EUROPE PLATE 5

There is enormous impact to this plate if it can be experienced in its entirety. On the previous plate the Shadowy Female stated:
 
"I bring forth from my teeming bosom myriads of flames."
 
and then she:

"rolld her shady clouds
Into the secret place" 

British Museum
Europe
Plate 5, Copy D

We can see the large winged figure as the immortal Shadowy Female as she is being transitioned to functioning on earth. Here she becomes involved in the sexual union which will bring forth a child:

"Like pearly clouds they meet together in the crystal house: 
And Los, possessor of the moon, joy'd in the peaceful night:"

Enitharmon's crystal house is her womb, and Los's pearly clouds are his semen.

The comet is appropriately presented as the moment when the the male and female lose their distinctions for the mutuality of impregnation.  An entity from beyond the planetary sphere makes its sudden appearance with fiery portent. Blake makes it possible to look at this fiery being as either Orc, Christ or Urizen.

The first lines of Blake's text echo early lines of Milton's On the Morning of Christ's Nativity.
 
Milton, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity
It was the Winter wilde,
While the Heav'n-born-childe,
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;

But Blake soon transitions from the morning of birth to the night when the 'thunders of the deep' are released by the abdication of the rule of Urthona (spirit) to Urizen (reason). What will follow is Blake's explanation of the failure of Christianity to follow the revolutionary path initiated by the entry of Christ into history. Europe is a Prophecy because Blake attempts to show his audience the way Christianity deviated form the message of Christ, and how the conditions we experience are the consequences.

Europe, Plate 3, (E 61)
                    "A PROPHECY

     The deep of winter came;                                    
     What time the secret child,
Descended thro' the orient gates of the eternal day:
War ceas'd, & all the troops like shadows fled to their abodes.

Then Enitharmon saw her sons & daughters rise around.            
Like pearly clouds they meet together in the crystal house:
And Los, possessor of the moon, joy'd in the peaceful night:
Thus speaking while his num'rous sons shook their bright fiery wings

Again the night is come 
That strong Urthona takes his rest,                              
And Urizen unloos'd from chains                                  
Glows like a meteor in the distant north
Stretch forth your hands and strike the elemental strings!
Awake the thunders of the deep."

Four Zoas, Night V, Page 59, (E 340) 
"Where is Sweet Vala gloomy prophet where the lovely form
That drew the body of Man from heaven into this dark Abyss� fields
Shew thy soul Vala shew thy bow & quiver of secret fires

Draw thy bow Vala from the depths of hell thy black bow draw 
And twang the bow string to our howlings let thine arrows black
Sing in the Sky as once they sang upon the hills of Light
When dark Urthona wept in torment of the secret pain

He wept & he divided & he laid his gloomy head
Down on the Rock of Eternity on darkness of the deep             
Torn by black storms & ceaseless torrents of consuming fire
Within his breast his fiery sons chaind down & filld with cursings

And breathing terrible blood & vengeance gnashing his teeth with pain
Let loose the Enormous Spirit in the darkness of the deep
And his dark wife that once fair crystal form divinely clear     
Within his ribs producing serpents whose souls are flames of fire

But now the times return upon thee Enitharmons womb
Now holds thee soon to issue forth. Sound Clarions of war
Call Vala from her close recess in all her dark deceit
Then rage on rage shall fierce redound out of her crystal quiver 

So sung the Demons round red Orc & round faint Enitharmon 
Sweat & blood stood on the limbs of Los in globes. his fiery Eyelids
Faded. he rouzd he siezd the wonder in his hands & went
Shuddring & weeping thro the Gloom & down into the deeps

Enitharmon nursd her fiery child in the dark deeps              
Sitting in darkness. over her Los mournd in anguish fierce
Coverd with gloom. the fiery boy grew fed by the milk
Of Enitharmon. Los around her builded pillars of iron"

These are the inscriptions which were chosen from Edward Bysshe's The Art of English Poetry. All are directed toward understanding events alluded to in the text and images as parallel to the cataclysmic entry of a comet as sign of change to come.

Top:
A Comet

Right margin:
Like some malignant
Planet that lowrs
upon the world.
                          Rowe.

These three quotes appear at the bottom of the plate:
He, like a Comet, burnd,
That fires the length of Ophiucus huge
In th' Arctick Skye; and from his horrid hair
Shakes Pestilence and war. ___
                                                   Milton

As the Red Comet from Saturnius sent
To fright the nations with a dire portent
With sweeping Glories glides along in air
And shakes the sparkles from his blazing hair.
                                                       Homer.

Comets imparting change to times and states
Brandish your golden tresses in the Skies.
                                                        Shakespear.

The Blake Archive gives further information on the source of the quotes:
"This pen and ink inscription appears in the margin to the right of the image. The lines are condensed from Nicholas Rowe, The Fair Penitent (1703), Act 3, Scene 1, lines 6-8. These lines are printed in Edward Bysshe, The Art of English Poetry, under the heading "Planet."
"This pen and ink inscription appears below the image. The first four lines are quoted from John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), Book 2, lines 708-10. The next four lines are quoted from Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's Iliad (1715-20), Book 4, lines 1-3, 104, 107, 108. The final two lines are adapted from William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part I (1598), Act I, Scene 1, lines 2-3. All three passages are printed in Edward Bysshe, The Art of English Poetry, under the heading 'Comet.'" 

Appendix 7

Plowman was a Christian, and like MacDonald he immediately recognized Blake as one and showed the way for those who came after him. With some difficulty Plowman induced the noted British critic, Middleton Murry, to enter the field of Blake studies. The resulting work, 'William Blake' first published in 1933, stands alone in one important respect. One should note first that Murry began his study of Blake without an explicit Christian perspective. He might therefore more properly belong to the group of critics discussed earlier, the secular writers, except that his study of Blake led to a spiritual experience.

Murry is unique in the existential way in which he entered into Blake's spiritual journey. He responded to Blake more personally than did the other critics of his generation. Murry got Blake's message. As he tells us in his preface, "my aim has been solely to discover and as far as possible, expound the doctrine of William Blake: 'The Everlasting Gospel'. The modern type of an enthusiast, Murry did not focus on the historical setting or other source material or upon aesthetic principles, but simply on the existential impression which Blake's poetry had on him.


                                                     233

Murry felt great admiration for Blake's spiritual vision (See his page 218). He professed a real commitment to Blake's expression of the Christian faith, while denying that it was Christianity (See his page 250). His empathy with Blake led him to sense what Blake had understood, and what Charles Williams had failed to grasp, "that the truest Christians are always heretics" (See my page 251). The inspiration of the 'Moment of Grace, which has played so vital a part in this book, probably came originally from Murry, although he did not call it that. Unfamiliar with the concept of grace, he called it the "eternal moment of creative vision" or the "Felpham moment". Murry could not interpret Blake from the perspective of a mature and informed Christian as his friend Plowman had done. Rather Murry, starting with a rather nebulous faith, caught something of the spirit of Christ from Blake and was honest enough to confess it (See his page 219). In that respect Murry has a rare if not unique place among Blake's literary critics. 

In l948 John Davies wrote The Theology of William Blake, so far as I know the earliest attempt specifically to relate Blake's message to the Christian faith in a systematic way. Davies emphasized the traditional facets of Blake's faith and had little to say about the anti-churchly dimension of Blake's thought, which according to my reading is paramount. Davies book seems to have attracted little notice among the community of Blake scholars. 

In 1964 William Hughes wrote a study of Blake's Jerusalem. Hughes does not present himself specifically as a Christian, but his work shows a rare level of spiritual maturity. When the reader feels ready for Jerusalem, Hughes makes an excellent companion for the adventure. Hughes pointed out the link between Blake and George MacDonald._ See ' his Jerusalem, page 7. 

Thomas Altizer is famous (or notorious?) as a founder of the God is Dead movement, prominent in theological circles in the sixties. Altizer owed a lot to Nietszche, who had announced the death of God a hundred years before. But shortly after he wrote The Gospel of Christian 


                                                                 234 

Altizer published a work entitled The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake in his introduction he called Blake "the first Christian atheist, the first visionary who chose the kenotic or self emptying path of immersing himself in the profane reality of experience as the way to the God who is all in all in Jesus". 

My own vision of Blake's faith diverges radically from Professor Altizer's. However all Blake scholars are indebted to him for his profound thoughts on the subject. In the last chapter mention was made of Norman Brown, author of Love's Body. Brown commited himself to Blake's structure of thought as Murry had done. 

I read Love's Body with an increasing sense of delight and awe. Brown may be the only person in our generation who  consciously tried to live Blake's doctrine. He understood Blake partially, like everyone else, and the parts which he emphasized are not those that have greatest meaning for me. Nevertheless I have a lot of respect for what Brown tried to do; in Love's Body he tells a fascinating story. "O Why was I born with a different face. I see things that other people don't see". 

EUROPE PLATE 4

British Museum
Europe
Plate 4, Copy D

Plate 4 of Copy D of Europe is considered to be a continuation of the Preludium. It contains inscriptions added by Cumberland perhaps under the supervision of Blake, as do Plates 2 and 3. The transcription of the inscriptions and identification of their authors is provided by the Blake Archive. The added text can be found in The Art of English Poetry by Edward Bysshe. The lines at the top of the plate are from Samuel Garth, The Dispensary and those on the bottom from Sir Richard Blackmore, Prince Arthur (1695).

Upper Quote:
          "Storms, Tempests. &c
He views with horror next the noisy cave
Where with hoarse din imprisond tempests rave
Where clam'rous Hurricanes attempt their flight
Or whirling in tumultuous Eddies fight."

Lower quote:
"This orbs wide frame with the convulsion shakes,
Oft opens in the Storm, and often cracks,
Horror, Amazement, and Despair appear,
In all the hideous forms that Mortals fear."

On Plate 4 Blake continues the speech begun by the Shadowy Female on Plate 3. The Shadowy Female is an immortal to whom the potentiality for destructive turmoil is visible. She desires that the storms which open the cracks which let out the tumult not be released to the world of matter. But Enitharmon allows the energy which has been contained to be unleashed . The Shadowy Female retreats as her energy is transferred to Enitharmon to be bound to matter.

Europe, Plate 2, (E 61)
"Unwilling I look up to heaven! unwilling count the stars!
Sitting in fathomless abyss of my immortal shrine.
I sieze their burning power
And bring forth howling terrors, all devouring fiery kings.

Devouring & devoured roaming on dark and desolate mountains      
In forests of eternal death, shrieking in hollow trees.
Ah mother Enitharmon!
Stamp not with solid form this vig'rous progeny of fires.

I bring forth from my teeming bosom myriads of flames.
And thou dost stamp them with a signet, then they roam abroad    
And leave me void as death:
Ah! I am drown'd in shady woe, and visionary joy.

And who shall bind the infinite with an eternal band?
To compass it with swaddling bands? and who shall cherish it
With milk and honey?                                             
I see it smile & I roll inward & my voice is past.

She ceast & rolld her shady clouds
Into the secret place."

Appendix 6

The lack of enthusiasm of both Lewis and Williams for Blake probably- stemmed from a fundamental difference of temperament: Blake considered questioning authority to be a primary virtue while the two Oxford Christians considered it a paramount crime.

Owen Barfield, a close friend of the Oxford Christians was much closer to Blake in spirit than were Lewis or Williams. Many of his metaphysical constructs closely resemble those of Blake. In all liklihood they came from common sources.

Evelyn Underhill is universally recognized as a primary authority on Christian mysticism. Her many books exhaustively treat the subject. In her largest work, first published in l9ll; she numbered Blake among the leading mystics of the Christian era; she quoted Blake extensively and referred to him a dozen times in the course of her work.

 Was Blake a mystic? The question has been debated almost as much as the question of his madness. Frye has the authoritative answer: Blake was a visionary, not a mystic, and Frye explains the difference. See Fearful Symmetry, p. 8. 231

Forty years after Underhill's Mysticism Sheldon Cheney wrote a book called Men Who Have Walked with God:
"Being the story of Mysticism through the ages told in the Biographies of representative seers and saints" (Title page).

Cheney devoted Chapter Ten to William Blake:

On page 309 of  Cheney's book:

Of all the later saints, William Blake was the one least limited 
by mortal nature. He believed that the soul is, during  this time-conditioned life on earth, a wanderer from the realm of pure spirit, from an Eden that exists eternally in a Golden Age.Throughout life he kept contact with the Golden Age, with Eter-nal Childhood, through visions. Death, he said, is no more thant the soul's passage from one room to another.

"Just before he died  reported one who was there, "his countenance became fair, his eyes brightened, and he burst into singing of the things he saw in Heaven." Thus William Blake brought down to a dingy room in crowded London, for the thousandth time, some of the light of Paradise. It was apparent not only to his faithful wife, who accepted his visions as reality, but to a neighbour woman who had come in to help Mrs. Blake. Observing how the cramped, dark room had lighted up, she said simply,  
 "I have been at the death of a saint"  

Cheney treated Blake's life as a spiritual journey, though without as complete an understanding as was achieved by later and more intensive scholars.

MacDonald, Bucke, Underhill, and Cheney, all writers on and admirers of Blake, had one comon characteristic as Christians: they were individualists; none wrote under the auspices of an ecclesiastical organization. True, MacDonald served as a. dissenting minister, but his writing was not a part of his role as a clergyman. It was rather a refreshing form of escape, as well as a means of supplementing the financial pittance which he received from the church.

The essay on Blake written by T.S.Eliot and appearing in The Sacred Wood (1920) certainly belongs in any survey of Christian critics. Eliot, a prominent religious poet and practically the arbiter of literary taste in England between the two World Wars, might be expected to have discerned the spiritual dimension of Blake's poetry. Writing at the age of 32 he showed a healthy respect for Blake's greatness. In his essay Eliot expressed some valuable and creative insights about Blake. For example Blake, with some other literary giants, had a "peculiar honesty which, in a world too frightened to be honest, is peculiarly terrifying" and "Blake's poetry has the unpleasantness of great poetry".

A few pages on Blake "was naked and he saw men naked". These and other comments in his essay are incisive in a way that reveals why Eliot's contemporaries held him.in such awe. Unfortunately Eliot failed fully to appreciate Blake's spiritual greatness. Eight years later he tells us in extenuation that when he wrote The Sacred Wood, he had not yet become interested in the relationship between poetry and the realm of the spirit. 

However The Sacred Wood was written presumably before Eliot became a Christian.

                                                           232 

Still writing as an aesthete. Eliot developed into the kind of high churchman least apt to find Blake's anti-priestly stance attractive. In fact one is tempted to suspect that Blake became more terrifying to him as he went through life.

In his twenties he explained in the clearest possible terms spiritual realities that the secular critics had stumbled over. Only a mature Christian can deal adequately with Blake's Christian iconoclasm, one who readily distinguishes between substance and form in the Christian life.

Those outside the Christian faith rather uniformly equate Christianity with its ecclesiastical expressions. Blake of all people showed the distinction ("the outward ceremony is Antichrist."), but in order to discern this fully one must in some sense share his spiritual perspective; no amount of material knowledge in itself will suffice.

Another Sorce - https://tseliot.com/prose/william-blake

EUROPE PLATE 3

British Museum
Europe
Plate 3, Copy D

The pilgrim who begins his journey in the Preludium is other than he seems. He is being sent on his travels by Enitharmon the mother of all things as Orc and his emanation (the shadowy female), beg not to be brought into life. The innocent pilgrim is prepared to set forth, ignorant of the assassin ready to attack.


The Preludium is the interval of preparation for the action to come. It is unconnected to the events which are to follow except that Enitharmon will be commissioned to take charge of the 18 Christian centuries.


The only inscription on this plate is the words 'The Assasin' at the top of the image, reminding us of the poem inscribed on the reverse of Plate 2.

Europe, Plate 1, (E 60)
                          PRELUDIUM
"The nameless shadowy female rose from out 

the breast of Orc:
Her snaky hair brandishing in the winds of Enitharmon,
And thus her voice arose.

O mother Enitharmon wilt thou bring forth other sons?
To cause my name to vanish, that my place may not be found.      
For I am faint with travel!      
Like the dark cloud disburdend in the day of dismal thunder.

My roots are brandish'd in the heavens. my fruits in earth beneath
Surge, foam, and labour into life, first born & first consum'd!
Consumed and consuming!                                          
Then why shouldst thou accursed mother bring me into life?

I wrap my turban of thick clouds around my lab'ring head; 
And fold the sheety waters as a mantle round my limbs.
Yet the red sun and moon,
And all the overflowing stars rain down prolific pains."

Milton, Plate 3, (E 97)
"First Orc was Born then the Shadowy Female: then All Los's Family
At last Enitharmon brought forth Satan Refusing Form, in vain
The Miller of Eternity made subservient to the Great Harvest
That he may go to his own Place Prince of the Starry Wheels"

Milton, Plate 10 [11], (E 104)
"Then Los & Enitharmon knew that Satan is Urizen
Drawn down by Orc & the Shadowy Female into Generation
Oft Enitharmon enterd weeping into the Space, there appearing
An aged Woman raving along the Streets (the Space is named
Canaan) then she returnd to Los weary frighted as from dreams   

The nature of a Female Space is this: it shrinks the Organs
Of Life till they become Finite & Itself seems Infinite."

Jerusalem, Plate 13, (E 157)
"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."

Christian Blakeans

First posted by Larry in October 2014

 

Of the critics, interpreters and scholars we have discussed, none to my knowledge wrote primarily as a Christian. However a few Blakeans did. Side by side with the secular stream of Blake criticism exists a smaller and less known group of writers whose interest in Blake was primarily spiritual. 

A member of the narrow band of Christian Blakeans was Kathleen Raine, who got the term from the poet, Yeats.  This survey has omitted many worthwhile Blake studies. 

Two other scholars who contributed appreciably to my own understanding were Harold Bloom, author of Blake's Apocalypse, and Bernard Blackstone, who wrote English Blake. 

George MacDonald

National Portrait Gallery, London

                                                         
Among the most notable was a Scottish minister and novelist named George MacDonald, born three years before Blake's death. MacDonald's reputation rests largely with his children's stories and two imaginative works entitled Phantastes and Lilith. MacDonald recognized Blake's visions as belonging to the mainstream of Christian thought. He translated some of them into his own fairy tales and visionary novels. The Blakean eternal pervades all of MacDonald's works; they abound with spiritual identities in many ways comparable to Blake's fantastic cast of characters. 

One can trace Blake's influence through MacDonald to the writings of his two famous disciples, C.S.Lewis and Charles Williams. Like Blake and MacDonald, Lewis and Williams conceived of the real as residing in the nonmaterial. With The Screwtape Letters Lewis gave us the most formidable literary devil since Urizen. 

Williams' metaphysical thrillers partake of the same transcendent dimension. The two men's visions broke like a new sunrise over the darkened positivistic face of English culture near the outbreak of the Second World War. Strangely enough these two Christian thinkers gave little evidence of awareness of their debt to Blake. Lewis did mention MHH in the preface of his most Blakean work, a vision of the hereafter called The Great Divorce, but he seems not to have fully realized that he had ingested Blakean values through his spiritual father, George MacDonald. 

Williams, in a little known work entitled The Forgiveness of Sins, made extended reference to Blake's vision of forgiveness as the central doctrine of Christianity. Nevertheless he categorized Blake's work as heretical. In another work Williams rated Wordsworth as the only powerful spiritual poet in English since Milton. I find it puzzling how truly Blakean the two great Oxford Christians were without acknowledging the debt. Evidently both Lewis and Williams were too threatened by Blake's anarchism, and especially by his attack on the established Church, to open themselves consciously to Blake's ideas.

The "flat sided steep" of MHH appears in Lewis' spiritual geography at The Great Divorce. 

 MacDonald  was secure enough in his own faith to feel no threat from Blake's immoderate language. He was also pure enough to find Blake pure. All four writers have in common a focus on the eternal. MacDonald learned to write about the eternal from Blake, Lewis and Williams from MacDonald. The three later men all understood art in the same sense that Blake did, what we might call art for God's sake. 

Richard Bucke, of the late 19th Century, like MacDonald was a solitary spiritual luminary. A psychiatrist, commited to 'Bacon, Newton & Locke' he nevertheless recognized Blake's spiritual genius. In his famous book, Cosmic Consciousness Bucke named Blake in a group of fourteen who he believed had experienced this psychic mutation. With Blake he included Buddha, Jesus, Paul, Boehme, Walt Whitman, and appropriately enough Francis Bacon. Cosmic Consciousness is a strange mixture of science and faith, which today has little credence in the citadel of either camp. Blake would probably have deplored it; however he would have enjoyed the recognition which he never received during his lifetime.richard bucke

EUROPE PLATE 2

New York Public Library

Europe

Plate 2, Title page 

The Title Page of Europe presents a menacing serpent which can be seen as the energy of Orc poised to release revolution. The previous image on the Frontispiece represented Urizen as the creator god who circumscribed the limits. Urizen struggles to preserve order by restraining energy. To Orc the only way the removal of the accumulation of the restrictions which imprison man in the manacles he himself forges can be accomplished, is by the release of his energy. The energy released in the French Revolution revealed the chaos which is so precariously controlled by Urizen.   

Opposed aspects of the serpent as he manifests in progressive stages of development is presented by Northrup Frye in Fearful Symmetry:
 
"Orc or human imagination trying to burst out of the body, is often described as a serpent bound on the tree of mystery, dependent upon it, yet struggling to get free.
... The energy of Orc which broke away from Egypt was perverted into the Sinaitic moral code, and this is symbolized by the nailing of Orc in the form of a serpent to a tree.
...
It is this serpent, man's Selfhood or desire to assert rather than create that stands between man and Paradise: the cherub with the flaming sword who guards the tree of life therefore is the demonic 'serpent'.
...
The fallen serpent is a worm 'seventy inches long,' lasting for 'sixty winters'; the demonic serpent or Covering Cherub is a dragon. The former is the helplessness of the victim; the latter the ferocity of the tyrant. But the dragon, in the Bible and elsewhere, is a symbol for something far worse than Satan, the 'Limit of Opacity': he is a symbol of the chaos which underlies it, waiting to burst in and overwhelm the entire cosmos...The creation of  the fallen world is an 'act of Mercy' because the stability and permanence of the dead organic world forms a barrier between our weak struggling lives and the total annihilation of all beings in chaos." (Page 136-8)

Europe,  Plate 10, (E 63)
"The ever-varying spiral ascents to the heavens of heavens
Were bended downward; and the nostrils golden gates shut
Turn'd outward, barr'd and petrify'd against the infinite.       

Thought chang'd the infinite to a serpent; that which pitieth:   
To a devouring flame; and man fled from its face and hid
In forests of night; then all the eternal forests were divided
Into earths rolling in circles of space, that like an ocean rush'd
And overwhelmed all except this finite wall of flesh.            
Then was the serpent temple form'd, image of infinite
Shut up in finite revolutions, and man became an Angel;
Heaven a mighty circle turning; God a tyrant crown'd."    

British Museum
Europe
reverse 
Plate 2, Copy D

On the reverse side of Plate 2 is an inscription from the same source as was noted in the post Europe Plate 1. The poem inscribed on the plate is from the novel The Mysteries of Udolpho published in 1794. The poem, The Pilgrim, by Ann Radcliff the novel's author, is apropos for directing our attention to Plate 3, the Preludium, and setting the scene for a journey into unknown territory.  

 
THE PILGRIM
Slow o'er the Apennine, with bleeding feet,
A patient Pilgrim wound his lonely way,
To deck the Lady of Loretto's seat
With all the little wealth his zeal could pay.
From mountain-tops cold died the ev'ning ray,
And, stretch'd in twilight, slept the vale below;
And now the last, last purple streaks of day
Along the melancholy West fade slow.
High o'er his head, the restless pines complain,
As on their summit rolls the breeze of night;
Beneath, the hoarse stream chides the rocks in vain:
The Pilgrim pauses on the dizzy height.
Then to the vale his cautious step he prest,
For there a hermit's cross was dimly seen,
Cresting the rock, and there his limbs might rest,
Cheer'd in the good man's cave, by faggot's sheen,
On leafy beds, nor guile his sleep molest.
Unhappy Luke! he trusts a treacherous clue!
Behind the cliff the lurking robber stood;
No friendly moon his giant shadow threw
Athwart the road, to save the Pilgrim's blood;
On as he went a vesper-hymn he sang,
The hymn, that nightly sooth'd him to repose.
Fierce on his harmless prey the ruffian sprang!
The Pilgrim bleeds to death, his eye-lids close,
Yet his meek spirit knew no vengeful care,
But, dying, for his murd'rer breath'd---a sainted pray'r!"

Appendix 4

My own serious interest in Blake began in 1977 when my wife brought Blake a psychological study by W. P. Witcutt home from the library. I had been on the point of a commitment to the study of Jung's voluminous writings, which at that time seemed the most creative intellectual work at hand. Witcutt diverted my commitment to  Blake, which we have now. 

In the late forties Blake scholarship came of age with Northrup Frye's Fearful Symmetry. Blake's students have overwhelmingly acclaimed this work as the most authoritative and brilliant interpretation of Blake that we have. The most prominent teachers of the succeeding decades paid tribute to Frye. David Erdman called him our most Blakean critic, and Harold Bloom said that Frye had taught him to read Blake.

Fearful Symmetry is a difficult book, but its difficulty stems from the depth of the ideas it contains. Frye's style is delightful, learned and debonair. Most serious students of Blake could profit from several readings of Fearful Symmetry. Both Frye and Percival, who wrote Circle of Destiny spent ten years with their Blake projects. Lovers of Blake have every reason to appreciate the arduous labors of these two men, and of others who have brought so much of Blake's obscurity out into the light of the 20th Century. 
No work equivalent to that of Percival or of Frye has appeared since. 

Later works have tended to focus upon some aspect of Blake studies rather than upon his work as a whole. In the fifties David Erdman published his comprehensive study of the political analogy, entitled Prophet Against Empire. He related Blake's art almost exclusively to the political events through which Blake lived.


Erdman has by no means a Blakean mind, but his historical approach provides a valuable supplement to our knowledge of Blake and his day. For a really close reading of the political dimension of Blake's work there is no substitute for Prophet Against Empire. Erdman built his literary career upon Blake more extensively than any other scholar except perhaps Keynes. Like Keynes he has edited the complete works, not once but several times. 

The last of the major places in Blake scholarship, in my opinion, belongs to Kathleen Raine. Like Percival and Frye she spent a full decade studying Blake. Then she produced her superlative two volume work, Blake and Tradition. In her study, as specialized as Erdman's, she explored at great length what she called the 'heterodox'.


Jacob Bronowski wrote two shorter works in the same vein, Man Without a Mask and William Blake and the Age of Revolution.  


                                             228 

Kathleen Raine related Blake explicitly and in depth to the Gnostics, Neoplatonists, Cabbalists, and alchemists.' Profusely illustrated, Raines's delightful book is almost guaranteed to give pleasure to any Blakean and to heighten his or her enthusiamn for the great poet. 

Raine, a Neoplatonist, deplored what she called Blake's 'Christianizing' of his myth. In this respect Christian readers simply have to suffer her kindly. In her autobiography she described her own unsuccessful attempt to accept the Christian faith. 

The last of the secularly oriented Blake writers to be discussed here is the Jungian analyst, June Singer. It goes without saying that her volume, The Unholy Bible, is specialized in nature. Singer deals almost exclusively with MHH. She treats Blake, not as an artist or spiritual seer, but as an interesting psychological exhibit. She saw Blake as a primitive, unconscious precursor of Jung. One could debate whether the lack of consciousness belonged to Blake or to Singer. 

EUROPE PLATE 1

British Museum
Europe, Plate 1
Frontispiece with inscription

David Erdman on page 220 of Prophet Against Empire gives information on the inscriptions found on Copy D of Europe, a Prophecy which is in the British Museum. This copy was owned by Blake's friend Ozias Humphery, but the inscription are thought to have been written by another of Blake's friends and fellow artists, George Cumberland. Erdman states, "Either because he understood Europe very well, or because he was coached by Blake himself, his friend George Cumberland added explanatory glosses to a copy now in the British Museum, mostly in the form of quotations from Blake's household volume, Bysshe's anthology."

We are acquainted with 'Bysshe's anthology' as noted in the post Enjoyment.

Written on the Frontispiece are words from Paradise Lost. Here is a longer section of Milton's poem with the inscription in bold.

Paradise Lost, Book VII

"On heav’nly ground they stood, and from the shore
They view’d the vast immeasurable Abyss
Outrageous as a Sea, dark, wasteful, wilde,
Up from the bottom turn’d by furious windes
And surging waves, as Mountains to assault
Heav’ns highth, and with the Center mix the Pole.
Silence, ye troubl’d waves, and thou Deep, peace,
Said then th’ Omnific Word, your discord end:
Nor staid, but on the Wings of Cherubim
Uplifted, in Paternal Glorie rode
Farr into Chaos, and the World unborn;
For Chaos heard his voice: him all his Traine
Follow’d in bright procession to behold
Creation, and the wonders of his might.
Then staid the fervid Wheeles, and in his hand
He took the golden Compasses, prepar’d
In Gods Eternal store, to circumscribe
This Universe, and all created things:
One foot he center’d, and the other turn’d
Round through the vast profunditie obscure,
And said, thus farr extend, thus farr thy bounds,
This be thy just Circumference, O World."
John Milton

In his chapter in Blake's Visionary Forms Dramatic, Michael J Tolley comments on the Frontispiece to Europe:

"Rich in allusion, simple in outline, grand in sublime tradition of painting, the frontispiece, envisioning the creator as a windswept old man who kneels in a sun that breaks through clouds to set his compasses on the void beneath, expresses a fundamental protest against the theodicy of Blake's time. While the design stands independent of Europe in conception, it is fittingly placed to introduce this poem, and may even have germinated its basic idea. To the right of the pencil sketch on page 96 of the Notebook are the words 'who shall bind / the Infinite,' a crucial phrase in the Europe Preludium. This Notebook sketch is in close association with others used in Europe; it is dated by Keynes as pre-1793. Whether or not Blake had Europe already in mind when he drew the sketch, his application to it of a key question from the poem shows how ironically he viewed the creator's attempted circumscription of the unbounded abyss.
...
Blake's way of showing men that the Miltonic-Newtonic creator their reason accepts as God is only a projection of their guilty fears[,] was to labor with loving care [on] a definitive image of this creator as Urizen. Once clearly seen, he believed, this image must be rejected as blasphemous error."

Appendix 3

The pre-Raphaelites, especially D.G.Rossetti, found in Blake an
early exponent of the non-material and anti-establishment values
for which they stood. Swinburne picked up this interest and
wrote "A Critical Essay" on Blake lavish in its praise of the poet.

In the Victorian era Swinburne played the role of devil, and it was
Blake's deviltry (nonconformism) that most appealed to him. He
mistakenly perceived Blake as an exponent of art for art's sake,
which was his own game at the time. Obviously art meant
something far different to Blake than it meant to Swinburne.

Swinburne's "Critical Essay" was an outrage against the
establishment and a distortion of Blake's art.
Nevertheless it helped to keep Blake's name alive
through a dismal philistine age.

The mainstream of Blake's legacy comes down through
the Irish poet, Yeats. Yeats derived much of his own imagery
from the Blake; his poems breathe with the Blakean spirit.

With E.J.Ellis Yeats wrote what became at the turn of
the century the primary Blake study. Yeats explained Blake
with his own language and thought forms, and Mona Wilson
found his interpretation of Blake "often more obscure than
Blake's own text".

Be that as it may, Yeats kept the flame burning and prepared
the way for the explosion of interest in Blake that came in the
twenties. ii In 1910 Joseph Wicksteed worked out some of
the basic principles of Blake's symbology and made them
public in his volume, Blake's Vision of the Book of Job.

Northrup Frye

Vancouver Sun

Speaking for his generation of Blake scholars Northrup Frye

said they had all learned their Blake symbology from

Wicksteed.  Wicksteed's Job in fact provides an excellent

beginning for the serious Blake student.

 Sir Geoffrey Keynes' three volume work, Blake's Complete Writings 
appeared in 1925; with revisions it has remained the
definitive text. Two years later Mona Wilson's biography
appeared, based upon the earlier works of Gilchrist and Symons:
Her biography remains for the ordinary student the best source
of information about Blake's life.

Foster Damon's William Blake: His Philosophy and Symbols appeared about the same time. This work is hard to find today,
but most of the interpreters who worked in the following decades
acknowledged a debt to Damon. His Blake Dictionary, published in
1965 and still available, is an extremely useful source of information
about Blake.

The year 1938 saw a creative and valuable interpretation of Blake
at the hands of Milton Percival. His book, Circle of Destiny, is a
systematic, cogent, and readable introduction to Blake's thought.
Percival became the primary Blake interpreter for C.G.Jung and for
Kathleen Raine:

Kathleen Raine.

In 1946 Wiliam Purcel Witcut wrote a little book relating the Four Zoas to Jung's four psychic functions, entitled Blake, A Psychological Study.

ENJOYMENT

During the time that Blake was most reproachful  about the treatment he has received at the hands of Cromek for cheating him out of the earnings he should have received for engraving his designs of Blair's The Grave, he made a unique entry into his notebook.

British Museum
Blake's Notebook
Page 88

British Museum
Blake's Notebook
Page 89

 Miscellaneous Prose, Memoranda from Notebook,  PAGE 88, (E 696)
          "South Molton Street
     Sunday August . 18O7  My Wife was told by a Spirit to look
for her fortune by opening by chance a book which she had in her
hand it was Bysshes Art of Poetry.  She opend the following
          I saw 'em kindle with Desire
          While with soft sighs they blew the fire
          Saw the approaches of their joy
          He growing more fierce & she less coy
          Saw how they mingled melting rays
          Exchanging Love a thousand ways
          Kind was the force on every side      
          Her new desire she could not hide
          Nor would the shepherd be denied
          The blessed minute he pursud
          Till she transported in his arms
          Yields to the Conqueror all her charms
          His panting breast to hers now joind
          They feast on raptures unconfind
          Vast & luxuriant such as prove
          The immortality of Love
          For who but a Divinity
          Could mingle souls to that degree 
          And melt them into Extasy
          Now like the Phoenix both expire 
          While from the ashes of their fire 
          Spring up a new & soft desire 
          Like charmers thrice they did invoke 
          The God & thrice new Vigor took
                                       BEHN

I was so well pleased with her Luck that I thought I would try my
Own & opend the following
          As when the winds their airy quarrel try
          Justling from every quarter of the Sky
          This way & that the Mountain oak they bear    
          His boughs they shatter & his branches tear
PAGE 89
          With leaves & falling mast they spread the Ground
          The hollow Valleys Eccho [the] to the Sound
          Unmovd the royal plant their fury mocks
          Or shaken clings more closely to the rocks
          For as he shoots his lowring head on high     
          So deep in earth his fixd foundations lie
                                             DRYDENS VIRGIL" 

The book in which they found these verses which affirmed and comforted them was a popular work by Edward Bysshe which was first published in 1702 and revised several times. The Art of English Poetry contains sections on writing poetry, quotes from numerous poets arranged by themes, and a rhyming dictionary. 

In this electronic copy of the 1737 edition you can locate the passage Catherine selected: Vol i, Page 139. William's selection is included on Page 9 in Vol ii of the 1762 edition.
 
This is the poem Blake wrote in the notebook following the poetry he copied from The Art of English Poetry.

Songs & Ballads, From Notebook, (E 481)
British Library
Blake's Notebook
Page 4

"I rose up at the dawn of day
Get thee away get thee away
Prayst thou for Riches away away
This is the Throne of Mammon grey

Said I this sure is very odd                                     
I took it to be the Throne of God
For every Thing besides I have
It is only for Riches that I can crave

I have Mental Joy & Mental Health
And Mental Friends & Mental wealth          
Ive a Wife I love & that loves me
Ive all But Riches Bodily
                
I am in Gods presence night & day           
And he never turns his face away
The accuser of sins by my side does stand                       
And he holds my money bag in his hand

For my worldly things God makes him pay     
And hed pay for more if to him I would pray
And so you may do the worst you can do
Be assurd Mr Devil I wont pray to you                         
                
Then If for Riches I must not Pray
God knows I little of Prayers need say
So as a Church is known by its Steeple      
If I pray it must be for other People   

He says if I do not worship him for a God                     
I shall eat coarser food & go worse shod
So as I dont value such things as these
You must do Mr Devil just as God please"

Appendix 2

 During his lifetime Blake won some recognition as an engraver and 
artist, while his poetry remained virtually unknown to the general public. 
He never sought a publisher but with his illuminated manuscripts 
practiced the communicative arts of the high middle ages. He used a 
rudimentary form of printing of his own invention. He laboriously made 
each print into an individual work of art. The technique was certainly not 
designed to achieve a large readership.

Nevertheless his poems did circulate among the small artistic 
community of England. Coleridge had met him and rated the 'Songs of 
Innocence', placing "The Little Black Boy" first. Crabb Robinson, a 
journalist interested in art and artists, attempted to bring Wordsworth 
and Blake together. He did not succeed, but Wordsworth did see some 
of Blake's work. He pronounced Blake mad, but found his madness 
more interesting than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott.

Mona Wilson: "As a lyrical Poet [Blake] was acclaimed by Lamb and 
Landor, by Wordsworth and Coleridge. But the writer of the symbolic 
books was alone from first to last." Blake's contemporaries rather 
uniformly failed to comprehend his larger works. His patron, William 
Hayley, a leading arbiter of taste, made a serious attempt to discourage 
Blake as a poet and to channel his creativity entirely into the graphic 
arts. This won Hayley the name of 'spiritual enemy' in Blake's poetry. 
Blake never found a purchaser for 'Jerusalem' his last and greatest 
illuminated poem.

Blake's works might have been lost to us except for the small group of 
young artists who gathered around him in his last years. They included 

Self Portrait
Wikipedia

John Linnell, George Richmond, Edward Calvert, and Samuel Palmer. 
These young men admired Blake as an artist and as a man, and at least 
some of them adopted his spiritual values. They referred to him as the 
Interpreter. Linnell treated him like a father, and it was into Linnell's hands 
that Blake entrusted his manuscript, 'The Four Zoas', shortly before his 
death.





Thirty six years after Blake's death an enthusiastic admirer named 
Alexander Gilchrist rescued him from obscurity with an authoritative 
biography. Gilchrist died before finishing his book; his widow completed 
the project with the assistance of William Rossetti. The Gilchrist 
biography, originally published in 1863, reflects the materialistic 
insensitivity of the Victorian age, but within those limits it gives a detailed 
and sympathetic treatment of Blake's life. Gilchrist interviewed many of 
Blake's friends and acquaintances,and his biography will always serve 
as the primary source for Blake's life.

( 'With his usual quaint irony Blake told his friend Thomas Butts that 
Hayley " is as much averse to my poetry as he is to a Chapter in the Bible.")

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