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 Vision. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vision. Show all posts
Thursday, January 16, 2025
Friday, March 5, 2010
GNOSIS II
In William Blake's Recreation of Gnostic Myth: Resolving the Apparent Incongruities, Sorensen devotes a chapter to gnostic redemption - fitting Blake's spiritual biography in the pattern of Redemption as a gnostic process which involves 'letting go of worldly conceit' and 'the exalting reunion with the divine.'
Quotes from Sorensen:
"There is little doubt that Blake had intuited as early as 1788 the essential nature of gnostic redemption, in which mankind, through gnosis becomes one with God. There Is No Natural Religion [b] declares," He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God....Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may become as he is."...Blake for many years diligently searched outside himself for this revelation. His wide, if eclectic, reading, his attraction to Swedenborg's works, and his hopes for political revolution all point toward the hope of pure revelation even in the chaos of a fallen material world. Blake's disappointment with the systems of the world around him is abundantly clear in the 1790's, but he never stopped hoping for some solution.
"Blake's letter of 23 October 1804 to William Haley specifies exactly what had troubled Blake and what caused Blake's own gnostic 'redemption.' There are two important aspects to this redemption; first, Blake lets go of his former enmity with Haley, under whose patronage Blake had felt so oppressed toward the end of his stay at Felpham. Blake expresses 'pleasure' and 'longing' in the letter to associate with Haley, who was not even remotely on the same spiritual plane as Blake (which fact caused enmity in the first instance). This self-annihilation on Blake's part constitutes the gnostic's final 'letting go' of worldly conceit.
"The second part of the redemption is the exalting reunification with the divine. After visiting an art gallery, Blake becomes 'enlightened', and he refers to the experience as his 'restoration to the light of Art'.
Blake's experience is reported in this Letter To William Hayley, 23 October 1804, (E 756):
..."Suddenly, on the day after visiting the Truchsessian Gallery of pictures, I was again enlightened with the light I enjoyed in my youth, and which has for exactly twenty years been closed from me as by a door and by window-shutters. Consequently I can, with confidence, promise you ocular demonstration of my altered state on the plates I am now engraving after Romney, whose spiritual aid has not a little conduced to my restoration to the light of Art. O the distress I have undergone, and my poor wife with me. Incessantly labouring and incessantly spoiling what I had done well. Every one of my friends was astonished at my faults, and could not assign a reason; they knew my industry and abstinence from every pleasure for the sake of study, and yet--and yet--and yet there wanted the proofs of industry in my works. I thank God with entire confidence that it shall be so no longer--he is become my servant who domineered over me, he is even as a brother who was my enemy. Dear Sir, excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand, even as I used to be in my youth, and as I have not been for twenty dark, but very profitable years. I thank God that I courageously pursued my course through darkness."
Returning to Sorenson:
"This instance of highly personalized , individual revelation is a hallmark of Christian gnosticism, in which each gnostic adept must personally encounter divine vision; the contemplation or rational study of canonized scripture and submission to ecclesiastical authority are insufficient, according to gnostic scribes, to reveal the true divine cosmology.
...
"This assurance, that poetic genius indeed creates reality, and that gnosis is the recognition of a reality more real than material existence, came to Blake full by 1804, and he could confidently reveal in his poetry and later in his painting the gnostic redemption of mankind, knowing that his word as poet was the harbinger of that redemption. The artist's poetic works and paintings became his spiritual offspring, and Blake (a man) became a member of the divine family, even as his earliest tractates declared."
The book attempts to open one's eyes to the many ways in which Blake exhibits gnostic thought forms in his life and work. It is a short book in scholarly form. It is an individual way of studying Blake, just as the the methods used by Frey, Erdman, Raine, Damon and each author are their individual ways. Although Sorensen has taken an unusual approach for scholarship by not looking for direct influence but for synchronistic, acausal congruence, it is the type of thinking Blake himself did.
An Angel Striding among the Stars
Quotes from Sorensen:
"There is little doubt that Blake had intuited as early as 1788 the essential nature of gnostic redemption, in which mankind, through gnosis becomes one with God. There Is No Natural Religion [b] declares," He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God....Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may become as he is."...Blake for many years diligently searched outside himself for this revelation. His wide, if eclectic, reading, his attraction to Swedenborg's works, and his hopes for political revolution all point toward the hope of pure revelation even in the chaos of a fallen material world. Blake's disappointment with the systems of the world around him is abundantly clear in the 1790's, but he never stopped hoping for some solution.
"Blake's letter of 23 October 1804 to William Haley specifies exactly what had troubled Blake and what caused Blake's own gnostic 'redemption.' There are two important aspects to this redemption; first, Blake lets go of his former enmity with Haley, under whose patronage Blake had felt so oppressed toward the end of his stay at Felpham. Blake expresses 'pleasure' and 'longing' in the letter to associate with Haley, who was not even remotely on the same spiritual plane as Blake (which fact caused enmity in the first instance). This self-annihilation on Blake's part constitutes the gnostic's final 'letting go' of worldly conceit.
"The second part of the redemption is the exalting reunification with the divine. After visiting an art gallery, Blake becomes 'enlightened', and he refers to the experience as his 'restoration to the light of Art'.
Blake's experience is reported in this Letter To William Hayley, 23 October 1804, (E 756):
..."Suddenly, on the day after visiting the Truchsessian Gallery of pictures, I was again enlightened with the light I enjoyed in my youth, and which has for exactly twenty years been closed from me as by a door and by window-shutters. Consequently I can, with confidence, promise you ocular demonstration of my altered state on the plates I am now engraving after Romney, whose spiritual aid has not a little conduced to my restoration to the light of Art. O the distress I have undergone, and my poor wife with me. Incessantly labouring and incessantly spoiling what I had done well. Every one of my friends was astonished at my faults, and could not assign a reason; they knew my industry and abstinence from every pleasure for the sake of study, and yet--and yet--and yet there wanted the proofs of industry in my works. I thank God with entire confidence that it shall be so no longer--he is become my servant who domineered over me, he is even as a brother who was my enemy. Dear Sir, excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand, even as I used to be in my youth, and as I have not been for twenty dark, but very profitable years. I thank God that I courageously pursued my course through darkness."
Returning to Sorenson:
"This instance of highly personalized , individual revelation is a hallmark of Christian gnosticism, in which each gnostic adept must personally encounter divine vision; the contemplation or rational study of canonized scripture and submission to ecclesiastical authority are insufficient, according to gnostic scribes, to reveal the true divine cosmology.
...
"This assurance, that poetic genius indeed creates reality, and that gnosis is the recognition of a reality more real than material existence, came to Blake full by 1804, and he could confidently reveal in his poetry and later in his painting the gnostic redemption of mankind, knowing that his word as poet was the harbinger of that redemption. The artist's poetic works and paintings became his spiritual offspring, and Blake (a man) became a member of the divine family, even as his earliest tractates declared."
The book attempts to open one's eyes to the many ways in which Blake exhibits gnostic thought forms in his life and work. It is a short book in scholarly form. It is an individual way of studying Blake, just as the the methods used by Frey, Erdman, Raine, Damon and each author are their individual ways. Although Sorensen has taken an unusual approach for scholarship by not looking for direct influence but for synchronistic, acausal congruence, it is the type of thinking Blake himself did.
An Angel Striding among the Stars
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
GNOSIS
For centuries the Gnostic movement of the early Christian era was primarily known by critical statements written by those who were trying to eradicate it. In the twentieth century the reappearance of a group of Gnostic writings, which came to be known as theNag Hammadi documents, have allowed us to learn directly what gnostics wrote and practiced.
Peter Sorensen has written a book entitled William Blake's Recreation of Gnostic Myth: Resolving the Apparent Incongruities, in which he "compare[s] Blake's work directly with the Nag Hammadi codices, discovered long after Blake's death." He believes that the new insights on Gnosticism, developed from the Nag Hammadi material can reveal insights into the patterns of gnostic thought in Blake's work.
Sorensen states: "I wish, then to use the Nag Hammadi codices as a touchstone to test the extent and specific features of Blake' gnosticism. Although I will mention again sources from Blake's own time that might have influenced him, I wish to insist that Blake was a gnostic, rather than merely a student of gnosticism." (Page 14)
In The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels says of the gnostics: "These Christians are now called gnostics, from the Greek word gnosis, usually translated as "knowledge". For those who claim to know nothing about ultimate reality are called agnostic (literally, "not knowing"), the person who claims to know such things is called gnostic ("knowing")...As the gnostics use the term, we could translate it as "insight," for gnosis involves an intuitive process of knowing oneself. And to know oneself, they claimed, is to know human nature and human destiny...Yet to know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God; this is the secret of gnosis."
The gnostic literature which would have been available for Blake to study would have been limited. Sorensen proposes that Blake would have found " 'confirmation' of his gnostic vision in the works [he has] cited, rather than to say that a genuinely gnostic vision can grow out of secondary reading alone."
I think Sorensen is projecting the idea that Blake's circumstances as well as his visions may have disposed him to think like the early Christian era gnostics. The sociological factors present for Blake which he may have shared with the gnostics would have included intellectual isolation, anxiety about possible persecution, and observing destructive conditions in his society. Psychologically, archetypes which structure thought universally and can be recognized by whoever is tuned to their presence, can link Blake with the gnostics. Additionally we can conjecture that Blake and the early gnostics with their inward looking mindsets, and focus on cosmological issues may have processed some of their insights using the same images.
As an example of the parallels which Sorensen sees between the gnostic myth and Blake's myth are Sophia and Vala, two females trapped in materiality. The difficulty both have in extracting themselves from materiality is represented in this passage from:
Four Zoas, Page 126 (E 395)
"Come forth O Vala from the grass & from the silent Dew
Rise from the dews of death for the Eternal Man is Risen
She rises among flowers & looks toward the Eastern clearness
She walks yea runs her feet are wingd on the tops of the bending grass
Her garments rejoice in the vocal wind & her hair glistens with dew
She answerd thus Whose voice is this in the voice of the nourishing air
In the spirit of the morning awaking the Soul from its grassy bed
Where dost thou dwell for it is thee I seek & but for thee
I must have slept Eternally nor have felt the dew of thy morning
Look how the opening dawn advances with vocal harmony
Look how the beams foreshew the rising of some glorious power
The sun is thine he goeth forth in his majestic brightness
O thou creating voice that callest & who shall answer thee
Where dost thou flee O fair one where dost thou seek thy happy place
To yonder brightness there I haste for sure I came from thence
Or I must have slept eternally nor have felt the dew of morning
Eternally thou must have slept nor have felt the morning dew
But for yon nourishing sun tis that by which thou art arisen
The birds adore the sun the beasts rise up & play in his beams
And every flower & every leaf rejoices in his light
Then O thou fair one sit thee down for thou art as the grass
Thou risest in the dew of morning & at night art folded up
Alas am I but as a flower then will I sit me down
Then will I weep then Ill complain & sigh for immortality
And chide my maker thee O Sun that raisedst me to fall
So saying she sat down & wept beneath the apple trees"
Sorensen concludes, "the awakening here is to knowledge"; but the transition is difficult.
Caught in Materiality , Jerusalem Plate 57
Peter Sorensen has written a book entitled William Blake's Recreation of Gnostic Myth: Resolving the Apparent Incongruities, in which he "compare[s] Blake's work directly with the Nag Hammadi codices, discovered long after Blake's death." He believes that the new insights on Gnosticism, developed from the Nag Hammadi material can reveal insights into the patterns of gnostic thought in Blake's work.
Sorensen states: "I wish, then to use the Nag Hammadi codices as a touchstone to test the extent and specific features of Blake' gnosticism. Although I will mention again sources from Blake's own time that might have influenced him, I wish to insist that Blake was a gnostic, rather than merely a student of gnosticism." (Page 14)
In The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels says of the gnostics: "These Christians are now called gnostics, from the Greek word gnosis, usually translated as "knowledge". For those who claim to know nothing about ultimate reality are called agnostic (literally, "not knowing"), the person who claims to know such things is called gnostic ("knowing")...As the gnostics use the term, we could translate it as "insight," for gnosis involves an intuitive process of knowing oneself. And to know oneself, they claimed, is to know human nature and human destiny...Yet to know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God; this is the secret of gnosis."
The gnostic literature which would have been available for Blake to study would have been limited. Sorensen proposes that Blake would have found " 'confirmation' of his gnostic vision in the works [he has] cited, rather than to say that a genuinely gnostic vision can grow out of secondary reading alone."
I think Sorensen is projecting the idea that Blake's circumstances as well as his visions may have disposed him to think like the early Christian era gnostics. The sociological factors present for Blake which he may have shared with the gnostics would have included intellectual isolation, anxiety about possible persecution, and observing destructive conditions in his society. Psychologically, archetypes which structure thought universally and can be recognized by whoever is tuned to their presence, can link Blake with the gnostics. Additionally we can conjecture that Blake and the early gnostics with their inward looking mindsets, and focus on cosmological issues may have processed some of their insights using the same images.
As an example of the parallels which Sorensen sees between the gnostic myth and Blake's myth are Sophia and Vala, two females trapped in materiality. The difficulty both have in extracting themselves from materiality is represented in this passage from:
Four Zoas, Page 126 (E 395)
"Come forth O Vala from the grass & from the silent Dew
Rise from the dews of death for the Eternal Man is Risen
She rises among flowers & looks toward the Eastern clearness
She walks yea runs her feet are wingd on the tops of the bending grass
Her garments rejoice in the vocal wind & her hair glistens with dew
She answerd thus Whose voice is this in the voice of the nourishing air
In the spirit of the morning awaking the Soul from its grassy bed
Where dost thou dwell for it is thee I seek & but for thee
I must have slept Eternally nor have felt the dew of thy morning
Look how the opening dawn advances with vocal harmony
Look how the beams foreshew the rising of some glorious power
The sun is thine he goeth forth in his majestic brightness
O thou creating voice that callest & who shall answer thee
Where dost thou flee O fair one where dost thou seek thy happy place
To yonder brightness there I haste for sure I came from thence
Or I must have slept eternally nor have felt the dew of morning
Eternally thou must have slept nor have felt the morning dew
But for yon nourishing sun tis that by which thou art arisen
The birds adore the sun the beasts rise up & play in his beams
And every flower & every leaf rejoices in his light
Then O thou fair one sit thee down for thou art as the grass
Thou risest in the dew of morning & at night art folded up
Alas am I but as a flower then will I sit me down
Then will I weep then Ill complain & sigh for immortality
And chide my maker thee O Sun that raisedst me to fall
So saying she sat down & wept beneath the apple trees"
Sorensen concludes, "the awakening here is to knowledge"; but the transition is difficult.
Caught in Materiality , Jerusalem Plate 57
Friday, February 12, 2010
Creative Event / Created Good
This is from a post in Reflections of a Happy Old Man
Monday, June 12, 2006
"He who binds to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity's sun rise."
(Blake, Erdman 470)
Only the creative event is to be worshiped.
The Bible is the created good.
All tribes are created good.
Religious organizations are created good.
Theologies, ideologies are created good.
These things are all manmade artifacts.
What is to be worshipped?
The Creative Event!!
Not the Bible: George Fox: "we have heard what Jesus and the Apostles say, but what doth thou say?"
Not a tribe: Joseph Campbell: their chief attribute is the limit of positive affect to members and of negative affect to non-members.
Not a religious organization: Gandhi: "if I ever found a truly Christian church, I'd join it."
So what should you worship: "the Vision of God that thou dost see...." (from Everlasting Gospel, Erdman 524)
Creative Event / Created Good
This is from a post in Reflections of a Happy Old Man
Monday, June 12, 2006
"He who binds to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity's sun rise."
(Blake, Erdman 470)
Only the creative event is to be worshiped.
The Bible is the created good.
All tribes are created good.
Religious organizations are created good.
Theologies, ideologies are created good.
These things are all manmade artifacts.
What is to be worshipped?
The Creative Event!!
Not the Bible: George Fox: "we have heard what Jesus and the Apostles say, but what doth thou say?"
Not a tribe: Joseph Campbell: their chief attribute is the limit of positive affect to members and of negative affect to non-members.
Not a religious organization: Gandhi: "if I ever found a truly Christian church, I'd join it."
So what should you worship: "the Vision of God that thou dost see...." (from Everlasting Gospel, Erdman 524)
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, November 27, 2009
Awakenings
In the Gospel of John, Nicodemus heard Jesus say, "you
must be born again" representing the most significant
event in a person's life-- their awakening from a purely
physical, materialistic life to a Perception of the Infinite
(MHH, Plate 13, lines 21-23, E39).
A person with inherent gifts of imagination and insight
into their psyche may be susceptible to moments of new
insight that seem like a rebirth. (Three seminary
professors told this student that 'you must be born
again, and again, and again'.)
Such a rebirth for our poet occurred in 1804, and he
immediately reported it to his (corporeal) friend and
physical benefactor, William Hayley; in Letter 51,
dated 23 October 1804 (Erdman 756) Blake wrote:
"Suddenly, on the day after visiting the Truchsessian
Gallery of pictures, I was again enlightened with the
light I enjoyed in my youth, and which has for exactly
twenty years been closed from me as by a door and by
window-shutters." (This letter is well worth reading
but I skipped the first three paragraphs.)
Although the experience had brought Blake a
significant increase in his creative powers, you may
envision even more significant ones in the years before:
Letter 16 to Butts (Oct 2, 1800), mentioned often
recently, which I called first vision of light, appeared
to me to be more critical in Blake's spiritual development.
It was the word from God that empowered him to the
magnificent statement of faith that his great poems
represented.
The letter to Hayley was of another genre; we might call
it an attempt to express his own spiritual attitude in a
way acceptable to the 'non-spirtual friend'. In
contrast Blake poured out his heart to his really
supportive friend, Butts.
All 91 of the letters, printed on 85 pages of Erdman's
Complete Poetry and Prose... reward the reader. You may
become weary from coping with the continuous barrage of
metaphors, figures, images, etc in Blake's works of art;
turn to the letters, which offer few obstacles to good
understanding.
We read and study Blake many different ways. The 91
letters might provide other 'visions of light'.
must be born again" representing the most significant
event in a person's life-- their awakening from a purely
physical, materialistic life to a P
(MHH, Plate 13, lines 21-23, E39).
A person with inherent gifts of imagination and insight
into their psyche may be susceptible to moments of new
insight that seem like a rebirth. (Three seminary
professors told this student that 'you must be born
again, and again, and again'.)
Such a rebirth for our poet occurred in 1804, and he
immediately reported it to his (corporeal) friend and
physical benefactor, William Hayley; in Letter 51,
dated 23 October 1804 (Erdman 756) Blake wrote:
"Suddenly, on the day after visiting the Truchsessian
Gallery of pictures, I was again enlightened with the
light I enjoyed in my youth, and which has for exactly
twenty years been closed from me as by a door and by
window-shutters." (This letter is well worth reading
but I skipped the first three paragraphs.)
Although the experience had brought Blake a
significant increase in his creative powers, you may
envision even more significant ones in the years before:
Letter 16 to Butts (Oct 2, 1800), mentioned often
recently, which I called first vision of light, appeared
to me to be more critical in Blake's spiritual development.
It was the word from God that empowered him to the
magnificent statement of faith that his great poems
represented.
The letter to Hayley was of another genre; we might call
it an attempt to express his own spiritual attitude in a
way acceptable to the 'non-spirtual friend'. In
contrast Blake poured out his heart to his really
supportive friend, Butts.
All 91 of the letters, printed on 85 pages of Erdman's
Complete Poetry and Prose... reward the reader. You may
become weary from coping with the continuous barrage of
metaphors, figures, images, etc in Blake's works of art;
turn to the letters, which offer few obstacles to good
understanding.
We read and study Blake many different ways. The 91
letters might provide other 'visions of light'.
Awakenings
In the Gospel of John, Nicodemus heard Jesus say, "you
must be born again" representing the most significant
event in a person's life-- their awakening from a purely
physical, materialistic life to a Perception of the Infinite
(MHH, Plate 13, lines 21-23, E39).
A person with inherent gifts of imagination and insight
into their psyche may be susceptible to moments of new
insight that seem like a rebirth. (Three seminary
professors told this student that 'you must be born
again, and again, and again'.)
Such a rebirth for our poet occurred in 1804, and he
immediately reported it to his (corporeal) friend and
physical benefactor, William Hayley; in Letter 51,
dated 23 October 1804 (Erdman 756) Blake wrote:
"Suddenly, on the day after visiting the Truchsessian
Gallery of pictures, I was again enlightened with the
light I enjoyed in my youth, and which has for exactly
twenty years been closed from me as by a door and by
window-shutters." (This letter is well worth reading
but I skipped the first three paragraphs.)
Although the experience had brought Blake a
significant increase in his creative powers, you may
envision even more significant ones in the years before:
Letter 16 to Butts (Oct 2, 1800), mentioned often
recently, which I called first vision of light, appeared
to me to be more critical in Blake's spiritual development.
It was the word from God that empowered him to the
magnificent statement of faith that his great poems
represented.
The letter to Hayley was of another genre; we might call
it an attempt to express his own spiritual attitude in a
way acceptable to the 'non-spirtual friend'. In
contrast Blake poured out his heart to his really
supportive friend, Butts.
All 91 of the letters, printed on 85 pages of Erdman's
Complete Poetry and Prose... reward the reader. You may
become weary from coping with the continuous barrage of
metaphors, figures, images, etc in Blake's works of art;
turn to the letters, which offer few obstacles to good
understanding.
We read and study Blake many different ways. The 91
letters might provide other 'visions of light'.
must be born again" representing the most significant
event in a person's life-- their awakening from a purely
physical, materialistic life to a P
(MHH, Plate 13, lines 21-23, E39).
A person with inherent gifts of imagination and insight
into their psyche may be susceptible to moments of new
insight that seem like a rebirth. (Three seminary
professors told this student that 'you must be born
again, and again, and again'.)
Such a rebirth for our poet occurred in 1804, and he
immediately reported it to his (corporeal) friend and
physical benefactor, William Hayley; in Letter 51,
dated 23 October 1804 (Erdman 756) Blake wrote:
"Suddenly, on the day after visiting the Truchsessian
Gallery of pictures, I was again enlightened with the
light I enjoyed in my youth, and which has for exactly
twenty years been closed from me as by a door and by
window-shutters." (This letter is well worth reading
but I skipped the first three paragraphs.)
Although the experience had brought Blake a
significant increase in his creative powers, you may
envision even more significant ones in the years before:
Letter 16 to Butts (Oct 2, 1800), mentioned often
recently, which I called first vision of light, appeared
to me to be more critical in Blake's spiritual development.
It was the word from God that empowered him to the
magnificent statement of faith that his great poems
represented.
The letter to Hayley was of another genre; we might call
it an attempt to express his own spiritual attitude in a
way acceptable to the 'non-spirtual friend'. In
contrast Blake poured out his heart to his really
supportive friend, Butts.
All 91 of the letters, printed on 85 pages of Erdman's
Complete Poetry and Prose... reward the reader. You may
become weary from coping with the continuous barrage of
metaphors, figures, images, etc in Blake's works of art;
turn to the letters, which offer few obstacles to good
understanding.
We read and study Blake many different ways. The 91
letters might provide other 'visions of light'.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
GOLDEN STRING
Blake opens this section of Jerusalem, "To the Christians", with a
promise. He intends to lead us through 'heavens gate' if we follow the 'golden string' which he places in our hands.
Jerusalem, Plate 77
"I give you the end of a golden string,
Only wind it into a ball:
It will lead you in at Heavens gate,
Built in Jerusalems wall."
The 'golden string' used only once in Blake's poetry, is an image which is rich in associations. It recalls the string which Ariadne gave to Theseus to lead him out of the maze of the Minotaur. It reminds us of the thread which measures the length of life and is cut by the Fates. Moirae - Wiki It leads us to think of the path we travel through life with all its twists and turns.
But Blake's image goes beyond that. It postulates that the end of the golden string is given to us and we have more to do than follow it. We actively wind it into a ball. If we don't keep the string taut and keep winding it, we may lose our way and
wander off into unknown territory. But by winding it and following, it will lead us to our to our destiny or destination.
We are headed toward Jerusalem:
Jerusalem PLATE 54
"In Great Eternity, every particular Form gives forth or Emanates
Its own peculiar Light, & the Form is the Divine Vision
And the Light is his Garment This is Jerusalem in every Man
A Tent & Tabernacle of Mutual Forgiveness Male & Female
Clothings.
And Jerusalem is called Liberty among the Children of Albion"
River of Life
This image articulates the cutting of the thread, the flow of the stream, the guidance of Jesus, the tree of life, the rising sun, and company of angels and much more.
Four Zoas, Page 33
"Thus were the stars of heaven created like a golden chain
To bind the Body of Man to heaven from failing into the Abyss
Each took his station, & his course began with sorrow & care"
promise. He intends to lead us through 'heavens gate' if we follow the 'golden string' which he places in our hands.
Jerusalem, Plate 77
"I give you the end of a golden string,
Only wind it into a ball:
It will lead you in at Heavens gate,
Built in Jerusalems wall."
The 'golden string' used only once in Blake's poetry, is an image which is rich in associations. It recalls the string which Ariadne gave to Theseus to lead him out of the maze of the Minotaur. It reminds us of the thread which measures the length of life and is cut by the Fates. Moirae - Wiki It leads us to think of the path we travel through life with all its twists and turns.
But Blake's image goes beyond that. It postulates that the end of the golden string is given to us and we have more to do than follow it. We actively wind it into a ball. If we don't keep the string taut and keep winding it, we may lose our way and
wander off into unknown territory. But by winding it and following, it will lead us to our to our destiny or destination.
We are headed toward Jerusalem:
Jerusalem PLATE 54
"In Great Eternity, every particular Form gives forth or Emanates
Its own peculiar Light, & the Form is the Divine Vision
And the Light is his Garment This is Jerusalem in every Man
A Tent & Tabernacle of Mutual Forgiveness Male & Female
Clothings.
And Jerusalem is called Liberty among the Children of Albion"
River of Life
This image articulates the cutting of the thread, the flow of the stream, the guidance of Jesus, the tree of life, the rising sun, and company of angels and much more.
Four Zoas, Page 33
"Thus were the stars of heaven created like a golden chain
To bind the Body of Man to heaven from failing into the Abyss
Each took his station, & his course began with sorrow & care"
GOLDEN STRING
Blake opens this section of Jerusalem, "To the Christians", with a
promise. He intends to lead us through 'heavens gate' if we follow the 'golden string' which he places in our hands.
Jerusalem, Plate 77
"I give you the end of a golden string,
Only wind it into a ball:
It will lead you in at Heavens gate,
Built in Jerusalems wall."
The 'golden string' used only once in Blake's poetry, is an image which is rich in associations. It recalls the string which Ariadne gave to Theseus to lead him out of the maze of the Minotaur. It reminds us of the thread which measures the length of life and is cut by the Fates. Moirae - Wiki It leads us to think of the path we travel through life with all its twists and turns.
But Blake's image goes beyond that. It postulates that the end of the golden string is given to us and we have more to do than follow it. We actively wind it into a ball. If we don't keep the string taut and keep winding it, we may lose our way and
wander off into unknown territory. But by winding it and following, it will lead us to our to our destiny or destination.
We are headed toward Jerusalem:
Jerusalem PLATE 54
"In Great Eternity, every particular Form gives forth or Emanates
Its own peculiar Light, & the Form is the Divine Vision
And the Light is his Garment This is Jerusalem in every Man
A Tent & Tabernacle of Mutual Forgiveness Male & Female
Clothings.
And Jerusalem is called Liberty among the Children of Albion"
River of Life
This image articulates the cutting of the thread, the flow of the stream, the guidance of Jesus, the tree of life, the rising sun, and company of angels and much more.
Four Zoas, Page 33
"Thus were the stars of heaven created like a golden chain
To bind the Body of Man to heaven from failing into the Abyss
Each took his station, & his course began with sorrow & care"
promise. He intends to lead us through 'heavens gate' if we follow the 'golden string' which he places in our hands.
Jerusalem, Plate 77
"I give you the end of a golden string,
Only wind it into a ball:
It will lead you in at Heavens gate,
Built in Jerusalems wall."
The 'golden string' used only once in Blake's poetry, is an image which is rich in associations. It recalls the string which Ariadne gave to Theseus to lead him out of the maze of the Minotaur. It reminds us of the thread which measures the length of life and is cut by the Fates. Moirae - Wiki It leads us to think of the path we travel through life with all its twists and turns.
But Blake's image goes beyond that. It postulates that the end of the golden string is given to us and we have more to do than follow it. We actively wind it into a ball. If we don't keep the string taut and keep winding it, we may lose our way and
wander off into unknown territory. But by winding it and following, it will lead us to our to our destiny or destination.
We are headed toward Jerusalem:
Jerusalem PLATE 54
"In Great Eternity, every particular Form gives forth or Emanates
Its own peculiar Light, & the Form is the Divine Vision
And the Light is his Garment This is Jerusalem in every Man
A Tent & Tabernacle of Mutual Forgiveness Male & Female
Clothings.
And Jerusalem is called Liberty among the Children of Albion"
River of Life
This image articulates the cutting of the thread, the flow of the stream, the guidance of Jesus, the tree of life, the rising sun, and company of angels and much more.
Four Zoas, Page 33
"Thus were the stars of heaven created like a golden chain
To bind the Body of Man to heaven from failing into the Abyss
Each took his station, & his course began with sorrow & care"
Friday, October 9, 2009
Blake's God
Do you realize that everyone has his own God?
A vision of God! that's all anyone has, their
vision of God. Apparently the vision of God
that most people have is a 'mean God', a God
who will send you to hell if you don't obey him.
Good Christians seem to believe that in spite
of the loving vision that Jesus gave us.
Not so for Blake; at least not for the mature
Blake. As a youth? Perhaps. His early poems
focused on negative images, images of
restraint; the angels restrained us; so Blake
chose to belong to the Devil's party; he
rebelled against a 'thou shalt not' God (look
at The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.)
He called God Old Nobodaddy; he came to
believe that Urizen represented God; he had
Urizen to say just that. Three times in Night
1, page 12 of The Four Zoas he said I am God .
The mature Blake wrote in his Comments on A Vision of the Last Judgment (Erdman 565):
"Thinking as I do that the Creator
of this world is a cruel being, and
being a worshipper of Christ, I have to
say: "the Son! oh how unlike the Father":
First God Almighty comes with a thump on
the head; then J.C. comes with a balm
to heal it."
For Blake the Son had become God; he
perceived Forgiveness as the greatest
gift we have from him. After his conversion
that was his chief theme and his way of
salvation.
Christ Offers to Redeem Man
If you would like to pursue this subject a bit
further click on Blake's thoughts on God.
If you have a question or comment click here.
A vision of God! that's all anyone has, their
vision of God. Apparently the vision of God
that most people have is a 'mean God', a God
who will send you to hell if you don't obey him.
Good Christians seem to believe that in spite
of the loving vision that Jesus gave us.
Not so for Blake; at least not for the mature
Blake. As a youth? Perhaps. His early poems
focused on negative images, images of
restraint; the angels restrained us; so Blake
chose to belong to the Devil's party; he
rebelled against a 'thou shalt not' God (look
at The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.)
He called God Old Nobodaddy; he came to
believe that Urizen represented God; he had
Urizen to say just that. Three times in Night
1, page 12 of The Four Zoas he said I am God .
The mature Blake wrote in his Comments on A Vision of the Last Judgment (Erdman 565):
"Thinking as I do that the Creator
of this world is a cruel being, and
being a worshipper of Christ, I have to
say: "the Son! oh how unlike the Father":
First God Almighty comes with a thump on
the head; then J.C. comes with a balm
to heal it."
For Blake the Son had become God; he
perceived Forgiveness as the greatest
gift we have from him. After his conversion
that was his chief theme and his way of
salvation.
Christ Offers to Redeem Man
If you would like to pursue this subject a bit
further click on Blake's thoughts on God.
If you have a question or comment click here.
Blake's God
Do you realize that everyone has his own God?
A vision of God! that's all anyone has, their
vision of God. Apparently the vision of God
that most people have is a 'mean God', a God
who will send you to hell if you don't obey him.
Good Christians seem to believe that in spite
of the loving vision that Jesus gave us.
Not so for Blake; at least not for the mature
Blake. As a youth? Perhaps. His early poems
focused on negative images, images of
restraint; the angels restrained us; so Blake
chose to belong to the Devil's party; he
rebelled against a 'thou shalt not' God (look
at The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.)
He called God Old Nobodaddy; he came to
believe that Urizen represented God; he had
Urizen to say just that. Three times in Night
1, page 12 of The Four Zoas he said I am God .
The mature Blake wrote in his Comments on A Vision of the Last Judgment (Erdman 565):
"Thinking as I do that the Creator
of this world is a cruel being, and
being a worshipper of Christ, I have to
say: "the Son! oh how unlike the Father":
First God Almighty comes with a thump on
the head; then J.C. comes with a balm
to heal it."
For Blake the Son had become God; he
perceived Forgiveness as the greatest
gift we have from him. After his conversion
that was his chief theme and his way of
salvation.
Christ Offers to Redeem Man
If you would like to pursue this subject a bit
further click on Blake's thoughts on God.
If you have a question or comment click here.
A vision of God! that's all anyone has, their
vision of God. Apparently the vision of God
that most people have is a 'mean God', a God
who will send you to hell if you don't obey him.
Good Christians seem to believe that in spite
of the loving vision that Jesus gave us.
Not so for Blake; at least not for the mature
Blake. As a youth? Perhaps. His early poems
focused on negative images, images of
restraint; the angels restrained us; so Blake
chose to belong to the Devil's party; he
rebelled against a 'thou shalt not' God (look
at The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.)
He called God Old Nobodaddy; he came to
believe that Urizen represented God; he had
Urizen to say just that. Three times in Night
1, page 12 of The Four Zoas he said I am God .
The mature Blake wrote in his Comments on A Vision of the Last Judgment (Erdman 565):
"Thinking as I do that the Creator
of this world is a cruel being, and
being a worshipper of Christ, I have to
say: "the Son! oh how unlike the Father":
First God Almighty comes with a thump on
the head; then J.C. comes with a balm
to heal it."
For Blake the Son had become God; he
perceived Forgiveness as the greatest
gift we have from him. After his conversion
that was his chief theme and his way of
salvation.
Christ Offers to Redeem Man
If you would like to pursue this subject a bit
further click on Blake's thoughts on God.
If you have a question or comment click here.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
LOS: POET & PROPHET
Los is the hero of Blake's myth as developed in the prophetic books. Among his many names are Eternal Poet and Eternal Prophet. As Blake's alter-ego he was the Creative Imagination, always expanding into new projects and endeavors. As a blacksmith he uses his furnaces to shape humanity through fire and the blows of his hammer. He holds the vision in times of trouble. He takes the materials at hand and puts them to the service of Jerusalem, the image of Divine Inspiration.
In describing this picture Erdman says: "The poet /blacksmith Los, naked with his steel hammer in a firm cushion of cloud, rests "wearied" from his intellectual labors, and regards the completed song/sun with anxious compassion."
SONG OF LOS, Plate 8
Los as Time, together with Enitharmon as Space brings change. He represents evolution, not in the sense of progress but of opportunity. The information, structures, and insights developed by one generation are available for use by succeeding generations to build upon. Urizen sought fixed structure and predictability. Not so Los. Nothing for him would be more deadly than restating repeatedly the same ideas in different words or applying the same rules to every situation.
The huge advances in scientific thought have come not by using a template but by creating new ways of thinking, new avenues of questioning, new fields of research. Psychology itself had a burst of development when scientific techniques were applied to understand the mysteries of human behavior which had baffled the human mind from the time man became self-reflective. We are following Los when we seek new paths and expand the horizons of our pursuits.
As William Blake said in two of his early works:
All Religions Are One
"PRINCIPLE 4.
As none by traveling over known lands can find out
the unknown. So from already acquired knowledge Man could not
acquire more. therefore an universal Poetic Genius exists"
There is No Natural Religion (b)
"I Mans perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception. he
percieves more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover.
II Reason or the ratio of all we have already known. is not
the same that it shall be when we know more.
IV The bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round
even of a univer[s]e would soon become a mill with complicated
wheels."
Blake spoke of dark Satanic Mills.
In describing this picture Erdman says: "The poet /blacksmith Los, naked with his steel hammer in a firm cushion of cloud, rests "wearied" from his intellectual labors, and regards the completed song/sun with anxious compassion."
SONG OF LOS, Plate 8
Los as Time, together with Enitharmon as Space brings change. He represents evolution, not in the sense of progress but of opportunity. The information, structures, and insights developed by one generation are available for use by succeeding generations to build upon. Urizen sought fixed structure and predictability. Not so Los. Nothing for him would be more deadly than restating repeatedly the same ideas in different words or applying the same rules to every situation.
The huge advances in scientific thought have come not by using a template but by creating new ways of thinking, new avenues of questioning, new fields of research. Psychology itself had a burst of development when scientific techniques were applied to understand the mysteries of human behavior which had baffled the human mind from the time man became self-reflective. We are following Los when we seek new paths and expand the horizons of our pursuits.
As William Blake said in two of his early works:
All Religions Are One
"PRINCIPLE 4.
As none by traveling over known lands can find out
the unknown. So from already acquired knowledge Man could not
acquire more. therefore an universal Poetic Genius exists"
There is No Natural Religion (b)
"I Mans perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception. he
percieves more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover.
II Reason or the ratio of all we have already known. is not
the same that it shall be when we know more.
IV The bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round
even of a univer[s]e would soon become a mill with complicated
wheels."
Blake spoke of dark Satanic Mills.
LOS: POET & PROPHET
Los is the hero of Blake's myth as developed in the prophetic books. Among his many names are Eternal Poet and Eternal Prophet. As Blake's alter-ego he was the Creative Imagination, always expanding into new projects and endeavors. As a blacksmith he uses his furnaces to shape humanity through fire and the blows of his hammer. He holds the vision in times of trouble. He takes the materials at hand and puts them to the service of Jerusalem, the image of Divine Inspiration.
In describing this picture Erdman says: "The poet /blacksmith Los, naked with his steel hammer in a firm cushion of cloud, rests "wearied" from his intellectual labors, and regards the completed song/sun with anxious compassion."
SONG OF LOS, Plate 8
Los as Time, together with Enitharmon as Space brings change. He represents evolution, not in the sense of progress but of opportunity. The information, structures, and insights developed by one generation are available for use by succeeding generations to build upon. Urizen sought fixed structure and predictability. Not so Los. Nothing for him would be more deadly than restating repeatedly the same ideas in different words or applying the same rules to every situation.
The huge advances in scientific thought have come not by using a template but by creating new ways of thinking, new avenues of questioning, new fields of research. Psychology itself had a burst of development when scientific techniques were applied to understand the mysteries of human behavior which had baffled the human mind from the time man became self-reflective. We are following Los when we seek new paths and expand the horizons of our pursuits.
As William Blake said in two of his early works:
All Religions Are One
PRINCIPLE 4.
As none by traveling over known lands can find out
the unknown. So from already acquired knowledge Man could not
acquire more. therefore an universal Poetic Genius exists
There is No Natural Religion (b)
I Mans perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception. he
percieves more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover.
II Reason or the ratio of all we have already known. is not
the same that it shall be when we know more.
IV The bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round
even of a univer[s]e would soon become a mill with complicated
wheels.
Blake spoke of dark Satanic Mills.
In describing this picture Erdman says: "The poet /blacksmith Los, naked with his steel hammer in a firm cushion of cloud, rests "wearied" from his intellectual labors, and regards the completed song/sun with anxious compassion."
SONG OF LOS, Plate 8
Los as Time, together with Enitharmon as Space brings change. He represents evolution, not in the sense of progress but of opportunity. The information, structures, and insights developed by one generation are available for use by succeeding generations to build upon. Urizen sought fixed structure and predictability. Not so Los. Nothing for him would be more deadly than restating repeatedly the same ideas in different words or applying the same rules to every situation.
The huge advances in scientific thought have come not by using a template but by creating new ways of thinking, new avenues of questioning, new fields of research. Psychology itself had a burst of development when scientific techniques were applied to understand the mysteries of human behavior which had baffled the human mind from the time man became self-reflective. We are following Los when we seek new paths and expand the horizons of our pursuits.
As William Blake said in two of his early works:
All Religions Are One
PRINCIPLE 4.
As none by traveling over known lands can find out
the unknown. So from already acquired knowledge Man could not
acquire more. therefore an universal Poetic Genius exists
There is No Natural Religion (b)
I Mans perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception. he
percieves more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover.
II Reason or the ratio of all we have already known. is not
the same that it shall be when we know more.
IV The bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round
even of a univer[s]e would soon become a mill with complicated
wheels.
Blake spoke of dark Satanic Mills.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Forgiveness
This was central to Blake's evolving theology. It came to him at 42 and delivered him from his need to flog Old Nobodaddy; he had experienced the 'healing balm'. Henceforth he loved and adored Jesus, the bearer of Forgiveness.
In this form Blake experienced the new birth, which Baptists tell us occurs when you "accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior". For Blake (and for me) it came with recognition of God's love, and particularly in his case a feeling of being accepted (for me, too actually). The First Vision of Light described his jubilation at being accepted and called "thou Ram hornd with gold".
For Blake (and for me) this led to an excess of power. It appears that Blake had a sense of guilt that came to a head during his three years at Felpham (by the sea). He had been invited there by a fashionable poet and man of affairs named Hayley.
That was wonderful, but Blake soon found that Hayley proposed to "assist" him to becoming succesful by producing miniatures. Blake had struggled with the temptation to pursue worldly success instead of the "main chance", by which he meant artistic integrity (no doubt something all or most artists struggle with). Blake spoke of this in a letter to Cumberland dated 2 July 1800.
The pressure of Hayley on him to conform to worldly expectations was the last straw, and he returned to London a new man, no longer concerned about the approval of those who could reward him monetarily.
His best work came then with Milton and Jerusalem, but his new life is also expressed in the last part of The Four Zoas.
This experience of Blake's strikes me as a universal, applicable to many of us. The world calls, and God calls. Happy are those who hear and respond to the second call.
In this form Blake experienced the new birth, which Baptists tell us occurs when you "accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior". For Blake (and for me) it came with recognition of God's love, and particularly in his case a feeling of being accepted (for me, too actually). The First Vision of Light described his jubilation at being accepted and called "thou Ram hornd with gold".
For Blake (and for me) this led to an excess of power. It appears that Blake had a sense of guilt that came to a head during his three years at Felpham (by the sea). He had been invited there by a fashionable poet and man of affairs named Hayley.
That was wonderful, but Blake soon found that Hayley proposed to "assist" him to becoming succesful by producing miniatures. Blake had struggled with the temptation to pursue worldly success instead of the "main chance", by which he meant artistic integrity (no doubt something all or most artists struggle with). Blake spoke of this in a letter to Cumberland dated 2 July 1800.
The pressure of Hayley on him to conform to worldly expectations was the last straw, and he returned to London a new man, no longer concerned about the approval of those who could reward him monetarily.
His best work came then with Milton and Jerusalem, but his new life is also expressed in the last part of The Four Zoas.
This experience of Blake's strikes me as a universal, applicable to many of us. The world calls, and God calls. Happy are those who hear and respond to the second call.
CHILDREN ROUND FIRE
.
Click on this link: Children round a Fire
LET US BE THE CHILDREN AROUND BLAKE'S FIRE
As I read "The Chimney Sweeper" presented in the post above, I realized the the boy in this picture and Tom Dacre of the poem both have shaved heads. So the little boy represented in the picture is likely a chimney sweeper, and all three around the fire represent street children huddled together for warmth as well as light.
Click on this link: Children round a Fire
LET US BE THE CHILDREN AROUND BLAKE'S FIRE
As I read "The Chimney Sweeper" presented in the post above, I realized the the boy in this picture and Tom Dacre of the poem both have shaved heads. So the little boy represented in the picture is likely a chimney sweeper, and all three around the fire represent street children huddled together for warmth as well as light.
CHILDREN ROUND FIRE
.
Click on this link: Children round a Fire
LET US BE THE CHILDREN AROUND BLAKE'S FIRE
As I read "The Chimney Sweeper" presented in the post above, I realized the the boy in this picture and Tom Dacre of the poem both have shaved heads. So the little boy represented in the picture is likely a chimney sweeper, and all three around the fire represent street children huddled together for warmth as well as light.
Click on this link: Children round a Fire
LET US BE THE CHILDREN AROUND BLAKE'S FIRE
As I read "The Chimney Sweeper" presented in the post above, I realized the the boy in this picture and Tom Dacre of the poem both have shaved heads. So the little boy represented in the picture is likely a chimney sweeper, and all three around the fire represent street children huddled together for warmth as well as light.
Friday, September 25, 2009
MINUTE PARTICULARS
From William Blake's Jerusalem: Plate 91
"He who would see the Divinity must see him in his Children
One first, in friendship & love; then a Divine Family, & in the
midst
Jesus will appear; so he who wishes to see a Vision; a perfect
Whole
Must see it in its Minute Particulars; Organized & not as thou
O Fiend of Righteousness pretendest; thine is a Disorganized
And snowy cloud: brooder of tempests & destructive War
You smile with pomp & rigor: you talk of benevolence & virtue!
I act with benevolence & virtue & get murderd time after time:
You accumulate Particulars, & murder by analyzing, that you
May take the aggregate; & you call the aggregate Moral Law:
And you call that Swelld & bloated Form; a Minute Particular.
But General Forms have their vitality in Particulars: & every
Particular is a Man; a Divine Member of the Divine Jesus.
So Los cried at his Anvil in the horrible darkness weeping!"
Looking at this passage as a whole, we look into a conundrum. Part of
the problem is that if we try to apply it to others, we are either
fault-finding or projecting. If we apply it to ourselves, we are Jungians.
Let's take it one section at a time.
"He who would see the Divinity must see him in his Children
One first, in friendship & love; then a Divine Family, & in the midst
Jesus will appear;"
This path to Jesus may be thought of as the path through 'innocence'.
It is direct and uncomplicated but not open to many of us. It is the way
of participating in the creative process through immersion in God's
love.
The following lines suggest a more complex process of achieving
wholeness. It involves altering consciousness and breaking down the
patterns that dominate our thinking. Blake is looking deep into the
human psyche:
"o he who wishes to see a Vision; a perfect Whole
Must see it in its Minute Particulars; Organized & not as thou
O Fiend of Righteousness pretendest; thine is a Disorganized
And snowy cloud: brooder of tempests & destructive War"
He focuses our attention on the processes through which we organize
people, places, things, ideas or whatever, convincing ourselves that it
is the right way, the only way. Perceiving reality in the wrong way
(materialistically and legalistically) gives a clouded, distorted picture
which leads to anger and destructiveness.
"You smile with pomp & rigor: you talk of benevolence & virtue!
I act with benevolence & virtue & get murderd time after time:"
Then he talks of hiding behind the persona and failing to connect with
the 'real' in others thereby taking the life from them and from ourselves.
"You accumulate Particulars, & murder by analyzing, that you
May take the aggregate; & you call the aggregate Moral Law:
And you call that Swelld & bloated Form; a Minute Particular."
He points out the errors of living in the mind and constructing
further defenses against the 'real' (spiritual) world, leading to a
confusion of categories.
"But General Forms have their vitality in Particulars: & every
Particular is a Man; a Divine Member of the Divine Jesus."
Now he reaches the level of integration: SEEING the Divine Image in
all, including within ourselves. This is Blake's reply to his implied
question of how to 'see a Vision, a Perfect whole.'
"So Los cried at his Anvil in the horrible darkness weeping!"
Los is undergoing this process himself and watching with anguish
as humanity is remolded and reborn.
Jesus as the healer: The Raising of Lazarus
MINUTE PARTICULARS
From William Blake's Jerusalem: Plate 91
"He who would see the Divinity must see him in his Children
One first, in friendship & love; then a Divine Family, & in the
midst
Jesus will appear; so he who wishes to see a Vision; a perfect
Whole
Must see it in its Minute Particulars; Organized & not as thou
O Fiend of Righteousness pretendest; thine is a Disorganized
And snowy cloud: brooder of tempests & destructive War
You smile with pomp & rigor: you talk of benevolence & virtue!
I act with benevolence & virtue & get murderd time after time:
You accumulate Particulars, & murder by analyzing, that you
May take the aggregate; & you call the aggregate Moral Law:
And you call that Swelld & bloated Form; a Minute Particular.
But General Forms have their vitality in Particulars: & every
Particular is a Man; a Divine Member of the Divine Jesus.
So Los cried at his Anvil in the horrible darkness weeping!"
Looking at this passage as a whole, we look into a conundrum. Part of
the problem is that if we try to apply it to others, we are either
fault-finding or projecting. If we apply it to ourselves, we are Jungians.
Let's take it one section at a time.
"He who would see the Divinity must see him in his Children
One first, in friendship & love; then a Divine Family, & in the midst
Jesus will appear;"
This path to Jesus may be thought of as the path through 'innocence'.
It is direct and uncomplicated but not open to many of us. It is the way
of participating in the creative process through immersion in God's
love.
The following lines suggest a more complex process of achieving
wholeness. It involves altering consciousness and breaking down the
patterns that dominate our thinking. Blake is looking deep into the
human psyche:
"o he who wishes to see a Vision; a perfect Whole
Must see it in its Minute Particulars; Organized & not as thou
O Fiend of Righteousness pretendest; thine is a Disorganized
And snowy cloud: brooder of tempests & destructive War"
He focuses our attention on the processes through which we organize
people, places, things, ideas or whatever, convincing ourselves that it
is the right way, the only way. Perceiving reality in the wrong way
(materialistically and legalistically) gives a clouded, distorted picture
which leads to anger and destructiveness.
"You smile with pomp & rigor: you talk of benevolence & virtue!
I act with benevolence & virtue & get murderd time after time:"
Then he talks of hiding behind the persona and failing to connect with
the 'real' in others thereby taking the life from them and from ourselves.
"You accumulate Particulars, & murder by analyzing, that you
May take the aggregate; & you call the aggregate Moral Law:
And you call that Swelld & bloated Form; a Minute Particular."
He points out the errors of living in the mind and constructing
further defenses against the 'real' (spiritual) world, leading to a
confusion of categories.
"But General Forms have their vitality in Particulars: & every
Particular is a Man; a Divine Member of the Divine Jesus."
Now he reaches the level of integration: SEEING the Divine Image in
all, including within ourselves. This is Blake's reply to his implied
question of how to 'see a Vision, a Perfect whole.'
"So Los cried at his Anvil in the horrible darkness weeping!"
Los is undergoing this process himself and watching with anguish
as humanity is remolded and reborn.
Jesus as the healer: The Raising of Lazarus
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
FOURFOLD READING
One of the better known sayings of William Blake concerns "Fourfold Vision." This is from a letter he wrote to his long term friend and supporter Thomas Butts.
"Now I a fourfold vision see
And a fourfold vision is given to me
Tis fourfold in my supreme delight
And three fold in soft Beulahs night
And twofold Always. May God us keep
From Single vision & Newtons sleep"
Blake's ability to envision the psyche as fourfold can be used as a guide to reading Blake on for different levels.
1) It would be possible to read him at the literal level as an account of material, sensual events. This may be the most difficult way to read him because his account would be of historical characters meeting mythological or fictional ones, people being thrown into furnaces or ground up by harrows, curtains being hung in the far reaches of space, and individuals dividing into multiple individuals. Our mind would reject these images as accounts of material activities just as we reject reading all mythologies as history. This kind of reaction could be said to be that of Tharmas. ("a portion of the Soul discerned by the five Senses")
2)We may read Blake on a reasoning level, associating his images with thought forms or patterns which are familiar to our rational minds. So we split off various dimensions of his thought and influences and look at these objectively building systems to explain some aspect of the body of work he produced. In this case we are viewing Blake as Urizen (symbolizing Reason) would view him. Blake portrayed this level of thinking with his famous image of Newton. Image of Newton
3)At the level of emotion we may become involved with the processes he describes, as psychic realities. We begin to see our own psychological process in terms of the characteristics and functioning of Blake's Men, Emanations, and Specters. As Luvah (who include all emotions) we enter into the dynamics of the interactions among Blake's portrayals of our inner functions.
4)The level of imagination represents a transformation or conversion to a spiritual perception. At this level the spirit will speak through the words, not just with or in the words. If Blake is inspired himself, (and he seemed to believe that he was a prophet in the same sense as the OT prophets;) his words can transmit to our spirits through a direct connection with the spirit in him. This level of communication, which Blake called Imagination, was his primary interest. His time, his energy, his goods, his thought, his labor were directed toward expressing Imagination and trying to awaken it in others. Through Imagination we get the fullest understanding of Blake. Non-sensory perception is represented by Urthona (the creative imagination of the individual.)
America a Prophecy, Title Page "In the mental realm of the
prophetic cloud a female and a male philosopher are assisted by a page-turning child . The alert female is already doing so, for the girl at her back is directing us, not her, to the subtitle and the battlefield....The leaping female turns the page." (Erdman)
If we focus on which of these fourfold methods we are using to read (or to understand one another, or to teach our children, or preform various other tasks), we gain a better understanding of the meaning for Blake of fourfold vision, and a greater ability to perceive fourfold reality.
"Now I a fourfold vision see
And a fourfold vision is given to me
Tis fourfold in my supreme delight
And three fold in soft Beulahs night
And twofold Always. May God us keep
From Single vision & Newtons sleep"
Blake's ability to envision the psyche as fourfold can be used as a guide to reading Blake on for different levels.
1) It would be possible to read him at the literal level as an account of material, sensual events. This may be the most difficult way to read him because his account would be of historical characters meeting mythological or fictional ones, people being thrown into furnaces or ground up by harrows, curtains being hung in the far reaches of space, and individuals dividing into multiple individuals. Our mind would reject these images as accounts of material activities just as we reject reading all mythologies as history. This kind of reaction could be said to be that of Tharmas. ("a portion of the Soul discerned by the five Senses")
2)We may read Blake on a reasoning level, associating his images with thought forms or patterns which are familiar to our rational minds. So we split off various dimensions of his thought and influences and look at these objectively building systems to explain some aspect of the body of work he produced. In this case we are viewing Blake as Urizen (symbolizing Reason) would view him. Blake portrayed this level of thinking with his famous image of Newton. Image of Newton
3)At the level of emotion we may become involved with the processes he describes, as psychic realities. We begin to see our own psychological process in terms of the characteristics and functioning of Blake's Men, Emanations, and Specters. As Luvah (who include all emotions) we enter into the dynamics of the interactions among Blake's portrayals of our inner functions.
4)The level of imagination represents a transformation or conversion to a spiritual perception. At this level the spirit will speak through the words, not just with or in the words. If Blake is inspired himself, (and he seemed to believe that he was a prophet in the same sense as the OT prophets;) his words can transmit to our spirits through a direct connection with the spirit in him. This level of communication, which Blake called Imagination, was his primary interest. His time, his energy, his goods, his thought, his labor were directed toward expressing Imagination and trying to awaken it in others. Through Imagination we get the fullest understanding of Blake. Non-sensory perception is represented by Urthona (the creative imagination of the individual.)
America a Prophecy, Title Page "In the mental realm of the
prophetic cloud a female and a male philosopher are assisted by a page-turning child . The alert female is already doing so, for the girl at her back is directing us, not her, to the subtitle and the battlefield....The leaping female turns the page." (Erdman)
If we focus on which of these fourfold methods we are using to read (or to understand one another, or to teach our children, or preform various other tasks), we gain a better understanding of the meaning for Blake of fourfold vision, and a greater ability to perceive fourfold reality.
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