Reading Blake

[WoodMarc]

Hello,

I'm reading Blake at the moment, and while I got on OK with the shorter poems and prophetic books, I'm struggling a lot with the longer prophetic books, i.e. the Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem. I have a decent annotated edition. One problem is the vastly different way in which the characters are presented in different places, and not being able to find much common ground between them. Also I'm finding passages or great beauty which seem, out of context at least, to be fairly coherent and easy to grasp, linked by much longer passages which I really can't make any sense of at all, or which seem to contradict or undermine the bits which do make sense to me.

An example of the sort of things I am finding bemusing: In some places Los is characterised as 'time', and Enitharmon as 'space'. In other places Los is 'poetry', or the eternal prophet, and Enitharmon is 'pity'. I can't find much common ground between these two different views! Then this Tharmas chap comes along, and apparently he is pity. Or according to Foster Damon, he is 'the body'. I'm guessing part of my difficulty is that I am probably being too literal, and am looking for a narrative coherence which may not be there, and may not even be intended to be there. I've also noticed that when critics write about Blake there is an unusually strong tendency for Blake to end up looking suspiciously like the person who is writing about him, which is not always helpful....

So I'm wondering if anyone can give me some hints about how to approach reading this material? I'm not looking for anyone to offer an interpretation, but just a more general idea about what lies behind the opaqueness, and the apparent confusion, and what sort of mindset might be helpful to bring to reading these poems. At the moment I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall. Would it be fair, for example, to say that these works are written from a 'dream' perspective, and should be taken as a sort of 'flow' experience, rather than trying to find a logically coherent reading of the whole? My tendency at the moment is to try to find allegorical interpretations of everything. Perhaps this is not Blake's intention? Any clues?

Thanks!

[Diar624]

hi. I wrote my MA thesis on Blake, particularly on Urizen, and have read his poetry many times. He's my fave poet and my thumbnail/avatar is Urizen as the ancient of days. You could email me if you'd like (go to my website www.apoetsperspective.com and contact me there) but in short, these characters are multiple in their aspects, as are all gods and humans. Los is Time and the creative force, Urizen the limited force of reason and empiricism along with the narrow-mindedness of law and religion, out of the severe need for self-preservation of those in power against the unknown and the masses (in political terms, thinking of the time frame of composition--French Revolution), and the fear generated by these in the elite. Also, there is a dream quality to the prophecies and a very strong mystical/eastern philosophical strain/theme running throughout them. Blake styled himself a mystic. If you want to talk more, email me. thanks.

[MorpheusSandman]

I read Blake a few years ago and devoured the critical/interpretative literature over a period of a few months. While the details are vague, the essence concerns the "fall of man," which Blake associates with the fourfold man, Jerusalem, in which Los, Orc, Urizen, and Tharmas were united as one. The "fall" is followed immediately by the creation, in which Urizen is tasked with "ordering" the chaos that enfolds after the fall. The "order" that Urizen imposes is reason/logic, religion, science, and other social institutions. Part of this requires chaining Orc, or "emotion," underground so that he can not upset this ordering. Tharmas is, IIRC, sense, but I don't recall what roll he played in this dynamic. Los is, essentially, the artist, or vision. For Blake, Los had to descend and "shape" Orc so that Orc could overthrow Urizen, but do so with a clear vision for a better future.

I get the sense reading Blake that it took a long time for his full allegory to coalesce in his mind, that it changed in subtle ways over time. I have to believe that, given its complexity, even Blake probably forgot everything his various characters were supposed to represent, so it wouldn't surprise me if there were some contradiction. One way I know Blake's allegory changed was in his shift in focus from Orc to Los. Blake, in his earlier, revolutionary works, felt that Orc was the power that needed unleashing to overthrow Urizen. But after the "failures" of many of the revolutionaries, Blake realized that something else was needed. It dawned on him that Los, the creative force, needed to guide the revolutionary power of Orc. This is, IMO, what we see most clearly in Milton. For Blake, Milton was the poet that "descended" to shape Orc (Milton's Satan) into the revolutionary power that attempted to overthrow God (Urizen). Many have been confused by Blake's famous statement about Milton being of the devil's party without knowing it; what Blake was referring to wasn't the classical, Biblical, Christian conception of Satan, but rather Blake's view of Satan as Orc, the revolutionary emotional force that "tempts" man to follow their emotion and violate the "laws" of Urizen.

One essential book I would recommend is Northrop Fry's classic Fearful Symmetry, which I think lays out these "basics" quite lucidly. Fry's "fault" is that he IS so general, and ignores all of the nuances in Blake, such as the various locations, the emanations, the events, etc. that have their own significant, symbolic value. For that, I'd highly recommend starting with Paley's The Traveller in the Evening, which gives a good overview of the late works. For studies on the specific works, I'd recommend Ault on The Four Zoas, Brancher on Milton, and Whitmarsh-Knight on both Jerusalem and Four Zoas.

I'd love to hear more recommendations from Diar624. I eventually had to put Blake down for a while. He ruled my life for several months and I started to feel like I was drowning in that world. So I stepped away and have yet to return, but I definitely will at some point. Blake is one of those rare authors who is worth as much time/effort as you care to invest in him.

Tangentially, I recently got heavily into Wagner, and I was shocked at how similar the allegory is between Wagner's Ring and Blake's late works; I was equally shocked that, as many books out there on Wagner, none seemed to mention Blake as a spiritual predecessor! Now, it's unlikely Wagner ever read Blake, but chalk it up to evidence for Jung's collective unconscious (I tend to feel Blake prefigured Jung anyway).

[WoodMarc]

Thanks for your responses, I have Northrop Fry's book, but have only dipped into it so far. Sounds like it might be time to look at it properly. Also Paley's book sounds worth getting. Seeing Tharmas as the senses seems clearer and is making more 'sense' now. Many thanks for your offer, Diar642, I may take you up on it in due course....

I'm getting on better with the Four Zoas on the second reading. I can easily see how people have dedicated their working lives to Blake. There's so much richness, almost inexhaustible I should think....

[Diar624]

Blake was very Gnostic in his roots, once you read the Gnostic gospels and books on Gnosticism, you'll understand his vision of humans as fallen, and that for him creation and fall were one and the same: to fall out of the harmony of eternity led to creating the physical worlds of the cosmos and Nature, in order to save human beings (the spirits/soul within them) from being destroyed by death, by the void that Urizen perceives as a great evil, rather than as part of the harmony experienced in eternity. Blake was influenced by Milton, of course, and by Hinduism (the first English trans of the Gita was in 1785, right when he started writing and engraving and publishing). He was also heavily influenced by the Gothic poetry and fiction tradition born in Germany and which made big waves in England from 1765 onward in its "classic" form till the the time of his death in 1827. And lastly, his strongest belief was in Jesus as the savior, the human form divine, but he understood him as the Gnostic Christ and accepted him in this way rather than in the traditional Christian manner. Frye and Bloom on Blake are grounding reads and should be done before any other critical texts. and Blake ruled me for so long in my thesis days that i felt like Urizen, and saw things through his narrow vision.

[MorpheusSandman]

Frye and Bloom on Blake are grounding reads and should be done before any other critical texts.

I forgot Bloom. His commentary in the Erdman Complete Poetry edition is invaluable, though it's a bit harder to read him in that context because one is constantly flipping back and forth between the work and the notes.

[Anymodal]

I'm looking foward to read Blake. In highschool I read some poems of the Songs of Innocence in class but that was it.
I became curious about Blake when I watched (again) Blade Runner and a line caught my attention, then I found out it was a misquote of him. "Fiery the angels fell / deep thunder rolled around their shores / burning with the fires of Orc". I don't know what it means but I love it. Also I watched a short movie were the character Borges sang by memory a beautiful poem: "Tiger, tiger, burning bright / in the forests of the night...".

I haven't read him yet because it seems quite challenging. Is America: A Prophesy good to start? Is the prologue and commentary of any good edition enough to understand it?

Anyway I just wanted to share these songs made out of the poems of Blake by Allen Ginsberg.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru3Cfk_FKU4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYTBEjWtBZk

[WoodMarc]

Hi Anymodal, from what I have read I would say that the Songs of Innocence and experience would be the best way to start (as in the easiest way in).

[MorpheusSandman]

Anymodal, there are two very different Blakes: there's the lyrical Blake of Songs of Innocence and Experience, and the visionary Blake of Milton, The Four Zoas, and Jerusalem. The former Blake is the popular, accessible Blake. This is the Blake that almost anyone can read, enjoy, and appreciate and, FWIW, his Songs hold a special place in my own heart when it comes to lyric poetry. Even though the Songs are full of allegorical meaning, you don't have to grasp the allegories to enjoy them. The visionary Blake, however, is as dense, difficult, demanding, and opaque as literature gets. Unless you devote some time to unraveling Blake's allegorical system of characters, objects, places, events, most of it will read like impenetrable nonsense. It's really up to any individual whether they feel late Blake is worth the time and effort. He was to me, but there undeniably many authors worth that time and effort. We have to be selective about which authors we devote that kind of time/effort too, though, as life is too finite to devote it to all of them.

I would also mention that there's the "transitional" Blake of works like The Marriage of Heaven & Hell, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, The Revolutionary Works, et al. These works are more accessible than the late works, but not as accessible as his Songs. A good strategy is to read the songs, then read these "transitional" pieces, and then decide whether the late works are worth it to you.