PROVERBS OF HELL

Blake Archive 

Original in Fitzwilliam Museum

Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 Plate 10, Copy H

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was an early production of William Blake. It was begun in 1789, the year Songs of Innocence was completed. There are twelve known copies, all but one in museums or libraries. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is Blake's only satiric work among his Illuminated Books. 

Sir Geoffrey Keynes provided an Introduction and Commentary for a volume of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell produced by The Trianon Press, Paris. This useful book contains the text, images of all pages, and a respected scholar's insights into the text and illustrations 'keeping the meaning related as closely as possible to Blake's personal standpoint.'

Here are some of Keynes' comments on the image on Page 10, which is shone above:

"The scene shows three figures at the foaming edge of the Sea of Time and Space. In the center the Devil is kneeling with a scroll lying across his knees and presumably carrying the Proverbs. He is pointing impatiently to the first lines to instruct a slow-witted Angel industriously writing them down in a book, while probably misunderstanding them. Behind the Devil is a kind of throne or judgement seat from which he seems to have descended in his impatience. Sprouting from his back are spiky wings, their points directed respectively to the words 'Enough' and 'Too Much'. To his left and behind him is seated a contrasted figure, alert and interested, with his own script nearly finished across his knees while he looks to see how the stupid Angel is progressing. Erdman suggests that this is 'an apprentice Devil', perhaps Blake himself... The design seems to imply that the stupid Angel must receive and understand the evil Devil's Proverbs if he is to be saved."

Above the illustration are these nine proverbs:

"The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the
     hands & feet Proportion.

As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the
     contemptible.

The crow wish'd every thing was black, the owl, that every thing

     was white.

Exuberance is Beauty.

If the lion was advised by the fox. he would be cunning.       

Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without
     Improvement, are roads of Genius.

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires 

Where man is not nature is barren.

Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be
     believ'd."

On pages 7-10 there are 70 Proverbs of Hell.