introduction SHERNAZ CAMA .» L rest not from my great task, To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought, into Eternity Ever expanding in the Bosom of God, the Human Imagination. Verusalem K. 623) The writings of William Blake can be read in a variety of ways. They lend themselves to personal, political, psychological, mythological and archetypal interpretations and can function at all these levels at one and the same time. Blake also worked within the framework of an ancient tradition, the Sacred Tradition of prophets and thinkers who base their writings upon spiritual insights. Blake, very much a man of his time, was also a member of this universal visionary company. Blake has been regarded as an isolated figure, neglected by his contemporaries and cut off from the main currents of his time. While 1757, the year of his birth, causes him to appear in bibliographies as an Eighteenth-century poet, the early Prophetic Books date with the early work of the Romantics and like them Blake's creative period began when the French Revolution had reached its crisis. Tt was a world of trernendous political, technical, economic and social change whee European civilization alternated between intensely high hopes oie Paradise on Earth and the threat of total collapse into disorder. The great promise and failure of the French Revolution, its fevouneny, and reactionary effects led to a profound cultural crisis in ee as politicians and the people had failed to usher in a ee es left to the poets to re-kindle hopes. The Ronee ord “s af id. But ware to becouse rehe’ unacknowledged legislators’, Of MAPEIRG. |” even as the horrors of the French Revolution soderaings nae confidante faxciher great uptiaval, the Indugeria! Nev Vd Le ay making ite Zéfecta felt. Thus, by the end of the elgties42. WILLIAM BLAKE beliefs that had withstood penerations OF change couig 20 Ig, satisfy. As Isaiah Berlin comments: npey Men had believed that to the central questio, purpose of their lives and of the world... etemal answers could be found. This was belief which Romanticism attacked and through Romantic writings a common noti objective structure, independent of those created by the Seeker. Hence that new e; and ideal rather than the objective and ¢! the vision rather than Setting the answ, D about the Nature -objective, ty and y Ww iversay the great founda; and io. weakened, Th ” of Te Tuns on .. that truth is n who seek it mphasis on the he real... er right! Ut is itsele Subjective -on the Quality of the individual level while except » the; . “ompensation j Te was no Correspondin, nthe way of istharged soy ees crime, injustice and lers, war wi, orphans and prostitutes, % Security or Oil. The early a: ei Produce q Y eighteenth ci : entury had believed “Meprint of the uni verse and economicINTRODUCTION 43 rogress would end social problems. By the end of the centu: th Pr alytical worldview of the Enlightenment had failed. Blake's ee away from the secular stream of thought to the sacred tradition es an attempt to find synthesis in a fragmenting world. The fragmentation of society that Blake had witnessed due to industrial urbanization and the dislocation of the old class structures affected him deeply and was to be transmuted into the main metaphor of his Prophetic Books and his Myth of Man. Man is central to Blake’s vision. Martin K. Nurmi sees Blake as “probably the most extreme humanist of all time.”3 For Blake the . human and the divine were interchangeable terms. God tells Christ; Thou Art a Man, God is no more Thine own Humanity, learn to Adore (K 750) All the Romantics taught humanist doctrines, but for Blake the Fall though couched in Christian terms and symbols was not because of a Biblical transgression but because man failed to perceive truth and doubted his own divine humanity. Man’s restoration to the perfection of Eden lies in humanity’s own hands. When man restores himself to harmony, the universe and all life will be perfected. The psychological Myth of Man, as seen in the story of The Four Zoas, reiterates man’s primary role in the universe. It also emphasizes human choice and judgement. Each man has total freedom and therefore total responsibility. He has to grow in order to learn to use this judgement wisely and therefore all Blake’s works act in linear progression, leading us from the Innocence of childhood, through Experience and the doubts and divisions of the Prophetic Books to “Heaven’s Gate” in Jerusalem (K 716). The effort of making this journey has to come from man himself. Men must re-form themselves, mentally and spiritually in order to reform society. This transformation of the world will be an apocalypse which will abolish all negativity and repression to celebrate “the Human form Divine”. Blake's humanist approach can also be seen in the use of the body as found in his art. Nature is painted in glowing hues and the human body is fleshy, muscular, naked and glorious -a celebration in all its beauty and splendour. The body is receptacle of the spirit, the seat of passion and wisdom, symbolic of that “Eternal44 WILLIAM BLAKE » which makes it pi deserves to rad ragged, chimney sweeper for “Everything dl art of the body of God. Each individya| be treated with dignity - be it that of a iientty seaseq hat lives Glory’ is sacred $ prostitute OF a dirty, is holy” (K 160). is did Blake move away so radically from accepted Politics ang Church of England dogmaé During Blake’s childhood, his father James a Dissenter from the Church of England and Blake himself in later years was attracted by the philosophy of Swedenborg and Boehme. The Dissenters had a tradition of both religious and political dissent and their members were primarily drawn from ae middle classes, However, Blake also read the Bible and Milton with intensity and gathered his chief myths and symbols from them along with his reading of the Greeks, the Romans and the Hebrews. His range of reading is impressive; self-taught, he studied literature and theology, philosophy and politics as well as art theory. His reading from earliest times and his parents influence, engendered an opposition to tyranny for unlike poets of the earlier part of the eighteenth century Blake had neither respect nor reverence for established authority. For him Jesus was his greatest revolutionary hero. For Blake, Locke, Bacon, Burke, Reynolds were all “abhorrent”. The cause for this was “They mock Inspiration and Vision. Inspiration and Vision was then and now is, and I hope will always Remain my Element, my Eternal Dwelling Place”. He chose the classical artists as his masters, among them were Raphael, Michelangelo, Giulio Romano, Durer and Heemskirk. His training in classical art gave him great admiration for the human form. At the same time, in the period between 1787-1798, Fuseli, the Swiss painter introduced him to the ae ae of Godwin, Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft and Joseph . . hee ae ee by their intellectual activity, it was Neoplatonist and he a He introduced to Thomas Taylor, the 4 metaphysics, Due he with equal cane in the realm of politics inter-telationship of ene Psychological insights he understood the ighteousness, ees oo facing his world. Social inequity, self- But for Blake these ae ession, sexual repression all led to violence. Toots was starved of love — a society which having lost its and relationships. For Blake the starvation wasINTRODUCTION 45 of the spirit was linked with fragmentation at both individual and societal levels.4 Blake became determined to fight all levels of oppression- political, artistic, social and spiritual. His works would be “Prophecies”, the Revelation of Eternal truth. His work would be visionary and his role as Prophet-Poet was to change his readers perceptions at both social and spiritual levels through awakening their imaginative capacities. This would usher in the perfected world. Technique Blake was, therefore, Romantic in his subjectivity but Classical in his training. How then is he to be categorized? Anne Kostelanetz Mellor called his work “Romantic Classicism.” Blake adds to the complexity for after Robert’s death, he was inspired by his dead brother's spirit to create the technique of Illuminated Printing®. As a professionally trained engraver, Blake was respected in his time. He now acted as his own publisher by using a process he called ‘Illuminated Printing’. Blake, poet, painter and technician placed words and picture into a totality of a page which he etched backwards, in reverse or mirror writing, onto a copper plate. He then printed this and coloured the page by hand. Hence each copy of his Illuminated Books is unique. The Plates of the Songs are small for copper was expensive and Blake often re-used his plates, making the few left intact all the more precious. His technique used acid to burn away the surface of the plate and let the text and design which he had engraved on it emerge. For him, this technique itself held symbolic meaning: Blake stated that he would use the printing technique of his Songs and Prophecies to bum away the “Apparent surfaces” in order to reveal the “infinite” world beneath (K 154). Technically, while some exact details remain unclear, Blake's method could be described as the “contrary state” of conventional intaglio etching. His text exists within an illustration on each page because for him poetry and painting were part of one creative process. The Songs of Innocence weie also set to music and sung by the poet himself. Thus, Blake created in his work a trinity of creativity, which fitted in perfectly with his instinct for the Unity of Being, a belief and theory on which all his philosophy, and myth is based.AG WILLIAM BLAKE Blake’s Myth of Man Blake’s England had moved from country roots to the city, the aristocratic feudal world was being replaced by Whig merchants and the beginning of industrialization. King George III was going insane. Food riots, Enclosure Acts and wars with France added to the confusion and corruption of society. The Augustan Age had kept up a public facade; Dr. Samuel Johnson could in private reveal desperate loneliness but had to be in public the great Moral Arbiter. Blake was, however, not afraid to expose his doubts, to question, to look within for answers and to write about this publicly. Totally opposed to the materialist and Deistic philosophy of his times Blake shows in the corpus of his works and in the structure of the great Prophecies, Vala or The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem a four-fold movement of Doubt, Division, Illumination and Unity. This provides his path of growth and metaphors for all his work. It is through this path that he also develops as a mystic. Blake always wanted an expanding vision and consciousness. After the failure of the French Revolution, he would continue his fight but for him now the greatest battle was not against man-made rules but mind-made fetters. His was an Age of Reason, a Time of Doubt, there was great progress but along with it great degradation. A world seemed to be disintegrating, therefore fragmentation and reunification become the key to the methodology of Blake’s Myth of Man. Science was dissecting life. This schism caused by science was for Blake a division of the Unitive Life, to counter this and see the world holistically man must develop in Blake’s world, Four-Fold Vision. Life, fully developed is Four-Fold. For Blake, Single Vision is that seen by the eye, it is repressive because man should always accept different perspectives. Two-Fold Vision perceives the value of things, Three-Fold Vision recognizes the emotions and inspires creativity. Four-Fold Vision is the ultimate, the achievement of spiritual ecstasy. Now I a Four-Fold vision see And a Four Fold vision is given to me ‘Tis Four-Fold in my supreme delight And Three-Fold in soft Beulah’s night And Two-Fold always. May God us keep From Single Vision & Newton's sleep (Letter to Thomas Butts-K,818)INTRODUCTION 47 Four-Fold Vision links with Blake’s myth of the Four Zoas Th d ‘Zoa’ itself is taken from the New Testament Greek Zwa ifs) ot Revelations 4: 6-8. The Zoas are psychic energies in Blake's psycholo fl analysis of the struggle of the Spirit. The energies, like the Hoses must be in harmony, the Zoas must be balanced for a Unitive Life. Blake’s hero in the myth is Albion who stands for All England and later for All Man. Albion at the beginning of Blake’s creation story had all his four Zoas balanced and was united with his Emanation, Jerusalem. Jerusalem stands for the female, divine Creative Principle within all life. At a simple level, the Four Zoas can be tabulated as follows:- Zoas Embodi- Faculty Embodiment in ment in ° nature Human form Urthona/Los Spirit Imagination Sun, creative principle of life Urizen Head Reason Stars, the mechanistic order Luvah Heart Emotion Moon Tharmas Loins Instinct , Earth The four Zoas originally existed in total unity so Albion was at peace with the universe and the self. Error enters this peaceful universe through Doubt and Self-doubt. For Blake, doubt is Satanic and in this confused world of doubt the Zoas divide from each other and chaos begins. If the world and humanity is to survive, it must regain lost unity. Reintegration can only come when man expands the imaginative vision and perceiving the sanctity and unity of all life casts out Doubt-the Satanic Tempter: He who Doubts from what he sees Will ne’er Believe, do what you Please If the Sun & Moon should doubt, They'd immediately Go out. (Auguries of Innocence K 433)c ALLIAM BLAS 48 W' Plate of the Four Zoas from Milton II: 33 Man the microcosm and the universe or mecca ie Ror eerie in the theory of the Four Zoas, therefore, in their division ea = universe is torn apart. A still centre remains in the heart of Albion; nt divine essence, or Jerusalem within, but this will remain aoe Albion perceives it and acknowledges it as Truth. As Man's br ‘ consciousness collapses, Albion falls into the sleep of the subconsciou : He has to reawaken and reunite. When asleep further division continue: the Spectre vs. the Emanation or rationality vs. iar Inspiration is feminine, so in casting off this feminine principle the Fou Zoas are reduced further until there is almost total destruction of oes Man is central to Blake’s vision. Albion must act but first he a eran from his dull stupor and reintegrated. i fe ee Imagination, ieee SOL, the Sun) is the creative aie ae this expanding inne ‘ work through Poetry, painting an i ‘eh, Faith will “nation will finally move Albion to Faith. Faith!INTRODUCTION 49 triumph over Doubt and Los integrates with Jesus as thi : jmagination and spiritual power combine their creativity to Be te the Four Zoas. ae So the Fall in Blake’s myth, from innocence to experience fi from integration and harmony to division and doubt within mai al To conquer this Satanic doubt and separateness, Blake’s ae ego, man needs to grow creatively, exercise wisdom, remove cron through Faith. Error for Blake is found in all negatives, prohibitions and false illusions. These are Devils who contract or limit life. So the castin, out of error and embracing truth is for Blake the last judgement. ‘ros js Created. Truth is Eternal. Error will be Burned up and Truth will appear”. (A Vision of the Last Judgement, K 617). The pattern then in Blake’s myth is that of the interior journey or the interior epic. Blake’s poetry is about the human soul in quest of truth and self-realization. The effort.is man’s, he must cultivate the Imagination-the divine spark within - for during moments of creativity or inspiration in poetry, painting and music, eternity, truth and vision is revealed. To study Blake’s achievements as poet, artist and printer is to realise nt and richness of his imagination. His contempt for Burke’s the exte: ‘A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757 and Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, both of which he read closely, sprang from their desire to classify and order the senses and thereby “fetter” the imagination. For Blake, mystics and visionaries were far closer to the truth. The visionary quest is one of growth, a need to joyfully embrace all life. To deny this is to be frozen and petrified into ice and rock. Blake’s s of “Glad Day” or “Albion Rose” explain this symbolism celebration of life, the glorification of the body drawing of Albion naked and free, his arms being, his feet wide apart, free of all | representation of the energy of life. The he Vitruvian figure, used by the Roman nce, to demonstrate great plate: very clearly. The open can be seen in this outstretched to embrace all restraint. This is Blake’s visual idea is probably derived from tl architect Vitruvius and his followers in the Renaissa the perfect proportion of the human body. While Blake was a rebel against eighteenth century mathematical proportion, this design shows how much he owed to classicism. In the original, the figure standsAlbion Rose rfectly en therefore as the measure of ae matic © though Blake rebelled against cad tts te the humanist, academic tradition a! Contribution to his thought” within a circle. Man is se Proportioned universe, Si order, he could appreciat : in many - This particular image will be aes a atcer starting with the Songs of ee neh nis the plate of Urizen. Urizen, a pun forms throughout his « contrast and comparisoINTRODUCTION 54 Urizen Reason” takes its root from the Greek “horizon”, the material boundary or limit of sight. Blake rejects boundaries or limits for they cut off man from the infinite spiritual happiness and knowledge available. Urizen is manacled, solitary, blind to truth, crouching with his arms and legs tightly shut, moaning and groaning. He is the refusal to accept anything, especially change. He continually writes out his laws in metal books with an iron pen. Blake uses this figure in The Ancient of Days, a great painting of Urizen measuring out a world with limiting compasses. Urizen is for Blake, the vengeful God of the Old Testament, writing out false laws which restrict and forbid mankind all joy and pleasure. In Blake’s Christianity, Jesus was identified with care, nurture52 WILLIAM BLAKE jritual goodness. God we oe of the Old Testameng i” and spit alous tyranny. Urizen becomes the limiteg = 7 symbol of jea s the imagination. He crouches to Prevent Po which Cah rowth is life and therefore essential for man’ io Movement . a life, man has to face many opposing aspect of bein On the Gee about and accept the dualities that are Present. We ae realise that Blake’s early apparently simple work The Son of Innocence and Experience Shewing the Two s Contrary States Of: ne Human Soul, already contains the seed of much of his ie" Philosophy 1 i The Songs of Innocence and Experience “Joys impregnate, Sorrows bring forth” (K 151) On the surface, these simple little poems of a few lines each are delightful, childlike, even childish. But as we study the '™, We find that each contains a symbolic meaning and fits Precisely into a larger Innocence®. The vocabulary of the Poems suggests a child’s own limited vocabulary and often Pottrays a child’s insistence on having his or her own way © understand the child’s different ices are voices of reason. The Sentative of a world beyond reason which tion’. Here, in a reversal of roles, Blake's educating humanity in how to grow and live tly in opposition to typical adult comes repre the imaginal the teach, ers,INTRODUCTION 53 differs from systems under which he has watched children and humanity suffer. For growth, both Joy and Sorrow are essential in Blake’s philosophy. For Blake, the journey from Innocence to Experience is necessary, for the individual and essential for spiritual or mystical advancement to Higher Innocence. So the seemingly childish Songs have a deeper purpose. “Allegory addressed to the Intellectual powers..is my definition of the Most Sublime Poetry” said Blake. (K 825). But Blake was to clothe his allegory in a simple popular form—that of the ballad. Ballads’ appealed to all classes and portrayed essential human feelings in a rhythm and metre which was immediately accessible. The fashion in literature at the time was the simple style and the radical tone and Blake had some other examples before him®. Blake’s Songs have a typically eighteenth century didactic purpose “Shewing the two Contrary States of the Human Soul”, and Blake was probably influenced in his structuring of the Songs by one other source, Isaac Watts, whose Divine Songs for Children, were popular. Yet the children of Watts’ world are Fallen, condemned by Original Sin. Blake is a Prophet who will not believe in this wholesale condemnation of humanity because for him, Innocence is available even after the Fall. Blake even in these early lyrics had his own ideas about how to enlighten us about the soul of man. The Dualities As we read the Songs, we must realize the fact and importance of the contrary states or dualities in the development of Blake’s thought and myth for only through them can man move beyond to Higher Innocence, Blake's final goal: Man was made for Joy and Woe And when this we rightly know Through the world we safely go. Joy and Woe are woven fine A clothing for the Soul Divine Under every grief and pine Runs a Joy with silken twine (K 432)54. WILLIAM BLAKE Joy is the centre and core of life-but sorrow helps in oy is the expan, the soul. Grief and poverty are degrading and thwa Tt innog Sion of every birth to a higher life is through pain. So Blake will oe but just innocence but the darker world of experience on hig x journey. The title pages of the Songs are important for understangy their meaning. On the title page of the Songs of Innocence Pr protective mother and the children at her knee are sheltered byan ne : tree laden with fruit. There is an open book on her lap from, ou the children read, re-stressing the theme of education and Ie tiny piper is placed with his pipe within the letter “|” This is the Piper-Bard Blake, who is just beginning educating humanity. aming. A Of innocence n his task of Gg ¢ The whole page is full of green foliage within which tiny figures climb and stand with arms outstretched in the welcoming posture of Blake's “Albion Rose” figure. The literary and visual influence of the Pastoral tradition is obvious and Blake deliberately uses pastoral symbols throughout the Songs of Innocence. ‘This Plate is in total contrast with the 1794 title page of the Songs of Experience. Here are dead parents, mourning children and EXPERIENCE a threatening bar across the page. We are facing a blank wall, a world without life -, the only green foliage is prickly, painful ivy, a plant which bears no fruit. This is the end of the protection of childhood, a world which every human being has to grow through after the security of parents and family protection has passed away. In the title page of the combined Works, birds soar upwards in spiritual quest but hell fires drive a very young, adolescent Adam and Eve out of Paradise. They are ashamed of their sexuality, they hide their faces and crouch in fear. They fear experience but growth and pain go together in man’s progression through life.i * 4 ra myINTRODUCTION 55 dnnocencs and Experience both begin with an introductory poem which presents the opposing attitudes of these worlds. Blake firml: believed “Without Contraries is no progression’, Man contains within himself the power to attract both creativity as well as negation oa destruction. Every man in his like individually enjoys the freedom of jnnocence and suffers the restraints of experience. The imagery of the pastoral, found in /nnocence, presents a vision in direct contrast to the imagery of commerce and industrialisation, repressed sexuality and fettered thought of Experience. The imagery is penetratingly modern. Blake in these poems anticipates the Symbolist Movement and like Yeats he overlaid his symbolism with a system of ideas. His symbols explained his visionary beliefs and experiences, relating him more to the aesthetic movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries than to his contemporaries!?. The children on the pages of the Songs of Innocence run and play freely, sing and dance,, their arms outstretched, unburdened. These pages are full of figures, for childhood is a world of community and security. This was the period when for the first time children’s literature was being published and though moralistic, stories like Mother Goose, Goody Two Shoes were attractive and reinforced the sense of community which Blake developed into a metaphor for Innocence. Childhood innocence is linked with spontaneity, freedom from care, joy in nature and’ sympathy for all living things. For Blake “Exuberance is Beauty” (K 152).There is total freedom to laugh and to love in contrast to the world of Experience. In Experience natural impulses are disallowed. Pictorially the vegetation, which decorates the text of Innocence, is shown here as dead, dying or poisonous. Cacti, thorns and prickly ivy accompany serpents in a harsh lonely world without comfort or companion- ship. Experience is a period which every individual and all society rimary state of nature; Experience can must face. Innocence is the p Fj dition create be psychological, political, religious or social; it is a con by man and his institutions not a given of nature. : Love, which was the heart of innocence, becomes possessiveness and destructive ego or sexual depravity and jealousy, a means of control and power over others. This is best seen in the contrast between The Clod & the Pebble:56 WILLIAM BLAKE Love seeketh not itself to please, “Love § «Not for itself hath any care, put for another gives its ease, - ‘And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair, “And So sang a little Clod of Clay Trodden with the cattle’s feet, But a Pebble of the brook Warbled out these metres meet: “Love seeketh only Self to please, “To bind another to Its delight, “Joys in another's loss of ease, “And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite” (K 211) ‘The growth of Innocence is curtailed by the norms of society; mental menacles give rise to the birth of fear along with which come inhibitions and restrictions. The Lamb of. Mercy has changed into the ‘Tyger of Wrath. The shepherd father Jesus has become a jealous Jehovah. But for Blake love and care are the birthright of every child as is the right to live by one’s imagination without restraints. For Blake, the mystic, Innocence goes beyond naivete and contains the capacity for true vision. We see then that Innocence is the stage of imaginative awakening, the foundation against which Blake judges the public and private desolation of Experience The pervasive metay of the combined works hor of Experience, as seen from the title page is that of the Fall and the expulsion of the young Adam and Eve from Eden. But Psychologically it is also the moving away from childhood Security into a grown up world, where individual choices have to be mad, ‘ le and where there are no adult parents to protect from the harshness of life, The adolescent faces a lonely world of Separation without the buman beh Security of caring adults. Each child, like each pron being, has to finally grow up and find his truth alone. The to awareness jg imperative bec. Of salvation “The fool shall Poly" (A Vision of the L ave to Work together fo, ‘ause ignorance is not a means Hot enter into heaven, let him be ever sO ast Judgement K 615) Knowledge and Faith * salvation. To remain in Innocence, howevetEe INTRODUCTION 57 iit may be, is to remain static and Blake’s humanism stresses n has infinite capacities which he must develop to the full ainful but necessary. ans peautifu that mal ‘ Experience is p What is the price of Experience? do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy ‘And in the wither’d field where the farmer plows for bread in vain” (Vala or The Four Zoas K 290) symbolism Two central groups of symbols form a dominant pattern in the Songs. In Jnnnocence, there is a Holy Trinity of The Child, The Father and Christ, while in Experience there is an unholy triad of Church, King and State. The Jesus shepherd of the New Testament who guided, sheltered and nurtured has become Nobodaddy “NoBody’s Daddy’, a forbidding Jehovah or Old Testament deity, who has withdrawn from his creation. This Deistic God is unconcemed with the fate of the world and will provide no succor. These symbols recur through out the Songs in various forms. The Chimney Sweepers of Innocence and Experience suffer the same fate but in Jnnocence the child is surrounded by others who share his sorrows and joys and there is still hope. The adult Master sweep is present, carrying the main burden of soot. A Christ figure rescues a sweep from the grave. In Experience the Chimney Sweep is all alone, there are no friends, no adults and no God to share his burden. In this manner, Blake’s recurrent basic symbols turn into archetypes which add associations to each poem and to the whole. Secondly, the symbolism of the contraries is an import of the Songs and becomes a key metaphor of all his works, “Without Contraries is no Progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate are necessary to Human Existence”. (K 149). is human world is made up of opposite energies. It is because of ese contraries that there is choice and through choice and responsibility, tant feature theKE 5g WILLIAM BLAK ion’ is available to man- From the simplest Physical a or “progress! alight and darkness are both found in the world 1 s ae . , evel of bel I where for Blake, every individual contains within mental leve n Emanation, Heaven and Hell, a “fearful and a . h a Spectre one has to find a balance in order to work . ot rimelé both 3 ee each symmetty’ a a ‘ stiny- ‘ out his own ¢e f experience are by no means ideal states, jons 0! While the degradation hieved after facing the battle of opposites that will be ac : . ‘ the ieee will be far more meaningful than a simple reconciliation on this eal of opposing ideas or @ single approach to life. In ied to 2 to the f perfection, the contraries are necessary for moral, intellectual eee progression. Blake’s characters and all human kind have . ed through choice between the States of Good and Evil. Man has to exercise his choice between Heaven or Hell. This dualistic symbolism is even found in the structure of the Songs, the language itself displays the contraries specially in the opposing of major terms: “life” and ‘death’, “night” and “day”, “love” and ‘joy’, opposing “sorrow” and “fear”!!, Both these aspects are present throughout this work, for by presenting the innocent songs of the child along with their antithesis Blake was studying and balancing the two contrary aspects of life itself. The black and white of a world only innocent or a world utterly depraved cannot challenge. The task is to see life in all its aspects. Life fully developed is Four-Fold, it has truth and complexity. It is this eee of life which Blake reconciles in the Tyger. This is a poem : ee end - ability to accept contradictions, its fame perhaps cana base ieee ae and reconciling the two Contrary ey e fulfills a deep human need of all Blake’s ai lake’s aim was very clear. He wanted to lead man to truth: 1 give you ony a rene golden string, Te will lead you : Man in at Heaven’ Built in Jerusaley en’s Gate Atthe eee (Jerusalem K 716) true kni end of his life’ : owledge as wey of inerusalem, Blake believed he had reached ® spiritual salvation. The world of JerusalemINTRODUCTION 59 freedom of both thought and expression. Los, the creative isa jon has fulfilled his task of reintegrating the divided Zoas agin ne end of Blake’s spiritual and poetic journey “Every Mae Thus; pour olde (K 745); and all creatures, lion and lamb lie down ae This is “the Life of Immortality” (K 747) and Blake’s task as 0% : i ophet and Poet is complete. _aworld of Notes 1, Isaiah Berlin, “Preface” in H.G. Schenk, The Mind of the European Romantics: tn Essay in Cultural History (Oxford, New York, Toronto, Melbourne Oxford Univ. Press 1979), p. xvi 3, Marilyn Bulter, Romatics, Rebels and Reactionaries : English Literature and lis Background 1760-1830, (Oxford; OUP, 1981) p. 24. 3, Martin K. Nurmi, Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell: A Critical Study, Research Series Ill of the Kent State University Bulletin XLV, 4 (April 1957) pp 14-61 4, Mary Lynn Johnson & John E. Grant, A Norton Critical Edition: Blake's Poetry and Designs. New York, London: Norton, 1979, p xxiv. Anne Kestelanetz Mellor, Blake’s Human Form Divine; Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, Univ. of California Press, 1974. 6, John Thomas Smith Nollekens & His Times 1828, rpt in Johnson and Grant, ‘Norton Edition pp 485-86 “his brother Robert stood before him in one of his visionary imaginations, and directed him in the way in which he ought to proceed”. . Butler, pp 41, 42. Alicia Ostriker, Vision and Verse in William Blake, Madison; Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1965 pp 55-56 : . Butler p 35 quotes Cowper, The Task IV, 1785. This poem criticises the wealthy and shows them as corrupters of the poor, while at the same time making a moral appeal in a traditional Christian wily. - 10. Fora full analysis of this point see Mark Schorer, William Blake: The Politics of Vision, New York, 1946, pp 418-425. . Josephine Miles, “Blake's Frame of Language” in Blake: Essays in Honour of Sir Geottrey Keynes, 1978, pp 86-95. ov oN © Paley and Phillips, William Oxford: Clarendon Press,