PROTECTION OF ART

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Illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy

Baffled Devils Fighting

Northrop Frye wrote on Page 265 of Fearful Symmetry:

"Art protects us against nature: it would be impossible to find pleasure in tragedy or laugh at the predicaments of comedy if we did not feel this protection. In nature there is misery, in art tragedy: in nature there is mysterious evil, in art ghost stories. This does not mean that art allows us to escape from nature: it allows us to undertake its imaginative conquest. The reasoner peers myopically out into an indefinite world, finds that he can see only a little way into it, even with the aid of instruments which 'alter the ratio,' reaches the blindness and ignorance at the circumference of his vision, and reports that man lives, as far as he can see, in a cave shrouded in darkness. The artist, by putting concrete images into a mental form, makes the familiar intelligible; and art does what all civilization does: it transforms nature into a home. This is what Blake means when he shows us the sons of Los creating the concrete imagery of art as a protection for the cringing, fighting, hysterical spectres of abstract thought which are born of the direct exposure of the mind to nature:

Milton, Plate 28 [30], (E 125)
'The little weeping Spectre stands on the threshold of Death      
Eternal; and sometimes two Spectres like lamps quivering
And often malignant they combat (heart-breaking sorrowful & piteous)
Antamon takes them into his beautiful flexible hands,
As the Sower takes the seed, or as the Artist his clay
Or fine wax, to mould artful a model for golden ornaments,      
The soft hands of Antamon draw the indelible line:
Form immortal with golden pen; such as the Spectre admiring
Puts on the sweet form; then smiles Antamon bright thro his windows'"

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Immediately before the above passage Blake wrote:

Milton, Plate 27 [29] 

"But in Eternity the Four Arts: Poetry, Painting, Music,          
And Architecture which is Science: are the Four Faces of Man.
Not so in Time & Space: there Three are shut out, and only
Science remains thro Mercy: & by means of Science, the Three
Become apparent in time & space, in the Three Professions
Poetry in Religion: Music, Law: Painting, in Physic & Surgery: 
That Man may live upon Earth till the time of his awaking,
And from these Three, Science derives every Occupation of Men.
And Science is divided into Bowlahoola & Allamanda.
Plate 28 [30]
Some Sons of Los surround the Passions with porches of iron & silver
Creating form & beauty around the dark regions of sorrow,
Giving to airy nothing a name and a habitation
Delightful! with bounds to the Infinite putting off the Indefinite
Into most holy forms of Thought: (such is the power of inspiration)
They labour incessant; with many tears & afflictions:
Creating the beautiful House for the piteous sufferer.

Others; Cabinets richly fabricate of gold & ivory;
For Doubts & fears unform'd & wretched & melancholy"

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Because Art to Blake is an expression of the imagination it carries the weight of transforming thought to inspiration. Release from the cave which limits the ability to see the world as it is - INFINITE and ETERNAL - becomes possible by creating and comprehending art. Through the arts of 'Poetry, Painting, Music, And Architecture' there is opened a direct link to the portion of the mind that is capable of immediate experience of completeness or Infinity.