The Blog Lessons was used for lesson material in a class given on 4 Tuesdays in July at the College of Central Florida.
If you have become sufficiently interested in Blake after this lesson, I expect to continue these lessons in this blog.
http://lessons-blake.blogspot.com/ "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 Jerusalem's wall." Very famous of course; you may find books
entitled 'The Golden String.' Does it remind you of anything? Greek? the
Minotaur. What is the golden string? Read my post,
or just read on. Last week's biography ended in 1804 with "After three
years Blake had had enough. He and Catherine returned to London and to
abject poverty, glorified by the tremendous production of his last
decade.
Output during that time:
Milton
Jerusalem, from Biography
Jerusalem, a Commentary
Paradise Lost
Illustrations to the Book of Job
Dante's Inferno"
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Today's
Biography is confined to the 19th Century, Blake's last 28 years.
Marriage had brought young Blake responsibilities; he was an artist; it
meant producing stuff for sale. (The poet is out of it entirely; he had
best never marry unless he knows a rich heiress.) Blake married an
illiterate farm girl; she was more than that when he died; she had been
pretty well educated by her husband. Blake wrote (and inscribed) a lot
of things: Thel 
Songs of Innocence and Experience (they became classics, but seen by
very few in his day.) Everybody knows or at least has heard of The Tyger.
As a married man Blake produced pictures and other objects of art; but
the sale was dismal. They struggled along with contributions of a few
friends. William Hayley, a successful although mediocre poet, took Blake
under his wing. Hayley insisted on Blake painting miniatures, all day.
Blake had no time for the poetry or the Visions that meant so much to
him. He and Catherine left their cottage on the sea and Hayley's
support; they returned to poverty-- and sweet joy.
In the
second half of his career Blake had largely dropped his preoccupation
with the Old Testament God and in favor of the New Testament God. His
first large prophetic poem, Milton begins with a famous poem called Jerusalem that latter became the theme song of the British Labor party; used to sing it as a hymn.
(Blake was not the first person to see the presence of
Jesus in ancient England. Tradition tells us that he was
there in the first century.)
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Look especially at the two major prophecies (poems): Milton and Jerusalem.
Milton Here are the Plates,
1 by 1 go to a terminal Do evince open ~/Downloads/1802rosen1811.pdf or
~/Documents/1802rosen1811.pdf There are two discussions of Milton here:
1. The synopsis found in wiki 2.. A section in my Blake Primer This
synopsis of Milton comes from a wiki:
Milton a Poem is an epic poem by William Blake, written and illustrated between 1804 and 1810. Its hero is John Milton,
who returns from heaven and unites with Blake to explore the
relationship between living writers and their predecessors, and to
undergo a mystical journey to correct his own spiritual errors.
The poem is divided into two "books".
Book I opens with an epic invocation to the muses, drawing on the classical models of Homer and Virgil, and also used by John Milton in Paradise Lost.
However, Blake describes inspiration in bodily terms, vitalising the
nerves of his arm. Blake goes on to describe the activities of Los,
one of his mythological characters, who creates a complex universe from
within which other Blakean characters debate the actions of Satan.
Referring to the doctrines of Calvinism,
Blake asserts that humanity is divided into the "Elect", the
"Reprobate" and the "Redeemed". Inverting Calvinist values, Blake
insists that the "Reprobate" are the true believers, while the "Elect"
are locked in narcissistic moralism. At this point Milton appears and
agrees to return to earth to purge the errors of his own Puritanism and
go to "Eternal death".
Milton travels to Lambeth,
taking in the form of a falling comet, and enters Blake's foot. This
allows Blake to treat the ordinary world as perceived by the five senses
as a sandal formed of "precious stones and gold" that he can now wear.
Blake ties the sandal and, guided by Los, walks with it into the City of
Art, inspired by the spirit of poetic creativity.
Book II finds Blake in the garden of his cottage in Felpham.
Ololon, a female figure linked to Milton, descends to meet him. Blake
sees a skylark, which mutates into a twelve year old girl, who he thinks
is one of his own muses. He invites her into his cottage to meet his
wife. The girl states that she is actually looking for Milton. Milton
then descends to meet with her, and in an apocalyptic scene he is
eventually unified with the girl, who is identified as Ololon and
becomes his own feminine aspect.
The poem concludes with a
vision of a final union of living and dead; internal and external
reality; male and female and a transformation of all of human
perception.
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The Mature Works
'Milton', Blake's first overtly Christian work, is his testimony of
faith. It's also his way of rehabilitating his childhood hero, John Milton.
Finally it's a difficult poem; it contains unfathomable depths. This
review can do no more than introduce the reader to the poem and call
attention to some of the new elements in the mature development of
Blake's myth.
'Milton' is a very autobiographical work.
Blake used many of the characters that his readers might be familiar
with from earlier works, but in this very personal poem they often
assume other (although related) identities. Particularly we understand
that Blake was Los; Hayley was Satan (he had suborned Blake from his
true work to hack work: from Eternity to Ulro.)
John Milton, the
author of 'Paradise Lost', had been a major force in Blake's life; he
had been many things to Blake through the years. In Blake's day Milton
enjoyed enormous spiritual stature among the English people. Even today
the general understanding of Heaven, Hell, God and Satan (among people
interested in those concepts) tends to be more often Miltonic than
Biblical. In the first half of his life Blake was very much under the
shadow of Milton, the great epic poet of the English people. All
subsequent English poets lived and wrote in Milton's shadow, and the
greatest ones aspired to achieve an epic comparable to 'Paradise Lost'.
Although
Blake had much in common with the puritan poet, he disagreed with
Milton about a number of things. For example, as a young man he despised
the God of 'Paradise Lost' and admired Milton's Devil. Blake made that
clear in 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' and tried to put Milton in
his place by saying that he was of the Devil's party without knowing it.
Ten years later the experience of grace empowered Blake to deal with
Milton in a better way. He called him back to earth to straighten out
his theology, and he identified with him and his spiritual power in a
radical way. He recreated Milton as Milton had recreated the Bible.
As Blake's poem begins, Milton has been in Heaven for a hundred years, obedient although not very happy there. The 'Bard's Song'
(which takes up the first third of the poem) recreates the war in
Heaven of 'Paradise Lost'. The other Eternals find the Bard's song
appalling, but Milton embraces the Bard and his song. In a thrilling
imaginative triumph he announces his intention of leaving Heaven to
complete the work on earth that he had left undone. Although Blake
doesn't say this, any Christian should recognize that Milton thus
follows in the footsteps of Christ as described in the famous Kenosis passage in Philippians 2:
He took off the robe of the promise and ungirded himself from the oath of God. And Milton said: "I go to Eternal Death!
The Nations still Follow after the detestable Gods of Priam [king of
Troy], in pomp of Warlike Selfhood."
Anyone familiar with the gospel story will see biblical allusions and references here.
In Blake's cottage he sees Milton's shadow, a horrible vision:
Milton
Plate 37, lines 7-46: "Miltons Shadow heard & condensing all his
Fibres Into a strength impregnable of majesty & beauty infinite I
saw he was the Covering Cherub & within him Satan And Rahab, ----,
in the Selfhood deadly And he appeard the Wicker Man of Scandinavia in
whom Jerusalems children consume in flames among the Stars Descending
down into my Garden, a Human Wonder of God Reaching from heaven to earth
a Cloud & Human Form beheld Milton with astonishment & in him
beheld The Monstrous Churches of Beulah, the Gods of Ulro dark Twelve
monstrous dishumanizd terrors Synagogues of Satan. ........ All these
are seen in Miltons Shadow who is the Covering Cherub The Spectre of
Albion."
An attempt to translate this visionary poetry into "common sense" might suggest that in Milton's shadow Blake suddenly became immediately aware of all the fallen nature of the world (and his mind) that had consumed most of his poetry to that point. Now he became aware of all these things, but in the light of a person now full of light.
Back on earth Milton encounters many of the characters whom we met in 'The Four Zoas'. Tirzah and Rahab
tempt him; his contest with Urizen has special interest as a record of
the resolution of Blake's life long struggle with the things that Urizen
represented to him:
A Bible
dictionary, or even better, Damon's Blake Dictionary, will help to
clarify the associations with biblical locations. Here we see the old
Urizen still trying to freeze the poet's brain, but instead he finds
himself being humanized by an emissary from Heaven. Blake is vividly
depicting the battle between the forces of positivism and spirit.
Milton
meets other obstacles and temptations on his journey, a journey that
begins to bear increasing resemblance to that of Bunyan's Pilgrim or
even of Jesus himself. He unites with Los and with Blake. He finally
meets Satan, confronts him and overcomes him as Jesus had done. These
dramatic events give Blake ample opportunity to describe in detail the
eternal and satanic dimensions of life, the conflict betwen the two and
the inevitable victory of the eternal. For the first and perhaps the
only time Blake is writing a traditional morality story.
This
material is autobiographical and written in the honeymoon phase of his
new spiritual life. Blake's full meanings yield only to intensive study,
but from the beginning there are thrilling lines to delight and inspire
the reader. In his esoteric language Blake describes for us what has
happened to him, and nothing could be more engrossing for the reader
interested in the life of the spirit and in Blake. The relationship of
this story to the myth described above should be obvious. But 'Milton'
is more real than the previous material because Blake has lived it and
writes (and sketches) with spiritual senses enlarged and tuned by his
recent experience of grace.
A digression occurs in the second half
of Book One of 'Milton', a detailed description of the "World of Los";
it contains much of Blake's most delightful poetry. The reader will
remember that in 4Z Los had passed through several stages of
development. Beginning as the primitive prophetic boy, he became first
disciple and later adversary of Urizen. He bound Urizen into fallen
forms of life, then "became what he beheld". But in Night vii we recall
that he embraced his Spectre, actually the Urizen within, and thereupon
became the hero of the epic.
This
is the full paged picture introducing the poem Jerusalem The picture
below is the "curtain call", Plate 100 of Jerusalem. In his last years
Blake often visited theaters with his young friends, the Shoreham
Ancients.
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