SUFFERING

Small Book of Designs

from Book of Urizen, Plate 11

Object 19

"I sought Pleasure and found Pain/Unutterable"

In his conversations with Crabb Robinson, Blake revealed more of himself than was stated in his poetry or in his visual images. He tried to express himself in language that Robinson could understand but it was usually a losing battle. Fortunately Robinson attempted to record Blake's words although the meaning was often opaque to him.

Blake did not want to do what he accused Swedenborg of doing in the first sentence of this quote, but it was difficult to reach a man who depended upon his reasoning function to understand spiritual realities. Blake was concerned that Wordsworth sought God through Natural Religion which makes the error of seeking God through sense and reason excluding love and imagination as essential to the consciousness of the presence. Perhaps Blake saw the passage from "The Excursion" as showing these two deficits in Wordsworth's ability to perceive the infinite, eternal realities. 

Blake pointed out to Robinson examples of men who comprehended a higher truth: Boehme, Law, Michael Angelo. By shifting to a recognition of the role of suffering along the journey to the consciousness of being in the presence of God, Blake went a step further than Robinson was prepared to take.  

Henry Crabb Robinson, Reminiscences, Page 27  

"Yet Swedenborg was wrong in endeavoring to explain to the rational faculty what the reason cannot comprehend. He should have left that." Blake, as I have said, thinks Wordsworth no Christian, but a Platonist. He asked me whether Wordsworth believed in the Scriptures. On my replying in the affirmative, he said he had been much pained by reading the Introduction to “ The Excursion .” It brought on a fit of illness. The passage was produced and read :  

" Jehovah, with his thunder and the choir
Or shouting angels, and the empyreal thrones,
I pass them unalarmed .”

This “pass them unalarmed” greatly offended  Blake. Does Mr. Wordsworth think his mind can surpass Jehovah? I tried to explain this passage in a sense in harmony with Blake's  own theories, but failed, and Wordsworth was finally set down as a Pagan; but still with high praise, as the greatest poet of the age. Jacob Boehme was spoken of as a divinely inspired man. Blake praised, too, the figures in Law's translation as being very beautiful. Michael Angelo could not have done better. Though he spoke of his happiness, he also alluded to past sufferings, and to suffering as necessary. There is suffering in heaven, for where there is the capacity of enjoyment, there is also the capacity of pain."

---

Auguries of Innocence, (E 491)

"It is right it should be so 
Man was made for Joy & Woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro the World we safely go
Joy & Woe are woven fine
A Clothing for the soul divine 
Under every grief & pine
Runs a joy with silken twine
The Babe is more than swadling Bands
Throughout all these Human Lands"

Songs and Ballads, (E 472)
[How to know Love from Deceit]        

"Love to faults is always blind
Always is to joy inclind                             
Lawless wingd & unconfind             
And breaks all chains from every mind

Deceit to secresy confind             
Lawful cautious & refind              
To every thing but interest blind     
And forges fetters for the mind"       

Songs and Ballads,(E 481)

"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"

Milton, Plate 33 [36], (E 132)
"And the Divine Voice was heard in the Songs of Beulah Saying     

When I first Married you, I gave you all my whole Soul
I thought that you would love my loves & joy in my delights
Seeking for pleasures in my pleasures O Daughter of Babylon
Then thou wast lovely, mild & gentle. now thou art terrible      
In jealousy & unlovely in my sight, because thou hast cruelly
Cut off my loves in fury till I have no love left for thee
Thy love depends on him thou lovest & on his dear loves
Depend thy pleasures which thou hast cut off by jealousy
Therefore I shew my jealousy  & set  before you Death.     
Behold Milton descended to Redeem the Female Shade

From Death Eternal; such your lot, to be continually Redeem'd
By death & misery of those you love & by Annihilation"