what we have learned of Blake and would would like to tailor our posts to the interests of the reader. We hope readers will let us know what interests them about Blake.
There have been posts which attempt to introduce the reader to studying Blake especially using the resources on the internet. The links to the text of Blake's poetry and prose, and to his graphic works are provided. A link to Larry's online book which includes a primer is also a useful tool. (These files can be electronically searched for specific topics.) Within the posts we often provide links to external files which expand the study to wider sources.
None of Blake's work is simple to understand. Beginners can start with Songs of Innocence and Experience. Marriage of Heaven and Hell grabs the attention of many with its irony. The major prophecies can be approached a little at a time rather than entire. If you are visually oriented, the visual images can be used as an avenue to draw you into reading the poetry.
Blake's body of work is large and complex. On our blog we have not attempted a systematic study. We are giving clues to solving the mystery. Analysts of Blake's work often tell us that Blake expected the reader to go beyond what was stated in the text, to perceive the underlying meaning. We hope our readers will sift through the blog posts looking for cracks or doors or highways through which they may enter Blake's mind and heart and imagination.
Reading Blake may expand your mind, nourish your spirit, or enrich your imagination; don't expect it to put money in your pocket, expand your social circle or impress your professors.
Here are some earlier posts which may help the neophyte.
Bible
Perception
Vision
Emphasis
Help
Fourfold
Idealism
Reader
Plates
4Z's
_________________
I can't end without a quote from Blake and a picture.
Jerusalem, Plate 60, (E 209)
"within the Furnaces the Divine Vision appeard
On Albions hills: often walking from the Furnaces in clouds
And flames among the Druid Temples & the Starry Wheels
Gatherd Jerusalems Children in his arms & bore them like
A Shepherd in the night of Albion which overspread all the Earth
I gave thee liberty and life O lovely Jerusalem
And thou hast bound me down upon the Stems of Vegetation
Liberty or Stems of Vegetation
Sunday, December 20, 2009
BEYOND EXPERIENCE
In later copies of Songs of Innocence and Experience, the last three poems are TO TIRZA, THE SCHOOL BOY, and THE VOICE OF THE ANCIENT BARD. In his The Illuminated Blake, Erdman postulates that, this "arrangement of the concluding plates impl[ies] an apocalyptic metamorphosis at the end of the series of emblems, beyond Innocence and Experience." Erdman suggests "that the Eternal Man 'has risen' out of the realm of' 'Contrary States.'
TO TIRZA picture
TO TIRZA text
So looking at these three poems as a group, we ask why they are chosen to conclude Songs of Innocence and Experience. TO TIRZA represents the realization that mortal life has been a temporary substitute for the real thing in Eternity. The mortal body is to be raised a spiritual body. The picture recalls to my mind both the Good Samaritan and the Raising of Lazarus, two stories of healing and recovery.
SCHOOL BOY text
SCHOOL BOY picture
The School Boy strikes me as autobiographical. Young William was not forced to attend school, and his imagination benefited from the freedom he was allowed. He asks how can the adult have the resources to go beyond innocence and experience if the imagination has not been fed and nourished on the sights and sounds and simple joys of unfettered thought and play. He illustrates this by a delightful group of children playing marbles, stretching, climbing, swinging and reading. This plate was originally in Songs of Innocence; now we see it illustrating the stage beyond Experience where the contraries have been resolved through recognition, love and forgiveness. Blake himself has survived the 'blasts of winter' mentioned in the plate, and made us better for it.
The Ancient Bard completes the series on an ambivalent note. The old man is singing and playing his song, and gathers a new generation about him, but he wears a shackle on his ankle. The faces of the children reveal anxiety as they are invited to the new morn and warned about past mistakes. Only if they can avoid being led by those who are not qualified, can they avoid repeating the cycle of despair which the previous generation followed. Blake's unstated answer to the children is that they should trust their own imaginations to provide them with the thread that connects them to the infinite.
So perhaps as a group the three poems are meant to be an invitation to go beyond Experience into Blake's favorite place, the world of Imagination and Vision.
BARD picture
BARD text
TO TIRZA picture
TO TIRZA text
So looking at these three poems as a group, we ask why they are chosen to conclude Songs of Innocence and Experience. TO TIRZA represents the realization that mortal life has been a temporary substitute for the real thing in Eternity. The mortal body is to be raised a spiritual body. The picture recalls to my mind both the Good Samaritan and the Raising of Lazarus, two stories of healing and recovery.
SCHOOL BOY text
SCHOOL BOY picture
The School Boy strikes me as autobiographical. Young William was not forced to attend school, and his imagination benefited from the freedom he was allowed. He asks how can the adult have the resources to go beyond innocence and experience if the imagination has not been fed and nourished on the sights and sounds and simple joys of unfettered thought and play. He illustrates this by a delightful group of children playing marbles, stretching, climbing, swinging and reading. This plate was originally in Songs of Innocence; now we see it illustrating the stage beyond Experience where the contraries have been resolved through recognition, love and forgiveness. Blake himself has survived the 'blasts of winter' mentioned in the plate, and made us better for it.
The Ancient Bard completes the series on an ambivalent note. The old man is singing and playing his song, and gathers a new generation about him, but he wears a shackle on his ankle. The faces of the children reveal anxiety as they are invited to the new morn and warned about past mistakes. Only if they can avoid being led by those who are not qualified, can they avoid repeating the cycle of despair which the previous generation followed. Blake's unstated answer to the children is that they should trust their own imaginations to provide them with the thread that connects them to the infinite.
So perhaps as a group the three poems are meant to be an invitation to go beyond Experience into Blake's favorite place, the world of Imagination and Vision.
BARD picture
BARD text
BEYOND EXPERIENCE
In later copies of Songs of Innocence and Experience, the last three poems are TO TIRZA, THE SCHOOL BOY, and THE VOICE OF THE ANCIENT BARD. In his The Illuminated Blake, Erdman postulates that, this "arrangement of the concluding plates impl[ies] an apocalyptic metamorphosis at the end of the series of emblems, beyond Innocence and Experience." Erdman suggests "that the Eternal Man 'has risen' out of the realm of' 'Contrary States.'
TO TIRZA picture
TO TIRZA text
So looking at these three poems as a group, we ask why they are chosen to conclude Songs of Innocence and Experience. TO TIRZA represents the realization that mortal life has been a temporary substitute for the real thing in Eternity. The mortal body is to be raised a spiritual body. The picture recalls to my mind both the Good Samaritan and the Raising of Lazarus, two stories of healing and recovery.
SCHOOL BOY text
SCHOOL BOY picture
The School Boy strikes me as autobiographical. Young William was not forced to attend school, and his imagination benefited from the freedom he was allowed. He asks how can the adult have the resources to go beyond innocence and experience if the imagination has not been fed and nourished on the sights and sounds and simple joys of unfettered thought and play. He illustrates this by a delightful group of children playing marbles, stretching, climbing, swinging and reading. This plate was originally in Songs of Innocence; now we see it illustrating the stage beyond Experience where the contraries have been resolved through recognition, love and forgiveness. Blake himself has survived the 'blasts of winter' mentioned in the plate, and made us better for it.
The Ancient Bard completes the series on an ambivalent note. The old man is singing and playing his song, and gathers a new generation about him, but he wears a shackle on his ankle. The faces of the children reveal anxiety as they are invited to the new morn and warned about past mistakes. Only if they can avoid being led by those who are not qualified, can they avoid repeating the cycle of despair which the previous generation followed. Blake's unstated answer to the children is that they should trust their own imaginations to provide them with the thread that connects them to the infinite.
So perhaps as a group the three poems are meant to be an invitation to go beyond Experience into Blake's favorite place, the world of Imagination and Vision.
BARD picture
BARD text
TO TIRZA picture
TO TIRZA text
So looking at these three poems as a group, we ask why they are chosen to conclude Songs of Innocence and Experience. TO TIRZA represents the realization that mortal life has been a temporary substitute for the real thing in Eternity. The mortal body is to be raised a spiritual body. The picture recalls to my mind both the Good Samaritan and the Raising of Lazarus, two stories of healing and recovery.
SCHOOL BOY text
SCHOOL BOY picture
The School Boy strikes me as autobiographical. Young William was not forced to attend school, and his imagination benefited from the freedom he was allowed. He asks how can the adult have the resources to go beyond innocence and experience if the imagination has not been fed and nourished on the sights and sounds and simple joys of unfettered thought and play. He illustrates this by a delightful group of children playing marbles, stretching, climbing, swinging and reading. This plate was originally in Songs of Innocence; now we see it illustrating the stage beyond Experience where the contraries have been resolved through recognition, love and forgiveness. Blake himself has survived the 'blasts of winter' mentioned in the plate, and made us better for it.
The Ancient Bard completes the series on an ambivalent note. The old man is singing and playing his song, and gathers a new generation about him, but he wears a shackle on his ankle. The faces of the children reveal anxiety as they are invited to the new morn and warned about past mistakes. Only if they can avoid being led by those who are not qualified, can they avoid repeating the cycle of despair which the previous generation followed. Blake's unstated answer to the children is that they should trust their own imaginations to provide them with the thread that connects them to the infinite.
So perhaps as a group the three poems are meant to be an invitation to go beyond Experience into Blake's favorite place, the world of Imagination and Vision.
BARD picture
BARD text
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
INFINITE
Desire for the Infinite From There Is No Natural Religion, Plate 5
Reading from George W. Digby, Page 124, Symbol and Image in William Blake:
"For not only is the infinite present in everything, but one thing is the mirror of another, and everything is linked and harmonized in a translucent chain of correspondences. This is the translucence of which Blake often speaks. Eckhart said, 'anything known or born is an image', and Jacob Boehem could see the inner life and nature of every natural object recorded on it as a 'signature.' In the poem sent to his friend Thomas Butts from Felpham, which begins 'To my Friend Thomas Butts I write / My first Vision of Light...,' Blake describes the miracle of the divine manifesting in the phenomenal. The poem records an instance of the power of contracting and expanding vision, which is one of Blake's fundamental images... This contracting and expanding of consciousness is the essence of human life; it is what makes possible the co-existence in one body of the divine and the human."
Letter to Thomas Butts, Oct 2 1800 (E 711)
Jerusalem, 98.28 (E257)
"And they conversed together in Visionary forms dramatic which
bright
Redounded from their Tongues in thunderous majesty, in Visions
In new Expanses, creating exemplars of Memory and of Intellect
Creating Space, Creating Time according to the wonders Divine
Of Human Imagination, throughout all the Three Regions
immense
Of Childhood, Manhood & Old Age[;] & the all tremendous
unfathomable Non Ens
Of Death was seen in regenerations terrific or complacent varying
According to the subject of discourse & every Word & Every
Character
Was Human according to the Expansion or Contraction, the
Translucence or
Opakeness of Nervous fibres such was the variation of Time &
Space
Which vary according as the Organs of Perception vary & they
walked
To & fro in Eternity as One Man reflecting each in each & clearly
seen
And seeing: according to fitness & order. And I heard Jehovah
speak
Terrific from his Holy Place & saw the Words of the Mutual
Covenant Divine"
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
"The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms, this knowledge, this feeling, is at the centre of true religiousness."
Albert Einstein
Friday, December 11, 2009
NATIVITY II
Returning to "The Morning of Christ's Nativity" by John Milton, for which Blake made two sets of five watercolor illustrations, there is a lot more to observe. Blake's pictures like Milton's poetry did not focus only on the supplanting of Apollo and heathen gods. The first and last pictures, like the beginning and ending of Milton's poetry present a more conventional portrait of the birth of the child based on accounts in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew.
Here is Blake's first illustration for On the Morning of Christ's Nativity.
Blake of course, added distinctive features to his illustrations. In her book Blake's Vision of the Poetry of Milton, Bette Charlene Werner, on page 119 and following, points out some things that speak of Blake's own philosophy. Quoting from her book:
> With the angelic figure of Peace and the recumbent form of Nature the artist suggests the union of heaven and earth in the Word made flesh.
> the Huntington version of the design emphasizes the divinity, not only of Christ, but also by implication of man.
> The Child is pictured springing forth in unfettered freedom. The figure suggests at once the "Heav'n-born-childe" of Milton's ode and the preexistent soul whose material birth Blake describes in "Infant Sorrow" (E27, SoE48):
"My mother groand! my father wept.
Into the dangerous world I lept."
The Blessed Infant, ablaze with the radiance of spiritual existence, is the light that puts the inferior flame of the sun to shame.
> According to Blake "everything that lives is holy for the source of life / Descends to be a weeping babe." (E323) That understanding may explain his portrayal of Nature here, not as one whose ugliness requires a covering, but as a figure whose naked beauty is still apparent beneath the translucent covering of snow. The veiled form of Nature in this illustration is, like the Vala of Blake's own mythology, an embodiment of the vale of tears and the veil of materiality.
> Like Milton, Blake sees in the Incarnation not only the humility of Christ, emptying himself of his Godhead, but the glorification of man. He identifies Jesus, the Divine Humanity, with Imagination and insists: "Man is All Imagination God is Man & exists in us & we in him." (E664) This understanding makes the Nativity not only the fulfillment of God's becoming man, but a promise of salvation through the spiritual union of all men in in the One Man who is Jesus, the Savior.
Milton's On the Morning of Christ's Nativity
NATIVITY II
Returning to "The Morning of Christ's Nativity" by John Milton, for which Blake made two sets of five watercolor illustrations, there is a lot more to observe. Blake's pictures like Milton's poetry did not focus only on the supplanting of Apollo and heathen gods. The first and last pictures, like the beginning and ending of Milton's poetry present a more conventional portrait of the birth of the child based on accounts in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew.
Here is Blake's first illustration for On the Morning of Christ's Nativity.
Blake of course, added distinctive features to his illustrations. In her book Blake's Vision of the Poetry of Milton, Bette Charlene Werner, on page 119 and following, points out some things that speak of Blake's own philosophy. Quoting from her book:
> With the angelic figure of Peace and the recumbent form of Nature the artist suggests the union of heaven and earth in the Word made flesh.
> the Huntington version of the design emphasizes the divinity, not only of Christ, but also by implication of man.
> The Child is pictured springing forth in unfettered freedom. The figure suggests at once the "Heav'n-born-childe" of Milton's ode and the preexistent soul whose material birth Blake describes in "Infant Sorrow" (E27, SoE48):
"My mother groand! my father wept.
Into the dangerous world I lept."
The Blessed Infant, ablaze with the radiance of spiritual existence, is the light that puts the inferior flame of the sun to shame.
> According to Blake "everything that lives is holy for the source of life / Descends to be a weeping babe." (E323) That understanding may explain his portrayal of Nature here, not as one whose ugliness requires a covering, but as a figure whose naked beauty is still apparent beneath the translucent covering of snow. The veiled form of Nature in this illustration is, like the Vala of Blake's own mythology, an embodiment of the vale of tears and the veil of materiality.
> Like Milton, Blake sees in the Incarnation not only the humility of Christ, emptying himself of his Godhead, but the glorification of man. He identifies Jesus, the Divine Humanity, with Imagination and insists: "Man is All Imagination God is Man & exists in us & we in him." (E664) This understanding makes the Nativity not only the fulfillment of God's becoming man, but a promise of salvation through the spiritual union of all men in in the One Man who is Jesus, the Savior.
Milton's On the Morning of Christ's Nativity
Sunday, December 6, 2009
JUNG & IMAGES
In spite of the difficulty of some of Blake's poetry, he was not trying to hide from us the truth that had been revealed to him, but to make it known. Like us, Blake lived in the world of generation, with all its distractions, distortions, oppressions and disappointments. But the Eternal world of the Imagination he knew to be the real world. He wanted us to know as he knew, that the real world in which nothing is worthless or can be lost, was open for us to enter. He felt with all his being that if each individual could know that Eternal Reality, it would assist in renewing the earthly world we inhabit. Not that we could create a better world, but we may create the conditions for God's transforming power to be manifest.
"For Jung, the purpose of psychoanalysis is, as Blake says, 'Conversing with Eternal Realities as they Exist in the Human Imagination' (1810, p. 613) - or, in Jungian terminology, dialoguing with archetypal realities that exist in fantasy. According to Jung, the images in a dream - or in active imagination - are exactly what they seem to be or seem to mean. He proposes a precision theory of the imagination. 'Precision means whatever is actually presented,' Hillman says. 'Simply: the actual qualities of the image' (1977, p. 69). The unconscious, Jung argues, is incredibly precise in the selection of qualitatively apt images to epitomize psychical reality. It is difficult to interpret psychical reality not because some censor distorts, or encrypts, reality in a code that we then have to decipher, but simply because the unconscious, like some poet, communicates in images with which we are only more or less familiar. We do not have to translate these images; we have to define them. We have to explicate all that a specific image implies. The imagination is, in this sense, what the philosopher of science Michael Polanyi (1966) (who also befriended me in Texas and later in England) calls a 'tacit dimension,' or what the physicist David Bohm (1981) calls an 'implicate order.' Jungian analysis employs a phenomenological (or 'essentialist') method. It inquires into the essential being or meaning of images, the fundamental phenomena of psychical reality. From a Jungian perspective, the unconscious does not so much conceal as it reveals. What an image is or means is not hidden from us, as if there were some deceptive intent; it is simply unknown to us, because we have not mastered the poetic, or imagistic, language that the unconscious employs."
Engaging in Activities of the Imagination
Vision of the Last Judgment, Page 90, (E562)The following passage is from an article by Michael Vannoy Adams which is the first chapter in Joseph Reppen (ed.), Why I Became a Psychotherapist (Northvale, NJ, and London: Jason Aronson, 1998), pp. 1-14.
"Here they are no longer talking of what is Good &
Evil or of what is Right or Wrong & puzzling themselves in Satans
[Maze] Labyrinth But are Conversing with Eternal
Realities as they Exist in the Human Imagination We are in a
World of Generation & death & this world we must cast off if we
would be Painters [P 91] Such as Rafa[e]l Mich Angelo & the
Ancient Sculptors. if we do not cast off this world we shall be
only Venetian Painters who will be cast off & Lost from Art"
"For Jung, the purpose of psychoanalysis is, as Blake says, 'Conversing with Eternal Realities as they Exist in the Human Imagination' (1810, p. 613) - or, in Jungian terminology, dialoguing with archetypal realities that exist in fantasy. According to Jung, the images in a dream - or in active imagination - are exactly what they seem to be or seem to mean. He proposes a precision theory of the imagination. 'Precision means whatever is actually presented,' Hillman says. 'Simply: the actual qualities of the image' (1977, p. 69). The unconscious, Jung argues, is incredibly precise in the selection of qualitatively apt images to epitomize psychical reality. It is difficult to interpret psychical reality not because some censor distorts, or encrypts, reality in a code that we then have to decipher, but simply because the unconscious, like some poet, communicates in images with which we are only more or less familiar. We do not have to translate these images; we have to define them. We have to explicate all that a specific image implies. The imagination is, in this sense, what the philosopher of science Michael Polanyi (1966) (who also befriended me in Texas and later in England) calls a 'tacit dimension,' or what the physicist David Bohm (1981) calls an 'implicate order.' Jungian analysis employs a phenomenological (or 'essentialist') method. It inquires into the essential being or meaning of images, the fundamental phenomena of psychical reality. From a Jungian perspective, the unconscious does not so much conceal as it reveals. What an image is or means is not hidden from us, as if there were some deceptive intent; it is simply unknown to us, because we have not mastered the poetic, or imagistic, language that the unconscious employs."
Engaging in Activities of the Imagination
JUNG & IMAGES
In spite of the difficulty of some of Blake's poetry, he was not trying hide from us the truth that had been revealed to him, but to make it known. Like us, Blake lived in the world of generation, with all its distractions, distortions, oppressions and disappointments. But the Eternal world of the Imagination he knew to be the real world. He wanted us to know as he knew, that the real world in which nothing is worthless or can be lost, was open for us to enter. He felt with all his being that if each individual could know that Eternal Reality, it would assist in renewing the earthly world we inhabit. Not that we could create a better world, but we may create the conditions for God's transforming power to be manifest.
"For Jung, the purpose of psychoanalysis is, as Blake says, 'Conversing with Eternal Realities as they Exist in the Human Imagination' (1810, p. 613) - or, in Jungian terminology, dialoguing with archetypal realities that exist in fantasy. According to Jung, the images in a dream - or in active imagination - are exactly what they seem to be or seem to mean. He proposes a precision theory of the imagination. 'Precision means whatever is actually presented,' Hillman says. 'Simply: the actual qualities of the image' (1977, p. 69). The unconscious, Jung argues, is incredibly precise in the selection of qualitatively apt images to epitomize psychical reality. It is difficult to interpret psychical reality not because some censor distorts, or encrypts, reality in a code that we then have to decipher, but simply because the unconscious, like some poet, communicates in images with which we are only more or less familiar. We do not have to translate these images; we have to define them. We have to explicate all that a specific image implies. The imagination is, in this sense, what the philosopher of science Michael Polanyi (1966) (who also befriended me in Texas and later in England) calls a 'tacit dimension,' or what the physicist David Bohm (1981) calls an 'implicate order.' Jungian analysis employs a phenomenological (or 'essentialist') method. It inquires into the essential being or meaning of images, the fundamental phenomena of psychical reality. From a Jungian perspective, the unconscious does not so much conceal as it reveals. What an image is or means is not hidden from us, as if there were some deceptive intent; it is simply unknown to us, because we have not mastered the poetic, or imagistic, language that the unconscious employs."
Engaging in Activities of the Imagination
Vision of the Last Judgment, Page 90, (E562)The following passage is from an article by Michael Vannoy Adams which is the first chapter in Joseph Reppen (ed.), Why I Became a Psychotherapist (Northvale, NJ, and London: Jason Aronson, 1998), pp. 1-14.
"Here they are no longer talking of what is Good &
Evil or of what is Right or Wrong & puzzling themselves in Satans
[Maze] Labyrinth But are Conversing with Eternal
Realities as they Exist in the Human Imagination We are in a
World of Generation & death & this world we must cast off if we
would be Painters [P 91] Such as Rafa[e]l Mich Angelo & the
Ancient Sculptors. if we do not cast off this world we shall be
only Venetian Painters who will be cast off & Lost from Art"
"For Jung, the purpose of psychoanalysis is, as Blake says, 'Conversing with Eternal Realities as they Exist in the Human Imagination' (1810, p. 613) - or, in Jungian terminology, dialoguing with archetypal realities that exist in fantasy. According to Jung, the images in a dream - or in active imagination - are exactly what they seem to be or seem to mean. He proposes a precision theory of the imagination. 'Precision means whatever is actually presented,' Hillman says. 'Simply: the actual qualities of the image' (1977, p. 69). The unconscious, Jung argues, is incredibly precise in the selection of qualitatively apt images to epitomize psychical reality. It is difficult to interpret psychical reality not because some censor distorts, or encrypts, reality in a code that we then have to decipher, but simply because the unconscious, like some poet, communicates in images with which we are only more or less familiar. We do not have to translate these images; we have to define them. We have to explicate all that a specific image implies. The imagination is, in this sense, what the philosopher of science Michael Polanyi (1966) (who also befriended me in Texas and later in England) calls a 'tacit dimension,' or what the physicist David Bohm (1981) calls an 'implicate order.' Jungian analysis employs a phenomenological (or 'essentialist') method. It inquires into the essential being or meaning of images, the fundamental phenomena of psychical reality. From a Jungian perspective, the unconscious does not so much conceal as it reveals. What an image is or means is not hidden from us, as if there were some deceptive intent; it is simply unknown to us, because we have not mastered the poetic, or imagistic, language that the unconscious employs."
Engaging in Activities of the Imagination
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
BLAKE, JUNG & ART
The self-image of Blake was that of an artist, his life was organized around creating art. But he came to see art as more than the objects created by the artist.
In her web page article, On William Blake, Psychologist Fleur Nelson writes:
"In The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature (1966), Jung describes the creative process as the unconscious activation of an archetypal image and the shaping of this image into a new symbol. He believed that these enacted new symbols have the potential to increase individual and collective consciousness and transform society by integrating them into the language of the current society."
Quoting Carl Jung she says:
"Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is “man” in a higher sense – he is “collective man,” a vehicle and molder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind
(par. 157, p. 101)."
In John Middleton Murry's book William Blake, on page 198-199, we read:
" Art, for Blake, is the Imaginative Life in its totality, nothing less." and,
"Art , in fact, is a new order of life: the order of life which (Blake believed) Jesus meant by Eternal Life. It is to live in accord with the Divine Vision, as a member of the One Man, through continual Self- annihilation... When every activity of life attains to the condition of the pure and selfless artistic activity, then we are totally regenerated, true members of the Eternal body of Man which is the Imagination." [and Christ]
"Vala produced the Bodies, Jerusalem gave the Souls"
William Blake writes in LAOCOON (E273):
" The whole Business of Man is the Arts & things Common
Christianity is Art & not Money.
Jesus and his Apostles & Disciples were all Artists."
In her web page article, On William Blake, Psychologist Fleur Nelson writes:
"In The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature (1966), Jung describes the creative process as the unconscious activation of an archetypal image and the shaping of this image into a new symbol. He believed that these enacted new symbols have the potential to increase individual and collective consciousness and transform society by integrating them into the language of the current society."
Quoting Carl Jung she says:
"Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is “man” in a higher sense – he is “collective man,” a vehicle and molder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind
(par. 157, p. 101)."
In John Middleton Murry's book William Blake, on page 198-199, we read:
" Art, for Blake, is the Imaginative Life in its totality, nothing less." and,
"Art , in fact, is a new order of life: the order of life which (Blake believed) Jesus meant by Eternal Life. It is to live in accord with the Divine Vision, as a member of the One Man, through continual Self- annihilation... When every activity of life attains to the condition of the pure and selfless artistic activity, then we are totally regenerated, true members of the Eternal body of Man which is the Imagination." [and Christ]
"Vala produced the Bodies, Jerusalem gave the Souls"
William Blake writes in LAOCOON (E273):
" The whole Business of Man is the Arts & things Common
Christianity is Art & not Money.
Jesus and his Apostles & Disciples were all Artists."
BLAKE, JUNG & ART
The self-image of Blake was that of an artist, his life was organized around creating art. But he came to see art as more than the objects created by the artist.
In her web page article, On William Blake, Psychologist Fleur Nelson writes:
"In The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature (1966), Jung describes the creative process as the unconscious activation of an archetypal image and the shaping of this image into a new symbol. He believed that these enacted new symbols have the potential to increase individual and collective consciousness and transform society by integrating them into the language of the current society."
Quoting Carl Jung she says:
"Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is “man” in a higher sense – he is “collective man,” a vehicle and molder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind
(par. 157, p. 101)."
In John Middleton Murry's book William Blake, on page 198-199, we read:
" Art, for Blake, is the Imaginative Life in its totality, nothing less." and,
"Art , in fact, is a new order of life: the order of life which (Blake believed) Jesus meant by Eternal Life. It is to live in accord with the Divine Vision, as a member of the One Man, through continual Self- annihilation... When every activity of life attains to the condition of the pure and selfless artistic activity, then we are totally regenerated, true members of the Eternal body of Man which is the Imagination." [and Christ]
"Vala produced the Bodies, Jerusalem gave the Souls"
William Blake writes in LAOCOON (E273):
" The whole Business of Man is the Arts & things Common
Christianity is Art & not Money.
Jesus and his Apostles & Disciples were all Artists."
In her web page article, On William Blake, Psychologist Fleur Nelson writes:
"In The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature (1966), Jung describes the creative process as the unconscious activation of an archetypal image and the shaping of this image into a new symbol. He believed that these enacted new symbols have the potential to increase individual and collective consciousness and transform society by integrating them into the language of the current society."
Quoting Carl Jung she says:
"Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is “man” in a higher sense – he is “collective man,” a vehicle and molder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind
(par. 157, p. 101)."
In John Middleton Murry's book William Blake, on page 198-199, we read:
" Art, for Blake, is the Imaginative Life in its totality, nothing less." and,
"Art , in fact, is a new order of life: the order of life which (Blake believed) Jesus meant by Eternal Life. It is to live in accord with the Divine Vision, as a member of the One Man, through continual Self- annihilation... When every activity of life attains to the condition of the pure and selfless artistic activity, then we are totally regenerated, true members of the Eternal body of Man which is the Imagination." [and Christ]
"Vala produced the Bodies, Jerusalem gave the Souls"
William Blake writes in LAOCOON (E273):
" The whole Business of Man is the Arts & things Common
Christianity is Art & not Money.
Jesus and his Apostles & Disciples were all Artists."
Saturday, November 21, 2009
CONSCIOUSNESS
The body of Blake's work can be thought of as his spiritual autobiography. He is speaking of nothing else than the spiritual path he traveled as he proceeded from Innocence to Experience and back to Innocence (with consciousness.) The poetry is the garment, his spiritual evolution is the body it clothes.
John Middleton Murry, William Blake, Page 378, Note for Page 204 says this:
"... in Night VII [Four Zoas] the change in Blake's attitude is fully conscious to himself: at the same moment he knows what he has been trying to do, and he knows that it has been done. Blake himself was perfectly clear about the process involved. In Milton (p. 19) he makes the distinction between the 'nether regions of the Imagination', where these critical changes come to pass in the unconsciousness, and the pure Imagination, where there is conscious knowledge of the change."
"For man cannot know
What passes in his members till periods of Space & Time
Reveal the secrets of Eternity." Milton, Plate 21, (E114)
Murry is attempting to explain to us what is happening in Blake's psyche as well as what is happening in the poetry that Blake wrote. Murry is following the struggle within Blake that he embodied in Urizen, Luvah, Los and all the others. The writing of the poetry was part and parcel of Blake's coming to terms with his own rational, emotional, and creative selves.
As Blake resolved the internal tensions through exploring their dynamics, Murry saw a resolution first appearing in Blake's unconscious, and then the writing of it in his myth was part of the process of making it conscious. The myth developed as Blake transcended the limitations of his earlier understanding.
Murry states on page 205:
"We must remember that the change has come to pass in Orc, as it has come to pass in Urizen, as yet only in Blake's creative imagination. The poet's work is done, but it remains to be expressed. Urizen and Luvah-Orc, that is to say, are unconscious of the destiny which awaits them."
And might Blake's readers also be unconscious of their destiny when the poet's work is expressed in them.
Embarking on the Journey
John Middleton Murry, William Blake, Page 378, Note for Page 204 says this:
"... in Night VII [Four Zoas] the change in Blake's attitude is fully conscious to himself: at the same moment he knows what he has been trying to do, and he knows that it has been done. Blake himself was perfectly clear about the process involved. In Milton (p. 19) he makes the distinction between the 'nether regions of the Imagination', where these critical changes come to pass in the unconsciousness, and the pure Imagination, where there is conscious knowledge of the change."
"For man cannot know
What passes in his members till periods of Space & Time
Reveal the secrets of Eternity." Milton, Plate 21, (E114)
Murry is attempting to explain to us what is happening in Blake's psyche as well as what is happening in the poetry that Blake wrote. Murry is following the struggle within Blake that he embodied in Urizen, Luvah, Los and all the others. The writing of the poetry was part and parcel of Blake's coming to terms with his own rational, emotional, and creative selves.
As Blake resolved the internal tensions through exploring their dynamics, Murry saw a resolution first appearing in Blake's unconscious, and then the writing of it in his myth was part of the process of making it conscious. The myth developed as Blake transcended the limitations of his earlier understanding.
Murry states on page 205:
"We must remember that the change has come to pass in Orc, as it has come to pass in Urizen, as yet only in Blake's creative imagination. The poet's work is done, but it remains to be expressed. Urizen and Luvah-Orc, that is to say, are unconscious of the destiny which awaits them."
And might Blake's readers also be unconscious of their destiny when the poet's work is expressed in them.
Embarking on the Journey
CONSCIOUSNESS
The body of Blake's work can be thought of as his spiritual autobiography. He is speaking of nothing else than the spiritual path he traveled as he proceeded from Innocence to Experience and back to Innocence (with consciousness.) The poetry is the garment, his spiritual evolution is the body it clothes.
John Middleton Murry, William Blake, Page 378, Note for Page 204 says this:
"... in Night VII [Four Zoas] the change in Blake's attitude is fully conscious to himself: at the same moment he knows what he has been trying to do, and he knows that it has been done. Blake himself was perfectly clear about the process involved. In Milton (p. 19) he makes the distinction between the 'nether regions of the Imagination', where these critical changes come to pass in the unconsciousness, and the pure Imagination, where there is conscious knowledge of the change."
"For man cannot know
What passes in his members till periods of Space & Time
Reveal the secrets of Eternity." Milton, Plate 21, (E114)
Murry is attempting to explain to us what is happening in Blake's psyche as well as what is happening in the poetry that Blake wrote. Murry is following the struggle within Blake that he embodied in Urizen, Luvah, Los and all the others. The writing of the poetry was part and parcel of Blake's coming to terms with his own rational, emotional, and creative selves.
As Blake resolved the internal tensions through exploring their dynamics, Murry saw a resolution first appearing in Blake's unconscious, and then the writing of it in his myth was part of the process of making it conscious. The myth developed as Blake transcended the limitations of his earlier understanding.
Murry states on page 205:
"We must remember that the change has come to pass in Orc, as it has come to pass in Urizen, as yet only in Blake's creative imagination. The poet's work is done, but it remains to be expressed. Urizen and Luvah-Orc, that is to say, are unconscious of the destiny which awaits them."
And might Blake's readers also be unconscious of their destiny when the poet's work is expressed in them.
Embarking on the Journey
John Middleton Murry, William Blake, Page 378, Note for Page 204 says this:
"... in Night VII [Four Zoas] the change in Blake's attitude is fully conscious to himself: at the same moment he knows what he has been trying to do, and he knows that it has been done. Blake himself was perfectly clear about the process involved. In Milton (p. 19) he makes the distinction between the 'nether regions of the Imagination', where these critical changes come to pass in the unconsciousness, and the pure Imagination, where there is conscious knowledge of the change."
"For man cannot know
What passes in his members till periods of Space & Time
Reveal the secrets of Eternity." Milton, Plate 21, (E114)
Murry is attempting to explain to us what is happening in Blake's psyche as well as what is happening in the poetry that Blake wrote. Murry is following the struggle within Blake that he embodied in Urizen, Luvah, Los and all the others. The writing of the poetry was part and parcel of Blake's coming to terms with his own rational, emotional, and creative selves.
As Blake resolved the internal tensions through exploring their dynamics, Murry saw a resolution first appearing in Blake's unconscious, and then the writing of it in his myth was part of the process of making it conscious. The myth developed as Blake transcended the limitations of his earlier understanding.
Murry states on page 205:
"We must remember that the change has come to pass in Orc, as it has come to pass in Urizen, as yet only in Blake's creative imagination. The poet's work is done, but it remains to be expressed. Urizen and Luvah-Orc, that is to say, are unconscious of the destiny which awaits them."
And might Blake's readers also be unconscious of their destiny when the poet's work is expressed in them.
Embarking on the Journey
Thursday, October 22, 2009
URIZEN & PSYCHE
Blake often tells the same story from the viewpoint of various characters. In the Book of Urizen, we see the Fall from Urizen's perspective. The breaking apart of the unity of Eternity results in Urizen finding himself in a void, formless yet dividing. There is, as yet, no outer reality, but the inner activity of Urizen begins to construct a mental world of uniformity, stability, laws, secrets and sins.
Is this a tale of the formation of the psyche from the point of view of the Superego? Comparing itself to the Id, the Superego would see itself as reason, self-control, necessary restraint, the means of functioning in the world. But the consequences of emerging from the undifferentiated whole, would not be apparent to the emerging Superego.
Urizen, the setter of limits, is without limits himself. So Los the vehicular form of the Zoa Urthona, is assigned by the Eternals 'to confine the obscure separation alone.' (BU5:40;E73) Los, 'Cursing his lot,' undertakes the task of creating a world and a form in which Urizen can function.
In Blake's scheme error is a state which can be destroyed once it is recognized and limited. Urizen's system is allowed to develop until it can be recognized as error.
Book of Urizen, Plate 16 (BU15.5; E78 )
"The Abyss of Los stretch'd immense:
And now seen, now obscur'd, to the eyes
Of Eternals, the visions remote
Of the dark seperation appear'd.
As glasses discover Worlds
In the endless Abyss of space,
So the expanding eyes of Immortals
Beheld the dark visions of Los,
And the globe of life blood trembling"
The process of differentiation continued with the division of Enitharmon (space), Orc (energy or change), Thiriel (air), Utha (water), Grodna (earth) and Fuzon (fire).
Urizen is not pleased with the emerging world: 'Urizen sicken'd to see His eternal creations appear.' Apparently it doesn't measure up to the world he left in Eternity.
He realizes: 'That no flesh nor spirit could keep His Iron laws one moment.'
Urizen wanders about the world spinning the web of religion, carving the laws of God and unable any longer to see into the closed tents of the Eternals. Urizen, the Superego, has created a dilemma; he can say 'Thou shalt not,' but he can't say 'Thou shalt.' (“Without a vision the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18.) Urizen is at an impasse from which he cannot extricate himself. The divided self, without the Spirit or Imagination lacks the ability to live the life of joy, peace, forgiveness and brotherhood.
The rest of Blake's myth deals with healing the division and restoring the psyche to Eternity (and of course, telling of the tale from other points of view.)
Urizen Ensnared
.
Is this a tale of the formation of the psyche from the point of view of the Superego? Comparing itself to the Id, the Superego would see itself as reason, self-control, necessary restraint, the means of functioning in the world. But the consequences of emerging from the undifferentiated whole, would not be apparent to the emerging Superego.
Urizen, the setter of limits, is without limits himself. So Los the vehicular form of the Zoa Urthona, is assigned by the Eternals 'to confine the obscure separation alone.' (BU5:40;E73) Los, 'Cursing his lot,' undertakes the task of creating a world and a form in which Urizen can function.
In Blake's scheme error is a state which can be destroyed once it is recognized and limited. Urizen's system is allowed to develop until it can be recognized as error.
Book of Urizen, Plate 16 (BU15.5; E78 )
"The Abyss of Los stretch'd immense:
And now seen, now obscur'd, to the eyes
Of Eternals, the visions remote
Of the dark seperation appear'd.
As glasses discover Worlds
In the endless Abyss of space,
So the expanding eyes of Immortals
Beheld the dark visions of Los,
And the globe of life blood trembling"
The process of differentiation continued with the division of Enitharmon (space), Orc (energy or change), Thiriel (air), Utha (water), Grodna (earth) and Fuzon (fire).
Urizen is not pleased with the emerging world: 'Urizen sicken'd to see His eternal creations appear.' Apparently it doesn't measure up to the world he left in Eternity.
He realizes: 'That no flesh nor spirit could keep His Iron laws one moment.'
Urizen wanders about the world spinning the web of religion, carving the laws of God and unable any longer to see into the closed tents of the Eternals. Urizen, the Superego, has created a dilemma; he can say 'Thou shalt not,' but he can't say 'Thou shalt.' (“Without a vision the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18.) Urizen is at an impasse from which he cannot extricate himself. The divided self, without the Spirit or Imagination lacks the ability to live the life of joy, peace, forgiveness and brotherhood.
The rest of Blake's myth deals with healing the division and restoring the psyche to Eternity (and of course, telling of the tale from other points of view.)
Urizen Ensnared
.
URIZEN & PSYCHE
Blake often tells the same story from the viewpoint of various characters. In the Book of Urizen, we see the Fall from Urizen's perspective. The breaking apart of the unity of Eternity results in Urizen finding himself in a void, formless yet dividing. There is, as yet, no outer reality, but the inner activity of Urizen begins to construct a mental world of uniformity, stability, laws, secrets and sins.
Is this a tale of the formation of the psyche from the point of view of the Superego? Comparing itself to the Id, the Superego would see itself as reason, self-control, necessary restraint, the means of functioning in the world. But the consequences of emerging from the undifferentiated whole, would not be apparent to the emerging Superego.
Urizen, the setter of limits, is without limits himself. So Los the vehicular form of the Zoa Urthona, is assigned by the Eternals 'to confine the obscure separation alone.' (BU5:40;E73) Los, 'Cursing his lot,' undertakes the task of creating a world and a form in which Urizen can function.
In Blake's scheme error is a state which can be destroyed once it is recognized and limited. Urizen's system is allowed to develop until it can be recognized as error.
Book of Urizen, Plate 16 (BU15.5; E78 )
"The Abyss of Los stretch'd immense:
And now seen, now obscur'd, to the eyes
Of Eternals, the visions remote
Of the dark seperation appear'd.
As glasses discover Worlds
In the endless Abyss of space,
So the expanding eyes of Immortals
Beheld the dark visions of Los,
And the globe of life blood trembling"
The process of differentiation continued with the division of Enitharmon (space), Orc (energy or change), Thiriel (air), Utha (water), Grodna (earth) and Fuzon (fire).
Urizen is not pleased with the emerging world: 'Urizen sicken'd to see His eternal creations appear.' Apparently it doesn't measure up to the world he left in Eternity.
He realizes: 'That no flesh nor spirit could keep His Iron laws one moment.'
Urizen wanders about the world spinning the web of religion, carving the laws of God and unable any longer to see into the closed tents of the Eternals. Urizen, the Superego, has created a dilemma; he can say 'Thou shalt not,' but he can't say 'Thou shalt.' (“Without a vision the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18.) Urizen is at an impasse from which he cannot extricate himself. The divided self, without the Spirit or Imagination lacks the ability to live the life of joy, peace, forgiveness and brotherhood.
The rest of Blake's myth deals with healing the division and restoring the psyche to Eternity (and of course, telling of the tale from other points of view.)
Urizen Ensnared
.
Is this a tale of the formation of the psyche from the point of view of the Superego? Comparing itself to the Id, the Superego would see itself as reason, self-control, necessary restraint, the means of functioning in the world. But the consequences of emerging from the undifferentiated whole, would not be apparent to the emerging Superego.
Urizen, the setter of limits, is without limits himself. So Los the vehicular form of the Zoa Urthona, is assigned by the Eternals 'to confine the obscure separation alone.' (BU5:40;E73) Los, 'Cursing his lot,' undertakes the task of creating a world and a form in which Urizen can function.
In Blake's scheme error is a state which can be destroyed once it is recognized and limited. Urizen's system is allowed to develop until it can be recognized as error.
Book of Urizen, Plate 16 (BU15.5; E78 )
"The Abyss of Los stretch'd immense:
And now seen, now obscur'd, to the eyes
Of Eternals, the visions remote
Of the dark seperation appear'd.
As glasses discover Worlds
In the endless Abyss of space,
So the expanding eyes of Immortals
Beheld the dark visions of Los,
And the globe of life blood trembling"
The process of differentiation continued with the division of Enitharmon (space), Orc (energy or change), Thiriel (air), Utha (water), Grodna (earth) and Fuzon (fire).
Urizen is not pleased with the emerging world: 'Urizen sicken'd to see His eternal creations appear.' Apparently it doesn't measure up to the world he left in Eternity.
He realizes: 'That no flesh nor spirit could keep His Iron laws one moment.'
Urizen wanders about the world spinning the web of religion, carving the laws of God and unable any longer to see into the closed tents of the Eternals. Urizen, the Superego, has created a dilemma; he can say 'Thou shalt not,' but he can't say 'Thou shalt.' (“Without a vision the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18.) Urizen is at an impasse from which he cannot extricate himself. The divided self, without the Spirit or Imagination lacks the ability to live the life of joy, peace, forgiveness and brotherhood.
The rest of Blake's myth deals with healing the division and restoring the psyche to Eternity (and of course, telling of the tale from other points of view.)
Urizen Ensnared
.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
POETIC GENIUS
BLAKE'S SUBLIME ALLEGORY, Edited by Stuart Curran
and Joseph Anthony Wittreich, Jr.
This book is a useful addition to the Blake shelf in our
library. It is easier to understand than some and more
thorough than others.
In addition to the helpful essay 'On Reading the Four Zoas'
by Mary Lynn Johnson and Brian Wilkie, are several others
including 'The Aim of Blake's Prophecies' by Jerome
McGann, which I particularly like.
From page 16, I quote:
"...The demand is that we set the poem's terms into
successively different types of relations to each other.
Blake's art is a sort of Glass Bead Game. (Hermann
Hesse, The Glass Bead Game) To "make sense" of his
works we establish in and for them different forms of
order, based on shifting sets of dissociations and
associations, contrasts and analogies. To cease the
act of creating these relations, or ironically, unbuilding
them again, is to lapse into single vision."
page 17 "Every line ought to be an opportunity for
outwitting Satan's watch fiends, while every poem as a
whole is designed as a spiritual exercise for the
encouragement of universal prophecy."
page 20 "Golgonooza is the house whose windows of the
morning open out to the worlds of eternity, where Jesus
dwells. We were never meant to live in, or with it but
through it."
page 21 "...artists must approach the world not with
creations which will trap men but with visions that will
encourage imaginative activity."
Trapped in the Cave of the Mind
The point to me is that Blake did not write poetry whose
meaning is discernible in static images, methods, or rules.
He wrote to encourage the kind of discernment or
perception which characterizes intuitive, imaginative,
immediate response to the image which presents itself.
The way he wrote, what he wrote, and why he wrote are
all one piece: imagination permeates all. He didn't want us
to exit by the same door we entered, so he closed that
one door and left all the others open.
and Joseph Anthony Wittreich, Jr.
This book is a useful addition to the Blake shelf in our
library. It is easier to understand than some and more
thorough than others.
In addition to the helpful essay 'On Reading the Four Zoas'
by Mary Lynn Johnson and Brian Wilkie, are several others
including 'The Aim of Blake's Prophecies' by Jerome
McGann, which I particularly like.
From page 16, I quote:
"...The demand is that we set the poem's terms into
successively different types of relations to each other.
Blake's art is a sort of Glass Bead Game. (Hermann
Hesse, The Glass Bead Game) To "make sense" of his
works we establish in and for them different forms of
order, based on shifting sets of dissociations and
associations, contrasts and analogies. To cease the
act of creating these relations, or ironically, unbuilding
them again, is to lapse into single vision."
page 17 "Every line ought to be an opportunity for
outwitting Satan's watch fiends, while every poem as a
whole is designed as a spiritual exercise for the
encouragement of universal prophecy."
page 20 "Golgonooza is the house whose windows of the
morning open out to the worlds of eternity, where Jesus
dwells. We were never meant to live in, or with it but
through it."
page 21 "...artists must approach the world not with
creations which will trap men but with visions that will
encourage imaginative activity."
Trapped in the Cave of the Mind
The point to me is that Blake did not write poetry whose
meaning is discernible in static images, methods, or rules.
He wrote to encourage the kind of discernment or
perception which characterizes intuitive, imaginative,
immediate response to the image which presents itself.
The way he wrote, what he wrote, and why he wrote are
all one piece: imagination permeates all. He didn't want us
to exit by the same door we entered, so he closed that
one door and left all the others open.
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