READING BLAKE

Image - Songs of Experience
Introduction

Northrup Frye, in Fearful Symmetry, develops his own metaphor for reading Blake's poetry on Page 143.

"As far as the poetic effect of Blake's mythology goes, it cannot of course be denied that when a character is presented as an individual or a god and his relationship to an archetype is left to take care of itself, an advantage in vividness is often gained. Blake was, it is obvious, so conscious of the shape of his central myth that his characters become almost diagrammatic. The heroism of Orc or the ululation of Ololon do not impress us as human realities, like Achillies or Cassandra, but as intellectual ideographs. It all depends on whether the reader has a taste for this kind of metaphysical poetry or not, on whether he is willing to read so uncompromising an address to the intellectual powers. It is not necessary to assume that qualities of poetry which are certainly not in Blake are qualities which Blake tried and failed to produce. One looks at a poet for what is there, and what is there in Blake is a dialectic, an anatomy of poetry, a rigorously unified vision of the essential forms of the creative mind, piercing through its features to its articulate bones. The figure is perhaps not one that he would have approved: his own is:

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."
Jerusalem, Plate 77, (E 231)

It might be said that Blake in these passages offered additional metaphors for reading his poetry.

Jerusalem, Plate 88, (E 246)
"When in Eternity Man converses with Man they enter
Into each others Bosom (which are Universes of delight)
In mutual interchange. and first their Emanations meet
Surrounded by their Children. if they embrace & comingle
The Human Four-fold Forms mingle also in thunders of Intellect"

Vision of the Last Judgment, (E 560)
" If the Spectator could Enter into these Images in his
Imagination approaching them on the Fiery Chariot of his
Contemplative Thought if he could Enter into Noahs Rainbow or
into his bosom or could make a Friend & Companion of one of these
Images of wonder which always intreats him to leave mortal things
as he must know then would he arise from his Grave then would he
meet the Lord in the Air & then he would be happy General
Knowledge is Remote Knowledge it is in Particulars that Wisdom
consists & Happiness too."

Frye II

Although Fearful Symmetry was Frye's first book, it was not the one he was famous for; that would be The Anatomy of Criticism. It became the preeminent textbook for literary critics. Anatomy of Criticism was a difficult book: for specialists. He wrote another one, a simplification of 'Anatomy', called The Educated Imagination. For those not up for that there's a study guide, in essence a condensation of Frye's first condensation. You might start with that and work your way up -- like a scholar does.

Here are two significant things that Frye said about Fearful Symmetry.
At one point he said that if had it to do again, he would have written a simpler explanatory treatment of Blake, like Percival's Circle of Destiny.

After Fearful Symmetry was done, he said that it had within it all he had to say with The Anatomy of Criticism.

So it appears that Frye thought he had written, with FS, a particular case of his thesis, while 'Anatomy' was the general case. Since that time many Blakeans have attended to Blake's poetry, pictures and ideas exclusively, to the exclusion of other poets and artists. They specialize in Blake, like a doctor might specialize in Ophthamology and know little or nothing about other fields of medicine.

A major convention of Western literature is the way in which stories get told. In The Educated Imagination (p. 52) Frye suggests that each story represents episodes in the story of literature itself . As he views it, all literature tells a largely cyclical story--"the story of the loss and regaining of identity" (p. 55). It can be seen in the hero's quest, where the hero leaves the safety of his society to face a monster and returns, or in the lover's plight, where the man is attracted to a woman, and marries her and is buried by her. But it's most complete representation in the West is the Biblical story of the Fall of man from his original home and the eventual return to a promised land or a heavenly kingdom."

Writing Fearful Symmetry Frye had perceived that Blake's opus was a Circle of Destiny with a departure and a return. Early in Blake's poetic development his circle had two points, reflected in two Contraries, Urizen and Luvah. But it soon became Fourfold: Blake's Myth, the System that he Created (Erdman 153). It had as its biblical source the 1st Chapter of Ezekiel, with the 'four living creatures. If you read Ezekiel 1 you can't help seeing their resemblance to the Four Zoas, forming the structure of Blake's unfinished masterpiece called The Four Zoas.

When you form the habit of recognizing the fundamental quality of the images Blake presents, you will be able to see the same kinds of images in the works of other writers. And if you have some familiarity with the Bible you may recognize the original sources of ideas, values, images that appear throughout literature.

BLAKE, FRYE & BIBLE

Urizen's Bible was not Blake's Bible

The First Book of Urizen copy F
1794 Houghton Library Object 4

We have often spoken of the distinctive way in which Blake read, studied and interpreted the Bible. Northrup Frye who was an ordained minister of the United Church of Canada before he was a literary critic, shows in this passage from Fearful Symmetry (page 370) how he and Blake were able to read the Bible according to the light which was given to them:

"The career of Jesus is visualized in the gospels as a recreation or epitome of the story of Israel. He comes of the seed of "David" that is, he is the new Orc or Luvah. A "father" who did not begat him, named Joseph, leads him to "Egypt," Herod's slaughter of the innocents being in counterpoint to the earlier Passover story. Returning from Egypt,he grows up and is baptized in the Jordon, corresponding to the crossing of the Red Sea; then he wanders forty days in the wilderness as the Israelites wandered forty years, resisting all the temptations the Israelites fell prey to, including at least one not presented as such in the earlier vision, the miraculous provision of bread. He emerges from the wilderness, gathers twelve followers, appears on a mountain with Moses and Elijah, enters and cleanses the Temple, and is finally lifted up like the brazen serpent in the harlot Jerusalem he came to redeem. In the mean time he raised up a new civilization through the power of the unlearned and oppressed people who were most receptive to his teaching.The new historical cycle is symbolized in Blake by Lazarus of Bethany and the Lazarus of the parable, and who is, like Samson, a vision of Orc suggesting the larger contours of Albion, whose resurrection may not be far off. Thus the "life" of Jesus presented in the Gospels is really a visionary drama based on the earlier vision of Jehovah, worked out not, in terms of historical accuracy or evidence but purely as a clarification of the prophetic visions of the Messiah."

Milton, Plate 24 [26], (E 120)
"When Jesus raisd Lazarus from the Grave I stood & saw
Lazarus who is the Vehicular Body of Albion the Redeemd
Arise into the Covering Cherub who is the Spectre of Albion
By martyrdoms to suffer: to watch over the Sleeping Body.
Upon his Rock beneath his Tomb. I saw the Covering Cherub
Divide Four-fold into Four Churches when Lazarus arose
Paul, Constantine, Charlemaine, Luther;"

Here is an earlier post on Albion and Lazarus.

Blake created his own 'visionary dramas' to present his prophetic visions of the Messiah which he was convinced could reveal the contours of a New Age.

Blake and Religion

Northrup Frye, an ordained Canadian minister, as a young man wrote a thesis entitled Fearful Symmetry, which became the magisterial exposure of Blake's thought to the academic world. His primary calling became English Literary Criticism, and he won signal distinction in that field (especially a book called The Anatomy of Criticism).

Later in life Frye said that if he had it to do over he would not write a sophisticated academic work about Blake, but something more like Percival's introductory survey. He called his last (monumental!) two volume work The Great Code of Art or The Bible as Literature. That's an invaluable work for learning Blake.

In Britain's early 19th Century the Enlightenment had a marked effect on religious thought; Deism was ascendant, the idea that God created the world and wound it up like a clock and thereafter retired from any interest in it. We are to God what ants are to us.

As you can imagine Bible soaked and God intoxicated Blake despised Deism. But he equally despised what he took to be the opposite, which he called (among other things) Druidism, the most primitive form of religion, including human sacrifice.

Druidism fit Blake's concept of established religion, whose leaders enthusiastically supported the king's wars; in the same way the religious leaders today have emphatically supported the government's wars. (The government, established religion and the military industrial complex were like three peas in a pod in Blake's day.)

Here's one of Blake's reactions to that sad reality:

(Plate 11) (of the Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
"The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could percieve.

And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity.

Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects; thus began Priesthood.

Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
And at length they pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things.
Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast."

According to Blake God is within-- you and me, everyone. In this he closely resembled the Quakers who fundamentally speak of that of God in you/me/everyone. The God within is creative, a Creator of Art. This depends upon imagination, intuition, the expression of spiritual/eternal ideas in tangible things-- like words (the Bible), music, and representations of the human form in its various states.

Here's an example in the Laocoon (E274) of how Blake expressed this idea:

"Prayer is the Study of Art
Praise is the Practise of Art
Fasting &c. all relate to Art
The outward Ceremony is Antichrist
Without Unceasing Practise nothing can be done

Practise is Art If you leave off you are Lost

A Poet a Painter a Musician an Architect: the Man
Or Woman who is not one of these is not a
Christian" 

GIVE BODY to IDEAS

I ended my last post by saying: "The picture I get is that Jesus, Newton, Blake, the Creator and Urizen shared the same instrument as well as some of the same activity. That activity was giving body to ideas."

Here is the passage from Northrup Frye' s Fearful Symmetry (Page 267) about giving body to ideas. "The artist does not use natural images to clothe his ideas so much as to give body to them. An abstract idea is a spectre, a collapsing skeleton; a concrete image has flesh and blood. Hence the rather violent image of woven bodies which Blake employs in this context: from the skeleton's point of view it is rather difficult to say whether the flesh is body or clothing. In making the familiar intelligible, in imposing a permanent vision on the flux of time, the artist creates a body out of nature which has a mental form. He thereby teaches us to see, in the small part of mystery which he has made coherent, the image, that is, the form of reality, of a universal coherence; he suggests, in other words, that if his natural body is a mental form, then the entire body of nature, from atoms to stars, may also be form of the human mind, if the imagination could get hold of it. Our fallen senses hollow out a tiny grotto in a boundless stretch of mystery, and this grotto is our home. But the center of the real universe is wherever we happen to be, and its circumference the limit of the radius of our experience. In the perspective of the awakened mind, the radius of of our experience is the universe, and art reveals to the senses of distant contact, eyesight and hearing, a universal home or Paradise which is ready for us to inhabit." 

Jerusalem, Plate 92, (E 252)

"Los answerd swift as the shuttle of gold. Sexes must vanish & cease
To be, when Albion arises from his dread repose O lovely Enitharmon:
When all their Crimes, their Punishments their Accusations of Sin:
All their Jealousies Revenges. Murders. hidings of Cruelty in Deceit
Appear only in the Outward Spheres of Visionary Space and Time.
In the shadows of Possibility by Mutual Forgiveness forevermore
And in the Vision & in the Prophecy, that we may Foresee & Avoid
The terrors of Creation & Redemption & Judgment. Beholding them
Displayd in the Emanative Visions of Canaan in Jerusalem & in Shiloh
And in the Shadows of Remembrance, & in the Chaos of the Spectre
Amalek, Edom, Egypt, Moab, Ammon, Ashur, Philistea, around
Jerusalem" 

This is the world turned upside down. What we have called reality is seen to be illusion; what we have called illusion is seen to be reality. The powers which have controlled us have become powerless. Albion arises and a new day dawns.

NOTHING LOST

Northrup Frye has a good bit to say that adds to the picture of Golgoonoza which we have been developing. Here is a paragraph which clarifies the purpose and the eventual outcome for Blake's City of Imagination. Notice that he emphasizes that Golgonooza as it becomes the New Jerusalem, 'the total form of all culture and civilization', will make permanent (but not static) all the imaginative work which has been contributed to its building. It reminds me of a phrase which I picked up somewhere along the way: nothing lost, nothing wasted.

This is from page 91 of Fearful Symmetry:

"Inspiration is the artist's empirical proof of the divinity of his imagination; and all inspiration is divine in origin whether used, perverted, hidden or frittered away in reverie. All imaginative and creative arts, being eternal, go to build up a permanent structure, which Blake called Golgonooza, above time, and, when this structure is finished, nature, its scaffolding, will be knocked away and man will live in it. Golgonooza will be the city of God, the New Jerusalem which is the total form of all culture and civilization. Nothing that the heroes, martyrs, prophets and poets of the past have done for it has been wasted; no anonymous and unrecognized contribution to it has been overlooked. In it is conserved all the good man has done, and in it is completed all he hoped and intended to do. And the artist who uses the same energy and genius that Homer and Isaiah had will find that he not only lives in the same palace of art as Homer and Isaiah, but lives at the same time."

Perhaps Blake is even more inclusive in this passage about Los' work:

Jerusalem, Plate 13,(E 157)
"Golgonooza: Los walks round the walls night and day.    

He views the City of Golgonooza, & its smaller Cities:
The Looms & Mills & Prisons & Work-houses of Og & Anak:
The Amalekite: the Canaanite: the Moabite: the Egyptian:
And all that has existed in the space of six thousand years:
Permanent, & not lost not lost nor vanishd, & every little act,
Word, work, & wish, that has existed, all remaining still
In those Churches ever consuming & ever building by the Spectres
Of all the inhabitants of Earth wailing to be Created:
Shadowy to those who dwell not in them, meer possibilities:
But to those who enter into them they seem the only substances
For every thing exists & not one sigh nor smile nor tear,
Plate 14
One hair nor particle of dust, not one can pass away." 

Satan's Watch-fiends Never Find the Gate of Los

Yale Center for British Art

Jerusalem

Plate 39

 

Jerusalem, Plate 35 [39], (E 181)
"this gate cannot be found

By Satans Watch-fiends tho' they search numbering every grain
Of sand on Earth every night, they never find this Gate.
It is the Gate of Los.
Withoutside is the Mill, intricate,  dreadful
And fill'd with cruel tortures; but no mortal man can find the Mill
Of Satan, in his mortal pilgrimage of seventy years" 

VISION of GOD

We are fortunate to have Northrup Frye's Fearful Symmetry as a Google book even though we are not able to read all the pages there. 

In the first paragraph of Chapter 5, Frye delineates the relationship between the individual mind and mind of God. He refers to fallen man as the ego which perceives the general. As a part of the Universal Creator, man perceives or creates as a mental form. It is in the mind of the totality of creative power that we are able to perceive the particular. If we see through that seed of truth planted within us, we perceive this world as a 'single creature' fallen and redeemed. Frye states, 'This is the vision of God (subjective genitive: the vision which God in us has).'

This is the fourfold vision of which Blake speaks in a Letter to Thomas Butts, (E 722):

"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 idea that we must see not with but through the eye, is true at the level of vision as well; we are not to see the vision, or with the vision but through the vision to the transcendent reality which provides the vision and the means of apprehending it.







Auguries of Innocence, (E 520)

"This Lifes dim Windows of the Soul
Distorts the Heavens from Pole to Pole
And leads you to Believe a Lie
When you see with not thro the Eye
That was born in a night to perish in a night
When the Soul slept in the beams of Light."

FEARFUL SYMMETRY

It is not easy to understand Blake's attitude toward Good & Evil. Northrup Frye, a renowned student of Blake has given some explanations in Fearful Symmetry. Let's go to him and to Mr. Blake himself for some help.

Northrup Frye, Fearful Symmetry, Page 197
"Moral good and moral evil do not represent any genuine opposition. The one wages wars and executes criminals; the other murders. The one exploits labor; the other robs. The one exploits marriage on the destruction of virginity; the other rapes. But they have a common enemy, the power of genius and prophecy. In terms of moral good it is not the murderer or the robber but the prophet who is really evil. Barabbas can be safely released, for it is impossible that his robberies can destroy the social structure of Pilate and Caiphas; but there is deadly danger in Jesus and John the Baptist, who must be got rid of at all costs."

Northrup Frye, Fearful Symmetry, Page 56
"Hence evil is a negative: all evil consists either in self-restraint or restraint of others. There can be no such thing, strictly speaking, as an evil act; all acts are good, and evil comes when activity is perverted into the frustration of activity, in oneself or others...
This death-impulse, this perverted wish to cut down and restrict the scope of life, is the touchstone not only of all the obvious vices, but of many acts often not classified as such, like teasing, instilling fear or discouragement, or exaction unthinking obedience."

William Blake, Annotations to Lavater (E 601)
"But as I understand Vice it is a Negative...Accident is the omission of act in self & the hindering of act in another, This is Vice but all Act [<from Individual propensity>] is Virtue. To hinder another is not an act it is the contrary it is a restraint on action both in ourselves & in the person hinderd. for he who hinders another omits his own duty. at the time
Murder is Hindering Another
Theft is Hindering Another
Backbiting. Undermining C[i]rcumventing & whatever is Negative is Vice."

Northrup Frye, Fearful Symmetry, Page 58
"But self-development leads us into a higher state of integration with a larger imaginative unit which is ultimately God. Hence the paradox that one gains his life by losing it, which Jesus taught. The selfish or egocentric are incapable of developing themselves; that comes from expansion outward not withdrawal inward. Hence there are two selves in man absolutely opposed to one another, the better self that grows and lives and the worse self that rots and withers, the good and evil angel:"

William Blake, Annotation to Lavater (E 594)
"Man is a twofold being. one part capable of evil & the other
capable of good that which is capable of good is not also
capable of evil. but that which is capable of evil is also
capable of good. this aphorism seems to consider man as
simple & yet capable of evil. now both evil & good cannot
exist in a simple being. for thus 2 contraries would. spring
from one essence which is impossible. but if man is
considerd as only evil. & god only good. how then is
regeneration effected which turns the evil to good. by
casting out the evil. by the good.
See Matthew XII. Ch. 26. 27. 28. 29 vs"
["If it is Satan who is expelling Satan, then he is divided against himself - so how do you suppose that his kingdom can continue? And if I expel devils because I am an ally of Beelzebub, what alliance do your sons make when they do the same thing? They can settle that question for you! But if I am expelling devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has swept over you unawares! How do you suppose anyone could get into a strong man's house and steal his property unless he first tied up the strong man? But if he did that, he could ransack his whole house."]

Northrup Frye, Fearful Symmetry, Page 58
"Man has within him the principle of life and the principle of death: one is the imagination, the other the natural man.
...
The only possible cure for the original sin of this Selfhood of the natural man is vision, the revelation that this world is fallen and therefore not ultimate."

I think this leads us right back to the first quote; which says in essence that the enemy of the moral system is the prophet who can destroy the status quo.

Los and his Spectre

Jerusalem, Plate 6

Blake's Tyger

Perhaps the most often read and significant of the poems in Songs of Innocence and Experience is Tyger,Tyger. With this poem in mind Northrup Frye wrote his tremendous book called Fearful Symmetry:

"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night.
What Immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart begin to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night.
What Immortal hand or eye Dare
frame thy fearful symmetry?"





Focus on this question: "Did he who made the lamb make thee?" That's food for considerable thought! At the least it calls into question many conventional ideas about God.

This could be the fundamental spiritual issue for Blake throughout his life, and for a great many of us: What about it, God? Are you a killer as well as a lover?
What do you Think?

REVELATIONS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wikipedia Commons

Death on a Pale Horse

 Book of Revelations 5:10 

They sang a new song and these are the words they sang, "You are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals; for you were slain, and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God; and we shall reign on the earth."

...6:1 - Then I watched while the Lamb broke one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice of thunder, "Come out!"
6:2 - I looked, and before my eyes was a white horse. Its rider carried a bow, and he was given a crown. He rode out conquering and bent on conquest.
6:3 - Then, when the Lamb broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature, cry, "Come out!"
6:4 - And another horse came forth, red in colour. Its rider was given power to deprive the earth of peace, so that men should kill each other. A huge sword was put into his hand.
6:5a - When the Lamb broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, "Come out!"
6:5b-6 - I looked again and there before my eyes was a black horse. Its rider had a pair of scales in his hand, and I heard a voice which seemed to come from the four living creatures, saying, "A quart of wheat for a shilling, and three quarts of barley for a shilling - but no tampering with the oil or the wine!"
6:7 - Then, when he broke the fourth seal I heard the voice of the fourth living creature cry, "Come out!"
6:8 - Again I looked, and there appeared a horse sickly green in colour. The name of its rider was death, and the grave followed close behind him. A quarter of the earth was put into their power, to kill with the sword, by famine, by violence, and through the wild beasts of the earth.

Blake's Bible

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

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

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

Plate 11 of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:
" The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could percieve. And particularly they studied the genius of each city &country. placing it under its mental deity. Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began Priesthood. Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounced that the Gods had orderd such things. Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Word within the Word

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LOS AND ORC

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


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

Wikipedia Commons

Book of Urizen

Copy G

Los at the forge with Enitharmon and Orc

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

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

Read Blake or About Blake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good luck with your study of William Blake.