WILLIAM BLAKE'S MILTON: MEANING AND MADNESS by Edward Robert Friedlander, M.D. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Honors degree program in the department of English Literature of Brown University 1973 Revised 1986 TO NORM BERTELS, M.D. "The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship." PREFACE TO THE 1986 REVISION William Blake's poetry and artwork still delight me after thirteen years. As I had hoped, my "double vision" as a physician interested in the humanities has been a source of much satisfaction. I am grateful to Dr. Colin Baxter for giving me the opportunity to share my interest in William Blake's poetry and visions with a new audience. I am very happy that many people are still interested in the subject. Now that I have completed my medical education, I am more confident than ever that my assessment of Blake's thinking was correct. The American Psychiatric Association's DSM-III was published since my college days, and Blake easily fulfills criteria in the appropriate section. Since I finished my college thesis, a handsome and inexpensive facsimile edition of Milton has published by Shambhala-Random House (1978). PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL PAPER My undergraduate concentration is English Literature, but my chief interests are science and medicine. This study came to be written because of my double perspective. I once planned to write a critique of the Jungian approach to Blake, but I discovered that there are more essential problems which remain unsettled. Focusing on Milton has given me an opportunity to explore several of these questions. All references in this study are to the Erdman text. It will be helpful if the reader is acquainted with Blake's main ideas and is familiar with the important poems. In discussing Milton, I am concerned only with the original epic, and will not consider plates 2-6, 10, 18, or 32, or the "Preface", to belong to this poem. These are late additions. If they are deleted, continuity is improved, the development of Los's character is smoother, there is less of the late style and characters typical of Jerusalem, the essential plot remains intact, and the whole work is much better unified. I am pleased to take this opportunity to thank my advisors in the English Department for their able assistance, Dr. Gabriel Najera for his thoughts on Blake and schizophrenia, and the staff of the Butler Hospital Library, whose courtesy helped make possible the medically-oriented portion of this study. I would also like to thank Brown for making available to me materials from the estate of the late Professor Damon. I am grateful to the English Department, and especially to my family, for their many indulgences. TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE TO THE 1986 REVISION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL PAPER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 WHAT HAPPENS IN MILTON? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1. Blake's "Visions" of Milton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2. Urizen: Milton as Satan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3. Tharmas: Milton as Covering Cherub . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 4. Luvah: Milton as Orc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 5. Urthona: Milton as Christ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 6. Milton's Emanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 7. The Traveler to Golgonooza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 THE SPIRIT OF ABSTRACTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 1. Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 2. Dream Elements in Blake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 3. Inspiration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 4. Blake's Visions and Voices: Introduction . . . . . . . . . 62 5. Blake's Visions and Voices: The Facts . . . . . . . . . . . 64 6. Blake's Visions and Voices: The Explanation . . . . . . . . 93 7. Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 NOTES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 BIBLIOGRAPHY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 DIAGRAM OF THE ACTION OF MILTON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 WILLIAM BLAKE'S MILTON: MEANING AND MADNESS The end of the world is experienced as a transition to something new, vaster, and is felt as a terrible annihilation. At first everything seems queer, uncanny, and significant. Catastrophe is impending; the deluge is here. A unique catastrophe approaches. Something comes over the world; the last Judgment, the breaking of the seven seals of the Book of Revelation. God comes into the world. Time wheels back. The last riddle of all is being solved. -- from Dr. Karl Jaspers's General Psychopathology INTRODUCTION One day William Blake saw a little girl named Ololon coming down from heaven into his garden. A moment later, he fainted at the climax of a complicated vision. He had seen John Milton renounce Satan, and he had glimpsed the return of Jesus Christ. Blake described this experience, together with many interesting things that had led up to it, in the shortest of his three major poems, Milton. Milton does not contain so many obscure geographic and Biblical allusions as Jerusalem. But readers find it even more difficult for other reasons. Milton assumes a knowledge of the other writings in which Blake explains the cosmic myth on which it is based. Much of the poem is biographical allegory. Characters of uncertain significance, such as Ololon, play prominent roles. Figures with different names are called the same character or coalesce. Conversely, one figure can play several different roles simultaneously. Shifts in perspective are bewilderingly rapid, and Blake has complicated it all by adding supplementary pages within the text. The first part of this study, then, explains what actually happens in Blake's Milton. Blake's role in his own poem will be the starting-point for discussion. We will see that the epic is based on familiar characters and conflicts from Blake's other writings. Some new figures are in fact types of those in The Four Zoas and Jerusalem. The symbols which illustrate Blake's message will be explained, and the themes developed in the poem will be summarized. The rest of the study is less conventional. Unlike the two longer epics, Milton is not an attempt to write a full cosmic history or a metaphysical treatise. But it claims to be the record of a sequence of Blake's visions and an explanation of what they meant. Also, Blake insisted that the poem itself was not his own work at all, but had been "dictated" to him by beings from another world. In what ways does Milton bear the stamp of visionary origin? Did Blake actually see and hear things that other people could not? If so, what were these visions? The purpose of this section is not to "psychoanalyze" a dead poet, or to discuss his writings in terms of a system of psychology. Attempts to do both have been made, with varying success, especially by the Jungians. These need not concern us. Instead, I will cite ways in which certain things about Milton appear to be related to various kinds of visions. The most familiar and best characterized of these is the common dream. After this, I will review all our records of Blake's visionary experiences. While Hunt and Hayley were blind to the merits of Blake's prophetic books, they were correct in saying Blake had a very different kind of mind. A medical diagnosis does not at all detract from William Blake's stature as artist and thinker -- it increases it. CHAPTER I WHAT HAPPENS IN MILTON? I bless thee, O Father of Heaven & Earth, that ever I saw Flaxman's face. Angels stand round my Spirit in Heaven, the blessed of Heaven are my friends upon Earth. When Flaxman was taken to Italy, Fuseli was given to me for a season, And now Flaxman has given me Hayley his friend to be mine, such is my lot upon Earth. Now my lot in the Heavens is this, Milton lov'd me in childhood & shew'd me his face. Ezra came with Isaiah the Prophet, but Shakespeare in riper years gave me his hand; Paracelsus and Behmen appear'd to me, terrors appear'd in the Heavens above And in Hell beneath, & a mighty & awful change threatened the Earth. The American War began. All its dark horrors passed before my face Across the Atlantic to France. Then the French Revolution commenc'd in thick clouds, And My Angels have told me that seeing such visions I could not subsist on the Earth, But by my conjunction with Flaxman, who knows to forgive Nervous Fear. -- Blake to John Flaxman, Sept. 12, 1800 1. Blake's "Visions" of Milton Milton contains more details about William Blake's own "spiritual acts" than any of his other writings except the letters. According to the poet, the epic is built around two great visions. We can discuss these now without asking how literally Blake meant us to take his descriptions. The poem also describes other events in Blake's earthly life from the period 1800-1803. Blake and his wife had accepted the invitation of his new patron, the philanthropist William Hayley, to move from the London slums to Hayley's ocean-side estate at Felpham. Blake was to earn his living painting and engraving commissions for Hayley's wealthy friends. Blake liked his new situation but resented Hayley's hostility toward his esoteric "visionary" works. Hayley in turn believed Blake suffered from "nervous infirmity", a country gentleman's euphemism for mental illness. Blake reportedly cursed the King in front of witnesses while he scuffled in his garden with one Scofield, a drunken soldier. The government tried him for treason. If he had been convicted, he would have been executed, but Hayley managed to get him acquitted. After three years at Felpham, the Blakes chose to return to London and to poverty. Blake published Milton soon afterwards, engraving every letter and design onto copper sheets and hand-coloring each printed page. Hayley, who had saved his life, appears in the poem as the villain, Satan. The first vision in Milton begins with the mysterious union of William Blake with the spirit of the poet John Milton: Then first I saw him in the Zenith as a falling star, Descending perpendicular, swift as the swallow or swift; And on my left foot falling on the tarsus, entering there; But from my left foot a black cloud redounding spread over Europe. -- Milton 15:47-50 We learn that this happened while Blake was still living at Lambeth in London (M 22:11). Although we know nothing of the encounter apart from the epic, Blake depicted the scene three times among the illustrations to the text. The first is a small sketch on plate 15. A falling star is entering the left foot of a man whose body is thrown backward. From the foot extends a web of fibers, perhaps depicting a net (the Net of Religion?) or vines on a wall, and beyond this a small female, possibly Jerusalem, is wailing. A second full-page design depicts the star and visionary in much greater detail. The left foot and hand of the half-naked figure are extended toward the black flaming star, while the torso, right foot, and right hand extend in the opposite direction. The head is also thrown upward and backward. Behind the seer three steps rise, and in the background there are dark clouds which contrast with the vivid pinks and yellows of the rest of the design. This is an idealized self-portrait, and "William" is inscribed across the top of the design. A third picture, almost a mirror image of the second, is labelled "Robert", and depicts the spirit of Blake's beloved brother. Here the lighting is softer, there are four steps (the visionary number) instead of three (nature), the colors are darker and cooler, and, of course, the star is entering the man's right foot. As in Illustrations to Job, the right is the side of eternity, while the left is that of this world. In each design, the man is both stepping toward the vision and withdrawing from it, in both ecstasy and terror. As we will discover when we read the poem, this is the right mixture of emotions. The appearance of the star marks the beginning of the apocalypse, in which the world as we know it will be annihilated. John Milton, in the form of the meteor, had smashed a gaping hole in the middle of the sky. While Blake (and all other creatures with "imagination") saw this, the meaning of the vision remained a mystery. The vision continued: But Milton entering my Foot; I saw in the nether Regions of the Imagination; also all men on Earth, And all in Heaven, saw in the nether regions of the Imagination In Ulro beneath Beulah, the vast breach of Miltons descent. But I knew not that it was Milton, for man cannot know What passes in his members till periods of Space and Time Reveal the secrets of Eternity; for more extensive Than any other earthly things, are Mans earthly lineaments. And all this Vegetable World appeard on my left Foot, As a bright sandal formd immortal of precious stones & gold: I stooped down & bound it on to walk forward thro' Eternity. -- Milton 21:4-14 Suddenly, the poet's entire frame of perception was altered, and the world in which Blake had been standing turned into a sandal of gems and gold, Blake's emblems for ordinary matter. Without even mentioning surprise, much less fear, Blake prepared to journey through the visionary regions which he had just entered. Once again, there is something ambiguous about the familiar world as a sandal. A close parallel to this part of the first vision appears in Blake's disturbing letter to his patron Thomas Butts dated Sept. 11, 1801: I labour incessantly & accomplish not one half of what I intend. because my Abstract folly hurries me often away while I am at work, carrying me over Mountains & Valleys which are not Real in a Land of Abstraction where Spectres of the Dead wander. This I endeavour to prevent & with my whole might Chain my feet to the world of Duty & Reality, but in vain! the faster I bind the better is the Ballast for I so far from being bound down take the world with me in my flights & often it seems lighter than a ball of wool rolled by the wind Bacon & Newton would prescribe ways of making the world heavier to me & Pitt would prescribe distress for a medicinal potion. but as none on Earth can give me Mental Distress, & I know that all Distress inflicted by Heaven is a Mercy, a Fig for all Corporeal Such Distress is My mock & scorn. Alas wretched happy ineffectual labourer of times moments that I am! who shall deliver me from the Spirit of Abstraction & Improvidence. Such my dear Sir Is the truth of my state.... This passage has been ignored by people who see a Platonic allegory in Blake's vision of the sandal, but the two texts are obviously related. To the poet under the influence of this "Spirit of Abstraction", the "Vegetable World" of duty and solid forms no longer encloses him. Instead, it becomes inconsequential, something of which the poet is not really a part, to which he is bound only by his foot. In the letter, Blake is clearly alarmed when he is forced into the strange sphere, and when he cannot fulfill his artistic "responsibilities". Blake feels that he is in the grips of a "Spirit of Abstraction", which carries him away from the world of ordinary things. He also feels that his experience must be rationalized as the mercy of God. As Blake tied the sandal to his foot, he was joined by his character Los. Los had come to take him to Golgonooza, the City of Art where all beautiful things are kept forever: ...Los descended to me: And Los behind me stood; a terrible flaming Sun: just close Behind my back; I turned round in terror, and behold. Los stood in that fierce glowing fire; & he also stoop'd down And bound my sandals on in Udan-Adan; trembling I stood Exceedingly with fear and terror, standing in the Vale Of Lambeth: but he kissed me, and wishd me health. And I became One Man with him arising in my strength; Twas too late now to recede. Los had enterd into my soul: His terrors now posses'd me whole! I arose in fury & strength. I am that Shadowy Prophet who Six Thousand Years ago Fell from my station in the Eternal bosom. Six Thousand Years Are finishd. I return! both Time & Space obey my will. I in Six Thousand Years walk up and down: for not one Moment Of Time is lost, nor one Event of Space unpermanent. But all remain: every fabric of Six Thousand Years Remains permanent: tho' on the Earth where Satan Fell, and was cut off all things vanish & are seen no more They vanish not from me & mine, we guard them first & last[.] The generations of men run on in the tide of time But leave their destind lineaments permanent for ever & ever. So spoke Los as we went along to his supreme above. -- Milton 22:4-26 Blake depicts his meeting with Los in another full-page illustration. The sandal for some reason appears on Blake's right foot. Los, whose expression and posture recall the star-struck visionaries described above, is stepping form the sun with his left foot, while the right foot remains within the magic circle. Once again, a letter provides a surprising perspective on this episode. In November, 1802, Blake, disturbed by his difficulties with Hayley, sent Thomas Butts a copy of some verses which he claimed were a year old. He described an encounter with a thistle which has threatened him in the name of Los and spoken of obligations, and then told what had happened when he defied the vegetable: Then Los appeard in all his power In the Sun he appeard descending before My face in fierce flames in my double sight Twas outward a Sun: inward Los in his might "My hands are labourd day & night" "And Ease comes never in my sight" "My Wife has no indulgence given" "Except what comes to her from heaven" "We eat little we drink less" "This Earth breeds not our happiness" "Another Sun feeds our lifes streams" "We are not warmed with thy beams" "Thou measurest not the Time to me" "Nor yet the Space that I do see" "My mind is not with thy light arrayd" "Thy terrors shall not make me afraid" When I had my Defiance given The Sun stood trembling in heaven The Moon that glowd remote below Became leprous & white as snow And every Soul of men on the Earth Felt affliction & sorrow & sickness & dearth Los flamd in my path & the Sun was hot With the bows of my Mind & the Arrows of Thought My bowstring fierce with Ardour breathes My arrows glow in their golden sheaves My brothers & father march before The heavens drop with human gore Readers who know Los best from the three long poems may not recognize this sun fiend as the Eternal Prophet. (Remembering the erring Los of the Lambeth books and Vala may help.) Los is the creator and guardian of the material world, and this is why he urges Blake to remain comfortable at Felpham making money doing hack work. After Milton was written, this aspect of the fourth Zoa was to become the separate Spectre of Urthona. In Milton, however, Los is still only one character, and according to the epic, when he approached Blake, he was friendly. Los and the two poets traveled to Golgonooza, which they entered despite opposition from Rintrah (prophecy) and Palamabron (conventional art). The first episode concludes with a view of the activity of Los's family there, with a study of how souls are incarnated, and how impoverished visionaries learn to look at nature. The second grand vision described in Milton took place several years later, at Felpham. Interestingly, Blake tells us how he had been sent to Hayley by Los: For when Los joind me he took me in his firy whirlwind My Vegetated portion was hurried from Lambeths shades He set me down in Felphams Vale & prepard a beautiful Cottage for me that in three years I might write all these Visions To display Natures cruel holiness: the deceits of Natural Religion[.] -- Milton 36:21-5 Blake was walking in his garden when he spotted a heavenly being named Ololon in the form of a twelve-year-old girl. He thought she was just another Daughter of Beulah bringing celestial news (M 36:26-7). He invited her into his cottage to talk with him and his wife, who of course was also able to see the spirits (36:28-32). Ololon did not have time to visit, and she explained that she needed to find John Milton (37:1-3). "Milton's Shadow" then appeared in the garden. Blake was able to look at its insides and saw Satan, Rahab, the twelve Sons of Albion disguised as the pagan idols from Paradise Lost, the Covering Cherub with its twenty-seven churches, the forty-eight constellations, and a variety of dreary Industrial Revolution landscapes (37:5-38:27). An entirely different "Milton" appeared in the apocalyptic eastern sky and announced his great commission to repudiate Satan's doctrines through love (38:28-49). Satan countered with bombastic claims while the Seven Spirits of God called to the human race to renounce the accuser (38:50-39:31). As Blake watched, Albion, the sleeping giant whose nightmares are human history, attempted for the first time to arise (39:32-52). Blake also saw Urizen, the cruel cosmic law-giver, overcome by Milton's spirit. The two had been struggling in the caverns of the sky (39:53-61). Blake remembered that the visions that followed were by him "unknown except remotely" (40:2-3). The penitent Ololon revealed that she had caused Deism (40:4-16), whereupon Natural Religion appeared as the Harlot (Rahab) and Dragon (Urizen) of the Biblical Apocalypse (40:17-22), along with the kings of the earth (40:23-7). Milton endorsed the artistic credo of Blake (40:28-41:28), the "feminine portion" of Ololon flew shrieking into the Shadow (41:29-42:6), and Jesus Christ descended toward Felpham, surrounded by Ololon, the twenty-four Cities of Albion, and the Zoas (42:7-23). At the end of the vision, Blake recalls: Terror struck in the Vale I stood at that immortal sound My bones trembled. I fell outstretchd upon the path A moment, & my Soul returnd into its mortal state To Resurrection and Judgment in the Vegetable Body And my sweet Shadow of Delight stood trembling by my side -- Milton 42:24-8 Blake's Shadow of Delight is of course Mrs. Blake, who had seen him fall down. Blake explained the second vision as the climax of a series of apocalyptic events known only partially to him beforehand (37:3). These events are summarized in the diagram. The living John Milton, Blake tells us, had held wrong views which had contaminated his work. Although he went to heaven after he died, the poet was unhappy because his "emanation", all the things he had produced and loved in life, was spreading error in the world he had left behind. The God of Paradise Lost was remote, cold, cruel, and arbitrary. Milton's poem had made readers think wrongly of God. John Milton had been considering an attempt to salvage his errors. He made his decision after hearing the story of Satan and Palamabron (Hayley and Blake) in a song which celebrated the inadequacies of conventional morality. As he began his descent, he was encouraged by perceptions of another, ideal Milton. This form, now asleep, is the last of the "Eight Eyes of God", a series which also includes Jehovah and Jesus. Upon reaching Beulah, the descending spirit entered his "Shadow", a dismal monster reaching from heaven to earth. Milton traveled inside it, falling through the heart of Albion into the world of Time and Space. For the rest of the poem, Milton is in several places simultaneously. Milton crashed through the Mundane Shell (our sky) and in the form of a meteor united with Blake. The Shadow rebounded from Blake's foot and hovered over a final Milton, this one a thundering rock in Mount Sinai. Simultaneously, Milton's spirit, traveling in the landscapes of the sky, battled Los and Urizen. Los was afraid that the Puritan fanatic had returned to spread his errors. Then he remembered a prophecy that Milton's return would begin the apocalypse, the time when all people's perceptions will be raised to the infinite. Los then descended to Blake and took the spirit of Milton with them to Golgonooza. In heaven (Eden), a group of immortals also misunderstood the purpose of Milton's descent. Fearing the spread of false religion, they drove the Eight Eyes into our world (Ulro). Then, realizing that Milton was returning to earth in order to redeem his errors and awaken Albion, they repented their act. Guided by Jesus Christ, the immortals descended through Beulah, passing the chaoses that surround the Mundane Shell and arriving at Golgonooza. They passed through the break in the sky that Milton had made, and they arrived in Blake's garden in the form of a little girl for the final reconciliation with Milton. The apocalypse was starting as Blake, overcome by his visions, fell in his garden path: Immediately the Lark mounted with a loud trill from Felphams Vale And the Wild Thyme from Wimbletons green & impurpled Hills And Los & Enitharmon rose over the Hills of Surrey Their clouds roll over London with a south wind, soft Oothoon Pants in the Vales of Lambeth weeping oer her Human Harvest Los listens to the Cry of the Poor Man: his cloud Over London in volume terrific, low bended in anger. Rintrah and Palamabron view the Human Harvest beneath Their Wine-presses & Barns stand open; the Ovens are prepar'd The Waggons ready: terrific Lions & Tygers sport & play All Animals upon the Earth, are prepard in all their strength To go forth to the Great Harvest & Vintage of the Nations -- Milton 42:29-43:1 How much of this plot (?) is based on Blake's actual visions and how much is inventive speculation probably cannot be decided, although the poem certainly draws on Blake's unusual feelings and experiences. The most important action of the poem is not the allegorical movements of his allegorical characters, but the changes in their attitudes. First Milton, then Los, Ololon, and eventually the human race itself move from anxious concern for self and surroundings to the creative self-giving on which visionary existence depends. Blake built his epic around this theme. We will now review all his characters, their points of view, and the shifting patterns of symbols that surround them. 2. Urizen: Milton as Satan Then spoke the Spectrous Chaos to Albion darkning cold From the back & loins where dwell the Spectrous Dead I am your Rational Power O Albion & that Human Form You call Divine, is but a Worm seventy inches long That creeps forth in a night & is dried in the morning sun In fortuitous concourse of memorys accumulated & lost It plows the Earth in its own conceit, it overwhelms the Hills Beneath its winding labyrinths, till a stone of the brook Stops it in the midst of its pride among its hills & rivers[.] Battersea & Chelsea mourn, London and Canterbury tremble Their place shall not be found as the wind passes over[.] The ancient Cities of the Earth remove as a traveller And shall Albions cities remain when I pass over them With my deluge of forgotten remembrances over the tablet So spoke the Spectre to Albion. he is the Great Selfhood Satan: Worshipd as God by the Mighty Ones of the Earth Having a white Dot calld a Center from which branches out A Circle in continual gyrations. this became a heart From which sprang numerous branches varying their motions Producing many Heads three or seven or ten, & hands & feet Innumerable at will of the unfortunate contemplator Who becomes his food[:] such is the way of the Devouring Power. -- Jerusalem 29:5-24 Blake's writings all concern the struggle of visionaries against the "False Tongue", the distortions of Satan and of what the eighteenth century called "the natural man". This theme, announced clearly at the beginning of Milton, has been described by fifty years of Blake's critics. Central to all Blake's writing is the theme of radical change in human perception itself. The view of the world against which the prophet-poet labors is at once a conception of nature, an idea about people, and specifically a view of how people should act. The ordinary person today imagines the earth is a ball of rock moving through empty space in obedience to mathematical laws, laws which also govern all the other phenomena of the world. He sees no spirits or spiritual agency, and if he conceives of God at all, thinks of Him at first as a remote Being. He thinks of his own person as a chance product of nature, separate from all other people, getting knowledge only the five natural senses, and seeking safety by controlling nature and his fellow people. This supposedly makes him care nothing about life and dignity for others. Blake said that all this determines how the natural man behaves. His actions aim to keep his body alive and comfortable, and to satisfy his sexual drives. He scorns poetic vision as madness, and sees art as pleasant untruths. To achieve precarious security, he invents morality and social contracts, systems of laws reflecting the impersonal laws that make nature predictable. He invents a new God to enforce moral decrees, and thus an imaginary tyrant appears in the sky. This God is the fallen Urizen, who is in the realms of imagination the giver of form, just as in our world he is the supposed creator of moral and natural law. In the natural world, Urizen's is the difficult work of repressing people's disorderly natural appetites. As the God of the churches, his power is his mysterious and remote majesty. The Christ preached by the prophets is a man and readily accessible. Urizen (Nobodaddy, Old Testament law-giver, Deist clock-maker, etc.) is a fiction, refuses to be approached or examined, and wants to be feared and revered unthinkingly from a safe distance. In these respects Urizen is like the inscrutable Jehovah of Paradise Lost. Urizen is always associated in Blake's poems with certain basic symbols. In Milton, as elsewhere, he is a skeleton, dead bones. A real skeleton is incapable of acting, feeling, or perceiving; a moving skeleton is either a puppet or a fairy-tale to frighten a child. The sight of a skeleton makes people fear that their personalities will vanish when they die. Thus the skeleton symbol evokes Urizen in many ways. (By contrast, Blake's living real God always displays the "human form divine".) Urizen's rocks, clouds, and snows are powerful symbols of the uniformity, sterility, and deadness of legalism. The clouds conceal Urizen and conceal the way back to Eden. They also remind us how insubstantial Urizen really is. The rocks form the foundation for the buildings of human society, and suggest the opposite of living form. In The Four Zoas, snow is associated with sexual repression, chastity being at once cold and "pure". Perhaps the hexagonal snowflakes reminded Blake of Urizen's geometry. Urizen leads an army of stars which inspire people to believe in natural laws and a remote heaven and God. Stars give a faint, unsteady light, just as Urizenic science supposedly casts light on a small facet of reality. In Milton, Urizen is associated with two new symbols -- the marble rocks which he freezes around Milton's feet (19:2), and the river Jordan, in which he tries to baptize the poet. In addition to suggesting Urizen's deadness, white marble was the building material of ancient Greece and Rome which Blake believed had contributed to Milton's errors. Freezing Jordan water evokes the Hebraic influence on Milton, while the baptism itself implies both guilt and mystery. Immersion also suggests death by drowning in the Sea of Time and Space, the fate that overtook Urizen in the Lambeth books. We see little of Urizen in Milton, and especially little of his unfallen role as the lord of light and form. Urizen's sons work for the regeneration of the world among the family of Los (27:44). We learn from Jerusalem that they are the scientists and engineers (J 65:12-28). Milton, as he rebuilds Urizen with red clay, is giving God back his true form. The role played by Urizen in the early poems and in Vala is mostly given to Satan in Milton. Although Satan incorporates the errors of all four fallen Zoas, it is his role as "God of this world" that is especially important in Milton. As the last of the Sons of Los, Satan supervises the practical things that are needed simply "to make the world go around". Blake calls these "dark Satanic mills", and in the biographical allegory they encompass areas of art such as portrait painting and other hack work. More generally, Satan takes over Urizen's role as operator of natural law, which is part of Los's regenerative activity. He also invents moral virtue, and recreates Urizen's law-books as he falls. Satan is a more personal being who includes in one figure the blind, selfish natural man and the God that he supposedly creates in his own image. Satan is distinguished by his "mildness" and "softness" (M 7:4, 6, 13, etc.), and by his "youth and beauty" (8:31). While there is no doubt that this character is modeled on William Hayley, Blake's Satan is any person who thinks himself "righteous in his vegetated spectre", holy by following the laws of conventional piety. Self-righteous Satan's laws do not rest on creative self-giving, but are designed to promote the physical security and well-being of natural, un-visionary people. They only secure an armed truce among people and make them forget visionary brotherhood. This is the mental state which Blake calls the "limit of opacity". By fixing moral law, Satan, whose name Blake knew means "accuser", accuses Humankind of being unable to rise above their own self-centeredness. The young Blake had thought the great struggle in human life was between Luvah and Urizen, energy and its boundaries. By the end of the Felpham period, Blake had come to view the great struggle as being between the visionaries, who saw all men as part of the divine family, and the rationalizing masses, concerned only with personal security. But if, in our world everyone worked with Blake-like dedication producing prophetic books, everyone would starve, and Blake knew it. As the last son of Los, the "Miller of Eternity" sees to the function of nature and society. While not part of the visionary process, Satan keeps the ordinary world from collapsing. The circulation of necessities Blake calls "the mills of Satan". Satan-Hayley seized the Harrow (art) because the conventional man "pitied" the struggling poet Palamabron-Blake. Satan-Hayley selected the Harrow rather than the Plow (prophecy) because the latter instrument breaks directly into the visionary realms to make new life sprout. The Harrow evens out the work done by the Plow, and this is probably why Satan-Hayley wanted to try it. Even so, the conventional gentleman was unable to handle the poet's task, finding the "fires of genius" to be mere "torment and insanity". Yet, with his faith in his own virtue, Satan-Hayley was unable to realize that he has done anything wrong (7:39-40). Satan-Hayley's misdeed was completed only after he received "the Wine of the Almighty", the drink of the poet and prophet, from Elynittria, Palamabron-Blake's inspiration. Blake's character Leutha explains: For Elynittria met Satan with all her singing women. Terrific in their joy & pouring wine of wildest power They gave Satan their wine: indignant at the burning wrath. Wild with prophetic fury his former life became like a dream Cloth'd in the Serpents folds, in selfish holiness demanding purity Being most impure, self-condemn'd to eternal tears, he drove Me from his inmost Brain & the doors clos'd with thunders sound -- Milton 12:42-8 The drug turned Satan-Hayley into a very angry reactionary. He preached the need for law, obsessive purity and obedience, and damned art and visions as delusions subversive to the well-functioning social machine. He turned opaque to visionary love, and blackened the East, realm of the heart (9:40). Seeing no other God, he set himself up as an imposter, "self-comdemn'd to eternal tears" (12:47) in a loveless world. As "God", Satan's first act was to cast out his inspiration Leutha, who had suggested he to try to be a poet. (The same thing happened when Urizen cast out Ahania in Vala.) Satan immediately lost control of himself and tumbled into Ulro (our world). Satan announced he would "rend the divine family from his covering" (9:21). He would permit no visionaries to interfere with his world, in which he is worshipped by his druid sons (11:7, renamed after Blake's trial the "Sons of Albion"). Although he is a different character, Satan's symbols are Urizenic. His "infernal scroll" of laws (9:31) is the sky-god's Books of Brass; his bosom is filled with the "ruins and desarts" (38:15-22) of Newtonian science. Satan is associated with Sihon, Og, and Anak, who guard the perceptual frontiers of mortals. If we detect an allusion to Paradise Lost in M 20:33-6, we see Og as Sin and Anak as Death; fear of these mythical giants prevents the seeker from approaching Golgonooza. The giants also represent the terrors of the unknown and indefinite in outer space -- the constellations are divided between Og and Sihon. Satan is also the type and sum of the elemental spirits (M 31:17-27). Blake tells us little about them except that they are deified and are incapable of regeneration or forgiveness. Probably they are personifications of what we call natural forces. In his last appearance (39:24-31), Satan is fourfold, fully formed and ready to be thrown away. He is surrounded by four Miltonic "Zoas", Death (Tharmas), Sin (Luvah), Chaos (Urthona), and Night (Urizen, equipped with a "mantle of laws"). When Milton announced, "I in my selfhood am that Satan: I am that evil one" (14:30), he began an equation that runs throughout the poem. While they seem to be separate characters, Milton and Satan are both multifaceted images of all people. "Milton's "Shadow" would come to be identified with the fallen demon and the Cherub, while the true Humanity of the poet would be identified with the passive "body" of Satan (39:18) and the rising Albion. What was it about John Milton that qualified him for such a role in Blake's "vision"? The answer is well-known to students of Blake. It is perhaps even more familiar to Miltonists who feel that the Puritan poet's writings betray an unintended sympathy for Satan and the other devils. Milton was an inspired romantic genius, Blake believed, but his poetry was perverted by Puritanism. As a revolutionary and epic poet, John Milton had embodied the Blakean ideals of an inspired man. He had defended individual liberty against royal tyrants and Puritan censorship. He had based his great poetic work on his understanding of Christianity, and he had looked with Oliver Cromwell to the foundation of a society filled with simplicity and godliness. John Milton had spoken as a prophet to the people of his age, and had found himself "a voice crying in the wilderness", a Rintrah among his fellow Puritans. The close of his life found him alone, cut off from Restoration society, uttering his prophecies for "fit audience though few", a phrase selected by Blake as the epigraph to his 1809 Catalogue. When Blake noted in the margin of a copy of a book by Joshua Reynolds that "Milton was in earnest in believing God did visit man", he recognized in him a fellow poet-prophet inspired by the Holy Ghost. Milton had made it clear in Paradise Lost (VII, 1-20), Paradise Regained (I, 8-17), and The Reason of Church Government that a great Christian epic would be inspired by no less a Person. Milton's poem on Adam and Eve was the first highly successful epic poem not dealing with heroic warfare, a subject which Milton and Blake considered inferior to the highest poetry (Paradise Lost X: 1-47). Blake told Crabb Robinson that while Milton had been gifted with Divine Imagination, he became "an Atheist, a mere politician busied about this world... till in his old age he returned back to God whom he had had in his childhood". Thus Milton is classed with Dante, Wordsworth, and probably every other competent Christian poet known to Blake, as having been grossly in error though inspired. While Blake may appear to be referring only to Milton's career as Cromwell's spokesman, we remember that Blake had himself supported the American and French Revolutions in his early days. Later Blake came to think that political activism was only useless, not harmful. They key phrase rather is "busied about this world". Despite his stance as a prophet, Milton had held the doctrines of the False Tongue, cut his thoughts off from Eternity, and had become only a stage in the endless cycle of earthly selfishness which Blake called the Orc cycle. Blake's early recognition of Milton's imperfect vision provoked his famous remark: ...in Milton, the Father is Destiny, the Son, a Ratio of the five senses. & the Holy-ghost, Vacuum! Note. The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devils party without knowing it. -- Marriage of Heaven & Hell ,Plate 5 Blake means, of course, that the Father in Paradise Lost is the remote Urizen, operating the wheels of the heavens and of the law, delivering boring lectures on predestination and guilt, creating man as a drudge, and demanding bloody sacrifice to atone for "sin". Christ is the builder of the Mundane Shell, which he circumscribes with his compasses as in Blake's famous picture of Urizen. Milton's epics contain few references to the Holy Ghost, none of which amounts to much poetically. At this stage, Blake felt that the devils (Luvahs, revolutionaries) were the visionaries and enemies of the false doctrines of Urizen; hence Milton is "of the devil's party". Later, Milton would be redivided between the party of Christ and that of Satan, who combines the errors of all the Zoas. Just as John Milton was in error about the nature of his God, he held pernicious views of human life which spoiled his poetry and made him personally unhappy. As a Puritan, Milton had urged men to withdraw from the sexual pleasures which are the easiest means to attain heavenly joys. When Quid the Cynic (Blake) remarks in An Island in the Moon that "Milton has no feelings" and "might easily be outdone", he is probably referring to the antiseptic way in which Milton handled even the great lovemaking-scenes in Paradise Lost. Crabb Robinson recalled that one of Milton's errors Blake wished to correct was that "the pleasures of love arose from the fall". Damon [1] is probably correct in thinking Blake meant Milton had seen lust as the result of sin (Paradise Lost IX, 1010 ff.), when to Blake "the lust of the goat is the glory of God". Comus betrays a similar un-Blakean approach to sexual matters. Milton also was wrong, Blake states in the late "Preface" to our poem, to choose the classical militarists as models for his life and poetry. Milton had defended the execution of Charles I, and had supported Cromwell's efforts to impose morality by the use of military force. The historical John Milton was subjected to "the torments of love and jealousy" at the hands of his three wives and three daughters. These six women, whom Milton had tyrannized in life, had to the visionary eye "represented and contained" Blake's sex female characters who together symbolize the natural world (M 17:2). Admirers of Milton, such as Percy Shelley and E.M.W. Tillyard, have often noted the same tension in his work that Blake did. The best-known presentation of the very Blakean ideas that have been found beneath the surface of Paradise Lost is Tillyard's discussion of "unconscious meanings" [2]. According to Professor Tillyard, John Milton had far more admiration and empathy for his rebellious Satan than he liked to admit. So he made him a "figure of heroic energy", a Blakean hero struggling against Urizen. Milton wrote no verse on the Atonement that rises above the prosaic, and Tillyard felt that Milton did not much like this doctrine, which he held only intellectually, and which Blake abhorred. Milton's paradise, where Adam and Eve live as "old age pensioners enjoying perpetual youth" is Blake's Beulah, and he and Tillyard recognized it as less than fully human. Finally, Tillyard saw John Milton as basically pessimistic about the human condition, showing little interest in expressing hope for the future. Blake agreed -- if a person cannot break out of this world by vision and self-sacrifice, neither of which Milton understood, he will never be happy again. Whatever one may think of Tillyard's criticism, which has been discarded by most serious Miltonists, Blake makes the dead poet himself recognize that it was true. John Milton often "begged Blake to confute" the "fatal errors in his Paradise Lost". Indeed, the John Milton familiar to lovers of English poetry appears to the visionary eye as a frozen monster, parodying the way in which the blind poet dictated his epics to his family: He saw the Cruelties of Ulro, and he wrote them down In iron tablets: and his Wives & Daughters names were these Rahab and Tirzah, & Milcah & Malah & Noah & Hoglah. They sat rang'd round him as the rocks of Horeb round the land Of Canaan: and they wrote in thunder smoke and fire His dictate; and his body was Rock Sinai; that body, Which was on earth born to corruption: & the six Females Are Hor & Peor & Bashan & Abiram & Lebanon & Hermon Seven rocky masses terrible in the Deserts of Midian. -- Milton 17:9-17 For Blake, the mortal John Milton had worshipped Urizen-Satan and has now become what he beheld. The poet, seated in Mount Sinai like Moses writing the Bible, sees the "cruelties of Ulro", the half-visionary, half-mythical, and altogether tragic events surrounding the Fall of Man, and inscribes them in Paradise Lost just as Urizen wrote the laws of morality based on his own distorted understanding. To the visionary, Paradise Lost and Urizen's Bible are the same. Both urge the same submission to mystery and tyranny. The first face of Milton is that of Satan-Urizen himself. 3. Tharmas: Milton as Covering Cherub Thus was the Covering Cherub reveald majestic image Of Selfhood, Body put off, the AntiChrist accursed Coverd with precious stones, a Human Dragon terrible And bright, stretchd over Europe & Asia gorgeous In three nights he devourd the rejected corse of death His Head dark, deadly, in its Brain incloses a reflexion Of Eden all perverted: Egypt on the Gihon many tongued And many mouthd: Ethiopia, Lybia, the Sea of Rephain Minute Particulars in slavery I behold among the brick-kilns Disorganiz'd, & there is Pharoh in his iron Court: And the Dragon of the River & the Furnaces of iron. Outwoven from Thames & Tweed & Severn awful streams Twelve ridges of Stone frown over all the Earth in tyrant pride Frown over each River stupendous Works of Albions Druid Sons And Albions Forests of Oaks coverd the Earth from Pole to Pole His Bosom wide reflects Moab & Ammon, on the River Pison, since calld Arnon, there is Heshbon beautiful The Rocks of Rabbath on the Arnon & the Fish-pools of Heshbon Whose currents flow into the Dead Sea by Sodom & Gomorra Above his Head high arching Wings black filld with Eyes Spring upon iron sinews from the Scapulae & Os Humeri. There Israel in bondage to his Generalizing Gods Molech and Chemosh, & in his left breast is Philistea In Druid Temples over the whole Earth with Victims Sacrifice, From Gaza to Damascus Tyre & Sidon & the Gods Of Javan thro the Isles of Grecia & all Europes Kings Where Hiddekel pursues his course among the rocks Two Wings spring from his ribs of brass, starry, black as night But translucent their blackness as the dazling of gems His Loins inclose Babylon on Euphrates beautiful And Rome in sweet Hesperia. there Israel scatterd abroad In martyrdoms & slavery I behold: ah vision of sorrow! Inclosed by eyeless Wings, glowing with fire as the iron Heated in the Smiths forge, but cold the wind of their dread fury. -- Jerusalem 89:9-42 Blake's Tharmas, while one of the four Zoas, receives little attention as such outside Vala. In Eden he is perception, or, more accurately, Man's power to create his world. (There is no subject-object distinction in Blake's highest realm.) Thus, Tharmas is the "Parent Power" underlying the workings of the other Zoas. Tharmas is associated especially with Beulah, the dimension of sensation and passive experience rather than of creation and conflict. With the closure of the Western Gate belonging to this Zoa, imaginative control over the perceptions was lost, and Man came to experience the world of matter. Tharmas divided into a Spectre and an amorphous residue. The surviving Zoa becomes the life-force. He begets monsters by spontaneous generation from chaos, and orders Los to his anvil to forge a new world of solid forms. As the Zoa who governs the experience of the unfallen world, Tharmas is also the sense of being happy and knows when things are wrong. Thus in Vala, after his own fall during the struggles of Luvah and Urizen, he knocked Luvah from the sky in anger, and later did the same to Urizen. While he is always expressing his feelings in some way or other, and thus functions as a sort of chorus, he does nothing constructive. In the later Milton and Jerusalem, the conception of a divided Tharmas was abandoned, and the Spectre was equated with the Covering Cherub of Ezekiel. The Spectre of Tharmas is called the False Tongue itself, because the error of perception is basic. The fallen Man perceives only a hostile, alien world around him and supposedly thinks that he must act accordingly. As Tharmas grants perceptions in Eden, the Cherub causes the natural person to perceive a solid material world. Tharmas is the vitality that bestows imaginative life in Eden; the Cherub is the Selfhood's idea of the life-giving spirit. Every advance in biology has confirmed the view that our species is a product of a complicated chemical process and is evolved ultimately from a few types of subatomic particles. As Urizen is the sky-god, the Covering Cherub is the limiting sky surrounding the world of matter and cutting off the vision of Eternity. As he is ultimately the fallen person's whole view of the world, the Covering Cherub's tyranny encompasses all errors that keep us from enjoying the fellowship of all people, whether they are political (9:51), "moral", scientific, artistic, or religious (37:16-8). Satan, the natural heart, falls enfolded by the Cherub as by a deadly constricting snake (12:46), a classical symbol for matter [3]. The most famous symbol for Tharmas is the ocean, which is appropriate for several reasons. Kathleen Raine says a great deal about water as a Neoplatonic image of matter [4], and Carl Jung found the sea to be the "commonest symbol for the unconscious" [5], source of all imaginative perception of the fallen man. As the sea engulfs all things, it is a fine symbol for the ever-devouring false Tongue; as it reflects heaven in its quiet moments, it becomes a symbol of the redeemed Tharmas (M 25:71). Finally, as matter, the Spectre of Tharmas (like his closest literary relative, Milton's Anarch Chaos), can give rise to nothing living. Left alone, it will eventually disintegrate into a "sea of atoms" [6], or, as Blake expresses it: The Natural Power continually seeks & tends to Destruction Ending in Death: which would of itself be Eternal Death -- Milton 26:41-2 All material things tend to deteriorate into formlessness. Thus Blake can say that the Covering Cherub, or natural power, pursues death, a process arrested only by the fixing of the "limits of opacity and contraction". All Spectres seek the deaths of others out of fear and jealousy. By remaining unregenerate we are also working toward our own nonexistence. The image of the gloomy "death" the erring Milton had chosen for himself in life is called "Milton's Shadow". While much has been written to make clear what Blake meant by a "spectre", less has been said about the quite different conception of a "shadow". Any shadow is the form of a thing without its substance or life, appearing opposite the light source. A review of the Felpham letters and later works shows that Blake often spoke of all material things and persons as "shadows" of their Eternal beings. The concept of the shadow must therefore be related to the material reality which helps or hinders the visionary. In the late strata of The Four Zoas, the shadows are the female counterparts to the spectres of the Zoas -- pale, static, inconsequential things. They are the soft of emanations spectres would desire, just as the material shadow seems to "emanate" from a material man. The invisible, wailing Enion, the lost Ahania, the laboring Vala, and Orc's silly goddess of purity, white Enitharmon, are all called "shadows", and are all that remains of their original forms in Ulro. So is the "Shadowy Female", personification of nature. Albion's "Shadow" is the idiotic, voiceless creature that arises from him and to which he prays to forgive his sexual sins (J 43:33-54). So the Shadow of Milton is probably the Spectre's version of what the human being ought to be. It is the pathetic image or parody of the self-sacrificing and productive Humanity of Milton; it is at once the roles he invented for himself and the errors that interacted with them. Milton's Shadow is "a mournful form", dismal as John Milton was when "covered" with the earthly body. Being mournful is the loveless spectrous version of being a solitary prophet speaking against evil. Blake's heroic Milton, while he is "severe and silent" (38:8), is not doleful or without hope. As Milton's experience of the fallen world, the Shadow encompasses all errors, and extends from Beulah through the twenty-seven heavens (human history) to the earth. This begins the suggestion that the Shadow, formed of the material of the Covering Cherub, is the Cherub. Milton enters the gloomy shape, and begins his voyage as "Milton's Human Shadow" (17:18). As Blake prepares to travel to Golgonooza, the Shadow separates (20:20-2), flying from the fierce visionary and going to "brood" over the frozen Milton in Sinai, just as the Cherub hovers over humankind in general. Blake is punning -- the dismal Shadow frets over Milton, but it is also "brooding" in the sense that Milton spoke of the Holy Spirit as a dove brooding to make chaos fertile (Paradise Lost I, 21). The action of the Shadow is an impossible parody of regeneration. Again Blake seems to identify Cherub and Shadow: For that portion namd the Elect: the Spectrous body of Milton: Redounding from my left foot into Los's Mundane space, Brooded over his Body in Horeb against the Resurrection Preparing it for the Great Consummation; red the Cherub on Sinai Glow'd; but in terrors folded round his clouds of blood. -- Milton 20:20-4 The Shadow appears again, as the Cherub (37:4-12), in definite form and ready to be cast out by the awakened Milton. Before it is given this shape, it is compared to a "polypus" (15:8). Readers of Blake know that this can mean either an octopus or a type of malignant growth; here both are very appropriate. Error spreads invasively and grows like cancer, and all of a cancer must be removed before a cure is effected. An octopus is a shapeless, clinging, soft-bodied sea creature with many extensions, one that avoids light and obscures itself in clouds of black ink. Why did Milton enter the Shadow to return to the material world? The Shadow is the material reality with which the personality of Milton dealt in life. Being twenty-seven-fold, extending through Ulro, and being likened to a polypus indicates that it is the unregenerated world which Milton perceived while on earth. However, since every person's way of looking at the world is distinctive to the person, the shadow is properly the Tharmic portion of one's personality. Because it is part subject, part object, it is "hermaphroditic; male and female / In one wonderful body" (14:37-8), just like Tharmas. Even though it is a body of error, the Shadow must be rejoined if the errors committed in the body are to be redeemed. Until the apocalypse, anyone who wishes to act in the time-and-space world needs to have some view of it. Milton travels in his Shadow until he joins Blake. Then the Shadow is discarded and John Milton can see the world with fresh eyes. 4. Luvah: Milton as Orc Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air; Hungry clouds swag on the deep Once meek, and in a perilous path, The just man kept his course along The vale of death. Roses are planted where thorns grow. And on the barren heath Sing the honey bees. Then the perilous path was planted: And a river, and a spring On every cliff and tomb; And on the bleached bones Red clay brought forth. Till the villain left the paths of ease, To walk in perilous paths, and drive The just man into barren climes. Now the sneaking serpent walks In mild humility. And the just man rages in the wilds Where lions roam. Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air; Hungry clouds swag on the deep -- The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 2 Luvah (Love, the Eastern Zoa of many aspects) figures prominently in Blake's two longest poems. In Milton, he is present only as he appears in our world. Albion (Humankind) fell in Beulah (dreamland) because he found it pleasant to allow Luvah (sensual desire, love of beauty) to control him. The natural person is dominated in the same way. Any being that feels love or a passion stemming from it, selfish or not, participates in what Blake came to call the state of Luvah. His manifestations in Milton include the unformed souls of people, the universal angry boy Orc, the other sons of Los, and the John Milton who chooses, out of love, to descend from heaven and redeem his mistakes. Luvah-Albion forgot his role in creative fellowship of Eden, and wanted the secure, passive, sensual and mindless dreamland of Beulah. Though now confined to the natural world, Luvah episodically tries to return to this comfortable state, and appears in the world as Orc. To make improvements in the world, people must imagine something better for themselves. Thus Orc is regularly born as the first child of Los and Enitharmon, who give visions. Orc has not returned to Beulah yet, because he retains the selfishness that turned Beulah into the Cherub's world of matter. Because he has not understood, every Orc falls prey to the delusions of our world, becoming preoccupied with security and rewriting Urizen's laws to control his own revolution. In the end he becomes Urizen, the adventure fails, and a new Orc is born. The history of the fallen world is the cycles between these two aspects of the fallen Albion. Blake saw each human life beginning with Orc and moving to Urizen. Every baby is a little bundle of primitive desire, restrained first by parental discipline and later by the child's own sense of guilt. Repressed desires, both aggressive and sexual, seethe under an outward show of chastity. Later, the young idealist, dreaming of a better life, may try to recover Beulah through political action, sexual promiscuity, or intoxicants. Yet these concerns of the young person eventually give way to concern for mere safety, until the ideals are forgotten. Blake saw the same process taking place in political and social revolution; a tyrant will be overthrown by well-meaning people, only to be replaced by anarchy and then another tyrant. The deterioration of Orc recalls that of Milton's Satan, identified with Luvah in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The heroic rebel of the first books of Paradise Lost degenerates through pride into a vengeful, malicious autocrat of an enormous wasteland. He finally gets changed, like Orc, into a snake. Orc is every person who refuses to be content with his circumstances. Revolutions that have made concessions to selfish hatred and fear have failed to restore the golden age. When a revolutionary finally appears who is free from these errors, the real revolution of love and forgiveness will take place, and the Covering Cherub will vanish. Waiting for human perceptions to change radically, the inspired prophets labor continually to weaken the hold of the False Tongue and help people see spiritual beauty. Most of Orc's symbols suggest both kinds of revolution. There is the trumpet (M 23:14) of militaristic war or apocalypse. Orc's fires (9:37 etc.) combine suggestions of desire, pain, destruction, and transmutation. Blood (27:3, etc.) is the living principle, and may flow from sacrifice either of self or others. Eerie "spectres of the dead" haunt the middle plates of Milton and the late passages of The Four Zoas. These are souls that inhabit the regions of the Mundane Shell waiting to be given earthly bodies. Although their personalities differ, each is a little Orc. One of the great tasks of Los and his family is to provide these spirits with the minds and bodies they need to develop into suitable inhabitants of a world being regenerated. Blake calls any being that knows only the natural world a "spectre", and the word as used in Milton should not be confused with "reasoning power". These little spectres are without shape, being compared to clouds (M 26:27), flickering flames (28:11), or even Shakespeare's "airy nothing" (28:3). They are "piteous passions and desires" (26:26), "doubts and fears" (28:9), "piteous sufferers" (28:7). They are little pieces of primitive selfish behavior that have somehow resulted from the fall. Together, they comprise Satan (15:17-8), and perhaps they are the "poor infected" (M 8:43). Getting the spirit into the body is the task of many members of Los's staff. Blake's description of the process is scattered through his three epics. A poignant passage in Jerusalem describes the role of the Daughters of Albion, personified natural functions, in the process [7]: This World is all a Cradle for the erred wandering Phantom: Rock'd by Year, Month, Day, & Hour; and every two Moments Between, dwells a Daughter of Beulah, to feed to Human Vegetable Entune: Daughters of Albion, your hymning Chorus mildly! Cord of affection thrilling extatic on the iron Reel: To the golden Loom of Love! to the moth-labourd Woof A Garment and Cradle weaving for the infantine Terror: For fear; at entering the gate into our World of cruel Lamentation: it flee back & hide in Non-Entitys dark wild Where dwells the Spectre of Albion: destroyer of Definite Form. The Sun shall be a Scythed Chariot of Britain: the Moon; a Ship In the British Ocean! Created by Los's Hammer; measured out Into Days & Nights & Years & Months. to travel with my feet Over these desolate rocks of Albion: O daughters of despair! Rock the Cradle, and in mild melodies tell me where found What you have enwoven with so much tears & care? so much Tender artifice: to laugh: to weep: to learn: to know; Remember! recollect! what dark befel in wintry days O it was lost for ever! and we found it not: it came And wept at our wintry Door: Look! look! behold! Gwendolen Is become a Clod of Clay! Merlin is a Worm of the Valley! -- Jerusalem 56:8-28 The spectres are drawn into our world by the power of natural beauty, not by the hope of regeneration. Thinking they are going to Beulah, the spirits enter the bodies woven for them in the womb. (The passage is the basis of the commonly accepted interpretation of The Book of Thel.) The account is elaborated in Milton, in a long continuous passage which Blake unfortunately interrupted by the insertion of Plate 27. It repays a close reading as Blake's essay on the origins of the individual personality: There are Two Gates thro which all Souls descend. One Southward From Dover Cliff to Lizard Point. the other toward the North Caithness & rocky Durness, Pentland & John Groats House The Souls descending to the Body, wail on the right hand Of Los; & those deliverd from the Body, on the left hand -- Milton 26:13-7 Los is at his forge in London, facing the apocalyptic eastern sky. The souls descending on his right are thus entering the body through the gate of Satan-Urizen in the South. After the soul has finished its life as a human being, it returns to the spirit world by way of the gate of Adam-Los in the North. Between these gates, the soul lives on earth, where the family of Los struggle to help it regain the lost vision of Eternity. And these the Labours of the Sons of Los in Allamanda: And in the City of Golgonooza: & in Luban: & around The Lake of Udan-Adan, in the Forests of Entuthon Benython Where Souls incessant wail, being piteous Passions & Desires With neither lineament nor form but like to watry clouds The Passions & Desires descend upon the hungry winds For such along Sleepers remain meer passion & appetite; The Sons of Los clothe them & feed & provide houses & fields And every Generated Body in its inward form, Is a garden of delight & and a building of magnificence, Built by the Sons of Los in Bowlahoola & Allamanda And the herbs & flowers & furniture & beds & chambers Continually woven in the Looms of Enitharmons Daughters In bright Cathedrons golden Dome with care & love & tears[.] For the various Classes of Men are all markd out determinate In Bowlahoola; as the Spectres choose their affinities So they are born on Earth, & every class is determinate But not by Natural but by Spiritual power alone. -- Milton 26:23-40 Even disembodied spectres have different personalities. Each soul chooses the body with which it can express the type of desires of which it is composed (cf. M 25:43). There are three basic sorts of spectres -- the sullen lovers, the anxious doubters, and the sadistic weaklings. These recall Tharmas, Urizen, and Luvah, and so do the descriptions which follow: 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. -- Milton 28:1-7 The emphasis here is on the body (Tharmas) itself, and particularly the regenerative power of the sexual act, the principal means by which we may guess these souls will achieve vision. Others; Cabinets richly fabricate of gold & ivory For Doubts & fears unform'd & wretched & melancholy 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 The Daughters of beauty look up from their Looms & prepare The integument soft for its clothing with joy & delight. -- Milton 28:8-20 Gold, ivory, and the light-giving lamp are emblems of the unfallen Urizen, as are the symbols of form -- the outline, the skin, the wax model. The battling spectres are of course twins, who struggle in the womb like Jacob (the patriarch Urizen) and Esau (the red Luvah). The images of graphic art suggests a means by which these spirits might be redeemed. But Theotormon & Sotha stand in the Gate of Luban anxious Their numbers are seven million & seven thousand & seven hundred They contend with the weak Spectres, they fabricate soothing forms The Spectre refuses. he seeks cruelty. they create the crested Cock Terrified the Spectre screams & rushes in fear into their Net Of kindness & compassion & is born a weeping terror. Or they create the Lion & Tyger in compassionate thunderings[.] Howling the Spectres flee: they take refuge in Human lineaments. -- Milton 28:21-8 Still other aggressive spirits are incarnated only by being frightened into the body. They will become people of great energy which must be directed by Los. The cycle from Tharmas through Urizen to Luvah is completed in the next verse paragraph, describing the clan of Ozoth, a lower form of Los himself: The Sons of Ozoth within the Optic Nerve stand fiery glowing And the number of his sons is eight millions and eight. They give delights to the man unknown; artificial riches They give to scorn, & their posessors to trouble & sorrow & care, Shutting the sun. & moon. & stars. & trees. & clouds. & waters. And hills. out from the Optic Nerve & hardening it into a bone Opake. and like the black pebble on the enraged beach. While the poor indigent is like the diamond which tho cloth'd In rugged covering in the mind, is open all within And in his hallowd center holds the heavens of bright eternity Ozoth here builds walls of rocks against the surging sea And timbers crampt with iron cramps bar in the joys of life From fell destruction in the Spectrous cunning or rage. He creates The speckled Newt, the Spider & Beetle, the Rat & Mouse, The Badger & Fox: they worship before his feet in trembling fear. -- Milton 28:29-43 While Theotormon and Sotha were associated with the number seven (time), Ozoth is associated with eight (eternity). Ozoth opens the visionary eye of any person who is content, like Blake, to be materially poor. The passage recalls Blake's remarks to Dr. Trusler in 1799: To the Eyes of a Miser a Guinea is more beautiful than the Sun & a bag worn with the use of Money has more beautiful proportions than a Vine filled with Grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way. Some See Nature all Ridicule & Deformity & by these I shall not regulate my proportions, & some scarce see Nature at all But to the Eyes of the Man of Imagination Nature is Imagination itself. As a man is So he Sees. As the Eye is formed such are its Powers That Ozoth also creates vermin is puzzling. The creatures tremble and prostrate themselves before him, and probably they are people whose visions have led them into superstitious awe. Yet the visionary can now see the world with an eye for beauty, and will labor for a better life among the Sons of Los -- Rintrah, Palamabron, Theotormon, and Bromion. Twelve of the Sons of Los and Enitharmon were lost to Urizenism. These remaining Four embrace all humanistic endeavor. All are forms of Orc, but unlike the terrible child, the drive of the Four toward a comfortable and happy world is controlled and directed by Los, prime agent of regeneration. Because Milton is a poem about people as we know them rather than a cosmic chronicle, the Four are very important in our epic. In particular, Rintrah, Palamabron, Theotormon, and Bromion are the enlightened, socially conscious people of Blake's age. We learn from Africa that Rintrah is particularly the genius of the Jewish and Oriental religions, and that Theotormon is associated with Christianity. Palamabron's is the Greek heritage, while Bromion is responsible for the rise of Deism and scientific naturalism. In the later poem, Rintrah is the type of the prophet, Palamabron is the poet or artist, and Bromion is the scientist. In Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Theotormon is the ascetic, joyless Puritan, setting impossible standards of behavior and wondering why he is so miserable. Perhaps we can recognize Theotormon in the moralists and social critics who remain in their societies. Together the Four make up a group, in which Rintrah recalls Urthona, Palamabron Luvah, Theotormon Tharmas, the Bromion Urizen. Rintrah is the person who withdraws from regular affairs of the world in order to speak against evil. He is called "fierce" (M 24:11) because he is every angry person. He is associated with fire and wrath for the same reasons as is Luvah. He is also a sun-hero (29:27) -- the sun is the source of the greatest light received by people, and it is Rintrah who lays the groundwork for his brothers by saying something is wrong. Enitharmon enters the Great Solemn Assembly on Rintrah's arm. She represents mercy following prophetic denunciations, a common theme in Old Testament prophecy as well as in Blake. Palamabron the poet is often paired with Rintrah as his contrary. Since Palamabron is Blake in the Bard's song, it is inviting to think Blake patterned Rintrah on his idealized brother Robert, who is paired with "William" in the illustrations. Palamabron is the moon (7:20; 29:27) reflecting more softly the light of Rintrah's sun, the Harrow that evens out the work of Rintrah's plow. Rintrah and Palamabron are associated with the Two Witnesses of the Bible (M 9:8; 22:55, cf. Rev. 11:7-12). While his elder brother looks dangerous, Palamabron is "mild and piteous" (24:71). He is called Pity while Rintrah is Wrath. In Blake's terminology, pity does not only mean compassion, but may mean beauty, kindness, and cooperation. As prototype of the "Redeemed", Palamabron is the sensitive man whose concerns are with restoring love and beauty but who does not remove himself from the company of people less sensitive than himself. He may speak as a prophet (7:23-4), because the convictions of any just man are prophetic. He puts his trust in God (9:5-6) and hesitates to become angry for fear of being accused of ingratitude (7:11-2). Palamabron the artist is responsible for most of human culture, including everything that is beautiful, but also the errors of dreaming poets -- all false gods and false religions (cf. MHH pl. 11). By Leutha, emanation of Satan, Palamabron becomes the father of Death and Rahab (13:40-1). Furthermore, an artist may be induced by society (Satan) to abandon true art for hack work (the mills of Satan). If the artist is truly inspired, as Blake was at Felpham, traces of genius will remain in the work (the drunken gnomes sing Palamabron's songs), and the results will be unsatisfactory. Theotormon may be modeled on the spirit of John Blake "in a black cloud making his moan", or of William Cowper, who worked in Felpham's mills before Blake. He is "filled with care" (24:12), and is imprisoned like industrial-age humans in his own factories (27:49-54). He works with the Sons of Urizen, forging materials in the mills of Protestant technology. While we do not know much about Theotormon, it is likely that he represents an aspect of Los's personality that became incorporated into the Spectre of Urthona. Bromion "loves science" (24:12). While Blake rejected efforts to explain all phenomena in natural terms, he appreciated the importance of science to human life, seeing it as the basis of all human activity (27:55-63). Theotormon and Bromion, more than the artists and prophets, share Satan's lack of vision. "Terrified" at the myth of "Eternal Death", they contend with Satan against Palamabron and Rintrah (8:30). These four sons of Los, as aspects of Orc, share his limited perspective. Thus, they think Blake intends to destroy their good creations. The spirits of civilization cannot appreciate the coming Last Judgment, the radical change in human vision, and the disappearance of the familiar world. While they recognize Satan (the savage) as their enemy, the Four direct the energies of Orc to secular ends. They are as wary of people like William Blake as they are of Satanic error. Rintrah and Palamabron (and also the other two, as Los later addresses them all together) try to block Milton-Blake's entry into the City of Art. Los delivers two long speeches warning his sons to remember the visionary ideals while thy civilize the world. Los reminds them: We were plac'd here by the Universal Brotherhood & Mercy With powers fitted to circumscribe this dark Satanic death And that the Seven Eyes of God may have space for Redemption. But how this is as yet we know not, and we cannot know; Till Albion is arisen; then patient wait a little while, Six thousand years are passd away the end approaches fast; This mighty one is come from Eden, he is of the Elect, Who died from Earth & he is returnd before the Judgment. This thing Was never known that one of the holy dead should willing return Then patient wait a little while till the Last Vintage is over: Till we have quenched the Sun of Salah in the Lake of Udan Adan O my dear Sons! leave not your Father, as your brethren left me.... You O my Sons still guard round Los. O wander not & leave me Rintrah, thou well rememberest when Amalek & Canaan Fled with their Sister Moab into that abhorred Void They became Nations in our sight beneath the hands of Tirzah. And Palamabron thou rememberest when Joseph an infant; Stolen from his nurses cradle wrapd in needle-work Of emblematic texture, was sold to the Amalekite, Who carried him down into Egypt where Ephraim & Manasseh Gatherd my Sons together in the Sands of Midian And if you also flee away and leave your Fathers side Following Milton into Ulro, altho your power is great Surely you also shall become poor mortal vegetations Beneath the Moon of Ulro: pity then your Fathers tears[.] -- Milton 23:50-24:25 The Sons of Los, like Blake's contemporaries, were not persuaded. So Los spoke. Furious they descended to Bowlahoola & Allamanda Indignant. unconvincd by Los's arguments & thun[d]ers rolling -- Milton 24:44-5 The Four fear Milton-Blake with good reason. Within his body is concealed Milton in his Luvah aspect. Although they cannot realize it, he is already a higher aspect than they. In his life on earth, John Milton had embodied the Sons of Los as a prophet, a poet, a Puritan social critic, and an avid student of the scientific advances of his day. After his death, however, he had realized that he had not understood his unconscious vision, and his work had propagated the errors that cut Humankind off from eternal life. At first Milton's spirit kept Puritanic silence (2:18), wondering whether to try to recover the truth that had inspired his great poetry. He listened as the Bard's song presented the errors of Satan and the dominion of selfishness over the whole natural heart, even the Miltonic virtues. Realizing this, Milton decided to descend to our world ("Generation"). The John Milton who descends is the spirit of the poet who lived on earth, but not the actual Self, who is sleeping the sleep of Albion. The wandering Milton is rather the "Vehicular Form", the manifestation in time and space of the unchanging reality of his personality. The "Vehicular Form" of Urthona is Los. Since the fiery Vehicular Form is associated with Luvah as the Shadow is with Tharmas, a quaternity appears... Humanity ³ ³ ³ ShadowÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÅÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄVehicular ³ Form ³ ³ Spectre (Body) ...showing the two as the time and space creations of Truth and Error. And Milton said, I go to Eternal Death! The Nations still Follow after the detestable Gods of Priam; in pomp Of warlike selfhood, contradicting and blaspheming. When will the Resurrection come; to deliver the sleeping body From corruptibility: O when Lord Jesus wilt thou come? Tarry no longer; for my soul lies at the gates of death. I will arise and look forth for the morning of the grave. I will go down to the sepulcher to see if morning breaks! I will go down to self annihilation and eternal death, Lest the Last Judgment come & find me unannihilate And I be seiz'd & giv'n into the hands of my own Selfhood. The Lamb of God is seen thro' mists & shadows, hov'ring Over the sepulchers in clouds of Jehovah & winds of Elohim A disk of blood, distant; & heav'ns & earth's roll dark between What do I here before the Judgment? without my Emanation? With the daughters of memory, & not with the daughters of inspiration? I in my Selfhood am that Satan: I am that Evil one! He is my Spectre! in my obedience to loose him form my Hells To claim the Hells, my Furnaces, I go to Eternal Death. -- Milton 14:14-32 Milton must return to earth to see whether Christ is rising in people's hearts ("the morning of the grave") and to overcome his errors. As he announces he will descend, Milton removes the "robe of the promise" (14:13). The robe is one of many clothing images in the epic. In every case, the garment is some illusion. The reference here is probably to the robe which was presented to the idolater Jeroboam as promise of his future kingship over Israel. Milton is divesting himself at once of the roles of politician, tyrant, and worshipper of mysteries. The "Gods of Priam" are the idols of war and mystery in our world. Christ is seen only dimly as a blood-red disk, an ambiguous emblem, suitable either for the rising Sun of Life or the Orc-cycle. Separated from his emanation, the visionary truth he had seen only dimly in writing his poetry, Milton cannot be anything more than Satan, an unregenerate "spectre of the dead", and his shadowy life will be annihilated at the Judgment. In searching for his emanation, his "daughters of inspiration", Milton seeks to oust Satanic error from the productive regions of his personality. These are the "furnaces", which can either consume and destroy or make possible the manufacture of works of art. Milton is the only one of the elect who realizes that without a radical change in outlook, he is lost. The poet's encounter with Urizen shows him as Orc and depicts his becoming something more by reconstructing the true image of God. In the depths of the sky, Milton wrestles with Urizen (and the three other Zoas, cf. 40:6). Urizen seeks to petrify Milton as he has frozen all the previous Orcs. The monster baptizes him with Jordan river water (18:8-9). Urizen wants to Hebraize the free Christian, to create in him the illusion of guilt that needs to be washed away. The baptism symbol is particularly helpful here, because, like Christ, Milton has come into the world and is soon to save others through willing self-sacrifice. The poet in turn struggles to create a living form for God out of the red earth (Greek milton) from which Adam had been created. Red covering the white bones of Urizen symbolizes revolution using the traditional colors of rebellion and conservatism. Blake frequently contrasts red and white in the later writings. The full page illustration in which Milton removes his robe shows him as reddish, the robe as white. Yet Milton is a different kind of revolutionary. Instead of burying the worn-out tyrant in the soil, Milton reconstructs for the people of the apocalyptic age the image of the loving heavenly Father. Milton works to restore the humanity of the God of Paradise Lost and thus correct his error. In molding his clay over the dead bones of God, Milton is a creative artist bringing together contraries; in essence Milton is rebuilding his own ideal personality which is the only true God. In the process, the negation must be destroyed. The illustration in which Milton is shown as overthrowing a hoary Urizen-like figure is titled "To Annihilate the Selfhood of Deceit and False Forgiveness". When Rintrah and Palamabron stop Los, Milton, and Blake at the gate of Golgonooza, they do not understand what Milton is doing. They suppose Milton the Puritan rebel only wants to establish the twenty-eighth church of Satan, another phase of organized religion. They say to Los: ....O Father most beloved! O merciful Parent! Pitying and permitting evil, tho strong & mighty to destroy. Whence is this Shadow terrible? wherefore dost thou refuse To throw him into the Furnaces! knowest thou now that he Will unchain Orc? & let loose Satan, Og, Sihon & Anak Upon the Body of Albion? for this he is come! behold it written Upon his fibrous left Foot black! most dismal to our eyes The Shadowy Female shudders thro' heaven in torment inexpressible! And all the Daughters of Los prophetic wail: yet in deceit, They weave a new Religion from new Jealousy of Theotormon! Miltons Religion is the cause: there is no end to destruction! -- Milton 22:29-39 The Sons of Los dread Milton both as the grim Puritan and as the wild religious enthusiast so detested by the enlightened people of Blake's age. The humanists are confronted with an other-worldly fanaticism wholly unlike their earthly idealism. They can only see in the earth-shattering appearance of Milton-Blake a threat to civilization. They are afraid Milton-Blake will restore mystery, savagery, and spiritual isolation. The "new religion" foreshadowed in the writings of Milton is Deism, manufactured from the "Jealousy of Theotormon" (orthodox Christianity). The Sons of Los go on the explain how Milton's image of a remote God led to the religious disasters of the eighteenth century: the appearance of Voltaire and Rousseau, the errors of Swedenborg, Whitefield, and Wesley, and the Deist revolution in France with wholesale destruction of life and culture. The sons of Los conclude: Milton will utterly consume us and thee our beloved Father[.] He hath enterd into the Covering Cherub, becoming one with Albions dread sons, Hand, Hyle & Coban surround him as A girdle; Gwendolyn & Corwenna as a garment woven Of War & Religion; let us descend & bring him chained To Bowlahoola O Father most beloved! O mild Parent! Cruel in thy mildness, pitying and permitting evil Tho strong and mighty to destroy, O Los our beloved Father! -- Milton 23:13-20 Los hesitates, and then explains his act: O noble Sons, be patient yet a little[.] I have embracd the falling Death, he is become One with me O Sons we live not by wrath. by mercy alone we live! I recollect an old Prophecy in Eden recorded in gold; and oft Sung to the harp: That Milton of the land of Albion Should up ascend forward from Felphams Vale & break the Chain Of Jealousy from all its roots; be patient therefore O my Sons.... -- Milton 23:32-8 Milton has devoted himself single-mindedly to bringing in the apocalypse. Humanized by his visionary union with Blake and Los, he will break up the Chain of Jealousy by destroying, through his own example, the error of selfishness by which Love is bound. As a star shooting out of the Urizenic ranks, he has already struck a death-blow to the Covering Cherub, piercing a passageway through the sky to reveal Eternity to all people (21:4 ff.) Milton's descent awakens Blake and all other people to a new view of their world. Albion (Humankind) begins to come to life once more (20:25-6). 5. Urthona: Milton as Christ Then Jesus appeared standing by Albion as the Good Shepherd By the lost Sheep that he hath found & Albion knew that it Was the Lord the Universal Humanity, & Albion saw his Form A man. & they conversd as Man with Man, in Ages of Eternity And the Divine Appearance was the likeness & similitude of Los Albion said. O Lord what can I do! my Selfhood cruel Marches against thee deceitful from Sinai & from Edom Into the Wilderness of Judah to meet thee in his pride I behold the Visions of my deadly Sleep of Six Thousand Years Dazling around thy skirts like a Serpent of precious stones & gold I know it is my Self: O my Divine Creator & Redeemer Jesus replied Fear not Albion unless I die thou canst not live But if I die I shall arise again & thou with me This is Friendship & Brotherhood without it Man is Not So Jesus spoke; the Covering Cherub coming on in darkness Overshadowd them & Jesus said Thus do Men in Eternity One for another to put off by forgiveness, every sin Albion replyd. Cannot Man exist without Mysterious Offering of Self for Another, is this Friendship & Brotherhood I see thee in the likeness and similitude of Los my Friend Jesus said. Wouldest thou love one who never died For thee or ever die for one who had not died for thee And if God dieth not for Man and giveth not himself Eternally for Man Man could not exist! for Man is Love: As God is Love: every kindness to another is a little Death In the Divine Image nor can Man exist but by Brotherhood. So saying the Cloud overshadowing divided them asunder Albion stood in terror: not for himself but for his Friend Divine, & Self was lost in the contemplation of faith And wonder at the Divine Mercy & at Los's sublime honour Do I sleep admist danger to Friends! O my Cities & Counties Do you sleep! rowze up. Eternal Death is abroad So Albion spoke & threw himself into the Furnaces of affliction. All was a vision, all a Dream: the Furnaces became Fountains of Living Waters flowing from the Humanity Divine And all the Cities of Albion rose from their slumbers, and All The Sons & Daughters of Albion on soft clouds Waking from Sleep. -- Jerusalem 96:3-39 The power which in our world grants visions is Los, the imagination. In Eden this power as Urthona forges the tools of mental combat and creation. After the fall into matter, Los's forging reshapes the world as a tool for the visionary consciousness. Because the natural world left to itself would collapse, Los's first task is to set a limit to the fall. Thus Los creates the elements of human experience -- time, matter, and the present form of human beings. Blake describes this in terms of the creation of the organs of perception. The second task of Los and his family is keeping chaos from overwhelming the world. Los protects his creatures from the unthinking outbursts of the rebel Orc as well from Urizenic darkness. Thus Los chains his first son, to keep him from remaining forever in a childish dreamland (Innocence) or destroying the creations of Los in war (the basic activity of the state of Experience). The "Chain of Jealousy" is Blake's metaphor for the social contract that links all people to each other to restrain the violence of the natural heart. This aspect of imaginative activity that Blake later assigned to the Spectre of Urthona, the reality principle that restrains childish passion and enables people to exercise good judgment in everyday matters. When Los begins laboring in The Four Zoas, his world is a sea of matter, like today's chaoses beyond the sky (outer space). The third task of Los, then, is to form the things in the familiar world so that progression upward may occur. These may be negations as well as contraries -- Los hammers all things into form to prepare for the Last Judgment. He supervises and records all events (M 22:15-25), and writes the history of the world in blood (27:8-10). He is called Time by Blake, but we might call him the all-creating God Who rules the world and Who shows people that their choice lies between radical new vision and annihilation [8]. In all these ways, Los recalls Milton's poetic interpretation of Christ. If Los can induce a person to set aside the naturalistic, self-centered perspective, that person will begin to realize the fourth phase of Los's redemptive activity, one which John Milton never imagined. Los, who creates the senses of fallen humanity, transforms the world of time and space into the image of Eternity by means of vision. Before the eyes of people like Blake, the whole world is alive: Thou seest the Constellations in the deep & wondrous Night They rise in order and continue their immortal courses Upon the mountains & in vales with harp & heavenly song With flute & clarion; with cups & measures filld with foaming wine. Glittring the streams reflect the Vision of beatitude, And the calm Ocean joys beneath & smooths his awful waves! These are the Sons of Los, & these the Labourers of the Vintage Thou seest the gorgeous clothed Flies that dance & sport in summer Upon the sunny brooks & meadows: every one the dance Knows in its intricate mazes of delight artful to weave: Each one to the wound his instruments of music in the dance, To touch each other & recede; to cross & change & return These are the Children of Los; thou seest the Trees on mountains The wind blows heavy, loud they thunder thro' the darksom sky Uttering prophecies & speaking instructive words to the sons Of men: These are the Sons of Los! These the Visions of Eternity But we see only as it were the hem of their garments When with our vegetable eyes we view these wond'rous Visions. -- Milton 25:66-26:12 The butterflies perform a ballet, Urizen's stars celebrate life, and the trees utter prophecies. To the eyes of the visionary artist, everything is beautiful and meaningful. A suitably disciplined visionary can preserve this enhanced perception in a material medium, transforming it into an artistic creation under the guiding spirit of Los, the Universal Artist. The artist opens people's eyes to the eternal images behind the natural world, and thus makes them see things in their true glory. Los the artist often comes to stand for Blake himself, even in such details as his red hair. As such, he has doubts and moments of indecision and even makes mistakes, such as allowing Palamabron-Blake and Satan-Hayley to exchange roles. Los hears the apocalyptic song of Ololon "as the poor bird within the shell / Hears its impatient parent bird". Working in the enclosed world of time and space, Los cannot see what is happening in Eternity, and at first tries to restrain Milton as he has restrained the previous Orcs, shooting out his limbs like the "roots of trees" (17:34-6, an old symbol of the Chain of Jealousy). Los's placing of the sandal on his head as a sign of the fall (8:11-2) contrasts with Blake's tying of his sandal on his foot during the vision of redemption. It is only after a time of despair that Los recalls an "Old Prophecy" (a truth known only to visionaries) and knows that Milton's descent is apocalyptic instead of merely destructive (21:1). Luvah-Orc and his manifestations look to political revolution, refined culture, social service, or science as means of restoring human happiness. Milton-Blake and Los prepare instead for the true revolution -- that of human perception itself. Whether a person is made to love and forgive by a glimpse of the world of Los in a work of art, in the beauty of nature, in a scientific exhibition, or by just being showed by a prophet the consequences of his selfish attitude, that person's regeneration is effected by the work of Los. It is by means of the Bard's inspired song that John Milton realizes the seriousness of his errors, and chooses to correct them by his self-sacrifice. By becoming united with Los and taken to Golgonooza, he will be able to realize the truth that is the essence of poetry. Blake's meeting with Milton revealed Eternity to the younger poet. He saw the heavens cracking, and then the world itself became only a sandal. Blake was then ready to identify himself with Los and experience the vision of nature in transformation (the City of Art). Milton's revolutionary form, concealed within Blake, was called Satanic by the Sons of Los, but he passed with Blake into the realms of vision. As source of all creative possibility, Los is the "Puer Eternus" of Jung and alchemy [9], and is portrayed by Blake has having eternal youth. Los's role as a blacksmith might be archetypal; some students of symbolism find that "the blacksmith is equivalent to the accursed poet and the despised prophet" [10]. Similarly, Los as a plowman (8:20, etc.) awakes the creative seed hidden in the earth. When Los is upset or unsure of himself, a storm arises (8:27-8; 23:21-31): Jehovah rains prophetic tears, lightnings of anger flash, and the thunder speaks. A brighter symbol is the sun, which Los shares with Rintrah. As giver of light, it is essential to human vision, and Blake must also have thought of how all creatures depend on the sun for life, warmth, and direction. In contrast to the false "gods" of the heathen (37:20-34), there are in Blake's Eternity seven real spirits of Divinity. These are the seven "Eyes of God", sent in succession by the Divine Family to guard the world. The name derives from the Biblical Apocalypse, but Blake has reinterpreted the symbolism. Satan ("organized religion") claims them for his own (38:54-8), but they sound their trumpets (39:3-9, cf. Rev. 8:2) and call on Albion (Humankind) to awake. We learn that Los was placed on earth "that the Eyes might have space for redemption" (23:52). The Seven are also connected with a mysterious Eighth Eye, identified with Milton himself. Blake's way of using language might lead us to think that "Eyes of God" may mean "ways people have had of looking at God". The suggestion works. Blake seems to be describing a historical succession of people's concepts of divinity. The Seven are: 1. Lucifer. The "Prince of Light", the fallen Day Star (Isaiah 14:12), thus an aspect of Urizen. Christian tradition identified him with Satan, who is also identified by Blake with the elemental spirits of animism. Thus primitive man's first conception of the Divine is the powers supposedly at work in nature. The first image of "God" is nature itself, called by Blake the devil. 2. Moloch. Named literally "King", this Ammonite war spirit, at once an idol and a furnace, received child sacrifices. People have come at this stage to view God as a personal being who is as cruel as greedy as ourselves. But they at least see Him as personal. The "thick fires" of Moloch are lightning and probably represent selfish anger (8:27-8). 3. Triple Elohim. Elohim is the name, grammatically a plural, used for the Israelite God in the later strata of the Old Testament. This name is used in the first chapter of Genesis for the Creator, and under this Eye the human body and senses took their present form. 4. Shaddai, literally "Almighty", is a rare name for the Old Testament God, as is... 5. Pahad, literally "Terror". Blake does not tell us enough about these Eyes for us to be confident about what they mean. 6. Jehovah. The most familiar name of the Hebrew God. The name was, according to one version, revealed at Sinai during the giving of the Law. God is now seen as a lawgiver in the sky, but one that dispenses mercy and makes covenants with people. His "rain" is probably the prophets' pity (8:27-8), in contrast to Moloch's rage. His wind, a symbol of prophecy, disperses doubt (23:31). Many of the laws of the Old Testament concern "leprosy", a skin disease which Blake equated with Albion's disease of sexual shame (J 43:64). Blake wrote that Jehovah is a spirit of guilt and punishment and is infected with his own spiritual disease (13:24). 7. Jesus. Christ appears in two different aspects in Milton -- as the Seventh Eye, and as the essence of the Eight. In either case, He is Divinity as He reveals Himself to people today. Blake explained that Jesus "was all virtue and acted from impulse not from rules" (MHH pl. 22), and He preached the forgiveness of sin, condemned the self-righteous Pharisees, and allowed Himself to be sacrificed for others as a "reprobate" (13:27). Thus the living Christ was the "image of the invisible God" (2:12), as well as "the likeness and similitude of... Los" (J 96:7), i.e., the Blakean prophet. He is the Divine Vision (22:2), the opposite of the False Tongue. As the preacher of apocalyptic love and rebel against Satanic law, Christ is identified with the unfallen Luvah. The rebel that can rise out of the errors that keep him bound to earth will enter the same state. The Christianity that superseded ancient Israel's religion was an improvement, but did not end fallen history. Christ was seen as an external Being, a distant God, not as the Godhead within each human being. While in Eden He is the form assumed by the Divine Family (21:37-42), on earth Christ appears even at the apocalypse only "in the clouds of Ololon", concealed by the limits of revelation. Christ thus appears above the spectres as the ambiguous disk of blood behind clouds and winds. In creating the world (Canaan, the Promised Land) for the Seven Eyes to develop, Los constructed a subject-object realm in which the concept of divinity could be reconstructed, culminating in the experience of Jesus. The Eighth Eye, which awakens when Albion begins to stir, is the only idea of the Supreme Being that will remain after the Last Judgment. This Eye is the awakened Humanity, typified by John Milton. This fourth aspect of the poet has been asleep in Eden (heaven) since, presumably, the fall of Albion. Blake believed, according to his Felpham letters, that each person was represented by an overself, or "humanity" living in heaven. In the first lines of The Gates of Paradise he states that each of these re-enacts the fall of Humankind. The Seven Eyes strengthen the wandering Vehicular Form with perceptions of the sleeping Humanity, equated with the essence of every person (the "Satan" or M 39:18). As Milton works at rehumanizing Urizen and enters the world of Los, the sleeping form begins to move (20:13), and appears fully awake in the East in Blake's apocalyptic vision. And Milton collecting all his fibres into impregnable strength Descended down a Paved work of all kinds of precious stones Out from the eastern sky; descending down into my Cottage Garden: clothed in black, severe & silent he descended. -- Milton 38:5-8 This final aspect of the poet is the final Orc, the prophet who has passed beyond the temptations of selfishness. As he renounces Satan, he summarizes the theme of the epic: Satan! my Spectre! I know my power thee to annihilate And be a greater in thy place, & be thy Tabernacle A covering for thee to do thy will, till one greater comes And smites me as I smote thee & becomes my covering. Such are the Laws of thy false Heavns! but Laws of Eternity Are not such: know thou: I come to Self Annihilation Such are the Laws of Eternity that each shall mutually Annihilate himself for others good, as I for thee[.] Thy purpose & the purpose of thy Priests & of thy Churches Is to impress on men the fear of death; to teach Trembling & fear, terror, constriction; abject selfishness Mine is to teach Men to despise death & to go on In fearless majesty annihilating Self, laughing to scorn Thy Laws & terrors, shaking down thy Synagogues as webs I come to discover before Heavn & Hell the Self righteousness In all its Hypocritic turpitude, opening to every eye These wonders of Satans holiness showing to the Earth The Idol Virtues of the Natural Heart, & Satans Seat Explore in all its Selfish Natural Virtue & put off In Self annihilation all that is not of God alone: To put off Self & all I have ever & ever Amen -- Milton 38:29-49 6. Milton's Emanations 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 descending to Redeem the Female Shade From Death Eternal; such is your lot, to be continually Redeem'd By Death & misery of those you love & by Annihilation When the Sixfold Female perceives that Milton annihilates Himself: that seeing all his loves by her cut off: he leaves Her also: intirely abstracting himself from Female loves She shall relent in fear of death: She shall begin to give Her maidens to her husband: delighting in his delight And then & then alone begins the happy Female joy As it is done in Beulah, & thou O Virgin Babylon Mother of Whoredoms Shalt bring Jerusalem in thine arms in the night watches; and No longer turning her a wandering Harlot in the streets Shalt give her into the arms of God your Lord & Husband. Such are the Songs of Beulah in the Lamentations of Ololon. -- Milton 33:1-24 So far we have seen that Blake's character Milton is really four different characters. One is a picture of the gloomy Puritan in his retirement, a miniature Urizen. Another is "Milton's Shadow", his old way of looking at our world, identified with the Covering Cherub. The third figure, who descended to Blake to bring vision to all people, is a heroic rebel and related to Luvah-Orc. The fourth, Milton's Humanity, appears at the end as a prophet who talks like Blake and Los and an image of the perfect human being. All four are named "Milton". The main female characters can all be seen as a single character, "Milton's emanation", though this is not very useful in reading the whole poem. All of the women who play active roles in the poem -- Leutha, Elynittria, Enitharmon, Rahab, Tirzah and her sisters, and the "multitudes of Ololon" -- represent Milton-Satan's varying mental constructions, especially his religious beliefs. Since the word "emanation" implies an evanescent thing arising from something more substantial, the term is quite appropriate in Blake's system. The emanation has no independent existence in Blake's Eden, but the subject-object distinction is basic to Beulah and to the error that causes the fall. The two familiar time-and-space names of the emanation who produced the original sleep of Humankind are Rahab and Tirzah. Tirzah, daughter of Rahab, is one of five sisters, the "daughters of Zelophehad", and usually stands for all five when Rahab is not representing the six together. In the Old Testament, a harlot and a huge sea monster are both named "Rahab". "Tirzah", another Old Testament name, is one of the daughters of Zelophehad, daughters who inherited as if they were sons, and one capital of idolatrous Israel. In Eternity, Rahab and Tirzah are Vala, natural beauty. In our world, Rahab, as Vala's Shadow, is the religion of error, natural religion. Especially she is Deism and the idea of a natural world left to run by itself. Thus she created Voltaire (M 22:41), and holds dominion over the warlike "male-female" churches (37:43). Her symbols are the veil of obscurity and mystery, and the cup, which combines ideas of mystery, femininity, and human sacrifice. Rahab represents the error itself. Tirzah is the world of error, the tyrannical and cruel Mother Nature. In antiquity she was contained in the idolatrous women of Amalek, Canaan, and Moab (24:14-5). In the eighteenth century she created the primitivists like Rousseau (22:41), and in general she heads the animistic "male-female" churches. Tirzah, as Mother Nature, weaves the fabric of life on a spindle (M pl. 7, erased line). Her special symbol is the moon, generally a female symbol connected with the menstrual cycle, water (because of the tides), and the passive, reflective role that women play in a patriarchy. Tirzah is the "Moon of Ulro" (24:25). Rahab and Tirzah are the natural errors that confront John Milton as he struggles to recreate his image of God and avoid merely becoming part of history. Rahab and her family tempt Milton with the things that had bound him to their world during his life. The temptation scene closely recalls Paradise Regained. In John Milton's own poem, Satan tempts Christ to become less than He can by offering him the roles of prophet, priest, and king of a secularized world [11]. Rahab and Tirzah invite Blake's Milton, not to do outright evil, but to become less than he could by accepting their limited perspective. William Blake considered royalty, priesthood, and prophecy to be possessions of every person willing to develop the visionary powers. For Blake, the living John Milton had enacted spectrous versions of all these roles. The senior poet was a Puritan and an admirer of the Old Testament patriarchy (false priest), he had been a Hebraist and a Classicist and advanced wrong views in his art (false prophet-poet), and he had gotten involved in bloody secular politics under Cromwell (false king). The wandering John Milton could do all three again -- he is imitating the patriarch Jacob by wrestling Urizen, he is being baptized by the classically-minded Urizen with Jordan river water, and he is about to appear as a new Orc. The Man and Demon [Urizen] strove many periods. Rahab beheld Standing on Carmel; Rahab and Tirzah trembled to behold The enormous strife. one giving life, the other giving death To his adversary. and they sent forth all their sons & daughters In all their beauty to entice Milton across the river, The Twofold form Hermaphroditic: and the Double-sexed The Female-male & the Male-Female, self-dividing stood Before him in their beauty, & in cruelties of holiness! Shining in darkness, glorious upon the deeps of Entuthon. Saying. Come thou to Ephraim! behold the Kings of Canaan! The beautiful Amalekites, behold the fires of youth Bound with the Chain of Jealousy by Los & Enitharmon; The banks of Cam: cold learnings streams: Londons dark-frowning towers, Lament upon the winds of Europe in Rephaims Vale. Because Ahania rent apart into a desolate night, Laments! & Enion wanders like a weeping inarticulate voice And Vala labours for her bread & water among the furnaces Therefore bright Tirzah triumphs: putting on all beauty. And all perfection, in her cruel sports among the Victims, Come bring with thee Jerusalem with songs on the Grecian Lyre! In Natural Religion! in experiments on Men, Let her be Offerd up to Holiness! Tirzah numbers her; She numbers with her fingers every fibre ere it grow; Where is the Lamb of god? where is the promise of his coming? Her shadowy Sisters form the bones, even the bones of Horeb: Around the marrow! and the orbed scull around the brain! His images are born for War! for Sacrifice to Tirzah! To Natural Religion! to Tirzah the Daughter of Rahab the Holy! She ties the knot of nervous fibres, into a white brain! She ties the knot of bloody veins, into a red hot heart! Within her bosom Albion lies embalmed, never to awake Hand is become a rock! Sinai & Horeb, is Hyle & Coban: Scofield is bound in iron armour before Reubens Gate! She ties the knot of milky seed into two lovely Heavens Two but yet one: each in the other sweet reflected! these Are our Three Heavens beneath the shades of Beulah, land of rest! Come then to Ephraim & Manasseh O beloved-one! Come to my ivory palaces O beloved of thy mother! And let us bind thee in the bands of War and be thou King Of Canaan and reign in Hazor where the Twelve Tribes meet. -- Milton 19:27-20:6 John Milton is invited to become "King of Canaan", to rule our world as Rahab and Tirzah show it to him. They prophesy the new age of materalism, and describe the spirit of the times. The natural desires of youth, they sing, are being frustrated needlessly by the old world order of the Christian visionaries. The intellectual life of the Universities is no longer necessary. People are learning to look on the pleasures of the mind (Ahania), love (Enion), and natural beauty (Vala) as merely phenomena of Nature, part of the bloody struggle for existence. Deism and other philosophies based on natural science are now popular, and the things of the spirit (Jerusalem) are analyzed and dismissed by scientists holding the naturalistic point of view (Tirzah). Soldiers (and Blake remembers Scofield) are born only to be killed in wars among cynical tyrants. And Christ's promised return has never happened. Rahab and Tirzah call to the world to put off superstition and discard belief in everything spiritual. Humankind is truly nothing but physical matter -- brains, hearts, sex. The person who recognizes this can tyrannize everyone else and be the new prophet, priest, and king of the coming scientific age [12]. Rahab and Tirzah are forms of the fallen Vala. Blake's Leutha clearly recalls Ahania, and is associated with the Urnizenic Antamon (Europe, Plate 14), Bromion (Four Zoas 115:7), and Satan, as well as Milton's character Sin. In Milton, she represents the feelings and ideals of Satan-Hayley and of other reasoners. Leutha is the beauty and delight that exist in order, structure, and thought. In the biographical allegory, Leutha is the Augustan Age's muse, whose special gift was the pleasures of the intellect, science, and "right reason". Satan's love of these good things caused his fall. Leutha tells the story. Descending as a butterfly into the midst of the "Great Solemn Assembly" in Palamabron's tent (the cottage at Felpham), she alights on the "golden floor" of Palamabron-Blake (his brain, 11:34) and explains how she led Satan-Hayley to attempt a task for which he was unfit. Her story is on one level an event in cosmic history, but it just as interesting as Blake's thoughts about decent, reasonable people like Hayley who want to write poetry, too. Leutha begins: I loved Palamabron & I sought to approach his Tent, But beautiful Elynittria with her silver arrows repelld me. For her light is terrible to me. I fade before her immortal beauty. O wherefore doth a Dragon-form forth issue from my limbs To seize her new born son? Ah me! the wretched Leutha! -- Milton 11:37-12:3 The emanations are the vehicles by which two male principles interact with one another. Hayley loved poets and poetry, and thought of becoming a poet himself. He had no talent, and Blake called his patron's poetic efforts "primitive tyrannical attempts on Los" (M 7:5). Hayley's works could not compare with those of an inspired genius like Blake, but were obscured by Blake's as a star disappears in the bright moonlight (the mighty silver arrows of Elynittria, moon-maiden and emanation of Palamabron-Blake). This, Blake believed, had made Hayley jealous of him; the new-born son of Elynittria, which is attacked by Leutha's dragon (cf. Revelation 12:4), may be any important production of Blake's, or of any other "inspired genius". So, Blake thought, the good-natured Hayley came to hate art. Leutha saw that Hayley's jealousy was dangerous, and she made him react against his own unrealized emotions. This to prevent, entering the doors of Satans brain night after night Like sweet perfumes I stupified the masculine perceptions And kept only the feminine awake. hence rose his soft Delusory love to Palamabron: admiration join'd with envy Cupidity unconquerable! -- Milton 12:4-10 Admiration and envy are feminine perceptions because they are passive and ignore the essential unity of all life. Leutha forgot that "every man's genius is particular to his own individuality". Putting her faith in the abstract principles of kindness, she made Satan feel he was doing Palamabron a good turn by assisting with the harrowing. Hayley decided that he wanted to be an artist like the people he patronized, and to work under the inspiration of Leutha. A mechanic seizing the production of art is very wrong, Blake knew. Palamabron's task is the dissemination of ideas and beauty; in Blake as in Shelley, the poet is the "legislator of the world". When his task was taken over by a demon whose province is mathematical formulae and the dull necessities of life, it spoiled everything. Satan was incapable of operating the poet's harrow properly, and in his hands it became a dangerous machine run wild. Elynittria knows how to let the horses move freely. Leutha in fear tightened the reins, only to find that the "fires of genius" seemed to be "torment and insanity". Trying regain control of the power of the harrow, Leutha formed the constricting Covering Cherub (12:38-9). On one biographical level, Satan and Leutha generate the sentimental, restrained art of the Augustan Age. In the cosmic drama, Satan's frolic began the production of spectrous art, an imitation by the Selfhood of the things in Eden reflecting and consolidating Satan's errors. Several illustrations of spectrous art have been noted so far. We have seen that the Selfhood possesses its own version of the Divine Vision (the False Tongue), of the life principle (the Covering Cherub), of prophets (the dismal Shadows), or creative conflict (war), of love (jealousy), of the fellowship of human beings (the chain of jealousy), and of the loving heavenly father (Urizen, Nobodaddy). Urthona's angry gnomes soon refuse to cooperate with Leutha and Satan. They prophetically denounced Leutha as "sin", the seductress who had separated people from God (12:38-9). At the end of the day, the fall of Satan is completed: For Elynittria met Satan with all her singing women. Terrified in their joy & pouring wine of wildest power They gave Satan their wine: indignant at the burning wrath. Wild with prophetic fury his former life became like a dream Cloth'd in the Serpents folds, in selfish holiness demanding purity Being most impure, self-condemn'd to eternal tears, he drove Me from his inmost Brain & the doors clos'd with thunders sound O Divine Vision who didst create the Female; to repose The Sleepers of Beulah: pity the repentant Leutha. My Sick Couch bears the dark shades of Eternal Death infolding The Spectre of Satan. he furious refuses to repose in sleep. I humbly bow in all my Sin before the Throne Divine. Not so the Sick-one; Alas, what shall be done to restore? Who calls the Individual Law, Holy: and despises the Savior. Glorying to involve Albions Body in fires of eternal War -- Now Leutha ceas'd: tears flow'd: but the Divine Pity supported her. -- Milton 12:42-13:7 Elynittria is the poet's emanation, and as such she is the perspective of a poet, the things that keep him in mind of what his art should be, and the joys and relaxations of poetry, as well as the guardian of poetic fury. She is Palamabron-Blake's muse. Her wine is the archetypal beverage of inspired poets: [Wine is] an ambivalent symbol like the God Dionysus. On the one hand, red wine symbolizes blood and sacrifice. On the other, wine symbolizes youth and eternal life, hence the sacred drunkenness of the poets... which permits the man to participate in the mode of being attributed to the gods [13]. Blake may have intended the "Wine of the Almighty" to represent the power of prophecy which enlightens the poet's work. Once he had taken the drug, Satan stops posing as the gregarious, good-natured poet and became instead an angry, self-righteous fool. In "prophetic fury" he casts out Leutha and destroyed the link between himself and the rest of the visionary company. Leutha bewails the situation: All is my fault! We are the Spectre of Luvah the murderer Of Albion: O Vala! O Luvah! O Albion! O Lovely Jerusalem The Sin was begun in Eternity, and will not rest to Eternity Till two Eternitys meet together, Ah! lost! lost! lost! forever! -- Milton 13:8-11 This is the voice of Satan's emanation, the highest ideals of which the natural heart is capable. Her symbols -- the rainbow (11:33), the moth (11:33), and perfume (12:5) -- all evoke her insubstantial beauty. Leutha sees no hope in the situation beyond offering herself as a "ransom" for Satan (11:20). She believes in vengeance for sin, and, after hiding in Canaan (our world), she becomes Palamabron's mistress and the mother of Rahab (fallen religion, produced when poets have visions only of the natural world). Blake unites aspects of the other emanations in the character of Ololon. Ololon is Milton's religion, the way in which the Divine is understood by the man. She may either be the Sixfold Female (Rahab and her daughters, the near-atheism which Blake found in Milton's thought and poetry), or be Milton's true inspiration. As the latter, she is the muse Urania who enabled him to write his great poetry. She is his revolutionary thought, his hatred of tyranny, his insistence on the worth and integrity of individuals, his belief in poets as inspired prophets, his passion for righteousness and intellectual inquiry. Through Ololon-Urania, Paradise Lost received its true meaning even though it was "unconscious". Blake's reason for including both the true emanation and the false one in the same character is made clear in a climactic speech of Ololon's: Are those who contemn Religion & seek to annihilate it Become in their Femin[in]e portions the causes & promoters Of these religions, how is this thing? this Newtonian Phantasm This Voltaire & Rousseau: this Hume & Gibbon & Bolingbroke This Natural Religion! this impossible absurdity Is Ololon the cause of this? O where shall I hide my face -- Milton 40:9-14 In Blake's analysis, the Deist rejection of orthodox Christianity only substituted one mystery (the remote Creator) for another (the arbitrary tyrannical God). Both Ololons are the enemies of orthodoxy and represent membership in the "devil's party". The Sixfold Female who inspired Deism merely substituted a grosser error, but the true emanation built the pathway back to Eden by granting vision. We first meet Ololon as members of the Divine Family who live on the shores of a river of "milk and liquid pearl". These Eternals did not hear the Bard's Song, and are unaware of Milton's reason for descending. Believing he intends to spread his doctrines of mystery and Puritanism, which they abhor, they take the form of a fiery circle and drive the Eight Eyes out of heaven and into Ulro. This is a key moment in the poem, equivalent to Los's tearing down of the heavenly bodies in Vala, or the episode of "Gwendolen's falsehood" in Jerusalem. Although they are inhabitants of Eden, the clan of Ololon does not understand the plan of salvation. The Eyes are provisional ideas about God used by Los for the redemption of the world. Now the residents of Ololon, despairing, drive them from heaven. Flame is a symbol of wrath, the ring is the emblem both of containment and of cyclic process. These Eternals thus take on themselves the role of Rintrah-Orc, repudiating the angels without understanding the role they play in the progress back to Eden. As in Blake's other two epics, the apocalypse is preceded by an act of desperation. The driving out of the Eyes, intended to keep Miltonism out of Eden, is "prophetic falsehood". On earth it is seen as the reappearance of Jesus Christ, the second coming and the end of time. Much of the last half of the epic is devoted to the re-education of Ololon in preparation for the Last Judgment in Blake's garden. The men of Ololon very shortly realize the consequences of their making themselves the enemies of all temporal religion. Perhaps because they see the union of Milton and Blake, which awakens the visionary senses of all beings (M 21:4-7), they realize that Milton is the Awakener (21:33). He is himself regaining vision, and he will awaken Albion. Thus Ololon repents and weeps. The community prepares to descend into Ulro themselves, bearing the revelation of Jesus Christ, Who has appeared above them. Between its repentance and its appearance in Blake's garden, Ololon is taught by Jesus Christ about forgiveness and regeneration. Ololon sees that virtue does not consist of damning imperfections (21:45-50, cf. 11:17-26) but is creative self-giving. She is shown the created world in its agonies, and wishes to redeem it. She is told that she must not try to interfere with Milton's descent but that she should enter the fallen world herself. After passing the Polypus, Ololon sees it in its transfigured state as Golgonooza (35:19-20). After asking forgiveness from the Eight Eyes (35:31-3), she descends to Milton, who by this time stands for all people. Rahab and Tirzah, the "feminine Portion" or errors of Ololon, separate from her and retreat into Milton's Shadow, and Milton is rejoined to his true inspiration. As members of the Divine Family, the men of Ololon are portions of Divinity itself. So they could not enter the created world in their true forms to be apprehended by ordinary people directly, but assume that of a female, a passive idea or perception. The female Ololon, while she superficially resembles other penitent female wills such as Enitharmon, Gwendolen, Leutha, or the Vala with whom she is identified in Plate 33, possesses the divine vision. Thus we mortals see her as divine grace descending to grant vision and despecterize Milton, Blake, Los, Orc, and ultimately the whole world at the Last Judgment. She surrounds the coming Christ with a mantle of clouds (42:12-5), called a "garment of war" (Christianity as a revolutionary force) and "the literal expression" of divine revelation. Although she is what encloses and even conceals the Divine Reality today, she differs from the Covering Cherub because she testifies to the existence of the Divinity she enshrouds and is recognized as a temporal phenomenon rather than anything ultimately true. Ololon's descent opens the way back to Eternity, symbolized by the appearance of a road reaching through the sky (35:34-6), just as that of Milton's descent showed mortals the existence of the Eternal regions. Ololon's symbols all support this line of interpretation. The dove (21:55), the flames and lightning, and the equation with Milton's Urania all remind us that she is the Holy Spirit, at once God and God's way of communicating. This association with clouds (31:10, etc.) appears to be archetypal. According to Cirlot: There are two principal aspects to cloud symbolism: on the one hand they are related to the symbolism of mist, signifying the intermediate world between the formal and the non-formal; and on the other hand they are associated with the "Upper Waters" -- the realm of the antique Neptune. The former aspect of the cloud is symbolic of forms as phenomena and appearance, always in a state of metamorphosis, which obscures the immutable quality of high truth. The second aspect of clouds reveals their family connection with fertility-symbolism and their analogous relationship with all that is destined to bring fecundity. Hence the fact that ancient Christian symbolism interprets the cloud as synonymous with the prophet, since prophecies are an occult source of fertilization, celestial in origin [14]. Both sides of Ololon are reflected here, and the additional association with the river of milk and seminal fluid favors the interpretation of Ololon-Rahab-Tirzah as feritility spirit. Ololon is also loosely connected with the birds, each a poet and prophet (31:38-45), and the flowers, each a seductive nymph (31:46-63). The road to heaven that Ololon and Christ create is the opposite of the road to hell engineered by Milton's Sin and Death. One of Blake's most famous symbols, the moon-ark, stands for Ololon's role as the life-preserving covering (ark) that floats safely on the stormy sea of time and space through the power of love (the crescent moon, itself an "arc"). 7. The Traveler to Golgonooza What do I see? The Briton Saxon Roman Norman amalgamating In my Furnaces into One Nation the English: & taking refuge In the Loins of Albion. The Canaanite united with the fugitive Hebrew, whom she divided into Twelve, & sold into Egypt Then scatterd the Egyptian & Hebrew to the four Winds! This sinful Nation Created in our Furnaces & Looms is Albion So Los spoke. Enitharmon answered in great terror in Lambeths Vale The poets Song draws to its period & Enitharmon is no more. For if he be that Albion I can never weave him in my Looms But when he touches the first fibrous thread, like filmy dew My Looms will be no more & I annihilate vanish for ever Then Los again took up his speech as Enitharmon ceast Fear not my Sons this Waking Death. he is become One with me Behold him here! We shall not Die! we shall be united in Jesus Will you suffer this Satan this Body of Doubt that Seems but Is Not To occupy the very threshold of Eternal life. if Bacon, Newton, Locke, Deny a Conscience in Man & the Communion of Saints & Angels Contemning the Divine Vision & Fruition, Worshiping the Deus Of the Heathen, The God of This World, & the Goddess Nature Mystery Babylon the Great, The Druid Dragon & hidden Harlot[,] Is it not that Signal of the Morning which was told us in the Beginning Thus they converse upon Mam-Tor. the Graves thunder under their feet -- Jerusalem 92-3 The important action of Milton is not the wanderings of Blake's earth-shattering characters. It is the victory of the visionary message expressed in Los's speeches over the ideal of Enitharmon, who fears the destruction of the familiar world that must soon take place. All the figures in the poem are faced with the choice between these attitudes. The heroes are those who renounce the concern for stability and comfort in this world in order to devote themselves to ushering in the apocalypse. Only when all creatures perceive things as changed will the rule of love and harmony be restored. First, John Milton discovers that the righteous anger of Rintrah, the careless love of Palamabron, and the well-intentioned piety of Satan without vision can only perpetuate the fall. Only through a radical change in his spiritual outlook can he recover the life of the true poet and prophet. His giving up of personal security, symbolized by the awakening and descent of an ideal Milton-Albion, is also identified with the second coming of Christ. The fallen world can be restored only by destroying the sky that encloses and protects it, and yet Milton participates in the vision of the same earth being brought back to live by love and art. Renouncing the invitations of Satan to rule the modern age, the inspired hero instead gives his life for the redemption of Satan, who is all people. Ololon, unlike her Puritan contrary, first appears as the enemy of all temporal religion. She, too, must join the prophet in his self-sacrifice if the true religion is to be restored. As "revelation", Ololon descends to Blake's cottage among signs of apocalyptic destruction, and leaves behind her a passage back to Eternity. Los recognizes the destructive power of Milton's descent, and is prevented from interfering with it only by an inspiration. The Lord of the regenerating world then joins with Milton and Blake. The Sons of Los, keepers of the good things in our world, act in the cosmic drama without appreciating the need for the final annihilation of the natural heart and all its works. In the same way, Leutha, some of the Daughters of Beulah, and the Satanic figures in various ways take sides against the visionaries. Milton is also a poem about Blake himself, and readers should be alert to the transformations that he undergoes as his own character. In the poem, Blake is first awakened to the existence of another world by Milton's descent. Then, seeing the material world transformed into a vehicle for exploring the realms of the spirit, the author joins the spiritual rulers of his world, and sees that all life is part of a progression to vision. Finally Blake beholds the revelation of Christ Himself and feels that his experience prefigures the Last Judgment. Blake changes from Palamabron, preoccupied with action on the temporal plane, into a prophet like Los, concerned with transforming human perception itself. It is widely agreed by scholars that Blake had so changed his view of revolution before Milton was finished. Much less often discussed is another change of outlook that must also have taken place. Between the Felpham period and the completion of Milton, Blake came to a new understanding of his character Urthona-Los. This is apparent from a comparison of letters and poems. Until Milton and the later strata of The Four Zoas, it is Los's role as creator and ruler of the mundane world that is emphasized. As such, he appears as Blake's enemy in the poem about the thistle. The Los of Milton is also appears to be the terrible "Spirit of Abstraction" which whisked Blake off to the mental regions while he was earnestly trying to work on commissions for Thomas Butts. Again, the letter to Butts presents this Los as the enemy, while in the epic, he is Blake's great friend and advocate. A third, little-known letter from the same period connects Blake's spiritual turmoil to the poetry he was writing about Los. On Oct. 23, 1804, he informed Hayley that he had been reconciled with an evil spirit who had ruined his poems and pictures for many years. They had been transformed, and he was now being helped by the same, unnamed spirit: I have entirely reduced that spectrous Fiend to his station, whose annoyance has been the ruin of my labours for the last passed twenty years of my life. He is the enemy of conjugal love and is the Jupiter of the Greeks, an iron-hearted tyrant, the ruiner of ancient Greece. I speak with perfect confidence and certainty of the fact which has passed upon me. Nebuchadnezzar had seven times passed over him; I have had twenty; thank God I was not altogether a beast as He was; but I was a slave bound in a mill among beasts and devils; these beasts and these devils are now, together with myself, become children of light and liberty, and my feet and my wife's feet are free from fetters.... He is become my servant who domineered over me, he is even as a brother who was my enemy. The letter is hard to interpret, but the parallel with the scene in which Los-Blake is reconciled with the iron-clad Spectre of Urthona, added to The Four Zoas during this period, is unmistakable. Blake recorded certain events of his "spiritual" life in very positive terms in his poetry and painting. His private letters prove that these same events had terrified and baffled him. Blake recognized that they were connected with Los and with the world-shaking powers of inspiration and creation. He also knew that his inner experiences were like the mental illness of King Nebuchadnezzar. The rest of this study concerns these strange states of mind. CHAPTER II THE SPIRIT OF ABSTRACTION I am not ashamed afraid or averse to tell You what Ought to be Told. That I am under the direction of Messengers from Heaven Daily & Nightly but the nature of such things is not as some suppose. without trouble or care. Temptations are on the right hand & left behind the sea of time & space roars & follows swiftly he who keeps not right onward is lost & if our footsteps slide in clay how can we do otherwise than fear & tremble. but I should not have troubled You with this account of my spiritual state unless it had been necessary in explaining the actual cause of my uneasiness into which you are so kind as to Enquire for I never obtrude such things on others unless questiond & then I never disguise the truth.... --Blake to Thomas Butts, Jan. 10, 1802 1. Preface What comes next is a different kind of study. The meaning of Blake's Milton can be clarified by a close study of the text, but we still sense that it is not like other allegories or fantastic narratives. Blake claimed that it described his "spiritual acts", and that it had been dictated to him by beings in another world. As a medical doctor, I will try to break new ground in an area which has been ignored. I am going to suggest that Milton, in contrast to most works of literature, was to a very large extent conceived and executed unconsciously. The faculties of the mind of which we are ordinarily unaware worked much more freely in the composition of Milton than in the production of narratives by most other authors. We have learned about the unconscious mind and its productions largely through the investigation of dreams. It is in relation to the dream, then, that a few distinctive techniques used in Milton will first be described. These techniques, involve symbols and are familiar from ordinary literature, but they dominate Blake's the poetry so much that the analogy with the dream is striking. Milton does not describe an actual dream, but Blake claimed its contents had come to him as "inspirations". There is evidence that this is true, and that such "inspirations" came to Blake with greater frequency than to other artists. The way Blake's mind worked made him different from other people. It is possible to account for Blake's visions, much of his system, and the facility with which he received his "inspirations" with a single hypothesis. To date, no medical doctor with a literary background has ever reviewed the Blake records, or offered an opinion to the literary community. I will review all the biographical information that we have regarding Blake's "visions" and "voices". I will then develop the case for Blake's having had schizophrenia. This is the commonest cause of hallucinations during clear consciousness. It affects around one percent of adults in our country, and was about this prevalent in Blake's England. The diagnosis in no way detracts from Blake's stature as an artist, poet, political thinker, or inspired visionary. I will not discuss cosmic or metaphysical issues, or claim any special insight into a puzzling mental condition. I will end with some thoughts on how this discovery might help us better understand and appreciate Blake's genius and writings. 2. Dream Elements in Blake Blake originally subtitled his long unpublished poem A Dream of Nine Nights. Like our dreams, the prophetic books are intricate constructions in which images of things in the ordinary world are combined in unfamiliar ways. When interpreted, the structure will reveal a spiritual message which illuminates its author's desires and beliefs. If the interpretation is correct and complete, all details of the symbolism should confirm it. That there is something dreamlike about The Four Zoas was noted by S. Foster Damon: Perhaps Blake's greatest contribution to literary methods occurs in this poem: his invention of the dream technique. It was also the cause of the greatest confusion among his earlier critics. This technique destroys the effect of a continuous and logical narrative. It permits the tangling of many threads, abrupt changes in subject, recurrent repetitions, obscure cross references, sudden intrusions, even out-and-out contradictions. Crucial scenes are omitted; others are expanded out of all seeming proportion. But this technique is closest to our deeper mental processes, and it was Blake's ideal -- complete freedom of the imagination [1]. The dream-like techniques mentioned by Damon are easily noticed in Milton or Jerusalem, even by a beginning reader of Blake. Damon's catalogue may be elaborated and generalized based on the understanding that the dream, like the Blakean epic, is constructed mostly from symbols. Even when questions of interpretation are set aside, any reader with a good memory for his or her own dreams can confirm that they have features in common with Blake's poetry. The disappearance of ordinary causality is an example. Dreams and Blakean epics begin in medias res, and consist of glimpses of a succession of situations. Even though there is usually some common motif, such as a character, journey, or task, the logical connections between events are never very clear without interpretation. Causality in dreams, as in Blake, is a function of the underlying mental reality. In the same way, the elementary facts of time, space, form, and identity serve in such compositions only to provide a framework for the symbolism. Dream space and time are constructed, much as in Blake (M 28:44-29:26, etc.), of discrete units in which individual situations appear and with which they vanish [2]. The dream, like Milton, moves just fast enough for the appropriate symbols to be articulated, and the length of time which should be passing as a total dream plot unfolds is not defined or important. Developments which in the real world might take months or years are condensed into several moments. Spatial relations in the dream are clear only when this serves the symbolic purpose. Thus I may dream I am in a room at Brown, and step towards a door and into a new situation in Africa, or I may be transported without anything whatsoever to do with it. This sort of thing never interferes with a dreamer's orientation with respect to where one is or what one is supposed to be doing. The same primacy of symbolism governs the cosmography of Milton. Hence an attempt by an admirer of Blake (unlike of Milton of Dante) to construct a precise map of his universe or the wanderings of his character would not only be futile (as the reader who may be tried to take my diagram too literally has discovered) but wrong in its conception. Occasionally the dreamer may even find himself working in two frames of reference engaged simultaneously in two separate activities, just as Milton's dissociated personality can do several things at once and Blake can stand in both his garden and in Satan's bosom. As a rule, dream objects do not retain a single shape or size, but the dreamer can recognize them despite variations in form. (Thus in one of my dreams, a symbolic spider appeared in quick succession as a tarantula covering a quarter of a ceiling, a nondescript species the size of a grapefruit, a poison claw as big as my forearm, a floppy creature combining the characteristics of a turtle and frog, a blue checkered beanbag with two plastic eyes, and an enormous idol.) Likewise, things may actually be transformed into conceptually related entities. (An automobile in which I am riding becomes a train without my noticing, paraders carrying a flag are changed into demonstrators waving bloody bandages, or an Israeli archeologist in white turns to me an to my amazement is revealed to be the transfigured Christ.) Bewildered readers soon discover that Blake allows himself the same type of freedom in his text and illustrations. Many examples could be cited. The Sons of Albion appear in Jerusalem as warriors, magistrates, furnaces (5:34), one blacksmith (9:3), a "polypus" (15:4), twelve wheels (15:24, etc.), three wheels (18:8), the spectres of the dead (? 39:17), a grove of trees (49:10), Satan (49:29), stars (50:20), and Druids (63:19). Ololon is in succession a river, a crowd of men, a ring of flame, a bird, a child, a cloud, and a boat. The chief characters in the epics are described and depicted in illustrations very differently at different times, even when they retain the human form. Characters are frequently identified with other figures or coalesce. Milton's shadow is revealed as the Covering Cherub; the Eyes join as Christ. Geneologies, chronologies, and even subtlety of characterization [3] are precluded by this technique. In short, the "Eternal" realities celebrated in Blake's poetry, while very orderly in their own way, are not bound by the principles which govern the way we mortals experience things at the "limits of opacity and contraction". Blake's poems also seem to be connected with dreams through his use of archetypes. If an underlying conception is one held to be native to all people, the images that arise from it are said to be archetypal. Students of this type of symbolism have had a heyday with Blake, and have included such luminaries as W.B. Yeats, Northrop Frye, and even Blake himself, who found "Eternal Images" from them in other people's inspired works. "Archetypal" ideas which have been discovered in Blake's prophetic books include heaven, the fall, chaos, the apocalypse, the sky-king, the solar hero, the nature-queen, the cosmic man, the uroboros, the infernal machine, inspiration, and the despised prophet. Frye's remarks on these are still the best. For discussions of Jung's archetypal figures, supposedly seen by dreamers everywhere, and in Blake's work in particular, the reader should consult the writings of June Singer, J.C. Clarke, G.W. Digby, and W.P. Witcutt, as well as Jung's own writings [4]. The use what psychologists call the mechanism of condensation seems especially important in Blake. This faculty seems to be basic to much of the operation of the unconscious. Identified and studied at length by Sigmund Freud, it causes the fusion of two or more separate images, motive forces, or ideas into a single creation, whether it is a dream image, a neurotic symptom, a good joke, or any other product of unconscious mental activity. In literature, the mechanism may be recognized when one figure symbolizes several things or people or ideas combined. A single example is Blake's description of the building of Stonehenge: They build a stupendous Building on the Plain of Salisbury; with chains Of rocks round London Stone: of Reasonings: of unhewn Demonstrations In labyrinthine arches. (Mighty Urizen the Architect.) thro which The Heavens might revolve & Eternity be bound in their chain. Labour unparalelld! a wondrous rocky World of cruel destiny Rocks piled on rocks reaching the stars: stretching from pole to pole. The Building is Natural Religion & its Altars Natural Morality A building of eternal death: whose proportions are eternal despair. -- Jerusalem 66:2-9 The building is at once the literal Stonehenge, which Blake believed to have been built by the giant Druids, and the structure of natural religion and naturalistic science. The visionary sees both these acts as one. Of course, the sky does not revolve through any ancient cluster of boulders, nor is Deism located on the Plain of Salisbury. However, when the two constructions are fused into a unity, characteristics of both are carried over, thus making the symbol an example of condensation. Milton, as we have seen, is full of instances of this sort of multiple meaning, which is a source of enormous confusion to readers. Satan, for example, is the "God" that Milton worshipped in church, the nucleus of the body of error that Milton must reject, the human race for which Milton makes his sacrifices, and even Milton himself. He is also specifically identified with William Hayley, and generally with the Augustan artists. Similar lists may be constructed for each character and place. Another instance of the use of condensation seems to be Blake's naming of his mythical figures. As a rule, each name appears to be condensed from several ordinary words [5]. Closely related to these techniques is Blake's use of the overdetermined symbol, one which evokes several different associations, all appropriate. A simple, familiar example is the rose, used to stand for a young woman. The rose is the most beautiful of all flowers, and it withers and dies soon after it blooms. Another very famous example is John Donne's twin compasses. Because it just happens to stand at the point of intersection of two or more independent spheres of meaning, the overdetermined symbol is usually a strange and surprising one, and not always an easy one to understand. This accounts for much of the strangeness of our own dreams, where many, if not all, images are symbols of this soft. Our poet especially favored overdetermined symbols. The more imaginative, more outlandish, more "Blakean" a symbol appears to be, the more lines of meaning have probably converged to it. For instance, Blake enhances the symbolism of the rose by referring to her "bed of crimson joy" in a lyric which on one level describes the ravages of syphilis. (The number of meanings that have been recognized in this excellent little poem shows the role played by condensation in its composition.) The symbols in Milton can get even more complicated. The False Tongue derives its name from an organ that devours, that is enclosed in darkness, that speaks, and that is also depicted in the tongues of flame which manifest the Holy Spirit, of Whom the False Tongue is the negation. The serpent, a chief form of the Covering Cherub, kills by surrounding and constricting its victim, coils itself in circles, produces poison, often appears studded as if with jewels (symbols of matter), lives flat on the ground, has as its main organ of sense a Divided Tongue, and is credited with causing the Biblical fall. Milton's Luvah form as a falling star calls up images of his own Satan (Luvah), and of cosmic catastrophe, apocalypse, revelation, illumination, and error (Swedenborg's interpretation of planets and comets). The sandal which represents the visionary's way of seeing the physical world is a vehicle for exploration, a support, a contact with the earth, and an inglorious and insignificant appendage. Finally, when the sandal is tied on by Los, it is a subtle way of identifying Blake with Jesus Christ, the thong of Whose sandal John the Baptizer (returned Elijah, therefore an incarnation of Los) was not really worthy to tie. The sun symbolizes Los because it is brilliant, measures time and space, and is the source of illumination which allows human activity. The ivory palaces which Tirzah offers to Milton (20:4) are composed of stonified living substance, recall the ivory house of the idolatrous tyrants Ahab and Jezebel, recall the popular hymn in which the ivory palaces are Beulah, and probably also refer to the Gate of Falsehood from Homer. This brings up a startling fact, which the alert reader may already have noticed. Every symbol mentioned so far in this study has been overdetermined. In fact, every symbol in the poem seems to fit the pattern. Anyone acquainted with the meaning of Milton will have no trouble discovering other such symbols, and no doubt will be able to supply some further insights into those already described. The discovery of dream elements in the prophetic books serves to remind us both of the purpose of Blake's writings and of how complex they really are. Let us look next at how dreams and dream-like experiences might appear in art. 3. Inspiration. The abundance of dream-like elements compounds the mystery of the origins of Milton created by the presence of the supposedly visionary material. Blake claimed that the poem was not his own work, but was somehow "inspired". On April 25, 1803, Blake wrote to Butts: But none can know the Spiritual Acts of my three years Slumber on the banks of the Ocean unless he has seen the in the Spirit or unless he should read My long Poem descriptive of those Acts for I have in these three years composed an immense number of verses on One Grand Theme Similar to Homers Iliad or Miltons Paradise Lost the Persons & Machinery intirely new to the Inhabitants of Earth (some of the Persons Excepted) I have written this Poem from immediate Dictation twelve or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time without Premeditation and even against my Will. the Time it has taken in writing was thus rendered Non Existent. & an immense Poem Exists which seems to be the Labour of a long Life all producd without Labour or Study. I mention this to shew you what I think the Grand Reason of my being brought down here. The letter almost certainly refers to an early version of Milton, the only known long poem by Blake which centers on his spiritual acts at Felpham (cf. M 36:24). Blake admitted that he wrote the letter "in haste" and apparently he forgot he had already mentioned his new poem when he wrote Butts again on July 6: Thus I hope that all our three years' trouble Ends in Good Luck at last & shall be forgot by my affections & only remember'd by my Understanding; to be a Memento in time to come, & to speak to future generations by a Sublime Allegory, which is now perfectly completed into a Grand Poem. I may praise it, since I dare not pretend to be any other than the Secretary; the Authors are in Eternity. I consider it as the Grandest Poem that this World Contains. Allegory addressed to the Intellectual powers, while it is altogether hidden from the Corporeal Understanding, is My Definition of the Most Sublime Poetry; it is also somewhat in the same manner defin'd by Plato. This Poem shall, by Divine Assistance, be progressively Printed & Ornamented with Prints & Given to the Public. But of this work I take care to say little to Mr. H[ayley], since he is as much averse to my poetry as he is to a Chapter in the Bible. He knows that I have writ it, for I have shewn it to him, & he has read Part by his own desire & has looked with sufficient contempt to enhance my opinion of it. But I do not wish to irritate by seeming too obstinate in Poetic pursuits. But if all the World should set their faces against This, I have Orders to set my face like a flint (Ezekiel iiiC, 9v) against their faces, & my forehead against their foreheads. Blake is one of a surprisingly large number of creative people who have felt that they were "inspired", given a new and brilliant idea which has been placed in their minds by a mysterious power outside of themselves. Today, most of us believe that inspirations originate in the artist's unconscious mind as dreams do. Many instances of this sort of thing have been cited and analyzed by Rosamund Harding in her fascinating Anatomy of Inspiration [6]. At first glance, what Blake says about his inspirations seems to fit the pattern that emerges from Harding's analysis. The inspired person feels that he or she is taken over by some mysterious force and gives expression to its ideas instead of his or her own. The experience occurs independently of any conscious effort by the recipient, who need only be skilled in the appropriate medium of expression. Furthermore, the ideas and impressions tend to be accompanied by a sense that they are of great value, and this makes it necessary to assess their real worth later. However, Harding find that, as a rule, the inspired idea serves simply as the basis for the completed work, which the artist then develops into a whole. In the author's words: In the arts... inspiration may give as much as the theme and general structure of a symphony; even at times a complete short poem or a song; and on the other hand it may provide as little as the nucleus of one word or a short phrase from which a poem is developed.... Or it may give no more than the vague notion of a plot... or if may diffuse some rare feeling or emotion.... Whatever the inspiration gives be it great or little the effect on the artist is profound because it provides the very foundation of his work from which the superstructure is developed almost mechanically; though the artist may not know where he is being led or what new realm he is destined to discover. The main function of inspiration in artistic work is, therefore, to provide the nucleus from which the work develops. [7] I can confirm Harding's findings from personal experience as a writer of poetry. In any case, the inspiration which can become the basis for a work of art consists of one block of material put into order by the unconscious and coming into consciousness -- in one moment -- as the basis of creative expression. Dreams, hallucinations, and the delusional insights of crazy people "come" in a moment (at most, a few seconds) and one might suggest that they represent "units of creativity" just as does the artist's inspiration. The largest verbal construction to which such a unit may give rise is probably the lyric. If we believe its author's account of its origin, we might guess that Kubla Khan sets a record for length as well as for quality. Literary inspirations may also be nonverbal; the preface to Jerusalem suggests Blake did not hear exact words. Professor Harding's considers most "inspired" works to originate with a single moment of inspiration, and indeed most of her cases confirm this. However, Blake's claims in the letters to Butts appears to go far beyond Harding's norm. Instead of his narrative being based on one inspiration arriving in a single moment, Blake insisted that each line of an excellent poem longer than Macbeth was given, even "dictated", to him by the alien powers, on various occasions, over several years. According to the poet, the epic is built up of sequences of up to thirty lines, each of which we may suppose is the product of a "unit of inspiration". The text itself supports this conjecture. Except for the "Bard's Song", Milton is built up of self-contained verse paragraphs. With minor alterations, most of them could stand by themselves as anthology pieces. The tone of the poem is not really unified, and the plot is buried among shifting perspectives. It is easy to believe that each paragraph entered Blake's mind as a discrete unit. If Blake's claim is true, we have in Milton a much greater density of inspiration than in most other literary works. The facts of William Blake's life tell how this could have happened. 4. Blake's Visions and Voices: Introduction William Blake's poems and paintings are of extraordinary beauty and deep meaning. His theme is always that perception itself is changing and that the life of the spirit is beginning for all people. His merits as poet and artist are firmly established. For over a century, our admiration of William Blake has led us away from the obvious. Most of Blake's contemporaries recognized that he was delusional and that the "visions" and "voices" he always described were hallucinations. Medical science has characterized these in depth since Blake's era. We are now ready to review of the records of the great poet's fantastic and fascinating experiences. The most influential attempt to give a coherent explanation for the visions was Gilchrist's, in the mid-nineteenth century. The biographer wished to save Blake from the stigma of mental illness. He concluded that Blake arbitrarily decided to regard as real the things that he imagined (in the ordinary sense of the word), even though he knew they were different from material things and persons. Gilchrist held that Blake's skill at visualizing things helped him objectify his fantasies. He explains away Blake's most extravagant utterances as "sophistries" or distortions intended to shock his audience. Blake scholars have generally accepted this for over sixty years [8]. However, it does not fit all the facts, and today some Blake scholars may no longer be so confident [9]. But even the Jungians are silent about the true nature and origin of the visions. The last article by a medical doctor on Blake's supposed insanity was Hubert J. Norman's effort in 1915. Unfortunately, Dr. Norman studied Blake without understanding his times or even his principal themes. Saying that "genius and nerve disorder" are both "by-products of some unstable equilibrium", Dr. Norman reviews fragments of Blake's life and writings, draws uncritically on Yeats and Ellis and shows that his appreciation and comprehension stop at the early lyrics. Dr. Norman arrives at no single conclusion as Gilchrist does, not does his collection of "symptoms" add up to any known medical entity. The most valuable part of Dr. Norman's article is his ample refutations of the sentimental and ill-informed defenses of Blake's sanity which had come after Gilchrist's. Dr. Norman's article has the further disadvantage of being written for medical specialists. The author assumes his readers possess clinical experience which a lay person is not likely to have [10]. When I wrote the original version of my thesis as a college student, I had already had the privilege of working, and talking, extensively with chronic psychiatric inpatients. I knew around one hundred schizophrenics of many subtypes, and several of then became friends of mine. I had read autobiographical materials on over a score of others. I was also well-acquainted with the other common mental disorders that can result in long-term confinement. From this I learned a great deal about hallucinations in mental illness. I found in reading the classic textbooks of psychiatry that hallucinations had already been exhaustively and accurately characterized. Now that I have completed my medical training, my experience is much greater. It seems unlikely that many other people with my background have had the time and inclination to study an difficult writer like Blake in enough detail to appreciate the prophetic books. While we are still far from a full understanding of what causes mental illness, its many forms are much better characterized today than in Blake's time, or Dr. Norman's. After assembling and reviewing all the evidence relating to Blake's "visions" and "voices", I found I could no longer agree with Gilchrist. The materials which have come down to us both strongly suggest, and are entirely consistent with, the modern diagnosis of schizophrenia. This does not in any way detract from Blake's excellence as a poet, painter, or thinker. Instead, it makes him even more interesting. 5. Blake's Visions and Voices: The Facts There is no shortage of well-attested information about the unusual things William Blake saw and heard. Aside from Blake's own writings, most of it consists of anecdotes supplied by people who had been close to the poet. The whole span of Blake's life is covered, and the information will be reviewed more or less chronologically. In my opinion, each of seven items is unambiguous proof that Blake did regard his "visions" and "voices" as autonomous things, independent of his own mind. I have underlined these passages, none of which I have ever seen mentioned by critics holding to Gilchrist's point of view. Catherine Blake recalled for Henry Crabb Robinson that, when Blake was four years old, he saw God for "the first time". The Lord "put his head to the window" and "set [Blake] a-screaming" [11]. Robinson is our only source for any vision at this early age, and while he heard that the visions had begun in "early infancy", perhaps Blake was exaggerating. The biographer Gilchrist did not know of any visions prior to the celebrated "tree full of angels": On Peckham Rye (by Dulwich Hill) it is, as he will in after years relate, that while quite a child, of eight or ten perhaps, he has his first vision. Sauntering along, the boy looks up, and sees a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars. Returning home he relates the incident, and only through his mother's intercession escapes a thrashing from his honest father, for telling a lie. Another time, one summer morn, he sees the haymakers at work, and amid them angelic figures walking. [12] Blake apparently perceived the angels fully projected in ordinary space and in close relationship to what were most likely real objects. Tatham heard that "even when a child, his mother beat him for running in and saying that he saw the Prophet Ezekiel under a tree in the fields" [13]. Gilchrist records several visions from when Blake was an apprentice: It was when he was one day thus secluded in the dim vaulted solitude of Westminster Abbey that he saw, as he afterwards records, one of his visions. The aisles and galleries of the old building (or sanctuary) suddenly filled with a great procession of monks and priests, choristers and censer-bearers, and his entranced ear heard the chant of plain-song and chorale, while the vaulted roof trembled to the sound of organ music.... Shut up alone with these solemn memorials of far-off centuries -- for, during service and in the intervals of visits from strangers, the vergers turned the key on him -- the Spirit of the past became his familiar companion. Sometimes his dreaming eye saw more palpable shapes from the past: once a vision of "Christ and the Apostles", as he used to tell [14]. In the vision of the procession, visual and auditory elements are coordinated. The written source to which Gilchrist refers is unknown. The well-known account of Robert Blake's death in 1787 derives from Blake's friend Linnell. Gilchrist tells us: At the last solemn moment, the visionary eyes beheld the released spirit ascend heavenward through the matter-of-fact ceiling, "clapping its hands for joy" -- a truly Blake-like detail [15]. Blake had been awake with his brother for almost three days, and hence was fatigued and no doubt distraught at the time of the vision. Later, Robert came to his brother and taught him how to produce the illuminated books: After intently thinking by day and dreaming by night, during long weeks and months, of his cherished object, the image of the vanished pupil and brother at last blended with it. In a vision of the night, the form of Robert stood before him, and revealed the wished-for secret, directing him to the technical mode by which he could produce a facsimile of song and design [16]. Gilchrist apparently heard this visitation took place in a dream. In a similar anecdote, "Joseph, the sacred carpenter" showed Blake how to use carpenters' glue as a binder for watercolors [17]. In 1788 Blake wrote in a copy of Lavater's Aphorisms: Man is bad or good as he unites himself with bad or good spirits: tell me with whom you go and I'll tell you what you do. As we cannot experience pleasure but by means of others, who experience either pain or pleasure thro' us, And as all of us on earth are united in thought, for it is impossible to think without images of somewhat on earth -- So it is impossible to know God or heavenly things without conjunction with those who know God and heavenly things; therefore all who converse in the spirit, converse with spirits. For these reasons I say that this Book is written by consultation with Good Spirits, because it is Good, & that the name Lavater is the amulet of those who purify the heart of man. Apparently writers may communicate with spirits without knowing it. Throughout his writings, Blake maintained that all creative activity, even ordinary thinking or digestion, is really carried out by spirits. J.T. Smith recalled that Blake "saw a vision of the 'Ancient of Days' at the top of his staircase in Hercules Buildings" [18]. The vision is of course preserved as the frontispiece to Europe, and while we might believe that Blake did see Urizen-Jehovah with His compasses projected on the staircase, it is hard to imagine the vision having any clear relation to it. (Possibly Smith records an experience in which Blake saw the Creator in inner space, while Blake was standing on the staircase.) Gilchrist adds: On that same staircase it was Blake, for the only time in his life, saw a ghost. When talking on the subject of ghosts, he was wont to say they did not appear much to imaginative men, but only to common minds, who did not see the finer spirits. A ghost was a thing seen by the gross bodily eye, a vision, by the mental. "Did you ever see a ghost?" asked a friend. "Never but once", was the reply. And it befel thus. Standing one evening at his garden-door in Lambeth, and chancing to look up, he saw a horrible grim figure, "scaly, speckled, very awful", stalking downstairs towards him. More frightened than ever before or after, he took to his heels, and ran out of the house [19]. Blake distinguished between an apparition seen by the physical eyes and a vision, which somehow is seen differently. However, Blake does seem to assume that the "finer spirits" are as real and autonomous as the ghost that chased him [20]. In the Introduction to Europe (published 1794), Blake tells us that the poem was dictated by a fairy he had caught in his hat: I took him home in my warm bosom: as we went along Wild flowers I gather'd, & he shew'd me each eternal flower. He laugh'd aloud to see them whimper because they were pluck'd. They hover'd round me like a cloud of incense: when I came Into my parlour and sat down and took my pen to write, My fairy sat upon the table and dictated EUROPE. The whole introduction looks tongue-in-cheek, but it is the first of many references to writings being "dictated". In 1796, Joseph Farington recorded in his diary that "Fuseli says, Blake has something of madness about him" [21]. Blake's 1795 annotations to Bishop Watson's Apology for the Bible defended Thomas Paine's attacks on orthodoxy. On the back of the title-page, he wrote, "I have been commanded from Hell not to print this, as it is what our Enemies wish." At this time, Blake was working on the "Bible of Hell". Perhaps his commanders felt that he should not undermine faith in inspired scriptures even when they were not being correctly interpreted. Blake tells us nothing more about the communications he received from the infernal regions. In 1799 Blake wrote to Dr. Trusler explaining why he had not followed instructions in preparing engravings for Trusler's book: I attempted every morning for a fortnight together to follow your Dictate, but when I found my attempts were in vain, resolved to shew an independence... I could not do otherwise, it was out of my power! I know I begged you to give me your Ideas & promised to build on them; here I counted without my host (my Genius or Angel).... And tho I call them (my Designs) Mine, I know that they are not mine being of the same opinion with Milton when he sayd That the Muse visits his Slumbers & awakes & governs his Song when Morn purples the East. The inspired artist cannot be expected to satisfy a dull man like Trusler; the inspiration is something over which he cannot exercise voluntary control. After Blake's designs were rejected, he wrote: I really am sorry that you are fall'n out with the Spiritual World, especially if I should have to answer for it. I feel very sorry that your Ideas & Mine on Moral Painting differ so much as to have made you angry with my method of Study. If I am wrong, I am wrong in good company. I had hoped your plan comprehended All Species of this Art, & Especially that you would not regret that Species which gives Existence to Every other, namely, Visions of Eternity.... But I am happy to find a Great Majority of Fellow Mortals who can Elucidate My Visions, & Particularly they have been Elucidated by Children, who have taken a greater delight in contemplating my pictures than I even hoped. Neither Youth nor Childhood is Folly or Incapacity. Some Children are Fools & so are some Old Men. But There is a vast Majority on the side of imagination or Spiritual Sensation. In 1800 after the death of William Hayley's son, Blake sent the son's picture and a letter to his future patron: I am very sorry for your immense loss, which is a repetition of what all feel in this valley of misery & happiness mixed. I send the Shadow of the departed Angel, hope the likeness is improved, the lip I have again lessened as you advised & done a good many other softenings to the whole -- I know that our deceased friends are more really with us than when they were apparent to our mortal part. Thirteen years ago I lost a brother & with his spirit I converse daily and hourly in the Spirit & See him in my remembrance in the regions of my Imagination. I hear his advice & even now write from his Dictate. Forgive me for Expressing to you my Enthusiasm which I wish all to partake of Since it is to me a source of Immortal Joy: even in this world by it I am the companion of Angels. May you continue to be so more & more & to be more & more perswaded, that every Mortal loss is an Immortal Gain. The Ruins of Time build Mansions in Eternity. The visionary sees and talks with his brother "in the spirit", although he is no longer "apparent to our mortal part". Exactly how Blake kept in touch with Robert, if not through the physical senses, is not explained, but here there is no question of Blake merely indulging in make-believe. If the poet had not actually had some sense that Robert were dictating his letter as he wrote it, he would hardly have brought it up on such a sensitive occasion. The dictation of the letter, in obviously Blakean style, suggests that "Robert" was voicing Blake's thoughts as he wrote them. In the same year, Blake wrote to Flaxman the poem concerning the visits of Milton, Isaiah, Ezra, Shakespeare, and the alchemists. It is usually claimed that Blake is merely referring to his forming an acquaintance with these writers through their books, though in light of the other visions it is hard to see why a more literal interpretation is not preferred. In September he sent Flaxman an account of his journey to Felpham. Felpham is a sweet place for Study, because it is more Spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her Golden Gates; her windows are not obstructed by vapours; voices of Celestial Inhabitants are more distinctly heard, & their forms more distinctly seen, & my Cottage is also a Shadow of their houses. And Now Begins a New Life, because another covering of Earth is shaken off. I am more famed in Heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my Brain are studies & Chambers fill'd with books & pictures of old, which I wrote & painted in ages of Eternity before my mortal life; & those works are the delight & Study of Archangels. You, O Dear Flaxman, are a Sublime Archangel, My Friend & Companion from Eternity; in the Divine bosom is our Dwelling place. I look back into the regions of Remeniscence & behold our ancient days before this Earth appear'd in its vegetated mortality to my mortal vegetated Eyes. I see our houses of Eternity, which can never be separated, tho' our Mortal vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of heaven from each other. Blake liked Felpham, because he could hear his voices and see his spirits more clearly in the country air, and because it resembled heaven. At this point in his career, Blake was developing his doctrine of a visionary realm which was at once a pastoral world of art, angels, and eternal life, a place inhabited by Blake and his friends, and an area in Blake's own brain. This inner space, "Eden", will come to figure prominently in all Blake's future writings. Hayley wrote to a friend in 1802 concerning his new protege: [Blake] would produce Works of the pencil, almost as excellent & original, as those works of the pen, which flowed from the dear poet [William Cowper], of whom he often reminds me by little Touches of nervous Infirmity, when his mind is darkend with any unpleasant apprehension [22]. Hayley-Satan could indeed write with "power armd, to say the most irritating things in the midst of tears & love" (M 12:32-3)! While he was getting settled at Felpham in October, 1800, Blake sent a poem to his faithful patron, Thomas Butts: To my Friend Butts I write My first Vision of Light On the yellow sands sitting. The Sun was Emitting His Glorious beams From Heaven's high Streams Over Sea, over Land My Eyes did Expand Into regions of air Away from all Care Into regions of fire Remote from Desire The Light of the Morning Heavens Mountains adorning In particles bright The jewels of Light Distinct shown & clear, Amaz'd & in fear I each particle gazed, Astonish'd, Amazed; For each was a Man Human form'd. Swift I ran, For they Beckon'd to me Remote by the Sea Saying: Each grain of Sand, Every Stone on the Land, Each Rock & each hill, Each fountain & rill, Each herb & each tree, Mountain, hill, earth, & sea, Cloud, Meteor & Star, Are Men Seen Afar. I stood in the Streams Of Heaven's bright beams, And Saw Felpham sweet Beneath my bright feet In soft Female Charms; And in her fair arms My Shadow I knew And my wife's shadow too, And my Sister & Friend. We like Infants descend In our Shadows on Earth, Like a weak mortal birth. My Eyes more & more Like a Sea without shore Continue expanding The Heavens commanding, Till the Jewels of Light Heavenly Men beaming bright, Appear'd as One Man Who Complacent began My limbs to infold In his beams of bright gold; Like dross purg'd away All my mire & my clay. Soft consum'd in delight In his bosom Sun bright I remain'd. Soft he smil'd, And I heard his voice Mild Saying: This is My Fold, O thou Ram horn'd with gold, Who awakest from Sleep On the Sides of the Deep. On the Mountains around The roarings resound Of the lion & wolf The loud Sea & deep gulf, These are guards of My Fold, O thou Ram horn'd with gold! And the voice faded mild, I remain'd as a Child; All I ever had known Before me bright shone. I saw you & your wife By the fountains of Life. Such the Vision to me Appear'd by the sea. Blake's vision begins as an ordinary enough perception, seeing motes of color in the sunbeams. When Blake says his "eyes expanded", he probably means only that he looked off into the distance. His surprise begins only when he sees each particle of color has assumed a human form. They call him, he responds, and they communicate the idea that each minute particular in nature is a human being -- the understanding that permeates the visions in Milton. Blake finds he is no longer in the ordinary world, but has left his body and is high above the earth. He is able to see his "Shadow" (his physical body), and finds he has also been given supernatural powers of sight. The light-men suddenly become One Man (Christ), just as does the Divine Family in Milton. Christ surrounds Blake with His brilliant, purifying light, and utters some words which seem to be based on Blake's personal symbols. The visionary sees all of Eden filled with the transfigured forms of the people and things he loves. On Sept. 11, 1801, Blake wrote to Butts about his "abstract folly". In January, 1802, Butts received an even more disturbing and bizarre letter concerning the troubles caused by Hayley's kindness: The Thing I have most at Heart -- more than life, or all that seems to make life comfortable without -- Is the Interest of true Religion & Science, & whenever any thing appears to affect that Interest (Especially if I myself omit any duty to my Station as a Soldier of Christ), It gives me the greatest of torments. I am not ashamed, afraid, or averse to tell you what Ought to be Told: That I am under the direction of Messengers from Heaven, Daily & Nightly; but the nature of such things is not, as some suppose, without trouble or care. Temptations are on the right hand & left; behind, the sea of time & space roars & follows swiftly; he who keeps not right onward is lost, & if our footsteps slide in clay, how can we do otherwise than fear & tremble? but I should not have troubled You with this account of my spiritual state, unless it had been necessary in explaining the actual cause of my uneasiness, into which you are so kind as to Enquire; for I never obtrude such things on others unless question'd, & then I never disguise the truth. -- But if we fear to do the dictates of our Angels, & tremble at the Tasks set before us; if we refuse to do Spiritual Acts because of Natural Fears of Natural desires! Who can describe the dismal torments of such a state! -- I too well remember the Threats I heard! If you, who are organised by Divine Providence for Spiritual communion, Refuse, & bury your Talent in the Earth, even tho' you should want Natural Bread, Sorrow & Desperation pursues you thro' life, & after death shame & confusion of face to eternity. Every one in Eternity will leave you, aghast at the Man who was crown'd with glory & honour by his brethren, & betray'd his Friend! -- Such words would make any stout man tremble, & how then could I be at ease? But I am no longer in That State, & now go on again with my Task, Fearless, and tho' my path is difficult, I have no fear of stumbling while I keep it. The last sentence is one of several denials, which he continued making over the next decade, that he would continue to experience "spiritual distress". The spirits told Blake to "be an artist and nothing else" [23] and was told of dreadful things that would happen should he disobey. He knew that he was having an experience that most people never have. Confessing it was difficult, and the "spiritual" commands were imperative. He was obviously in distress because of the voices. All this leaves little doubt that Blake was having auditory hallucinations, not just choosing his words idiosyncratically. Another letter to Butts followed in November of the same year: And now let me finish with assuring you that, Tho' I have been very unhappy, I am so no longer. I am again Emerged into the light of day; I still & shall to Eternity Embrace Christianity and Adore him who is the Express image of God; but I have travel'd thro' Perils & Darkness not unlike a Champion. I have Conquer'd, and shall still Go on Conquering. Nothing can withstand the fury of my Course among the Stars of God & in the Abysses of the Accuser. My Enthusiasm is still what it was only Enlarged & confirm'd. Along with the letter, Blake sent Butts the poem about the talking thistle and Los, which he stated he had composed a year previously. The poem is worth quoting here in full: With happiness stretchd across the hills In a cloud that dewy sweetness distills With a blue sky spread over with wings And a mild sun that mounts & sings With trees & fields full of Fairy elves And little devils who fight for themselves Remembering the Verses that Hayley sung When my heart knockd against the root of my tongue With Angels planted in Hawthorn bowers And God himself in the passing hours With Silver Angels across my way And Golden Demons that none can stay With my Father hovering upon the wind And my Brother Robert just behind And my Brother John the evil one In a black cloud making his mone Tho dead they appear upon my path Notwithstanding my terrible wrath They beg they intreat they drop their tears Filld full of hopes filld full of fears With a thousand Angels upon the Wind Pouring disconsolate from behind To drive them off & before my way A frowning Thistle implores my stay What to others a trifle appears Fills me full of smiles or tears For double the vision my Eyes do see And a double vision is always with me With my inward Eye 'tis an old Man grey With my outward a Thistle across my way "If thou goest back the thistle said Thou art to endless woe betrayd For here does Theotormon lower And here is Enitharmon's bower And Los the terrible thus hath sworn Because thou backward does return, Poverty, Envy, old age & fear Shall bring thy Wife upon a bier; And Butts shall give what Fuseli gave A dark black Rock & a gloomy Cave." I struck the Thistle with my foot, And broke him up from his delving root: "Must the duties of life each other cross" "Must every joy be dung & dross?" "Must my dear Butts feel cold neglect" "Because I give Hayley his due respect?" "Must Flaxman look upon me as wild," "And all my friends be with doubts beguil'd?" "The curses of Los the terrible shade" "And his dismal terrors make me afraid." So I spoke & struck in my wrath The old man weltering upon my path. Then Los appeard in all his power In the Sun he appeard descending before My face in fierce flames in my double sight Twas outward a Sun: inward Los in his might "My hands are labourd day & night" "And Ease comes never in my sight" "My Wife has no indulgence given" "Except what comes to her from heaven" "We eat little we drink less" "This Earth breeds not our happiness" "Another Sun feeds our lifes streams" "We are not warmed with thy beams" "Thou measurest not the Time to me" "Nor yet the Space that I do see" "My mind is not with thy light arrayd" "Thy terrors shall not make me afraid" When I had my Defiance given The Sun stood trembling in heaven The Moon that glowd remote below Became leprous & white as snow And every Soul of men on the Earth Felt affliction & sorrow & sickness & dearth Los flamd in my path & the Sun was hot With the bows of my Mind & the Arrows of Thought My bowstring fierce with Ardour breathes My arrows glow in their golden sheaves My brothers & father march before The heavens drop with human gore. Now I a fourfold vision see, And a fourfold vision is given to me; 'Tis fourfold in my supreme delight And threefold in soft Beulah's night And twofold always. May God us keep From Single vision & Newton's sleep! This poem seems to preserve authentic motifs from Blake's visions. Blake was still seeing angels, devils, and God, associated with natural objects. The voices included those of the members of his family who had died. They materialized, blocking Blake's progress, while other spirits came to drive them away. Blake's eyes then settled on a thistle, and he noted that objects provoke unusual and unexplained emotional reactions within him. The thistle was also an old man. The poet called this marvel "double vision", without further explanation. The thistle opposed Blake's plans to return to London, using terminology from the Lambeth books. Blake uprooted the mean-talking vegetable. Los appeared, Blake defied him, and Blake and his family marched onward among hideous signs of the end of the world. Blake's "voices" were obviously giving him contradictory messages. When he was trying to work for Hayley, the spirits threatened him and interfered with his work. When he resolved to return to London, the visions also threatened and disapproved. Even Robert first opposed, then sided with Blake. In 1803 Blake sent Butts the descriptions of the origin of Milton already reviewed. In October, when Blake was safely back in London after the Scofield fiasco and his trial for treason, he sent Hayley this odd letter: For now! O Glory! and O delight! I have entirely reduced that spectrous Fiend to his station, whose annoyance has been the ruin of my labours for the last passed twenty years of my life. He is the enemy of conjugal love and is the Jupiter of the Greeks, an iron-hearted tyrant, the ruiner of ancient Greece. I speak with perfect confidence and certainty of the fact which has passed upon me. Nebuchadnezzar had seven times passed over him; I have had twenty; thank God I was not altogether a beast as He was; but I was a slave bound in a mill among beasts and devils; these beasts and these devils are now, together with myself, become children of light and liberty, and my feet and my wife's feet are free from fetters. O lovely Felpham, parent of Immortal Friendship, to thee I am eternally indebted for my three years' rest from perturbation and the strength I now enjoy. Suddenly, on the day after visiting the Truchsessian Gallery of pictures, I was again enlightened with the light I enjoyed in my youth, and which has for exactly twenty years been closed from me as by a door and by window-shutters. Consequently I can, with confidence, promise you ocular demonstration of my altered state on the plates I am now engraving after Romney, whose spiritual aid has not a little conduced to my restoration to the light of Art. O the distress I have undergone, and my poor wife with me: incessantly labouring and incessantly spoiling what I had done well. Every one of my friends was astonished at my faults, and could not assign a reason; they knew my industry and abstinence from every pleasure for the sake of study, and yet -- and yet -- and yet there wanted the proofs of industry in my works. I thank God with entire confidence that it shall be so no longer -- he is become my servant who domineered over me, he is even as a brother who was my enemy. Dear Sir, excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand, even as I used to be in my youth, and as I have not been for twenty dark, but very profitable years. I thank God that I courageously pursued my course through darkness. Blake's mood had shifted again. A spirit who had been interfering with him had begun helping him instead. Blake now called the Felpham period his "three years' rest from perturbation" (!), and this reflects his euphoria. In 1807 Blake said he met the archangel Gabriel. Allan Cunningham's story is a good one: Blake, who always saw in fancy every form he drew, believed that angels descended to painters of old, and sat for their portraits. When he himself sat to Phillips for that fine portrait so beautifully engraved by Schiavonetti, the painter, in order to obtain the most unaffected attitude, and the most poetic expression, engaged his sitter in a conversation concerning the sublime in art. 'We hear much', said Phillips, 'of the grandeur of Michael Angelo; from the engravings, I should say he has been over-rated; he could not paint an angel so well as Raphael.' 'He has not been over-rated, Sir,' said Blake, 'and he could paint an angel better than Raphael.' 'Well, but' said the other, 'you never saw any of the paintings of Michael Angelo; and perhaps speak from the opinions of others; your friends may have deceived you.' 'I never saw any of the paintings of Michael Angelo,' replied Blake, 'but I speak form the opinion of a friend who could not be mistaken.' A Valuable friend truly,' said Phillips, 'and who may he be I pray?" 'The archangel Gabriel, Sir,' answered Blake. 'A good authority surely, but you know evil spirits love to assume the looks of good ones; and this may have been done to mislead you.' 'Well now, Sir,' said Blake, 'this is really singular; such were my own suspicions; but they were soon removed -- I will tell you how. I was one day reading Young's Night Thoughts, and when I came to that passage which asks "who can paint an angel," I closed the book and cried, "Aye! who can paint an angel?" A voice in the room answered, "Michael Angelo could." "And how do you know," I said, looking round me, but I saw nothing save a greater light than usual. "I know," said the voice, "for I sat to him: I am the arch-angel Gabriel." "Oho!" I answered, "you are, are you; I must have better assurance than that of a wandering voice; you may be an evil spirit -- there are such in the land." "You shall have good assurance," said the voice, "can an evil spirit do this?" I looked whence the voice came, and was then aware of a shining shape, with bright wings, who diffused much light. As I looked, the shape dilated more and more: he waved his hands; the roof of my study opened; he ascended into heaven; he stood in the sun, and beckoning to me, moved the universe. An angel of evil could not have done that -- it was the arch-angel Gabriel.' The painter marvelled much at this wild story; but he caught from Blake's looks, as he related it, that rapt poetic expression which has rendered his portrait one of the finest of the English school [24]. Catherine "learned how" to see and hear spirits from her husband. The poet records in his notebook for 1807: My Wife was told by a Spirit to look for her fortune by opening by chance a book which she had in her hand; it was Bysshe's Art of Poetry. She open'd the following: I saw 'em kindle with desire... Blake quotes some erotic doggerel from Bysshe. Whatever really happened, Blake himself clearly took it seriously and regarded such "spirits" as real informants. The notebook was not intended to be seen by the public, so this entry cannot be taken as an attempt to "startle" or "shock" someone. In his annotations to Reynolds (c. 1808), Blake describes creativity. He emphasizes the clarity and detail of his visions: The Man who asserts that there is no Such Thing as Softness in Art, & that every thing in Art is definite & Determinate, has not been fold this by Practise, but by Inspiration & Vision, because Vision is Determinate & Perfect, & he Copies That without Fatigue, Every thing being Definite & determinate. Blake's invocation of his Muses at the beginning of Milton is interesting and I have not cited it yet: Daughters of Beulah! Muses who inspire the Poet's Song, Record the journey of immortal Milton thro' your Realms Of terror & mild moony lustre in soft sexual delusions Of varied beauty, to delight the wanderer and repose His burning thirst & freezing hunger! Come into my hand, By your mild power descending down the Nerves of my right arm From out the Portals of my brain, where by your ministry The Eternal Great Humanity Divine planted his Paradise.... -- Milton 2:1-8 The Daughters of Beulah are machinery of the longer prophecies. They minister to those reposing in Beulah, close the Western Gate, expand a moment of time, create dreams (FZ 5:34), or bring the artist his inspiration. They always bring experiences to passive receivers. As usual, Eden is in Blake's brain, although the poems inspired by the Daughters of Beulah seem to Blake to originate outside himself. The visions recorded in Milton -- the falling star, the entry into the realms of imagination, the possession by Los, the apocalyptic scenes -- have already been described. Blake's very strange Descriptive Catalogue of 1809 contains scattered references to his visions. We learn, for example, that the visions often appeared as works of art: These wonderful originals seen in my visions, were some of them one hundred feet in height; some were painted as pictures, and some carved as basso relievos, and some as groupes of statues, all containing mythological and recondite meaning, where more is meant than meets the eye. Blake is referring to the "originals" which he copied in producing his paintings. From the same text: The Prophets describe what they saw in Vision as real and existing men, whom they saw with their imaginative and immortal organs; the Apostles the same; the clearer the organ the more distinct the object. A Spirit and a Vision are not, as the modern philosophy supposes, a cloudy vapour, or a nothing: they are organized and minutely articulated beyond all that the mortal and perishing nature can produce. He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and better light than his perishing and mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all. The painter of this work asserts that all his imaginations appear to him infinitely more perfect and more minutely organized than any thing seen by his mortal eye. Spirits are organized men. Moderns wish to draw figures without lines, and with great and heavy shadows; are not shadows more unmeaning than lines, and more heavy? O who can doubt this! In this critical passage, Blake identifies "visions" and "spirits". Blake makes it clear that by 'imaginations", he means things that are real and concrete, not just things he visualizes. The Descriptive Catalogue also contains an important reference to Blake's later poetry: Mr. B[lake] has in his hands poems of the highest antiquity. Adam was a Druid, and Noah; also Abraham was called to succeed the Druidical age, which began to turn allegoric and mental signification into corporeal command, whereby human sacrifice would have depopulated the earth. All these things are written in Eden. The artist is an inhabitant of that happy country; and if every thing goes on as it has begun, the world of vegetation and generation may expect to be opened again to Heaven, through Eden, as it was in the Beginning. Blake's prophecies originated in Eden and before he was born on earth. It is hard to explain the first sentence in any other way. Blake goes on to explain that such creations get to earth by means of inspiration. There are several anecdotes that indicate that, around this time, Blake thought he was being strangely persecuted. The cranky Catalogue alludes to his harassment by the "blotting and blurring demons", and states mysteriously (and perhaps figuratively) that Rubens and Correggio are "demons", enemies of art. People who knew Blake said that he believed the Scofield incident was part of a national conspiracy against him [25], and that he once insisted Stothard the artist had bewitched his picture of the Canterbury pilgrims [26]. Gilchrist also preserves the story that Blake was convinced that Napoleon had disappeared and had been replaced by a very skilled imposter [27]. Robert Hunt, who reviewed Blake's exhibition in the Examiner, won negative immortality as Blake's character "Hand" for describing Blake as "an unfortunate lunatic, whose personal inoffensiveness secures him from confinement" [28]. The introduction to Jerusalem refers to visionary dictation from Jesus Christ, but also to Blake's exercising control over the metre. Apparently the "inspired" content came as ideas and perhaps tone, but not exact words: I pretend not to holiness! yet I pretend to love, to see, to converse daily with, as man with man, & the more to have an interest in the Friend of Sinners. Therefore Dear Reader, forgive what you do not approve, & love me for this energetic exertion of my talent. Reader! lover of books! lover of heaven And of that God from whom all books are given, Who in mysterious Sinais awful cave To Man the wond'rous art of writing gave, Again he speaks in thunder and in fire! Thunder of Thought, & flames of fierce desire: Even from the depths of Hell his voice I hear, Within the unfathomd caverns of my Ear. Therefore I print; nor vain my types shall be: Heaven, earth & Hell, henceforth shall live in harmony. Of the Measure, in which the following Poem is written.... When this Verse was first dictated to me, I consider'd a Monotonous Cadence, like that used by Milton & Shakespeare & all writers of English Blank Verse, derived from the modern bondage of Rhyming, to be a necessary and indispensable part of Verse. But I soon found that in the mouth of a true Orator such monotony was not only awkward, but as much a bondage as rhyme itself. I therefore have produced a variety in every line, both of cadences & number of syllables. Every words and every letter is studied and put into its fit place.... Jerusalem begins: Of the Sleep of Ulro! and of the passage through Eternal Death! and of the awaking to Eternal Life. This theme calls me in sleep night after night, & ev'ry morn Awakes me at sun-rise; then I see the Savior over me Spreading his beams of love & dictating the words of this mild song. The time between sleep and wakefulenss seems to favor inspiration, as noted by Harding [29]. More of Blake's own comments on his visions appear in A Vision of the Last Judgment (c. 1810) The Last Judgment is one of these Stupendous Visions. I have represented it as I saw it; to different People it appears differently as everything else does; for tho' on Earth things seem Permanent, they are less permanent than a Shadow, as we all know too well. The Nature of Visionary Fancy, or Imagination, is very little known, & the eternal nature & permanence of its ever Existent Images is consider'd as less permanent than the things of Vegetative & Generative Nature; yet the Oak dies as well as the Lettuce, but Its Eternal Image & Individuality never dies, but renews by its seed; just so the imaginative Image returns by the seed of Contemplative Thought; the Writings of the Prophets illustrate these conceptions of the Visionary Fancy by their various sublime and Divine Images as seen in the Worlds of Visions. The things in Eden, represented in the works of inspired artists, exist eternally. Blake believed all mythology is inspired from Eden: Let it here be noted that the Greek Fables originated in Spiritual Mystery & Real Visions, which are lost & clouded in Fable & Allegory, while the Hebrew Bible & the Greek Gospel are GEnuine, Preserv'd by the Savior's Mercy. The Nature of my Work is Visionary or Imaginative; it is an Endeavour to Restore what the Ancients call'd the Golden Age. Blake explains the Last Judgment much as he did in Milton: This world of Imagination is the world of Eternity; it is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the vegetable body. This World of Imagination is Infinite and Eternal, whereas the world of Generation, or Vegetation, is Finite & Temporal. There Exist in that Eternal World the Permanent Realities of Every Thing which we see reflected in this Vegetable Glass of Nature. All Things are comprehended in their Eternal Forms in the divine body of the Savior, the True Vine of Eternity, the Human Imagination, who appear'd to Me as Coming to Judgment among his Saints & throwing off the Temporal that the Eternal might be Establish'd; around him were seen the Images of Existence according to a certain order Suited to my Imaginative Eye as follows.... The manuscript contains a curious reference to Los: The Greeks represent Chronos or Time as a very Aged Man, this is Fable, but the Real Vision of Time is in Eternal Youth. I have, however, somewhat accommodated my Figure of Time to the common opinion, as I myself am also infected with it & my Visions also infected, & I see Time Aged, alas, too much so. Again, the experience of the visionary colors the way in the way in which the "reality" is perceived. Blake concludes with a comment on the relationship of the artist to the material world: Truth is Eternal, Error, or Creation, will be Burned up, & then, & not till Then, Truth or Eternity will appear. It is Burnt up the Moment Men cease to behold it. I assert for My Self that I do not behold the outward Creation & that to me it is a hindrance & not Action; it is as the Dirt upon my feet, No part of Me. "What," it will be Question'd, "When the sun rises, do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea?" O no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty." I Question not my corporeal or Vegetative Eye any more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight. I look thro' it & not with it. This is another instance of an object being transformed through the visionary perceptions. Blake believed the after that "Last Judgment", there will be no further need for Los's material sun to provide a basis for imaginative activity. Henry Crabb Robinson wrote an essay on Blake in 1811. It began: Of all the conditions which around the interest of the psychologist, none assuredly is more attractive than the union of genius and madness in single minds, which, while on the one hand they compel our admiration by their great mental powers, yet on the other move our pity by their claims to supernatural gifts. Of such are the whole race of ecstatics, mystics, seers of visions, and dreamers of dreams, and to their list we have now to add another name, that of William Blake.... As his religious convictions had brought on him the credit of being an absolute lunatic, it is hardly to be wondered at that, while professional connoisseurs know nothing of him, his very well-wishers cannot forbear betraying their compassion, even while they show their admiration [30]. Robinson's article is the source for two interesting anecdotes: Our author lives, like Swedenborg, in communion with the angels. He told a friend, from whose mouth we have the story, that once when he was carrying home a picture which he had done for a lady of rank, and was wanting to rest in an inn, the angel Gabriel touched him on the shoulder and said, Blake, wherefore art thou here? Go to, thou shouldst not be tired. He arose and went on unwearied. This very conviction of supernatural suggestion makes him deaf to the voices of the connoisseur, since to any reproach directed against his works he makes answer, why it cannot in the nature of things be a failure. "I know that it is as it should be, since it adequately reproduces what I saw in a vision and must therefore be beautiful" [31]. Robinson's diary for the same year records a conversation with Robert Southey: Southey had been with Blake & admired both his designs & his poetic talents. At the same time that he held him for a decided madman. Blake, he says, spoke of his visions with the diffidence that is usual with such people. And did not seem to expect that he should be believed. He showed Southey a perfectly mad poem called Jerusalem [32]. The same diarist records an exchange with Flaxman in 1815: Flaxman was very chatty and pleasant. He related some curious anecdotes of Sharpe the engraver who seems the ready dupe of any & every religious fanatic & imposter who offers himself.... Sharpe, tho' deceived by Brothers became a warm partisan of Joanna Southcoat -- He endeavoured to make a convert of Blake the engraver, but as Flaxman judiciously observed, such men as Blake are not fond of playing the second fiddle. Hence Blake himself a seer of visions & a dreamer of dreams would not do homage to a rival claimant of the privilege of prophecy. Blake lately told Flaxman that he had had a violent dispute with the Angels on some subject and had driven them away [33]. In the same year, Blake's friend George Cumberland wrote to his son: You have a free estimate of Blake -- & his devilish Works -- he is a little Cracked, but very honest -- as for his wife she is the maddest of the Two -- He will tell you any thing he knows [34]. Around this time, Mrs. Blake made her famous remark, "I have very little of Mr. Blake's company; he is always in Paradise" [35]. Gilchrist describes Blake's attitude toward his visitors during his obscure years: "They pity me, but 'tis they are the just objects of pity: I possess my visions and peace. They have bartered their birthright for a mess of pottage" [36]. From Linnell's autobiography comes an account of his visits with the Blakes, which began in 1818: I soon encountered Blake's peculiarities and was somewhat taken aback by the boldness of some of his assertions. I never say anything in the least like madness for I never opposed him spitefully as many did but being really anxious to fathom if possible the amount of truth which might be in his most startling assertions I generally met with a sufficiently rational explanation in the most really friendly & conciliatory tone. Even when John Varley, to whom I had introduced Blake & who readily devoured all the marvelous in Blake's most extravagant utterances, even to Varley Blake would occasionally explain asked how he believed that both Varley & I could see the same visions as he saw making it evident to me that Blake claimed the possession of some powers only in a greater degree that all men possessed and which they undervalued in themselves & lost through love of sordid pursuits -- pride, vanity, & the unrighteous mammon [37]. We could wish Linnell had been more specific about the "sufficiently rational explanations" he heard. Blake drew the famous Visionary Heads around 1819. Many sources close to the poet tell us about them. Allan Cunningham's is typical: To describe the conversations which Blake held in prose with demons and in verse with angels, would fill volumes, and an ordinary gallery could not contain all the heads which he drew of his visionary visitants. That all this was real, he himself most sincerely believed; nay, so infectious was his enthusiasm, that some acute and sensible persons who heard him expatiate, shook their heads, and hinted that he was an extraordinary man, and that there might be something in the matter. One of his brethren, an artist of some note, employed him frequently in drawing the portraits of those who appeared to him in visions. The most propitious time for those 'angel-visits' was from nine at night till five in the morning; and so docile were his spiritual sitters, that they appeared at the wish of his friends. Sometimes, however, the shade which he desired to draw was long in appearing, and he saw with his pencil and paper ready and his eyes idly roaming in vacancy; all at once the vision came upon him, and he began to work like one possest. He was requested to draw the likeness of Sir William Wallace -- the eyes of Blake sparkled, for he admired heroes. 'William Wallace!' he exclaimed, 'I see him now -- there, there, how noble he looks -- reach me my things!' Having drawn for some time, with the same care of hand and steadiness of eye, as if a living sitter had been before him, Blake stopt suddenly, and said, 'I cannot finish him -- Edward the First has stept in between him and me.' 'That's lucky,' said his friend, 'for I want the portrait of Edward too.' Blake took another sheet of paper, and sketched the features of Plantagenet; upon which his majesty politely vanished, and the artist finished the head of Wallace. 'And pray, Sir,' said a gentleman, who heard Blake's friend tell his story -- 'was Sir William Wallace an heroic-looking man? And what sort of personage was Edward?' The answer was: 'there they are, Sir, both framed and hanging on the wall behind you, judge for yourself.' 'I looked (says my informant) and saw two warlike heads of the size of common life. That of Wallace was noble and heroic, that of Edward stern and bloody. The first had the front of a god, the latter the aspect of a demon. The friend who obliged me with these anecdotes on observing the interest which I took in the subject, said, 'I know much about Blake -- I was his companion for nine years. I have sat beside him from ten at night till three in the morning, sometimes slumbering and sometimes waking, but Blake never slept; he sat with a pencil and paper drawing portraits of those whom I most desired to see. I will show you, Sir, some of these works.' He took out a large book filled with drawings, opened it, and continued, 'Observe the poetic fervor of that face -- it is Pindar as he stood a conqueror in the Olympic games. And this lovely creature is Corinna, who conquered in poetry in the same place. That lady is Lais, the courtesan -- with the impudence which is part of her profession, she stept in between Blake and Corinna, and he was obliged to paint her to get her away. There! that is the face of a different stamp -- can you conjecture who he is?' 'Some scoundrel I should think, Sir.' 'There now -- that is a strong proof of the accuracy of Blake -- he is a scoundrel indeed! The very individual taskmaster whom Moses slew in Egypt. And who is this now -- only imagine who this is?' Other than a good one, I doubt, Sir.' 'You are right, it is a fiend -- he resembles, and this is remarkable, two men who shall be nameless; one is a great lawyer, and the other -- I wish I durst name him -- is a suborner of false witnesses. This other head now? -- this speaks for itself -- it is the head of Herod; how like an eminent officer in the army!' He closed the book, and taking out a small panel from a private drawer, said, 'this is the last which I shall show you; but it is the greatest curiosity of all. Only look at the splendour of the colouring and the original character of the thing!' 'I see,' said I, 'a naked figure with a strong body and a short neck -- with burning eyes which long for moisture, and a face worthy of a murderer, holding a bloody cup in his clawed hands, out of which it seems eager to drink. I never saw any shape so strange, nor did I ever see any colouring so curiously splendid -- a kind of glistening green and dusky gold, beautifully varnished. But what in the world is it?' 'It is a ghost, Sir -- the ghost of a flea -- a spiritualization of the thing!' 'He saw this in a vision then,' I said. 'I'll tell you all about it, Sir. I called on him one evening, and found Blake more than usually excited. He told me he had seen a wonderful thing -- the ghost of a flea! And did you make a drawing of him? I inquired. No, indeed, said he, I wish I had, but I shall, if he appears again! He looked earnestly into a corner of the room, and then said, here is is -- reach me my things -- I shall keep my eye on him. There he comes! his eager tongue whisking out of his mouth, a cup in his hand to hold blood, and covered with a scaly skin of gold and green; -- as he described him so he drew him. Visions, such as are said to arise in the sight of those who indulge in opium, were frequently present to Blake, nevertheless he sometimes desired to see a spirit in vain. 'For many years,' said he, 'I longed to see Satan -- I never could believe that he was the vulgar fiend which our legends represent him -- I imagined him a classic spirit, such as he appeared to him of Uz, with some of his original splendour about him. At last I saw him. I was going up stairs in the dark, when suddenly a light came streaming amongst my feet, I turned round, and there he was looking fiercely at me through the iron grating of my staircase window. I called for my things -- Katherine thought the fit of song was on me, and brought me pen and ink -- I said, hush! -- never mind -- this will do -- as he appeared so I drew him -- there he is.' Upon this, Blake took out a piece of paper with a grated window sketched on it, while through the bars glared the most frightful phantom that ever man imagined. Its eyes were large and like live coals -- its teeth as long as those of a harrow, and the claws seemed such as might appear in the distempered dream of a clerk in the Herald's office. 'It is the gothic fiend of our legends, said Blake -- the true devil -- all else are apocryphal.' These stories are scarcely credible, yet there can be no doubt of their accuracy. Another friend, on whose veracity I have the fullest dependence, called one evening on Blake, and found him sitting with a pencil and a panel, drawing a portrait with all the seeming anxiety of a man who is conscious that he has got a fastidious sitter; he looked and drew, and drew and looked, yet no living soul was visible. "Disturb me now,' he said, in a whisper, 'I have one sitting to me.' 'Sitting to you!' exclaimed his astonished visitor, 'where is he? -- I see no one.' 'But I see him, Sir,' answered Blake haughtily, 'there he is, his name is Lot -- you may read of him in the Scripture. He is sitting for his portrait" [38]. The first friend is John Varley the astrologer, who seems to have taken the whole matter more seriously than Blake did. Blake recognized and communicated with his visitors telepathically [39]. Sometimes portions of the face would disappear or the sitter would move [40]. The visitors also included Solomon, Harold, Cleopatra, "the man who built the pyramids", the Black Prince, Semiramis, the Empress Maud (in her bedroom), Hotspur, Mary and Joseph (together with a room they had occupied in life or perhaps in Eden), Uriah and Bathsheba, Saladin, Wat Tyler and his daughter, Roger Bacon, Voltaire, Thomas Gray the poet, and a few unnamed figures. Varley's sketchbook contains several of the visionary heads and also several notes concerning Blake's spiritual guests and what they had said to him. This interesting source appears to preserve more or less literal transcriptions of things that the "spirits", visible and invisible, said to Blake: [On the first page, recto:] Can you think I can endure to be consider'd as a vapour arising from your food. I will leave you if you doubt I am of no [more del.] greater importance than a Butterfly. [Annotated:] Spiritual communication to Mr. Blake [Below a line:] Empress Maud not very tall [On a page opposite a drawing by Blake of Queen Maud, mother of King Henry II, in bed in an apartment with Gothic appointments:] the Empresse Maud said rose water was in the vessel under the table octr 29 friday 11 PM 1818 & said there were closets which contain'd all the conveniences for the bed chamber [On a page otherwise blank:] it is allways to keep yourself collected [On the last page, recto, with a drawing of Hotspur's head:] Hotspur said any & we [?] shou'd have had the Battle had it not been for those curs'd Stars Hotspur said he was indignant to have been kill'd [by del.] through the fluid Influence [?] by such a Person as Prince Henry who was so much his inferior [41] These appear to be uncensored transcripts of what the "voices" actually said. The deletion and substitution of prepositions confirms the view that Blake did not hear every word precisely spoken, but picked up the general sense. The voices threatened to leave, mocked Blake's own doubts about their reality, and discuss chamberpots and lethal fluid influences. Around 1819, Blake annotated a copy of Spurzheim's Observations on Insanity mentioned a vision of the poet William Cowper, who had been recognized as mentally ill and helped by William Hayley: Cowper came to me and said "O that I were insane always. I will never rest. Can you not make me truly insane? I will never rest till I am so. O that in the bosom of God I was hid. You retain health and yet are as made as any of us all -- over us all -- mad as a refuge form unbelief -- from Bacon, Newton and Locke." Again, one of the spirits uses Blake's own terminology. Varley probably is the source for Cunningham's story about the "fairy's funeral". His mind could convert the most ordinary occurrence into something mystical and supernatural. He often saw less majestic shapes than those of the poets of old. "Did you ever see a fairy's funeral, madam?" he once said to a lady, who happened to sit by him in company. "Never, sir!" was the answer. "I have," said Blake, "but not before last night. I was walking alone in my garden, there was a great stillness among the branches and flowers and more than common sweetness in the air; I heard a low and pleasant sound, and I knew not whence it came. At last I saw the broad leaf of a flower move, and underneath I saw a procession of creatures of the size and colour of green and gray grasshoppers, bearing a body laid out on a rose leaf, which they buried with songs, and then disappeared. It was a fairy funeral" [42]. Gilchrist tells that a young painter asked Blake how to deal with periods of flagging creativity. Blake turned to his wife and said, "It is just so with us, it is not, weeks together, when the visions forsake us? What do we do then, Kate?" "We kneel down and pray, Mr. Blake" [43]. A.H. Palmer, another of Blake's visitors in his old age, recalls that Blake once said: "I can look at a knot in a piece of wood till I am frightened at it" [44]. This is another instance of an unusual emotional reaction to a neutral object. Palmer also tells another story: Being irritated by the exclusively scientific talk at a friend's house, which talk had turned on the vastness of space, he cried out, "It is false. I walked the other evening to the end of the earth, and touched the sky with my finger" [45]. We cannot tell whether Blake was joking or serious. In their later years, the Blakes used to amuse themselves by gazing into the fire until they saw forms there [46]. Gilchrist preserves the often-quoted story of the sculptured lambs: At one of Mr. Aders' parties -- at which Flaxman, Lawrence, and other leading artists were present -- Blake was talking to a little group gathered round him, within hearing of a lady whose children had just come home from boarding school for the holidays. "The other evening," said Blake, in his usual quiet way, "taking a walk, I came to a meadow, and at the farthest corner of it I saw a fold of lambs. Coming nearer, the ground blushed with flowers; and the settled cote and its woolly tenants were of an exquisite pastoral beauty. But I looked again, and it proved to be no living flock, but beautiful sculpture." The lady, thinking this a capital holiday-show for her children, eagerly interposed, "I beg your pardon, Mr. Blake, but may I ask where you saw this?" "Here, madam," answered Blake, touching his forehead [47]. Blake was of course pointing to Eden. Crabb Robinson's interviews with Blake are our most valuable source of information about the last months of the poet. Robinson was duly impressed by Blake's descriptions of his visions, which he recalled in no particular order: [Blake] spoke of his paintings as being what he had seen in his visions, and when he said "my visions," it was in the ordinary unemphatic tone of which we speak of trivial matters that every one understands & cares nothing about. In the same tone he said repeatedly, "the Spirit told me." I took occasion to say, "You use the same word Socrates used; what resemblance do you suppose there is between your Spirit & the Spirit of Socrates?" "The same as between our countenances." He paused & added, "I was Socrates." And then as if correcting himself: "A sort of brother -- I must have had conversations with him. So I had with Jesus Christ. I have an obscure recollection of having been with both of them." Blake's identifying himself with Socrates is an instance of what seems to be a delusion proper, one not based on a hallucination of the senses. Blake's vagueness and seeming bewilderment are inconsistent with the idea that he was trying to mislead Robinson. "Dante saw Devils where I see none. I see only good. I saw nothing but good in Calvin's house -- better than Luther's; he had harlots." Blake's remarks on the houses of his friends recall his letter to Flaxman from Felpham. He also maintained his old theory of inspiration: He spoke with seeming complacency of himself, said he acted by command. The Spirit said to him, "Blake, be an artist & nothing else. In this there is felicity." His eye glistened while he spoke of the joy of devoting himself solely to divine art. "Art is inspiration. When Michael Angelo or Raphael or Mr. Flaxman does any of his fine things he does them in the spirit." Blake thought of Dante much as he regarded the erring Milton: As Blake mentioned Swedenborg & Dante together, I wished to know whether he considered their visions of the same kind. As far as I could collect he does. Dante, he said, was the greater poet. He had political objects. Yet this, though wrong, does not appear in Blake's mind to affect the truth of the vision. Robinson also heard about the two suns, Blake's ability to recognize truth by immediate intuition, and why other men failed to see his visions: "I have conversed with the Spiritual Sun. I saw him on Primrose Hill. He said, 'Do you take me for the Greek Apollo?' 'No,' I said, 'that' (and Blake pointed to the sky) 'is the Greek Apollo. He is Satan.'" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "I know now what is true by internal conviction. A doctrine is told me -- my heart says it must be true." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Of the faculty of vision, he spoke as one he had had from early infancy. He thinks all men partake of it, but it is lost by not being cultivated. And he eagerly assented to a remark I made that all men have all faculties to a greater or less degree. Robinson confirms that Blake's conversation was perfectly lucid except when he was telling about his visions: The tone & manner are incommunicable. There is a natural sweetness & gentility about Blake which are delightful, and when he is not referring to his visions he talks sensibly and acutely. Blake described visits with Milton, Voltaire, and others, in terms which are hard to explain away as the consequences of Blake's supposed eccentricities of expression: He reverted soon to his favourite expression, "my visions." "I saw Milton in imagination, and he told me to beware of being misled by his Paradise Lost. In particular, he wished me to show the falsehood of his doctrine that the pleasures of sex arose form the fall. The fall could not produce any pleasure." I answered the fall produced a state of evil in which there was a mixture of good or pleasure. And in that sense the fall may be said to produce the pleasure. But he replied that the fall produced only generation and death. And then he went off upon a rambling state of a Union of Sexes in Man as in God -- an androgynous state in which I could not follow him. As he spoke of Milton's appearing to him, I asked whether he resembled the prints of him. He answered, "All." "Of what age did he appear to be?" "Various ages, sometimes a very old man." He spoke of Milton as being at one time a sort of classical atheist, and of Dante as being now with God. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "I have had much intercourse with Voltaire and he said to me, "I blasphemed the Son of Man and it shall be forgiven me. But they (the enemies of Voltaire) blasphemed the Holy Ghost in me and it shall not be forgiven them.'" I asked in what language Voltaire spoke. He gave an ingenious answer: "To my sensations it was English. It was like the touch of a musical key -- he touched it probably French, but to my ear it became English." Voltaire, the inspired Deist, probably became a citizen of Ololon after leaving our world. He was of course speaking to Blake's "imaginative ear", thus overcoming the language barrier. Blake plainly regarded the French-speaking Voltaire as a real external speaker. I spoke again of the form of the persons who appear to him, asked why he did not draw them. "It is not worth while, there are so many the labour would be too great. Besides there would be no use. As to Shakespeare, he is exactly like the old engraving which is called a bad one. I think it very good. The visionary can attest to the authenticity of the Droeshout likeness only because he has seen the Bard face to face. Blake of course mentioned his poetry: I inquired about his writings. "I have written more than Voltaire or Rousseau, six or seven epic poems as long as Homer and twenty tragedies as long as Macbeth." He showed me his vision (for so it may be called) of Genesis, "as understood by a Christian visionary," in which, in a style resembling the Bible, the Spirit is given. He read a passage at random; it was striking. He will not print any more. "I write," he says, "when commanded by the spirits and the moment I have written I see the words fly about the room in all directions. It is then published and the Spirits can read. My manuscripts are of no further use. I have been tempted to burn my manuscripts but my wife won't let me" [48]. The writings to which Blake refers have not all survived, if in fact they ever existed outside Eden. Seeing words flying about the room is another instance of synchronization of visionary and writing activity. J.T. Smith speaks of Blake's inspirations on his deathbed: On the day of his death, August 12th, 1827, he composed and uttered songs to his Maker so sweetly to the ear of his Catherine, that when she stood to hear him, he, looking upon her most affectionately, said, "My beloved, they are not mine -- no -- they are not mine" [49]. 6. Blake's Visions and Voices: The Explanation In Gilchrist's era, his obviously psychotic countrymen were all labelled "madmen". The several distinct reality-distorting syndromes, or "psychoses", from which one of them might be suffering were not distinguished until late in the century. More subtle cases went unrecognized. If someone was raving and running about, or had withdrawn into inaccessibility, or was flagrantly delusional, the person was "mad". Otherwise he or she was only considered eccentric. Many lay people share this view today, especially because such labels can be prejudicial. But it is much more enlightening and scientific to speak instead of clinical entities, in which varying signs reflect a common disorder. There really are distinct entities in clinical psychiatry, and William Blake easily meets today's criteria for schizophrenia. Although the causes (presumably biochemical) of the major mental illnesses remain unknown, symptoms occur in predictable groups. Had Gilchrist been able to read Emil Kraepelin's Dementia Praecox and Paraphrenia, Eugen Bleuler's Dementia Praecox, Karl Jaspers's General Psychopathology, or Carl Jung's early studies, he would have come to a very different conclusion about Blake's bizarre beliefs. For a fullest descriptions of the phenomenology of untreated schizophrenia, the curious reader should refer to these classic works [50]. The symptoms described below are much more common today than most lay people suppose. The antipsychotic drugs came into widespread use during the 1950's, and before then the symptoms were even more prevalent. The mentally sound reader looking for some normal analogue to the schizophrenic experience may find it in the peculiar state when, on falling asleep or awaking, hallucinations appear and strange thoughts occur before awareness of the real world vanishes. If the reader cannot remember such a state, there is probably no way in which he or she can identify with the schizophrenic. Blake's hallucinations usually occurred in clear consciousness. This is unusual except in schizophrenia and a few intoxications. Solitude, drowsiness, and emotion seem to have helped Blake's visions appear, as in schizophrenia. The visions often arose from things about which Blake had been thinking. A parallel to the visionary sitters is the experience of one of Bleuler's patients, who reported being visited by famous people after he read about them. The visions might also cease for a few weeks at a time, as they may do during a "lucid interval" in a chronic untreated schizophrenic. Visual hallucinations in schizophrenia are typically concrete and vivid. They often are so distinct that patients can draw the visions as if they were real objects seen by their physical eyes. In fact, their clarity may be "obtrusive", and the hallucinations appear better-defined than ordinary perceptions. Blake remarked, "He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and better light than his perishing and mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all." The visual hallucinations tend to be rigid, and abrupt or fluid movements are rare. The visions may appear without any sound, or be coordinated with auditory hallucinations, although neither situation is unique to schizophrenia. When they come silently, the visions of schizophrenics tend to be seen as "images" rather than as real objects. Therefore patients often call them paintings or sculptures, like the ones Blake describes in the Descriptive Catalogue or the Vision of the Last Judgment. It is also common for patients to see strange forms enter or leave their bodies, much as the meteor entered Blake. Even more characteristic of schizophrenia are the auditory hallucinations -- the "voices". Almost every diagnosed schizophrenic is bothered to some extent by the invisible speakers. There may be one voice or several, and they may speak as individuals or as members of an anonymous crowd. Often they disturb the patient with threats and abuse. At other times they can be friendly. The voices also tell the listener about self and surroundings and less often about themselves. Their remarks may be connected with the patient's delusional ideas, or may concern real things. Very often the voices say nasty things about the patient's mental condition. We have observed all these characteristics of schizophrenic auditory hallucinations in Blake's "spiritual communications". The voices predicted damnation if he did not keep writing, and his wife's death should he leave Hayley. A "spirit" said rudely that it is best for Blake to "keep [him]self collected". Another voice threatened to desert Blake if he continued to think it might be only a hallucination. The angels told Blake that he was kept alive by Flaxman's understanding of his "nervous fear". They said he had a divine commission that he must not fail, and they told his wife her fortune. Patients sometimes understand the voices' messages without being able to make out individual words. (We can notice this in our dreams.) Two of Bleuler's patients complained of hearing cursing in French, a language they did not understand. This reminds us of Blake's conversation with the shade of Voltaire, and his ability to communicate nonverbally with the visionary sitters. It is not easy to tell whether Blake felt he heard speech or had engaged in "thought dialogues", also characteristic of schizophrenia. In either case, the patient's ideas take over the role of perceptions. At other times, patients remember exact words, but the message is most often of little value. In the few cases in which actual words appear to be preserved in the Blake material, this seems to be the rule. The phrases from the Varley sketchbook and the thistle's speech are silly, and the remark that the "angels" made about Blake's life being preserved by his "conjunction" with Flaxman is absurd. Patients can carry on extended conversations with the hallucinations. The voices usually command the sufferer's whole or partial belief, but sometimes the patients argue furiously with them, as Blake did when he "drove the angels away". Often the voices are inconsistent, inducing a patient to do something and then berating their victim for deciding to do it. This apparently happened when Blake was trying to make up his mind about leaving Felpham to return to London. Schizophrenics very commonly state that the voices are those of absent acquaintances or family members. In the poem about this thistle, John, Robert, and Father float invisibly around Blake. The voices may also come from celestial or infernal spirits, the souls of the dead, real people, animals, even inanimate objects (talking thistles, etc.) As a rule, the voices seem to come from distinct points in space. Blake tells us that Robert was behind him, his father hovered in the air, and John hid in a cloud. The voices sometimes appear in embodied form, in which case visual elements have arisen to supplement auditory ones. The family members "appear on Blake's path." Whether they are visible or invisible, the voices use the patient's personal terminology, as the thistle and Cowper did. Patients who are hearing voices are usually quite secretive about them. They are afraid of being considered crazy, or decide matters of "cosmic importance" cannot be profaned, or the messages tend to be speedily forgotten, or their reasons are secret. Perhaps something in the mind still knows that the voices are not real. Blake told Butts that he never volunteered information about his disturbing "messengers from heaven". Hallucinations of music also occur in schizophrenia. Blake heard music during the "fairy's funeral". People like Northrop Frye who deny that Blake had hallucinations emphasize the complete control that Blake supposedly exercised over his visions [51]. In fact, there is nothing to indicate he had such control. By focusing his attention, Blake was sometimes (and not always) able to conjure up a spiritual visitor for his portrait. He had very little command over the threatening voices. A related hallmark of schizophrenia is the passivity experience. Patients have a very vivid feeling of being influenced or controlled by unseen powers. This experience is usually accompanied by a sense of its awesome importance and significance. Schizophrenics often comment that some or all of their thoughts seem to be coming from outside of them, even that they are "manufactured". They may still, however, recognize them as their own. "Inspirations" come daily to many such people. They may say they are taken over mentally and physically. Blake was himself "possessed" by the mighty Los, and although he was frightened he felt a sense of cosmic exultation. Or the external forces may interfere with the patient's thinking. The spirits steal their thoughts away, or force fantasy on them, dragging them from their earthly affairs. The "spirit of abstraction" interfered with Blake when he wanted to concentrate. (According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in Blake's era the word "abstraction" covered a range of meanings which evoke psychotic experience: the act of withdrawing, secret or dishonest removal, a thing that exists only as an idea, something visionary, a state of withdrawl or seclusion from worldly things or things of sense, inattention to things present, absence of mind.) While Blake was working on the pictures described in the Descriptive Catalogue, he was harassed by "Titian" and the "blotting and blurring demons". The chief interfering spirit changed into a helper when Blake's mood suddenly changed -- and such unexplainable, sudden mood swings are themselves a hallmark of schizophrenia. A less intense form of the passivity experience occurs when the voices say what the patient is thinking or writing, as "Robert" seems to have done when Blake was writing the letter to the grieving Hayley. Also common is "thoughts becoming visible", in which the thoughts of the patient are seen as hallucinated lettering. Blake told Crabb Robinson about this miracle. In schizophrenia, neutral objects can sometimes evoke unexpected emotional responses. Blake says: What to others a trifle appears Fills me full of smiles or tears. The feeling can apply to single objects, or to everything at once. The schizophrenic may suddenly find the whole world entirely fresh and of overpowering beauty, as Blake did after his visit to the Truchsessian Gallery in 1804. At the same time, the poet felt an unusual clarity and power of thought, another characteristic feeling in schizophrenia. Sometimes, and often early in the process, the feelings are altered so that everything appears rich with meaning, solemn and wonderful, as in the lyric passages in the center of Milton or in the Felpham letters. Conversely, Blake's visions of Ulro may have been like those of a schizophrenic whose perception of the infinite in finite particulars revealed "the vast cosmic mechanism which exists only to grind out guilt and punishment, solitude and unreality" [52]. Another experience typical of schizophrenia is an altered sense of time. One of many distortions is that of "time standing still". This feeling may come suddenly, and a second type of time can seem to appear alongside the familiar stream. It is hard for the uninitiated to imagine what this involves. One patient reported: I was suddenly caught up in a peculiar state; my arms and legs seemed to swell. A frightful pain shot through my head and time stood still. At the time it was forced on me in an almost superhuman way how vitally important this moment was. Then time resumed its previous course, but the time which stood still stayed there like a gate [53]. Patients with schizophrenia also report that time can be discontinuous rather than flowing. One is reminded of Blake's emphasis on the "moment" and the visionary perception of time as a structure of discrete units. Similarly, some schizophrenics mention changes in their experiences of space. Often a new "space" appears which is distinct from the familiar one. Generally the new space has some feeling, pleasant or unpleasant. A schizophrenic reported: "I still saw the room. Space seemed to stretch and go on into infinity, completely empty. I felt lost, abandoned to the infinities of space, which in spite of my insignificance somehow threatened me. It seemed the complement of my own emptiness.... The old physical space seemed to be apart from this other space, like a phantom [54]. Familiar time and space existing apart from "another" form of these realities should be of interest to students of Blake. Patients may talk about timelessness, an "eternal now" in which past, present, and future blend into one. At the same time they can continue to be aware of "clock-time". A new "space" which appears mysteriously distinct from "yardstick-space" may be inhabited by hallucinated figures. These descriptions can hardly fail to remind readers of "Eternity" and of our separate fallen "time and space". Schizophrenics may find themselves thrust into their own mental spaces. Usually this happens for brief periods during attacks, and recalls the strange experience of transformed perspective which Blake records in Milton. I do not know whether any anyone else has seen the whole world appear as a sandal, although it has been swallowed [55]. The hallucinations may be fully integrated into outer objective space, so that a schizophrenic could see a tree full of angels, or show a visionary visitor to a corporeal chair. These are very often recognized as being seen by an "inner eye", as was usually the case with Blake. Readers who do not believe in ghosts will conclude that in at least one case Blake said he saw a hallucination with his physical eyes. Patients may be subject to both types of hallucinations. Visions that appear projected in three-dimensional space but are unrelated to and unintegrated with physical objects are also common, and can occur in the same patients as the more deceptive types. The observer may feel these exist in a space of their own. Sometimes individual figures may appear in this way, but it is not unusual for patients to see whole scenes, such as landscapes which cannot always be made to disappear. Blake may have seen the Ancient of Days in this way, and also the visionary figures of Christ's parents and of Empress Maud, who appeared in visionary rooms. Bleuler mentions a patient who saw an entire flock of sheep in an unknown landscape [56], recalling the pasture and sculptured lambs Blake saw "in his head". The anecdote about the lambs raises another key issue. While schizophrenics may say that the visions originate "inside themselves", they do not generally think they are any less real or any less autonomous. For example, a patient may discuss voices originating in his ears, but still identify them as those of the distant persecutors. Or the patient may hear such things "in the memory", or, as in Blake's case, "in the imagination". Patients may even identify the voices with their own thoughts, and still fear their threats. This failure of logic reflects the disorder in thought -- schizophrenics are able to harbor the most contradictory notions at the same time, incorrigibly and without discomfort. (This is why Dr. Bleuler invented the term "schizophrenia" -- splitting of the mind into logic-tight compartments.) Blake obviously took the visions and voices more seriously than we take what we simply visualize. They were outside powers, "spirits" to be dealt with. They could be cited as authorities. The poet would respond with physical movements to certain visions (kicking the thistle), and he might even say he mistook one hallucinatory figure for another (i.e., Ololon for a Daughter of Beulah). Blake's other admirers often point out that, as an adult, he did not find it difficult to distinguish between the visions and everyday reality. He did not expect others to see or hear them even though they were "real". Lay people have believed that this means Blake was not hallucinating at all, but this is an error of fact. Intelligent schizophrenics can usually distinguish between a hallucinated voice or figure and a real one. This is especially easy when the hallucinations are recognized as seen in some other way than with the physical senses. Nonetheless, schizophrenics usually believe the hallucinations are more, not less, real than other perceptions. This was obviously true in Blake's case. While ordinary people can think logically if forced to do so, most schizophrenics have difficulty making logical connections, especially where their illness is concerned. This does not stop with accepting hallucinations as real. Complex ideas, often totally unreasonable, can enter the mind of the patient along with a compelling sense of their truth and significance. Blake told Robinson that he acquired knowledge by means which he could not explain rationally. His "heart" would inform him of the truth of a doctrine immediately. This phenomenon produces schizophrenic delusions, as well as less striking symptoms. Blake told Robinson that he "was Socrates". He distinguished himself from the masses of imagined kings, queens, Gods, Messiahs, world-conquorers, prophets, inventors, and millionaires that fill back wards and back streets everywhere only by hesitantly qualifying his remark. Delusional identities are very common, and it has been argued that they stem from the conversion of a metaphor into a belief by means of the same unconscious processes that give rise to dreams. (Interpreted symbolically as one would interpret a dream, Blake's idea that he was Socrates points out that he is a prophet, a man who deals with cosmic truths, a debunker of mystery, a hearer of spiritual voices, a martyr for the truth, and a short, snub-nosed man -- a nice example of overdetermination.) The grotesque Descriptive Catalogue may only reflect the mood seen in patients with delusions of grandeur, and the even crankier Public Address may be a gathering of paranoid ideas rather than real delusions. But if we believe Blake thought Scofield was a secret agent of the government, or that his painting had been made to fade through witchcraft, then we may reasonably conclude that Blake was having delusions of persecution, of the unsystematized and illogical sort typical of schizophrenia. Conspiracies and magic (today, electronic gadgets) are probably the commonest themes of such delusions. If we believe Gilchrist's report that Blake thought Napoleon had disappeared and been replaced by a very convincing imposter, then he displayed another typically schizophrenic idea. (This is called the Capgras syndrome when imposter delusions are conspicuous.) In Blake's case, the imposter idea seems to have been isolated. Similarly, Blake probably had "memory hallucinations" in later life. The spurious impression of having seen or done something may come to a schizophrenic so vividly that it is accepted as a memory, although the patient will be confused by it. Blake's ideas that he had had conversations with Socrates and Jesus, or had painted pictures in Eden before his life on earth suggest this type of experience. A schizophrenic delusion need not be sharply defined, but may be an "intuition" or a vague notion. This explains Blake's hesitancy with Robinson and his observation in Milton that he knew certain cosmic acts only "remotely". The cosmic scope of Blake's myth itself strongly suggests schizophrenia. Patients often become aware of immense and universal things, cosmic happenings of the utmost importance. Blake's voyages into the mental worlds, his apocalyptic visions, and his "spiritual struggles" are like things that happen to many other schizophrenics. Dr. Jaspers explains: Journeys of the soul into the Other World, the transcendental geography of lands beyond our senses, form a universal lore. But it is only in patients that we find it all decisively in the form of a lively, vivid experience. Even today we can observe such events occurring in the psychoses with an impressive wealth of detail and intellectual depth. The cosmic experience is characteristic of schizophrenic experience. The end of the world is here, the "twilight of the gods". A mighty revolution is at hand in which the patient plays the major role. He is the centre of all that is coming to pass. He has immense tasks to perform, vast powers. Fabulous distant influences, attractions and obstructions are at work. "Everything" is always involved; all the people of the earth, all men, all the Gods, etc. The whole of human history is experienced at once. The patient lives trough infinite millennia. The instant is an eternity to him. He sweeps through space with immense speed, to conduct mighty battles; he walks safely by the abyss [57]. Blake's descriptions share most of these qualities, including their universal importance. The more spectacular visions were noted unconsciously by everyone, and they affected everyone. This happens in the thistle poem and in Milton, where the falling star is perceived by everyone "in the regions of imagination" and "Milton's Humanity" heralds the time when all people experience visions. When the cosmic experience gets associated with delusions of grandeur, as it usually does, patients imagine themselves as saviors of the world. Apocalyptic content is typical and follows a well-defined pattern: The end of the world is experienced as a transition to something new, vaster, and is felt as a terrible annihilation. Despairing agony and blissful revelation occur in one and the same patient. At first everything seems queer, uncanny, and significant. Catastrophe is impending; the deluge is here. A unique catastrophe approaches. It is Good Friday; something comes over the world; the last Judgment, the breaking of the seven seals of the Book of Revelation. God comes into the world. The time of the first Christians is here. Time wheels back. The last riddle of all is being solved. Patients are exposed to all these terrifying and magnificent experiences without showing it to anyone. The feeling of being quite alone is unspeakably frightening [58]. Probably the end of the world is an outward projection of the breakdown of the patient's own mind. (Most people have seen street schizophrenics telling passers-by, "The end is near!") The prevalence of "cosmic experiences" reminds us that Blake's became the basis for a new cosmic system. Dr. Jaspers's comment on one of the ways schizophrenics can write recalls Blake's prophetic books: More rarely we find writings, where the manner is very bizarre, and the style high-flown and striking, though for the most part we can understand them. The patients do not report their experiences, persecutions and other personal facts, but develop theories, new cosmic systems, new religions, new interpretations of the Bible, or of universal problems, etc. The form and content indicate that they originate from patients suffering from a schizophrenic process. The presentation often will show the main delusion of the author [59]. Dr. Jaspers also notes that the cosmic systems that emerge tend to be highly schematized [60], like Blake's. Whether or not the schizophrenic evolves a new world system, he or she is likely to share a preoccupation with unseen forces, philosophy, magic, psychology, religion, or whatever is symbolic, abstract, secret. Intelligent schizophrenics do wonder why people around them fail to notice their visions, and one frequent explanation is that the patient has developed powers merely latent in all people. Blake decided that other people failed to see his visions because they were blinded by love of money. However, Blake's inspirations told him how his favorite artists worked -- they shared his visions. It is hard to say whether there is any typically schizophrenic symbol. Patients' writings are often distinguished by a jarring juxtaposition of the concrete and the abstract, and the most mundane things become private symbols. ("Elgin State Hospital is the Immaculate Conception." "Those bricks are my transcendent body.") This of course is also characteristic of Blake's later style. "Milton's shadow" is the universe of error. "Hampstead and Highgate rage before Bromion's tongs and poker" (J 16:1-2). The transformations of the thistle into the old man, the motes of light into men, and the sun into a company of angels could be instances of pareidolia, one of the illusions that often occur in schizophrenia and in certain toxic states, and occasionally happens to normal people. Objects seen with the ordinary senses change into figures of humans or animals, which may then approach the patient. This interesting effect can occur in conjunction with other types of vision. It often occurs while the subject is looking at a fire [61], and we know that the Blakes entertained themselves by watching the flames until forms appeared. Pareidolia or no, Blake was registering delusion and reality simultaneously. This can happen even in lucid schizophrenics ("I lay on my bed, and it seemed like a bed, but it was nevertheless a polar bear" [62].) Schizophrenic patients can have attacks lasting a few moments to many hours during which many very unusual things happen quickly. The patient may have vivid fantasy experiences, enter an imaginary space, fall down, become filled with bliss, have passivity experiences, and experience a great many other psychotic things. An individual attack may involve one or several of these, and a single patient may be liable to several types of attack. It is inviting to see Blake's ecstasy among the particles of light, the "fits of song" during which his wife brought him writing equipment, and the experiences described in Milton as episodes of this type. A predisposed person intimately associated with a dominant schizophrenic commonly comes to share his psychotic ideas, a situation known as folie a deux, craziness for two. Blake's wife seems to have been so affected. It is interesting and significant that Blake identified some of his experiences with the insanity of Nebuchadnezzar. Such insight is common in schizophrenia. Blake told Robinson he had "committed many murders". The poet may only have remembered that "murder is hindering another". But "murder" is an all-purpose word for many schizophrenics, who have to describe terrible things for which there are no ready-made terms exist. They must give new meanings to existing words, and "murder" is a favorite choice. Even the content of the artistic productions of schizophrenics as described by Dr. Jaspers bears similarities to Blake's: Schizophrenic art may be a real expression of the schizophrenic psyche and represent the world of schizophrenic thought that has developed in the patient, but we only get this when there is a certain level of technical skill and where the schizophrenic signs have not swamped the whole picture. Content is characteristic; mythical figures, strange birds, grotesque and misshapen forms of people and animals, a bold and ruthless emphasis on sexual characteristics, usually the genitalia; in addition there is an urgency of present some universal whole, a world-picture, the essence of things [63]. People who have argued that Blake was not psychotic are unfamiliar with schizophrenia or fail to consider all the evidence. Blake could distinguish his visions and voices from ordinary things. He often said he saw things "in his brain" or "in his imagination". But this is common in schizophrenia, and Blake still believed what he saw and heard were real, autonomous things. Schizophrenic patients who, like Blake, retain clear consciousness seem much less absorbed in fantasy than they really are. They seem concerned with their hallucinations only in a theoretical way, or keep silent about them. Blake developed a lifestyle in which he could be comfortable with his visions and also lead a productive life. It is possible for the writings or paintings of a schizophrenic to make sense, or even to be very good. Other famous artists with schizophrenia or schizophrenic-like syndromes include Franz Kafka the writer, Robert Schumann the composer, and Vincent Van Gogh the painter. Blake did not become demented as he grew older or require institutionalization, but neither do many untreated schizophrenics. Dr. June Singer has suggested that Blake's work as an engraver helped prevent schizophrenic deterioration. Engraving is exacting, tedious work that requires full concentration. So it resembles the therapeutic tasks given to present-day institutionalized schizophrenics to prevent them from being overwhelmed by fantasy [64]. Dr. Jung claimed that schizophrenic could sometimes be controlled by having the patient express feelings in one of the plastic arts, usually painting. This allowed the unruly imagination to vent itself and at the same time keep the patient distanced from the fantasy material [65]. Northrop Frye's defense of Blake's sanity in Fearful Symmetry [66] is typical. He begins with the assumption that happy William Blake was in full command of his visions. He then states that the artistic productions of psychotics are based entirely on personal matters and therefore can never have much interest for normal people. Bewildered readers of Jerusalem may draw an opposite conclusion from this premise, but Professor Frye's whole argument rests on a misunderstanding. It is hard to think that Frye was never moved by a Van Gogh painting. Frye believes that the visions of psychotics are all "evil and monstrous". This another mistake, and so is his notion that patients are always bothered by their visions (and that Blake was not). Frye concluded in his book that being crazy was the Spectre's warped attempt to be a visionary, but his approach was quite different a few years later: The complaints that Blake was "mad" are no longer of any importance, not because anybody has proved him sane, but because critical theory has realized that madness, like obscenity, is a word with no critical meaning [67]. Frye recognizes that artistic works stand or fall on their own merits, and the psychiatrist's diagnosis is of no interest to people who only care about the artist's productions. But to people who care about William Blake as he really was, explaining and understanding what his "visions" and "voices" were like is essential. There is one last way of defending Blake's sanity [68]. This is simply to reiterate Blake's own claim of supernatural knowledge. Blake saw and heard spirits because they were really there. People who have never worked with mental patients sometimes suppose that this happens whenever anybody hallucinates, even when one hears distant persecutors speaking one's own thoughts within one's own head. It is as impossible to disprove this claim as it is for its proponents to produce any evidence to support it. Technically, schizophrenia is a clinical entity, recognized by its symptoms rather than by its unknown causes. Maybe it is caused by spirits. Blake's poetry and paintings present classic illustrations of the schizophrenic experience. So far as I know, these are the best, most beautiful, and most meaningful ones ever created. They are great value by themselves. It only remains to say what all this means to all of us who love Blake's works. 7. Conclusion. For the time being the question stays open: why is schizophrenia in its initial stages so often (though not in the majority of cases) a process of cosmic, religious or metaphysical revelation? It is an extremely impressive fact: this exhibition of fine and subtle understanding... this masterly creativity (Van Gogh, Holderlin), these peculiar experiences of the end of the world or the creation of fresh ones, these spiritual revelations and this grim daily struggle in the transitional periods between health and collapse. Such experiences cannot be grasped simply in terms of the psychosis which is sweeping the victim out of his familiar world, an objective symbol as it were of the radical, destructive event attacking him. Even if we speak of existence or the psyche as disintegrating, we are still only using analogies. We observe that a new world has come into being and so far that is the only fact we have. -- Dr. Karl Jaspers When John Milton crashed through the sky and became one with William Blake, a new world was opened. It is not the business of medicine to try to say from the evidence in what ways Blake's experience was valid or valuable. The purpose of this half of my study is not to "prove that Blake was crazy", but to suggest that we can look to the schizophrenic experience to understand Blake's works. Students of Blake have been naive to ignore the way his mind worked. And the medical community will want to examine this sophisticated and meaningful collection of writings by a schizophrenic. The visions and feelings described in Milton are typical of schizophrenia. A new star appeared in the sky. It entered Blake's body, filling him with both terror and exultation. The star was a man from a world beyond time and space. His appearance affected the spirits of all people. Nothing like this had ever happened before. The sky was shattered and the apocalypse was about to begin. Space and time were transformed and Blake entered a new world. The Lord of Inspiration overwhelmed and became one with the visionary. Other spiritual forces opposed them. The world appeared strange, an atmosphere of majesty pervaded the whole. All objects were alive and humanized. Strange powers that control mortal life loomed around the poet. Ghostly forms flickered in darkness. Cosmic truths became apparent. Later, the visionary greeted a solitary spirit descending on the wind. Next, there was a tumultuous vision of the end of the world. In a moment, the visionary glimpsed the greater reality that will supersede it. Overwhelmed by his rapture, he collapsed. Around one adult in one hundred has schizophrenia. Every day, these people experience things like those Blake shared with us. I can think of no better way to try to enter this wonderful world of human experience than through the eyes and ears of William Blake. Some readers may feel uncomfortable with a style that is related to an abnormal state of the brain. But every artist has an individual style and a particular mode of self-expression. Blake is a poet who celebrates the world's beauty, the world of children, the struggle for a just society, and the fascination of the supernatural. He expressed these interests through the medium of schizophrenic art. Both style and content are interesting and valuable. How much of Blake's system is the direct result of his schizophrenia is an open question, but it helps us understand most of his metaphysics. Being aware of the transcendental realms, Blake denounced the pretensions of natural science, and urged everyone to try to see his visions and forget earthly concerns. The familiar world is unreal, an error resulting from our closed perceptions. All things happen because of the activity of spirits [69]. Blake's hated "Spectre" was the portion of himself that tried to direct his interests to the material world. The real Blake lived in the visionary world even when his mortal self lived in the London slums. His true personality filled the universe, he was all things, and he was filled with love for all people. The discovery of dream elements in Milton, with the suggestion that much of the poem was directly inspired, allows a reasonable conjecture. Dream elements are typical products of the unconscious mind, and are hard to produce by conscious effort. Blake was often bombarded by productions of his unconscious mind (his hallucinations). It is probable that those in Milton appeared as part of the "inspired" content of the poem. Milton may have been written with little interference by the rational faculties. Blake the conscious poet was content to order the material and make minor revisions. The many "inspirations" that made up the poem each appeared because of the underlying schizophrenic process, a process that releases unconscious fantasy. The Blake data confirm that schizophrenic ideas share their origin and symbol mechanics with dreams, and also with the inspirations of other creative people. This was the opinion of the Zurich school of early psychoanalysis (Bleuler, Jung). The later writings of Blake are strong evidence to justify Dr. Jung's emphasis on the creative power of the unconscious, as well as perhaps illustrating some of his more technical theories. These writings also recall Dr. Bleuler's provocative remarks about schizophrenic artists: Several very well-known artists and poets... were schizophrenics. It cannot be ruled out that very mild forms of schizophrenia may be rather favorable to artistic production. The subordination of all thought-associations to one complex, the inclination to a novel, unusual range of ideas, the indifference to tradition, the lack of restraint, must all be favorable influences if these characteristics are not overcompensated by the association disturbance proper.... The question deserves a good deal more study [70]. Had Bleuler been able to read and understand Milton, he might have repeated something the real William Cowper once wrote in another context: The author of it had the good hap to be crazed, or he had never produced anything half so clever; for you will ever observe that they who are said to have lost their wits, have more than other people [71]. Let no one misunderstand me. Blake's writings and pictures are extremely interesting and valuable. Blake has opened worlds of marvels and great beauty to us. Blake rejected social injustice and mechanical philosophies just like most of us do. But I believe that William Blake was wrong about his visions and voices. They are not guides to metaphysical truths for all of us. I find that Blake's visions of the end of the world and the transformation of all people's perceptions were figments of his sick brain. Like the sons of Los, I believe that it is better to live and work for good in the world as it really is. I believe that Blake was wrong. But I hope that he was right. Then, when we understand his works, we will have broken through the "limits of opacity and contraction", and enter a larger, more meaningful world. NOTES. CHAPTER I. [1] S. Foster Damon, A Blake Dictionary (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1971), p. 172. [2] E.M.W. Tillyard, Milton (London: Chatto & Windus, 1956), pp. 276-88. [3] Kathleen Raine, Blake and Tradition (Princeton: Princeton, 1968), i,117. [4] Ibid., passim. [5] W.P. Witcutt, Blake: A Psychological Study (Port Washington: Kennikat Press, n.d.), p. 40. [6] Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry (Princeton: Princeton, 1949), pp. 281-3. [7] For a more sinister perspective, contrast M 34:29-31. [8] Northrop Frye, "The Keys to the Gates", Some British Romantics (Columbus: Ohio State U. Press, 1966), p. 38. [9] George Wingfield Digby, Symbol and Image in William Blake (London: Oxford U. Press, 1957), p. 35. [10] J.E.Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols (New York: Philosophical Library, 1962), pp. 27-8. [11] Barbara K. Lewalski, Milton's Brief Epic (Providence, Brown University, 1966), passim. [12] For a different interpretation, see Bloom's commentary in the Erdman text. [13] Cirlot, op. cit., p. 325. [14] Ibid., p. 107. CHAPTER II. [1] S. Foster Damon, A Blake Dictionary (New York: E.P. Dulton, 1971), p. 143. [2] The same sort of effect is noted in schizophrenia and certain toxic states. See below. [3] Whether or not Vala is an exception might be argued. [4] Of these "Jungians", only Clarke is generally accurate in his reading of Blake, and the reader should be on guard for misinterpretations that arise from the mechanical application of Jung's models to fairly simple passages from Blake. The identification of the four zoas with the "four functions" of mental life is tenuous; the discussions of emanation and spectre in terms of "anima" and "persona" seem much more convincing. June Singer has had considerable success interpreting the "Memorable Fancies" of MHH as if they were dreams. Hopefully more good work will be done in this fascinating area; I would particularly like to see a professional intepret the Golgonooza "mandala" in J 12:45-13:33). [5] Examples: "Urizen" has been traced to the expression "your reason," and to the Greek ourizein, bounded (hence English "horizon"). Enitharmon may derive from Enion plus Tharmas, derived in turn from Hesiod's Thaumas and Eione, sea monsters, as well as Gk. anarithmon, "numberless", referring to the stars she rules to sky queen, and possibly from "zenith woman". Damon thinks Tharmas may also be related to tamas, the principal of intertia from Hindu pseudoscience, or be a back construction from Enitharmon. Orc seems related to the root orchis, testis, to cor, heart, and to ork, whale (see Prologue to America). Rahab is both a Biblical sea monster of the primordial waters, subdued by God, and the whore who, to save her skin, cooperates with the Israelites, and becomes the type of the person who goes to church for fire insurance. Tirzah derives her name from the Daughter of Zelophehad and the capital of idolatrous North Israel, which is personified and contrasted to Jerusalem in the Song of Songs. See John Adelard, "Tasso and the Cock and the Lion in Blake's Milton," Symposium 20 (1966), pp. 5-6, for another likely instance of condensation at work in the composition of Milton. Our reading of Milton has emphasized that individual characters and events tend to have many equivalents spread through Blake's canon. J.C. Clarke, who recognizes their presence as characteristic of Blake's technique, has proposed that these groups be called "action-image clusters", and cites as components of one such system the falling asleep of Albion, the loss of Eden, the descent of Albion into the womb of Vala, the deluge of Atlantis, and the eclipse of the sun. All modern interpreters of Blake agree that these elements of myth describe the same cosmic event. Many other such groupings may be discovered; in each case, a key idea of the poet's has found expression in several distinct ways. What separates Blake from most other writers who like to vary their symbols is that Blake intertwines several components of an action-image cluster in one text. This technique, which helps to make Blake so notoriously difficult for the uninitiated, is most prominent in the post-Felpham writings and the flashbacks in Vala. It is clearly the opposite of condensation, and no less an authority than Erich Fromm (The Forgotten Language: New York, Rinehart & Co., 1951, p. 29) feels it is another technique typical of dreams. [6] Rosamond Harding, An Anatomy of Inspiration (Cambridge: Hoffer & Sons, 1942). [7] Ibid., pp. 96-7. [8] S. Foster Damon, William Blake: His Philosophy and Symbols, (Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1958). pp. 196-211. [9] See, for example, Frye's comment from "The Keys to the Gates," cited below. [10] Hubert J. Norman, "William Blake", Journal of Mental Science 61 (1915), pp. 198-224. [11] Henry Crabb Robinson, Remeniscences, quoted in G.E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Records (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 542-3. [12] Alexander Gilchrist, Life of William Blake: Pictor Ignotus (London: Macmillan & Co., 1863), i,7. [13] Frederick Tatham, "Life of William Blake", unpub. MS quoted in Bentley, p. 519. [14] Gilchrist, i, 81. [15] Ibid., i, 59. [16] Ibid., i, 69. [17] Ibid., i, 69-70. [18] John T. Smith, Nollekens and his Times (London: Henry Colburn, 1829), p. 470. [19] Gilchrist, i, 128. [20] The present writer does not know whether ghosts exist. [21] Quoted in Bentley, p. 52. [22] To Lady Hesketh. Quoted in Bentley, p. 106. [23] Cf. his remarks to Robinson, Dec. 10, 1825. [24] Allan Cunningham, The Cabinet Gallery of Pictures (London: George and William Nicol, 1836), p. 11. [25] Gilchrist, i, 171. [26] Norman, op. cit., p. 219. [27] Gilchrist, i, 373. [28] Robert Hunt, "Mr. Blake's Exhibit", The Examiner, Sept. 1, 1809, pp. 605-6. [29] Op. cit., p. 94. [30] Henry Crabb Robinson, "William Blake", Vaterlandischein Museum (1811), tr. Bentley, p. 432. [31] Ibid., p. 452. [32] Henry Crabb Robinson, Diary, ed. Thomas Sadler (New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1877), i, 217. [33] Ibid., i, 303. [34] Quoted from unpub. MS in Bentley, p. 236. [35] T.W. Reid, Richard Monckton Milnes, quoted in Bentley, p. 221. [36] Gilchrist, i, 309. [37] Quoted from unpub. MS, Bentley, p. 237. [38] Allan Cunningham, Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters & Sculptors (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1831), ii, 145-8. [39] Anon., "Blake the Vision Seer", Monthly Magazine XV (1833), pp. 244-5. [40] Gilchrist, i, 251. [41] Published in the Keynes edition (1966), pp. 343-4. [42] Cunningham, Lives, op. cit., ii, 137. [43] Gilchrist, i, 297-8. [44] A.H. Palmer, Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer, quoted in Bentley, p. 294. [45] Ibid., quoted p. 302. [46] Damon, Philosophy and Symbols, op. cit., p. 201. [47] Material from the Diary is conveniently assembled in Bentley, pp. 306-25. [48] Gilchrist, i, 319-20. [49] Smith, op. cit., p. 488. [50] Eugen Bleuler, Dementia Praecox (New York: International Universities Press, 1950); Karl Jaspers, General Psychopathology (Manchester: Manchester U. Press, 1962); Carl Gustav Jung, Collected Works (Princeton: Princeton, 1970); Emil Kraepelin, Dementia Praecox and Paraphrenia (Edinburgh: Livingston, 1925). [51] Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry, p. 38. [52] "Renee", Journal of a Schizophrenic Girl, quoted in Aldous Huxley, Heaven and Hell, (Hew York: Harper & Rowe, 1963), p. 134. [53] Jaspers, p. 125. [54] Ibid., p. 81. [55] Bleuler, p. 125. [56] Ibid., p. 104. [57] Jaspers, pp. 294-5. [58] A. Wetzel, Z. Neur., vol. 78, quoted in Jaspers, p. 295. [60] Jaspers, p. 291. [61] M.J. Horowitz, "The Imagery of Visual Hallucinations", J. Nerv. Ment. Dis. 138 (1964):513-21. [62] Bleuler, p. 116. [63] Ibid., p. 292. [64] June Singer, The Unholy Bible (New York: Putnam's Sons, 1970), p. 77. [65] Jung, iii, 260. [66] Frye, Symmetry, op. cit., pp. 77-8. [67] Frye, "Keys", op. cit., p. 4. [68] A good example is Emily S. Hamblen, On the Minor Prophecies of William Blake (New York: Haskell House, 1966), pp. 27 ff. [69] This is typical of schizophrenia. Cf. Silvano Arieti, "Primitive Intellectual Mechanisms in Psychopathological Conditions", Am. J. Psychopath., IV (1950):4-15. [70] Bleuler, pp. 89-90. [71] To Lady Hesketh. Quoted in Gilchrist, i, 367. BIBLIOGRAPHY. Adams, Hazard. William Blake: A Reading of the Shorter Poems. Seattle, U. of Washington Press, 1963. Adlart, John. "Drunkenness at the Mills in Blake's 'Milton.'" Notes and Queries 205 (1965). 183-4. -----. "Tasso and the Cock and the Lion in Blake's 'Milton.'" Symposium, 20 (1966), 5-6. Alper, Benedict S. "The Mysticism of William Blake: A Psychological Re-Examination." Poetry Review, 29 (1938), 115-23. Anon., "Mad Artists." 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