RETURN JOURNEY

Wikipedia Commons
Illustrations to Blair's The Grave
Soul Exploring the Recesses of the Grave

 Interview with Charles Frazier author of Cold Mountain:

"I wished I had been able to ask him [my great-great grandfather] how he looked at the war when he volunteered and how he looked at it when he came home. So, the story I found myself writing became an Odyssey, not an Iliad. Returning, not going. A long journey home through a devastated world. Late in the third century BC, the Greek geographer Eratosthenes wrote: "You will find the scene of the wanderings of Odysseus when you find the cobbler who sewed up the bag of the four winds." His point, of course, had to do with readers who get twisted up trying to untangle fact and fiction, especially the ones needing too much of the former."

The journey of the second half of life is a journey of return. The accomplishments of the first half of life are complete. Now what has been divided will be united; what has been lost will be recovered; what has been forgotten will be remembered; what is in error will be annihilated.

In the Odyssey, Odysseus is returning home to his wife Penelope who has been weaving a shroud for her father-in-law. By day she weaves, by night she unweaves to avoid finishing the garment.

In Cold Mountain, Inman is returning home to Ada, the woman he loves. Ada has been learning to be self-sufficient in a war torn world, simultaneously she is longing to be reunited with Inman.

In Blake's Milton Ololon has followed Milton's descent to earth believing that joined together they can restore the Imaginative Vision which had been lost to man in the Fall.

In Homer's work as well as in Blake's, weaving is a metaphor for taking the threads of time and arranging them in ways that form the fabric of experience. The same thing is happening in Frazier's work but the weaving metaphor is not explicitly used. All three authors use the journey in such a way that the hero accomplishes tasks that prepare him to be united to his female portion which will make him complete.

We see from Blake and Homer that weaving and unweaving are both necessary. The skills and achievements which serve well when one is focused on the outer world fail to be suitable when in the second half of life developing an inner life is paramount. 

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Milton,Plate 32 [35], (E 132)
"The Imagination is not a State: it is the Human Existence itself
Affection or Love becomes a State, when divided from Imagination
The Memory is a State always, & the Reason is a State
Created to be Annihilated & a new Ratio Created                  
Whatever can be Created can be Annihilated Forms cannot
The Oak is cut down by the Ax, the Lamb falls by the Knife
But their Forms Eternal Exist, For-ever. Amen Hallelujah

Thus they converse with the Dead watching round the Couch of Death.
For God himself enters Death's Door always with those that enter 
And lays down in the Grave with them, in Visions of Eternity
Till they awake & see Jesus & the Linen Clothes lying
That the Females had Woven for them, & the Gates of their 

Fathers House"

Milton, Plate 41 [48], (E 143)
"Then trembled the Virgin Ololon & replyd in clouds of despair

Is this our Feminine Portion the Six-fold Miltonic Female      
Terribly this Portion trembles before thee O awful Man
Altho' our Human Power can sustain the severe contentions
Of Friendship, our Sexual cannot: but flies into the Ulro.
Hence arose all our terrors in Eternity! & now remembrance
Returns upon us! are we Contraries O Milton, Thou & I            
O Immortal! how were we led to War the Wars of Death
Is this the Void Outside of Existence, which if enterd into
Plate 42 [49]                                         
Becomes a Womb? & is this the Death Couch of Albion
Thou goest to Eternal Death & all must go with thee

So saying, the Virgin divided Six-fold & with a shriek
Dolorous that ran thro all Creation a Double Six-fold Wonder!
Away from Ololon she divided & fled into the depths              
Of Miltons Shadow as a Dove upon the stormy Sea.

Then as a Moony Ark Ololon descended to Felphams Vale
In clouds of blood, in streams of gore, with dreadful thunderings
Into the Fires of Intellect that rejoic'd in Felphams Vale
Around the Starry Eight: with one accord the Starry Eight became 
One Man Jesus the Saviour. wonderful! round his limbs
The Clouds of Ololon folded as a Garment dipped in blood
Written within & without in woven letters: & the Writing
Is the Divine Revelation in the Litteral expression:
A Garment of War, I heard it namd the Woof of Six Thousand Years" 

ON HOMERS POETRY, (E 269)  
"Every Poem must necessarily be a perfect Unity, but why Homers is
peculiarly so, I cannot tell: he has told the story of
Bellerophon & omitted the judgment of Paris which is not only a
part, but a principal part of Homers subject
  But when a Work has Unity it is as much in a Part as in the
Whole. the Torso is as much a Unity as the Laocoon
  As Unity is the cloke of folly so Goodness is the cloke of
knavery  Those who will have Unity exclusively in Homer come out
with a Moral like a sting in the tail: Aristotle says Characters
are either Good or Bad: now Goodness or Badness has nothing to do
with Character. an Apple tree a Pear tree a Horse a Lion, are
Characters but a Good Apple tree or a Bad, is an Apple tree
still: a Horse is not more a Lion for being a Bad Horse. that is
its Character; its Goodness or Badness is another consideration.
  It is the same with the Moral of a whole Poem as with the Moral Goodness
of its parts Unity & Morality, are secondary considerations & 
belong to Philosophy & not to Poetry, to Exception & not to Rule,
to Accident & not to Substance. the Ancients calld it eating of
the tree of good & evil.
  The Classics, it is the Classics! & not Goths nor Monks, that
Desolate Europe with Wars."

Annotations to Lavater, (E 592) 
Lavater:
 "Whatever is visible is the vessel or veil of the
invisible past, present, future--as man penetrates to this more,
or perceives it less, he raises or depresses his dignity of
being."
Blake:
 " A vision of the Eternal Now--"