Creation from Opposition in the Works of William Blake

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“Without Contraries There is No Progression”: Creation from Opposition in the Works of William Blake

Bailey Fernandez

Committee: Lise Sanders, Polina Barkovsa, Yasotha Sriharan Division III Hampshire College May 2019

For Eli Todd , who lived with flaming fire.

iii The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever, so that we may perform the words of this sacred law — Deuteronomy 29:29

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments— vi

Critical Introduction— 3

Chapter I: Gen— 10

Chapter II: Mapping the East— 33

Chapter III: Symbol of Fire— 68

Chapter IV: Last Judgment— 90

Postscript — 110

Glossary — 113

Bibliography — 115

v Acknowledgments

The existence of this work would not be possible without the generous care and attention of my Hampshire College Division III Committee: Lise Sanders, Polina Barkovsa, and Yasotha Sriharan.

Additional feedback thus far given by Sarah Bishop.

A paper which eventually became section 2.3 was graciously read and edited by Alan Hodder.

This project was greatly enhanced by my relationship with the Swedenborg Society in London: and I also wish to express my gratitude for the knowledge and aid of Stephen McNeilly, James Wilson, Alex Murray, Jacob Cartwright, Maia Gaffney-Hyde, and Denise Prentice.

I am grateful to other mentors and professors whose guidance has shaped my intellectual direction: Anston Bosman, Serena Chopra, Martín Espada, Damani Harrison, and my father.

Lastly, I wish to thank the dedicee— Eli Todd — whose shadow is my example.

“Without Contraries There Is No Progression”

Critical Introduction

It takes a contrarian to write of Genius in the current critical milieu, and it is not hard to see why. For many, the appreciation of the romantics has dwindled to the levels it faced in the time of the New Critics. Yet another thesis on Romanticism, let alone a thesis with surface

Idealist sympathies, is bound to raise questions and concerns. These concerns are legitimate, and

I do not seek to repudiate them. Rather, I want to read “Genius,” as it applies to Blake, using a new method. This reading will focus not on elitist intellectuals or singular minds, but rather on a complex relationship between opposing elements, which I argue is present throughout nearly all of Blake’s poetry. I will begin with an introduction to the critical history surrounding William

Blake, followed by a recounting of this thesis’s arguments and organizational structure, before ending with a greeting and an invocation for the reader of this text.

To make a statement about Blake’s work, no matter how simple, is to account for a spiralling network of relations. A “metaphysical” poet, such as John Donne, will focus on one lexical object which is then transmuted into another sense. In “Love’s Alchemy,” for example,

Donne focuses on a simple metaphor — that is, the transference from one sense to another — of

“love” and “alchemy.” The coherence we infer centers on one hinge between the two objects, which allows the metaphor to make sense. In this case, the hinge would be “unreliability.” In simple form: 1). love is unreliable, 2). alchemy is unreliable, 3). Therefore, love is alchemy. In these experiments, two words slowly begin to signify one united concept. This process fits the definition of what Ludwig Wittgenstein calls the “language game.” In these games, we begin to see what a word means by seeing its application in a variety of contexts. To use Wittgenstein’s own example, one could point at a brick, then a barn, then a rose, all while saying the word

“red.” Eventually, the discourse recipient would infer that “red” is the color that all of these

objects share.

With Blake, however, the process of linguistic acquisition is far more complex than a simple game. Take, for example, the following passage from a long poem entitled The Four

Zoas:

Rising upon his Couch of Death Albion beheld his Sons Turning his Eyes outward to Self. losing the Divine Vision Albion calld [sic] Urizen & said. Behold the sickening Spheres Whence is this Voice of Enion that soundeth in my Couches Take thou Possession: take this Scepter! go forth in my might For I am weary, & must sleep in the Dark sleep of Death. Thy brother Luvah hath snitten me but pity thou his Youth Tho thou hast not pitid [sic] my age. O Urizen prince of Light.1

This passage is largely incomprehensible without having previously explored the language of

Blake’s symbols.2 These chains of reference make the prophecies difficult to read. They also make them difficult to write about. As I have spent a large amount of time absorbed in their dialect, I often find the words slowly leaking into my speech about Blake, so that the distance between the critic and Blake collapses. The message of the critic risks becoming absorbed within

Blake’s own mythology.

I have not been dragged into this pit alone. Many of the great scholarly works about

Blake, some of them seminal, fail to maintain a sort of critical distance. This is particularly true of Harold Bloom’s Blake’s Apocalypse, as well as, to a lesser extent, Northrop Frye’s Fearful

Symmetry. These critics, who constitute what W.J.T. Mitchell calls the “classical” era of Blake criticism, were often ideologically and philosophically sympathetic to Blake. They were often

American (with the exception of Kathleen Raine), and were therefore reacting against the early twentieth-century trend of “New Criticism.” The New Critics, spearheaded by T.S. Eliot, Cleanth

1 The Four Zoas. 23. 1-8; Erdman 313 (note: all Blake citations will occur both by plate and line number as well as their page number in the David V. Erdman edition of Complete Poetry & Prose) 2 By symbols, I refer to an image or word which in turn refers to a series of other words or symbols itself.

Brooks, William Empson, Monroe Beardsley, and others, were emphatic about analyzing poems in and of themselves. They sought to eliminate passion from the critical process, and therefore to make their approach to literature both more rigorous and more scientific. This approach naturally led to a dislike for Blake, as well as the rest of the Romantics, who emphasized passion and inspiration. Critics such as Frye, Bloom, David V. Erdman, Kathleen Raine, and Samuel Foster

Damon — who championed Blake despite his unpopularity — were attracted to his philosophical idealism, his celebration of “Poetic Vision,” and his uncompromising mythology.

The backlash against this movement in criticism — not just in Blake, but across all of literary studies — has been in full swing for several decades. Critics today come from a variety of perspectives. Marxist Critics detest the Idealism of these Romanticists, arguing, quite rightly, that the “spiritual revolutions” the Romanticists believed they could achieve depended largely on their class privilege. They state their belief that no Imaginative idea will bring about social change, which can only occur through the material actions of the working class. Gender and queer theorists have taken a more interested stance, but have largely shifted the conversation away from the Romantics’ mythologies and instead turned it towards issues such as the queer sexuality that underlies many of the Romantic poets. I do not seek to repudiate any of this work.

And though I disagree with the (orthodox) Marxists on the validity and actionability of

Imagination, I find it to be a minor, more technical point in the face of the larger and more pertinent question: can a thesis such as this one, largely focused on mythologies, have social value? In order to answer this question, it would help to turn to the actual content contained herein.

***

This project is organized into four chapters, each with a particular focus. The first chapter has three argumentative goals. I argue: 1). The word Genius, in Blake’s poetry, is derived from a Proto Indo-European root gen, meaning “to produce,” which is also the root for several other words in William Blake’s poetic canon, most notably “Generation,” 2). Blake conceives of the “Poetic Genius” as the Godhead consistently throughout his poetic canon; and

3). Genius functions through a series of mutual oppositions that Blake calls the Contraries. These

Contraries work in mutual opposition — and are the source of all poetic production. In effect, I argue that William Blake views not a Genius but a gen — which is an opposition between two mutually incompatible ideas — and only through this can religion, vision, ideas, imagination, and poetry emerge.

The second chapter explores what are called the major prophetic poems, which are what contain the central narratives of Blake’s mythology. I argue that 1). the gen can be divided into a

Contrary opposition between Genius and Generation; 2). That these oppositions can be located in the Blakean direction of the “East”, 3). That the east, because of this binary opposition of

Contraries, is rendered unstable. I draw on the sources that Blake was known to have read, and often borrowed from, to support these arguments.

The third chapter examines these same gen-contraries in respect to the “element” that

Blake associates with the “East”: fire. I argue that the symbol of fire can be divided into one of

Gen-ius, which I call prophetic fire (Fp), and one of Gen-eration, which I call material fire (Fm) .

These fires have different references and relations, which are connected to their respective origins.

The final chapter explores the apocalypse imagery at the end of the poems Jerusalem and

The Four Zoas. I argue that in both of these endings, Blake goes directly against the poetic vision

he has set out for us in the rest of his poetic work. Blake unites all of his allegorical characters into one grand-man Albion, which I argue undermines the entirety of his system. Blake spent much of his career in emphasizing Contraries, and by extension, instability and difference. In the end, however, he completely rejects these concerns in favor of unity.

The choice of gen as the origin point of this thesis may seem arbitrary. After all, Proto

Indo-European is not a concept that existed in Blake’s time. However, all of the other symbols mentioned above are latent within Blake’s linguistic play, including Genius and Generation. Gen is merely a unique way of linking these two images, one that helps us to enter the “language game” of Blake’s work. It is, however, as arbitrary as any critic may state, and this is why I have taken care to emphasize the subjectivity of this author. This is not an attempt to understand Blake as he would have understood himself. It is rather an author’s subjective, unique, and unusual reading of a bizarre language he has long been immersed in — in hopes of elucidating that language from a certain perspective.

***

In outlining this thesis’s argumentative objects, I believe that I have also suggested its social position. The traditional view of the Genius — that is, the one traditionally ascribed to the

Romantics — is that it is a self-creating force. For them, one simply has Genius and then produces, while those not fortunate enough to be blessed by such a divine gift are simply inconsequential. A careless reading of Blake would seem to produce this interpretation as well.

However, I believe, and am arguing now, that Blake’s Genius has — in its best moments — nothing in common with this interpretation. He instead views it as one side of an opposition, with something it cannot reconcile on the other side. It is this that Blake believes produces not just art and poetry, but also religion, prophecy, and philosophy. Good art is a wrestling with a difference

it cannot reconcile. As soon as it begins to merge with its opponent, it becomes what Blake calls a Negation: a shadow of its former self.

As for the density of symbol in this piece — the neologisms, the use of occult symbolism, the pseudo-mathematical notation — I have used them as a tool of immersion. Readers may still cry foul, and I understand. But I do believe that the densest and most frustrating structures of language are what push us forward both to imagine more and to apprehend difference. In this experience there is a Contrary, you and the text, and it is my hope that the foreignness of the language and graph-structures may incite greater opposition — and therefore, greater creative response.

I have not crafted this text merely to indulge or to create systems, but to be read. I have attempted to aid readers with visual aids and a glossary, and hope they will view the densest parts of this work as a puzzle rather than an affront. I invite any reader, and have tried to empty these pages of any jargon not coined by me or the sources analyzed. There are — besides the lay- reader (whom I hope will find knowledge and enjoyment in this work for their own sake, as well)

— three classes of reader for whom I believed this work may be particularly applicable. For the

Blake critic, I hope they receive a well-argued case for a new reading of Blake’s mythology, a reading which in several places directly challenges the academic orthodoxy. For the poet and poeticist (for whom I have great affection), I hope they receive a new approach to poetic production and methods derived from Blake, and read radically through him; one that emphasizes the importance of contradiction without resolution as the generator of poetic content.

Lastly, I have considered the Humanities at large — particularly literature — and urge them to enter a realm of spiritual visions, heavenly creatures, difficult texts, impenetrable symbols, and divine revelation. It is my belief that these are not idle pleasures, but rather powerfully refracting

mirrors, through which we can project ourselves outside ourselves. For those that will not be moved, there is nothing left to say. But for those of them, even if only one, that trek further through these passages — I promise I not only have something to say, but the beginning of a life’s work on the essence and virtue of poetic contradiction.

Chapter I: Gen

1.1: Introduction

Genius is a curious word in the prophetic works of William Blake. Its etymology is unusual and, accordingly, its meaning has gradually evolved. In its historical usage, it has signified, in various periods: a guardian spirit, an appetite, a malefactor, the spirit of one’s birth, and a talented person.3 In order to enter the space in which Blake uses the Genius, I will analyze its etymological origins to uncover the series of meanings, codes, and significations hidden within it. This will result in an analysis of the gen: which will underlie our further investigations as we begin to explore the mythological structure of Blake’s oeuvre. The gen will become the foundational signifier of this thesis as we explore the series of structures we will eventually be able to logically describe as the infernal east.

In short, this chapter seeks to account for the etymology and history of the Genius — both as it originates in history and as it descends into Blake’s work — as well as to chronicle the imperialist and masculinist assumptions that become grafted onto the Genius as it appears in

English Romantic poetry. These assumptions eventually supplant what we will call the gen, and will be kept in view as this thesis spirals towards its conclusion: the ultimate betrayal and subversion of Blake’s vision, which I explore in section 4.6. I, in doing all of this, distinguish between the Genius and the etymological root gen. Genius is the gen-maker, and gen is the elementary particle of production.

1.2: Etymological Descendants of Gen

3 “Genius, n. and adj." in OED Online. (Oxford University Press, July 2018) www.oed.com/view/Entry/77607. Accessed 28 October 2018. Talent has a curious etymology itself; for more, see Matthew 25: 14-30

“Genius,” as an English and Latin, derives from the Proto Indo-European gen, meaning

“to produce.”4 This definition is not entirely adequate. Proto Indo-European has only been hypothesized — as an ancestor language for Latin, Greek, Slavic Languages, Sanskrit, and others

— and therefore can only be understood from the commonalities in its derivatives. In order to truly understand the gen, we must first approach it from that aforementioned context. Gen is seen in its descent into language: generation, genital, genitive, origin, etc… in English, and gens, generare, genitalia, and genius in Latin.5 In all of these derivatives, one can easily see a pattern of definitions centered around a certain familial reproduction. For specifics, however, let us turn to the simplest Latin derivation: the gens.

The Romans understood the gens as “the free-born descendants of a common ancestor in the male line.”6 That is to say, they were the individual’s family or clan. The relationship between gens and gen can be understood through another derivative: the genitalia. For the ancient Roman, the production of the gens had to occur through some kind of medium. Genitalia served as this medium: that is, the object that creates the family. This process could be analyzed through what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari call “desiring machines,”7 which “produce what we take to be reality, through the investment of psychical energy (libido).”8 That is to say, the gen of the Roman gens-structure is emitted and produced repeatedly by the genitalia. This

4 Julius Pokorny, Proto-Indo-European Etymological Dictionary: A Revised Edition of Julius Porknoy’s Indogermanisches Etymologisches (Worterbuch: Indo-European Language Revival Association, 2007). Dhungu Association. Web. Accessed 1 Oct 2018 5 Charlton T. Lewis. and Charles Short, “Gens.” A Latin Dictionary. Perseus Tufts. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DG%3Ae ntry+group%3D6%3Aentry%3Dgens (Accessed 22 October, 2018) 6 “Gens,” The Oxford Classical Dictionary. 3rd ed, ed.Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 631. 7 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 5. 8 Eugene Holland, “Desire + Social Production.” The Deleuze Dictionary, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 54.

heteronormative and masculinist production maintains the “generations” that preserve the Ur- family and Ur-state. We derive the Latin verb generare, the direct ancestor of “generate,” from this mode of familial reproduction. It is from this background that the concept of the Genius emerges.

The clearest primary source for the etymology of the Genius comes from the Roman philosopher Censorinus. He describes it in the following manner:

Whether it is to make sure we get generated, or he is generated with us, or he takes up and protects us once we are generated, in any case, it is clear the the is called our “Genius” from “gen-eration.”9

All of these uses of the word “genius”/generare give three possible ways to view the Genius: as either the creator of the human, as a being that exists in bond with it, or as a guardian spirit. All of these definitions inform each other. This definition is, however, always associated with birth and the birthday. Through its etymological connection with the genitalia and the gens, we also see its inevitable relationship to the reproduction of the familial.

Genius, as seen in the quotation above, could also function as an inhabiting spirit. It is a

“god under whose protection each person lives from the moment of their birth.”10 It also, like other classical deities, required sacrifice.11 Roman playwright Plautus’ play The Captives

[Captivi], an early example of Genius-sacrifice, also shows the Genius taking on some characteristics of that which it guards, and vice versa.12 Genius sacrifice was performed by the head of the gens (in Rome, always a patriarchal, masculine figure).13 The Genius could also take

9 Censorinus, The Birthday Book, trans. Holt N. Parker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 5. 10 Ibid, 4. 11 Ibid, 5. 12 Plautus, Captivi. Plautus with an English Translation by Paul Nixon: In Five Volumes, trans. Paul Nixon (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1946), 489. 13 “Genius, n. and adj," in OED Online. (July 2018) Oxford University Press, , www.oed.com/view/Entry/77607. Accessed 28 October 2018.

the form of the genius loci, which could inhabit a person, place, or thing. It could even represent an entire nation, in the case of the Genius of the Roman People [Genius Populi Romani].14 The combination of these beliefs led to the longstanding assertion in classical scholarship that the emperor Augustus Caesar demanded sacrifices to his own Genius among his subjects. All of these examples serve to show that the pagan Genius, far from being a deity along the lines of others, also had an animist character. A person, place, or thing was imbued with a Genius rather than the Genius existing on its own. More accurately, one could say that these objects are outgrowths of this productive force: the maker and materializer of gen.

Genius is also subject to division, however, and this process occurs with the development of “good” and “evil” genii [genius bonus and genius malus]. The earliest example of this occurs in Servius’ Commentary on the Aeneid:

namcum nascimur, duos genius sortimur: unus set qui hortatur ad bona, alter qui depravat ad mala. quibus adsistentibus post mortem aut adserimur in meliorem vitam, autcondemnamur in deteriorem; per quo aut vacationem meremur, aut redium in corpora.15

Here, in short, the unus est qui hortatur ad bona [one which cultivates us to goodness] and the one that depravat ad mala [lowers us to evil] act as agents to which the individual exists in relation. They are two types of gen-creators: one which produces good and one which produces

14 For the contemporary view, see Harriet I. Flower "Genius Augusti?," The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden: Religion at the Roman Street Corner, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 299-310. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1vwmh7f.35. For the historical one, see Lily Ross Taylor. "The Worship of Augustus in Italy during His Lifetime." Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 51 (1920): 116-33. doi:10.2307/282875. 15 Maurus Servius Honoratus. In Vergilii carmina comentarii. Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii carmina commentarii; recensuerunt Georgius Thilo et Hermannus Hagen, ed. Georgious Thilos, (Leipzig,B. G.Teubner, 1881), http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0053:book=6:commline=743&highlight=genios. English Translation: (mine): “That is when we are born, we are assigned two genii: one who cultivates us to goodness, another who lowers us to evil. Who assist us after death or are joining to us in better life, or are condemning us in a worse one; through them our freedom is earned, or turned back in the body.”

evil. This situation can be compared to the image of the angel and devil sitting on opposite shoulders. They generate the thought of the material subject.

The angel/devil image is also appropriate because it reflects the Christianization of the

Genius as it appears in English. This process starts around the fourteenth century, as was common for Latin borrowings.16 Genius not only entered the English language through Latin, however, but also through the French Romance. For commentators such as C.S. Lewis, it represented “the Allegory of Love.”17 This treatment in the medieval Romance soured in the

Renaissance. Demonologists such as Reginald Scot18 and even King James I/VI19 began to repudiate this distinction as pagan. They replaced the concept of the genius bonus and genius malus with the war between God and the Devil. They sought to replace the Genii — with their pagan connections to sexualized generation — with a more theologically justifiable spiritual war.

Through this history, we first see the binary opposition between two modes of gen, now given a

Christian dimension. This device will have import in section 2.2.

By the time we reach the eighteenth century, a new definition of the genius emerges. In his Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson first defines the genius as the

“protecting or ruling power of men, places, or things.”20 This identification directly relates to the etymologies we have discussed thus far. Then, however, he places a new definition: “a man endowed with spiritual faculties.”21 This encroaching definition implies that, by the time Johnson

16 George McKnight, The Evolution of the English Language: From Chaucer to the Twentieth Century (formerly entitled Modern English in the Making). (New York: Dover, 1956), 30. 17 Denise N. Baker, "The Priesthood of Genius: A Study of the Medieval Tradition." Speculum 51, no. 2 (1976): 279. 18 Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft: Being a Reprint of the First Edition Published in 1584, ed. Bersely Nicholson (London: Elliot Stock, 1886), 483-484. 19 James I, Daemonologie: In Forme of a Dialogie Diuded into Three Bookes, (N.p.: Robert Walde-graue, 1597), 39. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25929/25929-pdf.pdf. 20 Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language in which the Words are Deduced from their Originals, and Illustrated in their Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers, to Which are Prefixed A History of the Language, and an English Grammar, Eighth Edition. (London: J. Johnson et. al, 1799). https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_Nk9NAAAAcAAJ/page/n7. 21 Ibid.

began to compile his Dictionary, Genius was beginning to take on the meaning it possesses today. It is no coincidence that this redefinition occurs during the Enlightenment. In Classical

Rome, the Genius reflected a polytheistic society with connections to animism in Medieval and

Early Modern England, the pagan aspects of the Genius became part of theology; finally, in the

Enlightenment, the word reflects not the power of a pagan or Christian deity, but rather the individual achievement of the rational mind.

Blake, in contrast to this development, was a critic of the Enlightenment. He sought to return to earlier poetic definitions and forms, and drew particular attention to John Locke and

Isaac Newton.22 In his poem Europe, he even makes Newton the horn-blower of the apocalypse.23 Evidence for this can be found most obviously in his earliest poems, where he imitates “unfashionable”24 influences such as Edmund Spenser,25 Ben Jonson,26 and others, in his

Poetical Sketches.27 We should therefore not be surprised that Blake should cling to significations of the word “Genius” which were quickly becoming archaic.

This very archaism — a core component of Blake’s knowledge base — also informs what seems to be Blake’s lucid knowledge of the etymology of the Genius. Take, for example, his letter to George Cumberland:

I congratulate you not on any achievement, because I know, that the Genius that produces. [sic] these Designs can execute them in any Manner. Notwithstanding the pretended Philosophy which teaches that Execution is the power of One & Invention of Another—Locke says it i[s the] same faculty that Invents.28

22 Milton, hereafter cited as M. 41.4. Erdman 142 23 Europe, hereafter cited as E. 13.4-5. Erdman 65. 24 Peter Ackroyd. Blake: A Biography (New York, Ballantine Books, 1995), 56. 25 Erdman 420 26 Erdman 409 27 Northrop Frye. Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake. Second Edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 177. 28 Erdman 699. Blake is known for occasional odd spelling and punctuation. This expresses itself most frequently in oddly placed periods, which I have chosen not to remove from any of the Blake quotations. In his edition of Blake’s work, David V. Erdman makes textual corrections where he believes them to be appropriate. I have preserved these.

Blake refers to the Genius as the “Genius that produces.” The gen etymology presented above therefore holds true for him as well. It thus retains its etymological connotations surrounding production. This will become important as we experience the role that the Genius plays in

Blake’s poetry, and how he ultimately uses the gen in separate senses. Blake, however, also uses the above letter to refute the Cartesian cogito29 and the mind/body separation. In this instance, he labels the separation made by these dualists as that between “Invention” and “Execution.” That is to say, he claims that Locke believes the production and performance of a task can be separated.

Blake believes otherwise. He rejects this dualism of the gen, and claims instead that the Genius is at once production and performance. This will not prevent Blake from making other divisions and separations, however, as we will see in section 1.5.

In a letter to his patron William Hayley, Blake also indicates that he is aware of the genius loci concept mentioned above:

But I invoke the Good Genii that Surround Miss Poole’s Villa to shine upon my journey thro the Pentworth road which by your fortunate advice I mean to take.30

Here, he clearly designates the Genii as guardian spirits with power over the road. Therefore,

Blake seems to believe that the “Good Genii” are genii loci, and have the ability to give positive influence over the journeys of travelers. What is even more striking is Blake’s other continuing allusions to fantastical creatures. He addresses Hayley at the beginning of the letter as the “leader of my angels,” while also claiming the assistance of “Brunos fairies.” This listing of various mythological characters — arranged in matrix with the Genii — constitutes a blueprint for the later complexities in Blake’s system. This is more thoroughly explained in section 2.3.

29 The proposition in Rene Descartes’ Discourse on Method “I think, therefore I am” which is the foundation of philosophical Idealism. 30 Erdman 709.

Finally, in the Catalogue of his largest Exhibition Blake imbues the Genius with the characteristics of a Nation:

If Genius and Inspiration are the great Origin and Bond of Society, the distinction my Works have Obtained from those who best understand such Things, calls for my Exhibition as the greatest Duties of my Country.31

In this quotation, we can note the distinct “joyning” aspects of the gen. Reviewing the aforementioned “desiring machine” conception from Deleuze and Guattari, the gen of the Genius

“constantly couples continuous flows and partial objects that are by their very nature fragmentary and fragmented.”32 Or does it? In this letter, it seems that the highest purpose of the gen is to function as a weld or joint to unite two concepts. However, as section 1.5. will illustrate, a key component in gen is not unity or rejoinder but rather the contrary opposition of two component parts. The paradox and contradiction between these two elements (which, I suppose, could also be viewed as a form of Contrary) is the omega point where I found Blake most at fault. As demonstrated here, the joining and unification route presented here constitutes the most easy associations with the masculinist and nationalist currents that date back to the gens and to the Genius Populi Romani. This culmination will be more fully explored in section 4.6, the end point of this thesis.

Before we turn to Blake’s poetry, I will summarize what this genealogical analysis teaches. Genius is the maker of gen, an abstract productive quality. The stem gen predates both ancient and modern language, and finds itself embedded in various Latin and English forms. The

Romans, at least as early as Censorinus, were conscious of the meaning of the gen-stem. Blake, through evidence provided in his letters, seems aware of this history as well. Genius — as Blake

31 Erdman 528. 32 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 5.

uses it — is fundamentally reacting against the Enlightenment. It ascribes gen-ing qualities not to the human Mind or to reason, but rather to an abstract Divinity. With this in mind, we are ready to consult Blake’s earliest engraved work: All Religions are One.

1.3: An Analysis of the Poetic Genius in All Religions are One

Blake introduces the concept of the Genius (which he terms the Poetic Genius) in his very first engraved works: the trilogy of pieces entitled All Religions are One, There is No

Natural Religion [A], and There is No Natural Religion [B]. These pieces, composed in 1788, contain maxims that describe the core of Blake’s intellectual belief system. In analyzing this work, all of the prior etymologies, histories, and genealogies will be useful. It is here that we first see the gen in its poetic expression.

Here is the entire text of All Religions are One:

ALL RELIGIONS ARE ONE

The Voice of one crying out in the Wilderness

Principle 1st: That the Poetic Genius is the true Man. and that the body or outward form of Man is derived from the Poetic Genius. Likewise the forms of all things are derived from their Genius. which by the Ancients was call’d Angel + Spirit + Demon. Principle 2d: As all men are alike in outward form, so (and with the same infinite variety) all are alike in the Poetic Genius Principle 3d. No man can think write or speak from his heart, but he must intend truth. Thus all sects of Philosophy are from the Poetic Genius adapted to the weaknesses of every individual. Principle 4. As none by traveling over known lands can find out the unknown. So from already acquired knowledge Man could not acquire more. therefore an universal Poetic Genius exists Principle 5. The Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nations different reception of the Poetic Genius which is every where call’d the Spirit of Prophecy

Principle 6. The Jewish & Christian Testaments are An original derivation from the Poetic Genius. this is necessary from the confined nature of bodily sensation. Principle 7th. As all men are alike (tho’ infinitely various) So all Religions & as all similar have one source. The true Man is the source he being the Poetic Genius.33

To continue our analysis of the gen, it will be expedient to close-read this piece in its entirety.

This will at first seem to take us somewhat far afield, but the dissection of a piece fully conceived with the mechanism of the Genius will show holistically now the concept of its working. From there, it will become easier to analyze its subsequent fracturing and segmentation.

Blake first gives the piece the header “A Voice Crying Out in the Wilderness.” This header is a direct quotation from two significant biblical passages: 1). A passage in which the

Old Testament Prophet Isaiah describes the nature of righteous prophecy; and 2). One in which

John the Baptist announces the coming of Christ.34 In both cases, the “voice crying out in the wilderness” paves the way for God’s messenger. By comparing himself to each of these figures,

Blake establishes himself as a prophet and his revelation as divine. However, there are marked differences between the states which Blake gives himself here, and the shattering divinity of the traditionally Christian conception of God. Rather, Blake is announcing the character of the

Genius explained in the subsequent principles. Genius creates an outward expression of the

“form of Man.” Like the Roman Genius described by Censorinus, it is a spiritual force which sprouts a material covering. It generates the outward body of every individual, which both has infinite similarity and infinite variety.

33 All Religions Are One. Erdman 1. 34 “A voice cries out: In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” (Isaiah 40:3), and, using one gospel as example: “He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah said” (John 1:23).

In the fifth and sixth principles, we can see that universal axiom working in other forms.

These are the grandiose, patriotic, and “taming” forms we have seen earlier. Genius produces not only persons, but also the grandiose and organizational concepts of Nation and Religion. In the case of the latter, we find the Poetic Genius defined as the “Spirit of Prophecy.” This dual- definition transforms Genius and Spirit, as well as prophetic and Poetic, into synonyms. Through this method, Blake has articulated what for him is an enduring belief about art: that it is one and the same with prophecy, and therefore Religion. Blake therefore gives the gen, in the form of the

Genius, an essential role as the production of spiritual substance. Blake views the Poetic Genius not only as poetry, and not only as prophecy either, but rather as the Godhead itself. The

Godhead, however, is neither stately nor anthropomorphic. It is present in Nations, Religions, and People.

Blake completes his argument in the 7th principle.35 Since the Poetic Genius gen-s infinite varieties with identical cores it follows (according to Blake) that the Genius constitutes the world’s religion in the same fashion. They are not at odds with each other, but rather are

Platonic forms of the same “generating ideal.” For Blake, it seems that great poetry, and the

Bible itself (which as prophecy, is poetry) can emit the greatest number of poetic expressions.

Gen is therefore self-replicating. One can take a body of Poetic Genius — whether that be a poem, a religion, a nation, or person — and see the spiraling web of that nation’s gen-emission.

In this manner, Blake does not simply repeat Plato’s theory of the forms. There is not one perfect ideal, of which all other manifestations are corruptions. Rather, all forms are the ideal, and all reproduce that ideal indefinitely across all space, history, and time.

35 The holy associations of this number were most likely intentional. In both Swedenborgian correspondence and general Jewish and Christian symbolism, the number seven signifies completeness (God creates the world in seven days, the seven trumpets of Revelation, etc…). For more on this, see Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy.

Here, once more, we prepare ourselves for paradox. There is a universalizing impulse present here — one that seems incontrovertible — which contradicts the Contrary oppositions explored in section 1.5. This impulse is most apparent in the manner in which Blake attempts to characterize the “core” of all things as possessing an inherent sameness. We should therefore be skeptical of giving Blake too much praise. There is always danger in an appeal to universality, in that no idea is truly universal. Other religions and nations which fall on the outside of Blake’s

Judeo-Christian milieu must be subsumed into the “Genius” worldview, which in reality is not a universal one but a Western or Anglo-centric one. Poetic Genius, like the Genius Populi Romani, requires sacrifice. It is not an elemental form of the gen. Rather, it is murder in the favor of monstrous repetition of the Genius.

Spanning across these barriers, we find the consummate point of Blake’s thesis in the final lines of There is No Natural Religion [B]:

He who sees the Infinite in all things see God. He who sees the Ratio sees himself only. Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is.36

Blake refers to God as an “infinite” that resides in “all things.” Whatever word, sign, thing, or being lies in front of the observer, they can perceive it as infinite. This, according to Blake, is the only way to see God. The “Ratio” refers to scientific principles of observation, which according to Blake fail to account for the imaginative, replicating power of the Genius. “God becoming as we are,” references a tradition of philosophy reaching back towards Heraclitus: things, including

God, are always changing, morphing, and coming to be. We “be” as “he is” by existing as flux within imaginative realities. It is from this that we find how “Everything that lives is holy.” In this process of becoming, all things are imbued with divinity.

36 There is No Natural Religion[B]. Erdman 2.

Blake’s view of the world is a deeply religious one, but it is religious in a highly idiosyncratic way. These idiosyncracies allow him to create a universe where the central aspect of creation is neither traditionally theological nor anthropomorphic, but rather the expression of an omnipresent gen. But what religious traditions does he draw from? There are two traditions, both radical, with which Blake was associated. These are the Swedenborgian Church of the New

Jerusalem and the Zinzendorfian Moravian Church. Primarily concerning the former, the next section will summarize current scholarship surrounding Blake’s relationship to radical

Christianity.

1.4: Blake and the Swedenborgian Church

As previously mentioned, the works of the theologian, scientist, polymath, poet, and generally Borgesian character Emanuel Swedenborg played an extraordinarily formative role in the development of Blake’s poetic theology. In this section, I aim to provide a quick chronicle of

Blake’s relationship with the Swedenborgian Church in London, as well as briefly touch on

Blake’s relationship to a radical Christian group known as the Moravians. These explorations will situate Blake’s religious context prior to an analysis of a certain section of The Marriage of

Heaven and Hell — a text that by all verifiable accounts was constructed as a satire and attack upon the Swedenborgian Church in London. Let us then begin by exploring the history Blake had with Swedenborg.

Romanticist scholar Morton D. Paley — whose work on both Blake and Samuel Taylor

Coleridge has been trailblazing for both fields — places the beginning of Blake’s interest in

Swedenborg at roughly 1787.37 This initial interest was followed by a rapid absorption of

37 Morton D. Paley, “‘A New Heaven is Begun’: Blake and Swedenborgianism,” Blake and Swedenborg: Opposition is True Friendship, (New York: Swedenborg Foundation, 1985), 16.

Swedenborg’s work which was readily available in English. With certainty, we know that Blake read Heaven and Hell, Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, and Divine Providence. Paley also argues that he must have read Earths in Our Universe and True Christian Religion as well.

However, as scholars such as Robert Rix have observed, Blake was quite friendly with a large amount of the English Swedenborgians at the time: including John Flaxman, Henry Fuseli, C.A.

Tulk, and others. He attended the 1789 East Cheap Conference of Swedenborgians.38 This conference took place in London — and he and his wife Catherine’s signatures can be found in the Conference Minutes. All of which is to say, that Blake was most likely completely familiar with Swedenborg’s entire oeuvre. All of its subsequent portions will be cited as intertextual evidence within these pages.

Who was Swedenborg? To be as brief as I can be, he was an eighteenth-century Swedish scientist and mine-operator who at the age of 55 experienced a tense series of revelatory visions.

He subsequently devoted the rest of his life to theology both wildly obscure and wildly radical.

The unorthodoxy of his ideas — which included the postulations that angels and devils were not separate creations from but rather the deceased spirits of human beings, that they likewise exist on different planes/societies organized according to their relative goodness or evil, that sex was a glorified act, and that the Bible communicated both in an “external” literal sense and a corresponding “internal” spiritual sense which had been revealed only to him and that his works excavated — caused him to be exiled from Sweden and forced him to find refuge in London.

Blake and Swedenborg never crossed paths, but the theological works of the Swedish expatriate would come to have a profound effect on the developing young poet.

38 Robert Rix, William Blake and the Cultures of Radical Christianity, (Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2007), 48.

Blake’s view of Swedenborg changed over time. His first annotations to Heaven and Hell are quite scarce, and it is hard to glean a definite opinion from them.39 His subsequent annotations to the Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, however, are lavish with their praise. He is keen on annotation at this stage. While he is also keen on replacing aspects of Swedenborg’s terminology with his own — see his insertion of the concept of the “Poetic Genius” we will see later in this section — Blake’s overall mood seems to be one of agreement.40 This is not the case, however, with the bitter, acerbic, and nearly comically hostile annotations which Blake grafts onto Divine Providence. “Cursed folly,” he writes, as he takes a sharp turn into intense criticism of his theological patriarch. He accuses Swedenborg of believing in “Predestination” — the theological concept that God has already preordained whether we will be saved or damned before the creation of the universe — despite a clear lack of evidence for this belief on Divine

Providence or in any other part of Swedenborg’s writing.41 What is manifesting, however, is the bitter hostility towards Swedenborg’s writings that resulted in the creation of The Marriage of

Heaven and Hell.

The Marriage… (1790) is quite clearly a satire of Swedenborg’s works. The title echoes the most famous of Swedenborg’s treatises, Heaven and Hell, and various aspects of The

Marriage’s language: such as the divisions into “Memorable Fancies” (echoing Swedenborg’s

“Memorable Relations”) as well as the usage of phrases such as “torments and insanity” which directly recall the Thomas Hartley translation of Heaven and Hell. What’s more, Swedenborg is referenced by name, at various points. It is also probable that the plates most specifically directed

39 Erdman 601. 40 Erdman 602-09. 41 Erdman 609-11. “Cursed Folly” on page 610.

at Swedenborg — that is, plates 21-24 — were written before the rest of the piece.42 What remains is a hostile document, best summarized by the language in those very plates:

I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise; this they do with a confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning: Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new; tho' it is only the Contents or Index of already publish'd books A man carried a monkey about for a shew, & because he was a little wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and conciev'd himself as much wiser than seven men. It is so with Swedenborg; he shews the folly of churches& exposes hypocrites, till he imagines that all are religious. & himself the single [22] one on earth that ever broke a net. Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth. Now hear another: he has written all the old falsehoods. And now hear the reason. He conversed with Angels who are all religious, & conversed not with Devils who all hate religion, for he was incapable thro' his conceited notions. Thus Swedenborgs writings are a recapitulation of all superficial opinions, and an analysis of the more sublime, but no further. Have now another plain fact: Any man of mechanical talents may from the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen, produce ten thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborg's. and from those of Dante or Shakespear, an infinite number. But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine.43

In this rebuttal, we see Blake’s antagonism towards Swedenborg distilled into its purest form. He mocks the theologian — comparing his voluminous treatises and claims to the only truth to be only a commonplace wisdom — and displaces him. But even in what could easily be described as the most scathing remarks towards Swedenborg, one sees a shred of the admiration which drew Blake towards him in the first place. Blake does not resent Swedenborg for failing entirely.

Rather, he merely thinks that his work fails to live up to the standards of other occultists —

42 Joseph Viscomi, “The Evolution of ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.’” Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 58, no. 3/4, 1995, pp. 281–344. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3817571. 43 The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, henceforth cited as M.H.H. 21-22 .Erdman 42-43.

Paracelsus and “Jakob Behmen” — and falls infinitely short of the great artists Shakespeare and

Dante.

This is the most negative Blake ever became towards Swedenborg. Other scholars have noted how Blake, in his correspondence and his poetry, began to view him more positively later in life. This coincides with a general trend in Blake towards a re-embracement of Christianity. In his late epics, Milton (1800-1803) and Jerusalem (1803-1820), Blake begins to use Christian symbolism with much greater urgency. The Christianity, as G.E. Bentley Jr. observes, is laden with specific references to Swedenborg.44 Perhaps the best summary of Blake’s changing attitude towards the theologian occurs in the poem Milton itself:

They perverted Swedenborgs Visions in Beulah & Ulro; To destroy Jerusalem as a Harlot & her Sons as Reprobates; To raise up Mystery the Virgin Harlot Mother of War, Babylon the Great, the Abomination of Desolation; O Swedenborg! Strongest of men, the Samson shorn by the Churches: Shewing the Transgressors in Hell, the Proud Warriors in Heaven: Heaven as a Punisher & Hell as One under Punishment: With laws from Plato & his Greeks to renew the Trojan Gods, In Albion; & to deny the value of the Saviours blood.45

This quotation is oft-cited, but much less frequently analyzed with rigor. Much of the terminology reflects the arcane symbolism Blake developed in his later poems, but we can still perform decent analysis without becoming too lost in the weeds of what each particular symbol happens to signify. Swedenborg’s failure is here no longer attributed to the man himself, but rather to the “Churches.” In biblical parallel, Blake references Samson — by extension turning the Churches into the Philistines — who lost his way, but ultimately triumphed against what he deemed to be the enemies of God.46 Such a view could be justified by the intense power

44 For an exploration of this, see G.E. Bentley Jr, “A Swedenborgian Bible.” Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly. Vol. 24, No. 2, Fall 1990, 63-64. 45 Milton , henceforth cited as M. 22. 46-54 (Erdman 117-18). 46 See Judges 16: 25-30.

struggles in the English branch of the Swedenborgian Church, which to Blake distracted from the purpose of Swedenborg’s imaginative visions. Thus, we see the vision of Swedenborg reclaimed within Blake’s mind.

Such a view is also supported by the oft-cited — and possibly apocryphal — quote which

Blake supposedly made to a friend, publisher, and a man of Swedenborgian interest, Charles

Augustus Tulk:

“Blake,’’ says Dr. Wilkinson, “informed Tulk that he had two different states; one in which he liked Swedenborg’s writings, and one in which he disliked them. The second was a state of pride in himself, and then they were distasteful to him, but afterwards he knew that he had not been wise and sane. The first was a state of humility, in which he received and accepted Swedenborg.’’ We can readily believe this statement, as it serves to explain much in relation to Blake’s attitude to our great seer which is otherwise inexplicable.”47

Various Blakean critics — most notably G.E. Bentley Jr.48 — have cast doubt on the veracity of this quotation. Their points are not unfounded. James Spilling is a Swedenborgian writing for a

New Church Journal, which by this point had developed strong doctrinal orthodoxy, and would have been required to “couch” Blake in order to make him even remotely palatable for his audience. However, there is strong possibility that Blake’s critics at discounting the quote as pure fiction. For one thing, the chain of names here — Tulk, being a friend of Blake’s and Wilkinson of Tulk’s — would be entirely accurate towards Blake’s relations. More importantly, Spilling himself by no means seems to be adhering to orthodox Swedenborgian ideas. Tulk, as devout as he was, was excommunicated by the New Church for the publication of his work Spiritual

Christianity, which was deemed heretical by Church Leaders. Wilkinson — who coupled

Swedenborgianism with his medical practice — was also far from Orthodox. Finally, writing about Blake to Swedenborgians is itself a radical and defensive position — even to this day —

47 James Spilling, ‘’Blake the Visionary.’’ The New Church Magazine. Vol 6: 1887. Print. 204-211. 48 G.E. Bentley Jr, Blake Records: Second Edition, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 53.

due to the negative perceptions attached to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Therefore, there is reason to give some sort of credibility to Spilling’s account, even if it should be taken with a grain of salt.

Lastly, because so much recent scholarship has concerned it, it would be remiss not to discuss Blake’s potential relationship to the Moravian Church. In 1999, Keri Davies and Marsha

Keith Schuchard published an article concerning the religious affiliations of Blake’s mother, which proved her relationship to the Moravians.49 These were a radical sect of Christians whose worship practices emphasized free love, communal hymns, and the glorification of the “wounds”

Jesus suffered during his crucifixion. Influences from this mode of thinking abound in Blake’s poetry. Sexual liberation is glorified in Visions of the Daughters of Albion, and the centrality of

“hymn” or “song” is expressed in the Songs of Innocence and Experience. This area of inquiry has still not been fully explored, and though it pertains little to the subsequent argument, it bears inclusion in any work concerning Blake’s religious beliefs.

With this history now having been briefly examined, we can turn once more to the through-line of the gen concept in Blake’s poetry as it appears in The Marriage… The next and final section of this chapter will explore the elaboration that occurs in The Marriage from All

Religions are One. In the subsequent chapter, I argue that Blake has begun to view gen as the result of the opposition of two Qualities — which he dubs “Contraries.”

1.5: Contraries: The Mechanism of Gen

Having now established the relationship between Blake and the London Swedenborgian

Church, moving into a discussion of The Marriage… , we can begin to discuss the text itself.

49 Keri Davies and Marsha Keith Schuchard, “Recovering the Lost Moravian History of William Blake’s Family” Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 33.2 (fall 1999): 36-50.

This section of the paper constitutes the final one before we move to explore Blake’s later poems. Here, I will attempt to take the gen concept — personified thus far in the Genius — and argue that Blake shows in The Marriage… that it is created through a series of mutual antagonisms dubbed “Contraries.” In this particular case, I argue that the Contrary terms are named “Heaven” and “Hell.” However, one may find examples of Contrary pairs throughout

Blake’s poetry. For example, the entire structure of the Songs of Innocence and Experience is one opposition between a childlike, happy “Innocence” and an adult, dark, and marked

Experience. Here, however, we will explore the instance of the Contraries that ties most closely to the gen and to Blake’s religious beliefs.

Here is the passage I have selected for this usage, taken from the third plate of The

Marriage:

The voice of the Devil

All Bibles or sacred codes. have been the causes of the following Errors. 1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul. 2. That Energy. calld Evil. is alone from the Body. & that Reason. calld Good. is alone from the Soul. 3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies. But the following Contraries to these are True 1 Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that calld Body is a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses. the chief inlets of Soul in this age 2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is The bound or outward circumference of Energy. 3 Energy is Eternal Delight.50 We see here for the first time one instance of the Contraries. The first three numerals explicated here describe a state of “Error,” which Blake aligns with “Bibles and sacred codes.” By this,

Blake means to put Swedenborg — and by extension Christianity — on the side of that Error.

What he encapsulates here is curious, however, in that he establishes a relationship of Contraries

50 M.H.H. 3. Erdman 34.

in both the macrocosmic and the microcosmic levels. On the level of the text, Blake accuses the

Christians of creating an artificial division between good and evil. The Contrary — through which Blake establishes “Truth” — emphasizes a non-dualist view of the universe. Good and evil are not separate, but rather, Good is a “bound and outward” form of the concept of evil.

These two terms, loaded as they are, however, are not much in themselves. They signify elsewhere — to an opposition between “Reason” and “Energy,” which are signified by “Good” and “Evil” respectively. One would not often think to conflate these concepts but Blake does here. The Bibles of the word — for Blake, even the Swedenborgian ones — are not as much legislating morality as much as they are a certain method of looking at the world. They are bound by segmented argumentation and logical principles, they keep “Evil” Energy (a tautology,

Evil=Energy), caged.

On the level of form, however, we see the same binary division. Blake establishes what the “Bibles and Sacred Codes” say, but what their opposites say. This formal division inaugurates a sense of stability to Blake’s argument, even if it goes against it somewhat. He gives us resolution by, in his formal device, restoring the binary division he so criticizes. What he loses, however, is the enactment of the forms of mutual antagonism. For more on how this sense of stability erodes Blake’s commitment to opposition and difference — see section 4.6 — as this self-betrayal is somewhat key to this thesis’ overall appraisal of the canon of William Blake.

Astute readers may also have noticed that the language in this passage is quite similar to the language Blake uses to describe the “Genius” in All Religions are One, which was quoted in section 1.3. For example, in that poem, he refers to how the “body or outward form” of Man is derived from the Poetic Genius, while the above-quoted passage from The Marriage… states word-for-word the exact same thing about Energy in relation to Reason. Through further

tautological equivalence, we can state that the Genius of All Religions are One therefore constitutes Energy, while the generated bodily form of Man corresponds to Reason. This can be expressed as Genius=Energy, Man=Reason. The relationship is not merely hierarchical, however, as it also constitutes a Contrary opposition.

To further investigate a definition of the above, we must lift another quotation from plate

3 of The Marriage: “Without Contraries there is no progression.” Above, it may have seemed that the gen of the Genius was purely the Genius itself, creating bodies out of spiritual substance

— a clear, Idealist system. What is happening instead, however, is much more interesting. The

Contraries previously established create by their opposition. Blake goes on to say that “Love and

Hate, Reason and Energy, are necessary to Human Existence.”51 What he means here is that the creation process out of the gen — if we follow his philosophy in its purest form (without the contradictions we have briefly touched on in this section and will explore more thoroughly in

Chapter IV) — is that it is contradiction and instability that results in the most profound, creative, and in the clearest knowledge of things. The weakness of the Enlightenment according to Blake is that — by virtue of its dedication to its taxonomy — it is required to continually depress the gen relationship necessary for progression.

Readers with familiarity within the Western philosophical system may notice some similarities with the concept of dialectics proposed by G.F.W. Hegel. It is worth noting that outside of their polar construction, they are not very similar. Hegelian dialectics relies primarily on the idea of synthesis or sublimation in which two opposing concepts collide and merge in a historical progression. For Blake, however, progression grows because the concepts involved do not merge or synthesize. They do not compromise themselves. Rather, they remain separated,

51M.H.H. 3. Erdman 34.

differentiated in all their contradiction. They are allowed to remain separated from Rational attempts to explain them, which would force us too quickly on to one or another side of the gen.

Considering that Hegel would have an influence on other Romantics — most notably Samuel

Taylor Coleridge (who dedicated the latter half of his life to translation German metaphysics) — it is worth differentiating Blake’s concept of the Contraries, which is quite different from

Hegel’s, and, in many ways, far more advanced. What results from this philosophy, in contrast to

Hegel’s, is a more profound and deeper embracement of the philosophy of difference.

Blake will continue to espouse this philosophy throughout his work. As Blake’s poems and mythology becomes substantially more complicated, it becomes paramount to view his work through some kind of anchor. I propose to keep the gen in center-view as we continue to deconstruct the approaches and ideas that Blake present in this thesis. I will start, ultimately then, by approaching the major prophecies. There, I will analyze an event in which Blake begins to distinguish between two types of gen. It is at this point that diagrams and sets will become particularly useful to keep track of Blake’s ever-expanding system. In the next chapter, I will argue that there are two distinct types of gen within Blake’s system: which I will begin to call

Gen1 and Gen2. I will then continue to analyze these two concepts as they appear in what becomes a central concept of Blake’s: the East.

Chapter II: Mapping the East

2.1: Introduction

The previous chapter of this thesis focused on establishing the historical mechanism of gen and its application to Blake’s poetry. It focused primarily on the Genius, which is the form that it takes in early poems such as All Religions are One and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

In the later poems — along with almost everything else — these ideas become more complicated. In this chapter, I propose a series of arguments: 1). That the location of the gen

Contraries in Blake’s poetry is the direction of the East. 2). That these Contraries can be divided into two opposing forms, which I designate as Gen1 and Gen2. I will develop these two terms of

Blake’s mythology within them. These sets will establish the conceptual framework through which we will enter the third chapter.

There are multiple other issues at play within the second chapter as well. The structure of this chapter will continue as follows: 1). To explore the difference between Gen1 and Gen2, 2).

To explore the landscape of Gen2 as it appears in the major prophecies, continuing through the figure of Satan, the elemental creatures, and their relationship to the works of Emanuel

Swedenborg, 3). To situate this encounter within the symbolic East, contrasted against the other

Blakean directions by being rendered more unstable.,4). To explore biblical influences and inspirations for the exaltation of the East in William Blake’s poetry, and 5) To explore the

Contrary relationship between the gen as it appears in the poetry itself.

Considering the massive height of argument and information, this chapter may run the risk of being long and convoluted. As mentioned in the introduction — all Blake scholars

inevitably run this risk. However, it is my belief that the end of this chapter will provide a steady framework for a far more complex relationship to the gen then has been explored thus far.

2.2: Genius/Generation

The first aim of this chapter will be an attempt to prove that there are two kinds of gen at work in the major prophecies. The first is the form of Genius, or what will now be designated as

Gen1, which we have come to be familiar with over the course of the first chapter. The second form is one that Blake designates as “Generation,” which will become Gen2. One will quickly notice that they both share the obvious gen root, and that “generation” echoes the sexual connotations discussed in generare in section 1.2. Through each of these forms, I will attempt to delineate how they appear in the major prophecies with both written explications and visual aids.

To begin, let us focus on the instance of the Genius as it appears in the later prophetic poems.

The Poetic Genius makes an appearance in the long poem Milton, in which it is described in the following manner:

According to the inspiration of the Poetic Genius Who is the Eternal all-protecting Divine Humanity To whom be Glory & Power & Dominion forevermore amen52

As discussed in section 1.3, there is a startling continuity between the emergence of this particular concept and the ones expressed as early as All Religions are One. Given the precise and direct recapitulation of such a similar idea, we can rest with good assurance, that when Blake refers to the Genius in any capacity, he is referencing it with the same aims and goals in mind as he had when he referred to them in the earlier poems described in the prior chapter. This continuity occurs because, as we will continue to investigate, the Poetic Genius in All Religions

52 M. 14. 1-3. Erdman 108.

are One is the One and Difference of Nature, Religion, Poetry — in short, a series of Contraries.

They are Platonic forms in a battle-state, but they all derive from a Poetic source of gen.

Another piece of evidence can be found in the poem Jerusalem, repeated from The

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which also concerns the Genius:

Go, tell them that the worship of God is honouring the gifts In other men: & loving the greatest men best, each according To his Genius: which is the Holy Ghost in Man; there is no other God, then that God who is in the intellectual fountain of Humanity: He who envies or caluminates: which is the murder & cruelty Murders the holy one53

Genius is used here in two particular senses. The “each according to” implies a difference which must be acknowledged among the so-called “greatest men,” while the usage of “there is no other

God” implies a one-ness. In a sense, the property of gen is that is always in a state of difference, due to the perpetual nature of its creation. Gen’s God is difference, even though it has “no other.”

This dynamic also emphasizes a “creature” state, in which one does not envy the creation of others, due to the perpetual creation of one’s self. This is what is meant by the difference between Contraries, which is a marriage of elements which maintain difference through continual opposition, and the Negation (need to create Continually) through reasserting their monism without respect to the difference of the same. This can be seen in the following quotation:

Negations are not Contraries: Contraries mutually exist but Negations Exist Not: exceptions & Objections & … Exist Not.54

In which we learn that the Contraries must exist in continual opposition. What is most striking about the prior quote, however, is that it occurs newly word-for-word in the same format in The

53 Jerusalem (henceforth cited as J). 91.7-12. Erdman 251. M.H.H. 22-23. Erdman 43. 54 J. 16. 34-36. Erdman 162

Marriage. This continuity establishes the Genius repetition as a permanent fixture within Blake’s work. It also firmly allows us to draw on the character of the Genius elaborated within The

Marriage itself: its association with fire and with its hellish content.

Given the two examples we can postulate that the gen-ing Genius remains intact in the later prophecies. What we have yet to discuss, however, is the term that has not appeared in our in our discussion of the gen thus far, the term Gen2, or Generation. Gen2 may share the gen root with Gen1 of Genius, but it describes a quite different phenomenon. An example can be found in the following passage;

And all the Living Creatures of the Four Elements, wail'd With bitter wailing: these in the aggregate are named Satan And Rahab: they know not of Regeneration, but only of Generation The Fairies, Nymphs, Gnomes & Genii of the Four Elements Unforgiving & unalterable: these cannot be Regenerated But must be Created, for they know only of Generation These are the Gods of the Kingdoms of the Earth: in contrarious And cruel opposition: Element against Element.55 First, we must unravel the new relationship that Satan seems to undertake within the Blakean cosmology. Second, the result must be a fully functional understanding which differentiates

“Generation” and “Regeneration.” Third, the Elemental Creatures in the previous passage must be explained to the reader. I will begin with the first, and then descend into the other two lines of argumentation.

In respect to the first point, Satan plays a role quite obviously different from that of the

“hell” in The Marriage. Rather, he is instead identified with the “Living Creatures of the Four

Elements.” This designation has a host of symbolic roots, including the Book of Ezekiel and the alchemist Paracelsus. However, we should be wary of bequeathing a positive identification. The

55 M. 31. 17-23. Erdman 130.

four elements (see Plato’s Timaeus) connote a sense of materiality, we already know from sections 1.3 and 1.5. However, the material is not an entirely positive realm for Blake. It is instead the “dull or outward round,” — or Reason — which bounds the energy of the Genius. As discussed in The Marriage, however, the Reason/Good with which Satan is now paradoxically being identified with stands in the gen-ing Contrary opposition to Energy. As stated before, the opposition of these two elements manufactures production. If Satan has become part of the material then he can be associated with the Reason/Good section of the Contraries. More importantly, however, we can begin to identify the “living Creatures” and Satan in the same grouped set: Gen2.

Given that we are contending with derivatives of gen, it would do well to examine the gen name-sake of Gen2 Generation. It occurs in the passage above, and is contrasted with the concept of “Regeneration.” Since we already knew that the Gen2 grouping constitutes one side of the Contraries explored in section 1.5., we can comfortably group its opposite, regeneration, into the prior category of Gen1 of Genius. What do we learn from this distinction? We see that the elemental creatures do not fit into the world of Regeneration. They instead must be “Created

Continually” — a phrase that notably excludes any gen roots. This exclusion implies that there is something more or less productive on this side of the gen. “Regeneration,” which through the transitive property can be connected to the Genius, promises an effortless self-creation and replication. Generation must instead consistently renew itself. Blake’s consistent referrals throughout the major prophecies to “vegetable Generation” or “sexual Generation” therefore become indicative of a much larger sense embedded within this distinction.

Figure I

In section 1.2., we discussed the distinction between the genius bonus and the genius malus that first appears in Servius’ Commentary on the Aeneid. We discussed the opposition between these two genii in the mind of the subject. Likewise, we also expected some of the sexual roots and signifiers behind the gen etymology. Here, a similar partitioning to the Christian separation of the Genius occurs in Blake’s division. Gen1 reportedly contains spiritual qualities, while Gen2 creates sexual ones. A similar separation to that between the Christian and the pagan occurs in Blake’s poetry as well, like the separation between the sheep and the goats.

To recapitulate the grander message of this section: the gen can be quite easily divided into two forms: Gen1 and Gen2. The first of these contains the attributes of the Genius, explored in sections 1.3. and 1.5.. Both of these gen elements are Contraries, and production occurs from their opposition. In the passage quoted above, we are yet to explore only one element: What are the Elemental Creatures? The next session will explain this, and then discuss one in particular with great depth, and surprising results: Swedenborg’s Genii.

2.3: Swedenborg’s Genii

If we recall the quote above, which names the “Living Creatures of the Four Elements” we find that there are “Fairies, Nymphs, Gnomes, & Genii.” In the poem Jerusalem, a city called

Golgonooza — the city of “art & manufacture”56 — is built by a character named Los. Blake litanizes the architecture of the City. In the midst of this Litany, Blake gifts each of the elemental creatures with a gate to stand guard over. Gnomes are given to the North, Nymphs to the West, and Fairies to the South. Blake saves the East for last, however, and gifts it to the Genii:

Sixty-four thousand Genii guard the Eastern gate.57

56 M. 24.51. Erdman 120. 57 J. 13. 26

These directional assignments link each of the elemental creatures quite easily to a figured called a Zoa. In the later Blake poems, the universal “Man” named “Albion” was once whole, but has since fractured into four “Zoas,” which each occupy a directional space and also exemplify a certain “quality.” Urizen exemplifies Reason and his direction is the South. Tharmas is the West and represents materiality, Urthona (who is also named Los) represents poetic creation, and

Luvah represents the emotions and revolution.58 Each of the Zoas contains several associations within them. One of these associations for each of them are the elemental creatures, which become associated with the respective Zoas: Gnomes for Urthona/Los, Fairies for Urizen,

Nymphs for Tharmas, and Genii for Luvah. In this chapter, as stated above, I will argue for a curious derivation for the Genii as opposed to the other three elemental creatures. To the best of my knowledge, this point has not been advanced before: I agree with the position put forth by

Samuel Foster Damon that the other three creatures are derived from Blake’s reading of alchemy, but that the Genii are derived from Blake’s reading of Emanuel Swedenborg.

I wish to begin by asserting that Blake’s alchemical readings are important, and they will play an important role particularly within sections 3.2 and 3.3. I will start by acknowledging that the Genii are most definitely a part of the Swedenborgian theological corpus. They are also contained in the portions of Swedenborg’s work Blake is known to have read (see section 1.4), the first being the work Heaven and Hell. In Swedenborg’s cosmology, the celestial Spirits

(angels and devils) are not separate from human creation, but rather are the souls of those who have died. These linger in what is termed the “world of spirits,” before eventually being absorbed to live in one of the “societies” in either heaven or hell. Swedenborg organizes these societies in celestial space according to the principles of directional symbolism, much as it

58 Georges Bataille, “Blake.” Literature and Evil, trans. Alastair Hamilton (London: Marion Boyars, 1997), 86.

appears in Blake’s epics. Focusing on hell, as that is what concerns us at the moment, we find the

“hells” subdivided into two categories: one located west and one located east. These groups of spirits are termed Genii and Spirits respectively.

Genii are described in fullest detail in Swedenborg’s Arcana Caelestia:

There are two kinds of Spirits in Hell...to which the two Faculties in Men, viz. The Will and Understanding, correspond...the other Kind are called Genii, and act upon the Will- Principle...they, who are called Genii, infuse Evils, act into the Affections and Concupiscencies of Man, and smell in a Moment what Man desires; if this be Good, they bend it most cunningly to Evil; and are in the Delight of their Life, when they can make Good to be apperceived as Evil, and Evil apperceived as Good...the Genii have no concern for what Man thinks, but only what he Loves.59

If we refer back to the genius bonus and genius malus discussed in sections 1.2 and 2.2, we can recall the denunciation of Genius by Christian writers. These genii all respectively took on the role of the genius malus from Servius. The connection to the Will-Principle is also congruent with prior characterizations of the Genius discussed in section 1.2. The Genius, after all, pushes desires onto the subject. It, however, also has negative qualities. What remains to be seen is how it fits into what Blake views as negative. To see this, we must look at other aspects of the gen.

Considering we have already discussed Gen2 and “Sexual Generation,” we should also discuss the related origin of the Genii, which occurs in Emanuel Swedenborg’s Divine

Providence:

The lot of these seducers after death is sad, as such seduction is not only impiety, but also malignity; when they have passed through their first period in the spiritual world, which period is in externals...they are reduced to another period of their life, which is in internals, wherein lust is set at liberty, and commences its sport. After some such scenes a third period takes place, which is that of judgment; and in this case being convicted they sink down...if they have been allured by deceit...in this hell they appear at a distance like serpents of various kinds, and the most deceitful like vipers….they are also void of all of the sex, and they are called infernal Genii.60

59 Arcana.Caelestia (henceforth cited as A.C.). 5977, spelling modernized. 60 Divine.Providence (henceforth cited as D.P.). 514

This quotation situates Genii in the souls of the lustful dead. We have already established that in

Blake, the Genii constitute one of the Elemental Creatures, and therefore are contained within the set of Gen2. The association with lust, and particularly a base sort of lust, helps enhance and illuminate this connection. Their creation is one that is continual in Blake — unlike what he views as the more self-perpetuating Genius — and aligns with the picture of Swedenborg’s Genii we have been given thus far.

Neither of these excerpts discuss the relationship to the East, however. It is at this bridge that we begin to approach the second of this chapter’s major themes: the centrality of the East. In order to begin this argument, we must first turn to a passage from Heaven and Hell:

The very reverse of what has been stated, is the case with the inhabitants of the infernal kingdoms, as they behold not the Lord as a Sun, or as a moon, but, with their back towards him, look at that black body which to them is in the room of what our sun is to us; and to that dark orb which is to them instead of a moon; those which are called Genii to the former; and those which are called Spirits to the latter...that the Sun of our world, and the moon belonging to our Earth, are not seen in the spiritual, but instead of the former a black disk (calignosum quid) opposite to the celestial sun, and instead of the latter a dark orb (Teneborum quid) opposite to the heavenly moon...Wherefore the four quarters with the infernals are opposite to those in Heaven, their East being where the black disk, or the dark orb appears; their West towards the celestial sun; the South to their right, and the North to their left hand; and thus, which way soever they turn; nor can it be otherwise, as blackness and darkness is the centre of all their motions61

Due to Thomas Hartley’s unwieldy, clunky, and difficult translation, it can be difficult to parse this explanation in English. However, a degree of context could help decode the cosmology of this passage. Swedenborg believed that the universe was composed of a natural world and a spiritual world, as outlined above. The natural and spiritual worlds, he believed, also had separate suns and moons. To him, the astronomical bodies in our world were diminished reflections of the heavens. Both the heavens and the hells exist on corresponding spiritual planes,

61 H.H. 149

but the hells exist as a reversed state of the heavens. Since the hells are what is pertinent, we will turn our fears to them. In the hells, the sun of our world, which is as a “black orb,” is located towards the East, while the sun or heaven is located towards the west.

Swedenborg’s Genii, as detailed in the long paragraph cited above, “look at that black body which to them is in the room of what our sun is to us.” From this passage, it would seem completely logical to assume that they look towards the East. Given that this is the case, they align perfectly with the direction of the Genii in Blake, who themselves “guard against the

Eastern gate.” In the correspondence of the East, it seems quite clear that Blake was inspired by

Swedenborg’s description. There is, however, one final complication. In the final section of

Heaven and Hell, Swedenborg states that

their general distinctions are known from the quarters respectively where they lie; those distinctions being the same as in the heavens, where they are regulated according to the kinds and degrees of heavenly love, beginning with the Lord as the sun of heaven, which is called the east; and as the hells are in all things opposite to the heavens so the principle or regulating quarter there is the west.62

And later:

The hells likewise [to the heavens] are distinguished into two kingdoms; the one of which is opposite to the celestial, the other to the spiritual. That which is opposite to the celestial is the west, and they who belong to it are called Genii; and that which is opposite to the spiritual kingdom is in the north and south, and they who belong to it are called evil spirits.63

These descriptions, without an extremely close reading of the prior quotation, seem contradictory to the earlier identification of the Genii, which looked towards the East. However, I do believe that the descriptions are reconcilable. Their potential for agreement lies in the very phrase

“looking toward.” If we can picture the Genii with a far-reaching gaze, spreading across the quarters of hell to attune themselves to the darkness, then we can parse their direction and

62 H.H. 587 63 Ibid 596.

continue to see them facing East. likewise, the first quotation can also be reconciled with the earlier cosmology. Even though the Genii find themselves permanently attuned to the darkness in the East, their realm begins from the West with the Lord, as every level of existence does in the

Swedenborgian cosmos. They are so far from God, so hideously base, that they cannot bear to look upon the face of their maker.

Having now provided firm grounding for the relationship between Swedenborg’s Genii and the East, we can now turn to the more conventional explanations for the elemental creatures.

I seek not to dispute the postulated derivations for the other elemental creatures, but only to postulate why the Genii seem to be inadequately accounted for. Oddly enough, most have not postulated why (such as Samuel Foster Damon’s Dictionary)64 Genii was derived except for that it was commonly associated with the alchemical element of fire. One scholar who does provide a detailed explanation for all four creatures is John Adlard, and I wish to challenge him on his assertions regarding the Genii.

Adlard first half-heartedly suggests that all four of the elemental creatures may have come from Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock.65 This thesis contains numerous problems: including that the names of the creatures correspond in only one instance, and that Blake shows little appreciation for Pope elsewhere. Adlard, however, seems to know this, as he then puts forward his actual theory, which is that the creatures from alchemist Paracelsus’ Three Books of

Philosophy. However, this explanation runs into problems. Paracelsus does not use the names

“fairies” or genii” for his elemental creatures, but rather, “sylphs” and “salamanders.” Fairies as a replacement name can be explained through other means. Blake had been using them since the

64 See Samuel Foster Damon, William Blake and His Symbols, (London: Constable and Company Ltd, 1924) 65 Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock: A Heroi-Comical Poem in Five Cantos, (London: Sovereign Sanctuary Press, 2004), xii. Pope states that he derived these creatures from a Rosicrucian text entitled Le Comte de Gabalis, but given the likelihood that Blake would have access to this text is virtually nil, it seems fruitless to consult it.

poem Europe, and may have simply wanted to include them in his mythology. No other such explanation exists for the genii, however, and they are therefore more easily accounted for by the

Swedenborgian explanation.

In contradistinction to Adlard’s argument, then, I contend that the Genii are a

Swedenborgian derivation. This assertion automatically associates them with Blake’s own vision of Christianity, as discussed in section 1.4. They make the east into a “central” place in Blake’s mythology. Fairies, Nymphs, and Gnomes are — as we have now explored — either pagan or alchemical derivations. Genii, however, have the status of a Christian symbol. Blake’s later works are rife with repudiations of paganism and the Classics, while in contrast, we know that

Blake viewed the Godhead — the “source of the Old and New Testaments” — as a prophetic and

Poetic Genius, as discussed in section 1.3. We therefore have carried over an assembly of the special creature within the direction it was assigned to: the East. The next section shows to serve for further evidence of the Eastern Gate’s Christian significations. While we have focused on a

Swedenborgian level in this section — which is assigned to the realm of Gen2 and materiality — we will now see the Biblical and Miltonic associations with the East, which fall under the level of Gen1.

2.4: The History of the Eastern Gate

This section argues for three other influences which provide evidence for Blake’s view of the East as an exalted direction. They are Milton, Swedenborg, and the Bible. I start by adding one more Swedenborgian element — one which I believe fall under the auspice of Gen1 — the spiritual sun. Then, I explore the influence of Milton’s “east” on Blake, while briefly explaining the centrality of Milton’s work to Blake’s oeuvre. Finally, I examine particular influences from

the spiritual east in the Bible. These examples will all not only confirm the “East” as an exalted direction within these three crucial influences on Blake (notably all Christian), but also draw specific attention to the derivation of the phrase “the Eastern Gate.” It is in this section, as well, that I posit that the Eastern direction — intertextually across the Bible, Milton, Blake, and

Swedenborg — exists as a central and special direction in comparison to the others. This state is marked by being carved out by its difference from the three, and the zone is therefore marked by its instability in relation to an overarching theme of opposition against the other, stable directions. This instability — by the method of Blake’s own poetics — transforms the East into a battleground of the Contraries Gen1 and Gen2. I address that particular dynamic within Blake’s poetry in the following section.

As to the signification of the Eastern Gate, over which, as we may recall, the “64,000

Genii” in Blake’s poem stands guard over, we should first turn to Swedenborg’s work Divine

Love and Divine Wisdom. This work — judged by Blake’s gracious and praising annotations — was by far his favorite of Swedenborg’s works. In this treatise Swedenborg provides his most succinct explanation for the architecture of the spiritual sun, as opposed to what he termed the

“natural sun”:

Inasmuch as these two worlds are distinct, it may clearly be seen, that the spiritual World is under a different sun from that of the natural World, for in the spiritual World there is especially Heat and Light, as in the natural world; but the Heat there is spiritual, and spiritual heat is the Good of Charity; and spiritual Light is the truth of Faith.66

The spiritual and natural suns therefore differ within Swedenborg’s cosmology. They mutually differ — establishing a kind of Contrary — yet also correspond. Heat finds itself in the spiritual world as Charity; while Light finds itself in Faith. We should also take notice that the sun, as would be expected (and was alluded to in the prior section), is located in the East:

66 Emanuel Swedenborg, Divine Love and Divine Wisdom (henceforth cited as D.L.W.) 84.

It is otherwise in the spiritual World; There the Quarters are determined by the Sun of that World, which constantly appears in its Place, and where it appears is the East.67

And later:

The Reason why the Angels turn their Faces constantly to the Lord as a Sun, is, because the Angels are in the Lord and in them, and the Lord interiorly leads their Affections and Thoughts, and turns them constantly to himself, in Consequence whereof they cannot look any otherwise than to the East, where the Lord appears as a sun.68

An immeasurable amount of passages throughout the Swedenborgian corpus refer to “Eastness.”

I have chosen these two quotations, however, because I am also interested in demonstrating the phenomenon of orientation, which dominates Swedenborg’s heavenly cosmography.69 The angels must always look to the East because they are facing themselves towards it. If the East is the place of orientation, it is no wonder that the Genii look towards it. In these passages, we see that the attuning of directions is more than the physical space one occupies. It follows the Angels regardless of where they turn.

There is more influence for this view of the East then Swedenborg, however. Moving backwards in time (and forwards in historical importance), we come to the work of John Milton.

For readers of Blake, this influence is not a surprise. Blake illustrated Milton’s work on numerous occasions. He also titled one of the major prophecies, the eponymous Milton, after him. His influence hangs on Blake’s writing even more than it did on the rest of English epics published after Paradise Lost. However, Milton’s influence on Blake is as thorny as

Swedenborg’s. Blake critiques him heavily in The Marriage, along with Swedenborg, which leads to one of the most influential appraisals of Paradise Lost in the history of English poetry:

67 D.L.W. 120 68 D.L.W. 130 69 Note that the Latin word for East, orientum, is the etymological root of the verb “to Orient.” The problematic associations with the phrase and the geographical “Orient” in the physical world is dealt with in section 4.5.

Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained

…

The history of this is written in Paradise Lost, & the Governer or Reason is called Messiah. And the original Archangel or possessor of the command of the heavenly host, is called the Devil, or Satan and his children are called Sin & Death.

But in the book of Job Miltons [sic] Messiah is calld [sic] Satan. It indeed appear’d to Reason as if Desire was cast out. [sic] but the Devils account is, that the Messiah fell. [sic] & formd [sic] a heaven of what he stole from the abyss. … But 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 [sic] party without knowing it.70

For Blake, Milton’s attempt to “justify the ways of God to men” in Paradise Lost is fundamentally inadequate. He assigns the structure of Contraries and Negation, explored in sections 1.5 and 2.2 to the Trinity as it appears in the epic. The Father becomes “destiny” because he knows that both Satan and Adam will fall. The Son becomes a “Ratio of the five sense” — or the dull round of Gen2 — because it is only assigned a mortal role, and receives little agency. As for the Holy Spirit — it is only present in the text implicitly — and there takes on the role of Negation, adding nothing to the poetic production. Therefore, for Blake, Satan becomes victorious in the poem. This is because he does not suffer Negation as the father/son

Contrary does.

Despite this, Blake clearly has respect for the poet, as is shown by the central redemptive role Milton carries in his titular epic. In this respect it is perhaps best to think of Milton as an embodiment of the famous Blakean dictum: “Opposition is true friendship.”71 And indeed opposition — and even Contrary oppositions — prefigure in the work of Milton as well. This

70 M.H.H. 5. 71 M.H.H. 20

opposition most obviously occurs in the poems “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso.” The structure of these poems is one of two Contrary odes. The former serves as an exaltation of the emotion of mirth, and banishes melancholy. The latter performs the opposite task. As it so happens — Blake cared enough for these poems to illustrate them. The one that is most pertinent to us is

“L’Allegro,” as it contains direct references both to a spiritual sun and to an Eastern gate.

Let us examine the following lines:

Sometimes walking, not unseen By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green, Right against the eastern gate, Where the great Sun begins his state, Rob’d in flames, and amber light, The clouds in thousand liveries dight.72

In this passage — which is predominantly imagistic — we see a narrative for the rising of the sun at dawn. Milton connects this image with mirth (happiness). It connects the eastern gate — an image we’ve seen in Blake — explicitly with the sun. In Blake’s illustrated interpretation

(Figure II), we find an image that may be surprising.

In Blake’s illustrations, we find one entitled “The Sun at his Eastern Gate.”73 Blake draws a naked, masculine figure emerging from a circle of light and fire. Juxtaposed against the landscape, the figure is massive. The mountains on the horizon are barely the size of his feet.

Blake takes the descriptor “rob’d in flames” extremely literally. He portrays the East as all- powerful, all-threatening, and terribly and thoroughly divine. What is emerging from this image is clearly some form of production: a massive entity is emerging from the East. Given what we know about Blake’s poetic interests, and the late composition date of this image, it seems

72 John Milton, “L’Allegro,” The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, (New York: Random House, 2007), 43 73 William Blake, The Sun at his Eastern Gate. c. 1816-1820, watercolor, approximately 16.0 x 12.0 cm. Morgan Library and Museum, New York. From: The William Blake Archive, http://www.blakearchive.org/. See as figure II.

Figure II: William Blake— “The Sun at his Eastern Gate”

reasonable to postulate that the multitude of spirits emerging from the landscape in the background may not be genii. What we see here, then, is not only the presence of the Eastern gate in Milton’s Poetry, but a clear sense of Blake’s reading and appropriation of the concept.

Other “eastern” images occur in Milton’s poetry as well. The angel Raphael recounts the world’s creation in Paradise Lost. He reads:

‘Let there be light,’ said God, and forthwith light Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure Sprung from the deep, and from her native east.74 This description establishes the East as a prime and central point within the Miltonic cosmology.

Not only does it establish its centrality, however, but it also emphasizes it as a place of

“creation.” Light is generated in the East — and as it is notoriously the first and most elemental of call created things, it implies that the East is a place where creation happens. If we read this passage from Blake’s perspective, and know that for him all creation is made from the opposition of Contraries, then we by extension will see all creation as an Eastern contrary war. Likewise, in

Raphael’s further description of the rotations of planets in their epicycles,75 he adds:

If Earth industrious of herself fetch day Traveling east, and with her part averse From the sun’s beam meet night, her other part Still luminous by his ray.76

And just shortly after this, he adds:

But whether thus these things, or whether not, Whether the sun predominant in heav’n Rise on the Earth, or Earth rise on the sun, He from the east his flaming road begin, Or she from west her silent course advance …

74 PL. 7. 243-45. 75 That is, the Ptolemaic version of the universe embraced before Nicolaus Copernicus’ heliocentric theory was widely accepted. 76 PL. 8. 137-40.

Solicit not thy thoughts with matter hids, Leave them to God above.77

Here, Raphael expresses a skepticism as to whether human beings can obtain truths about heavenly bodies. However, a definitive truth is asserted: that the sun moves from the East, and that the path of the East can be described as a “flaming road.”

The images of the sun, and its association with the East, preoccupied Blake from his very youth. In his juvenile poem “The Dawn,” we see the sun characterizations highlighted in

“L’Allegro” and in Paradise Lost:

The Sun arises in the East Cloth’d in robes of blood & gold Swords & spears & wrath increast All around his bosom rolld Crownd with warlike fires & raging desires.78

Here we can detect numerous commonalities that must have come from a reading of Milton.

“Robes of blood & gold” recall the “rob’d in flames” of “L’Allegro,” while the mention of the sun recalls the latter description of Paradise Lost. The war-like images — such as “swords, spears, & wrath” — allude to the embittered and “Contrary” state within which the East finds itself. Section 2.5 will also demonstrate how Blake associates the East with warlike characters:

Luvah and Orc. We also see here — as will become important with the third chapter — an association with the element of fire, through which the Blakean Genii are associated with as per section 2.3. Fires appear everywhere in this East: from the fiery sun of Milton, to the Eastern gate, to the fiery spiritual sun from Swedenborg’s cosmology, to the Blakean and Swedenborgian

Genii and the fiery energy of Blake’s Hell in The Marriage. This association contributes to the unstable and difficult impression thus far created in regards to the East.

77 PL. 8. 159-68. 78 Erdman 473.

Those readers with a knowledge of Christian theology, who have followed the argument of this chapter so far, will most likely think that I have made a glaring omission. That is, I have yet to discuss the symbolism of the Eastern Gate within the Bible itself. It is, after all, the primary source for both Milton and Swedenborg. It will please them to know that I have saved this discussion for last precisely because of its importance. Blake, as we have discussed, was a close and devout reader of the Bible. He dedicated extensive time in his middle age towards learning Ancient Greek, primarily in order to read the New Testament in its original. He acquired at least an elementary knowledge of Hebrew, as well, for the same purpose. We must, then, carefully consider the symbolic relation of Blake’s East to the East in the Bible.

Let us start with the Book of Ezekiel. Blake, as is encapsulated in his dialogue with Isaiah and Ezekiel in The Marriage, was a close reader and enthusiast of Old Testament prophetic literature. I have already discussed possible allusions to Ezekiel in this thesis, such as the phrase

“Living Creature” (section 2.3)79 and the concept of the fourfold (in the introduction). What I have not discussed, however, is the importance of the “Eastern Gate” in the construction of the third temple, which occurs at the end of the book. It is seen in a vision that the Lord gives to the prophet Ezekiel. This is how the gate is described:

Then he brought me to the gate, the gate facing east. And there, the glory of the God of Israel was coming from the east; the sound was like the sound of mighty waters; and the earth shone with his glory. The vision I saw was like the vision that I had seen when he came to destroy the city, and like the vision that I had seen by the river Chebar; and I fell upon my face. As the glory of the LORD entered the temple by the gate facing east, the spirit lifted me up, and brought me into the inner court: and the glory of the LORD filled the temple80

Where we see a clear and moving description of the East as a brilliant and sacred direction. It is here where the LORD enters. This is continued in the subsequent passage:

79 Ezekiel 1. 80 Ezekiel 43: 1-5.

Then he brought me back to the outer gate of the sanctuary, which faces east; and it was shut. The LORD said to me: this gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it; for the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered by it; therefore it shall remain shut. Only the prince, because he is a prince, may sit in it to eat food before the LORD; he shall enter by way of the vestibule of the gate, and shall go out by the same way.81

And finally:

Thus says the Lord GOD: The gate of the inner court that faces east shall remain closed on the six working days; but on the sabbath day it shall be opened and on the day of the new moon it shall be opened. The prince shall enter by the vestibule of the gate from outside, and shall take his stand by the post of the gate. The priests shall offer his burnt offering and his offerings of well-being, and he shall bow down at the threshold of the gate. Then he shall go out, but the gate shall not be closed until evening The people of the land shall own down at the entrance of that gate before the LORD on the sabbaths and on the new moons.82

These visions have lasting significance within the Jewish and Christian theologies. It would do well, then, to give them some attention.

They are, first and foremost, one of the major sources for the Messianic prophecy. Unlike all of the other gates of the temple, the Eastern gate is described as being “closed shut.” The reason for this descriptor is that the “Lord” wells within the Eastern gate. Only the Levites may enter its holy sanctum. That being consistent with the doctrine concerning the “holy of holies” within the Ark of the Covenant. The gate is not merely a place from which the lord communicates with the Israelites, but rather the place where the LORD truly is. This is the reason for its sealing. However, a prince will be able to enter through the gate and come out. In

Christian theology, this prince is Jesus Christ. Christ’s divinity, according to those theological doctrines, was what allowed him to stand on holy ground and resist incineration.83 What is clear, however, is that a delivering and salvational urge can be delivered from the East in Biblical

81 Ezekiel 44: 1-3. 82 Ezekiel 44 83 This being the typical result of those who entered the holy of holies.

language. It coexists with the spiritual sun, and the Eastern Gate which is the other name. It is the figure emerging from Blake’s painting in Figure II. It is, if we extract further to Blake’s philosophy of creation, the outgrowth of a war of Contraries.

If we wish to continue looking for Messiah symbolism in the biblical East, we can also take a look towards the Gospels. Particularly, we should concern ourselves with the Mount of

Olives. The Mount of Olives lies directly outside of the city of Jerusalem — outside, that is, of its Eastern Gate. Jesus spends a large portion of his ministry travelling to, from, and around the

Mount of Olives. He arrives there at central points: most notably the Sermon on the Mount and the meditation before his crucifixion. Other scenes include moments when Jesus tells his disciples they will encounter a donkey tied and waiting for them in the city of Bethphage, and the scene in which the disciples request a sign of the second coming. The central importance of this locality is best summarized, however, with the following passage from Luke:

He came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him.84

The Biblical accounts therefore establish the Mount of Olives as a “usual” locale of the Messiah.

It is in the East, and it is where his work is done. when we recall the role of the Poetic Genius —

Gen1 — we see how this location results in the “Creation” and the “Fulfillment” of the Biblical

Prophecy. It is a place in which the poetic production of the Jesus figure may continue to result from a section of the gen.

The Mount of Olives also appears within Blake’s poetic output itself. Take, for example, the following passage in the long poem Jerusalem:

The envy ran thro Cathedrons looms into the Heart Of mild Jerusalem, to destroy the Lamb of God. Jerusalem Languishd upon Mount Olivet. East of mild Zions hill.85

84 Luke 22: 39. 85 J. 82. 53-55. Erdman 240.

As this passage suggests, Blake knowingly incorporated Biblical structures surrounding the

Mount of Olives and brought them into his own poetic universe. Jerusalem is actually a

“character,” and not a place, within the Jerusalem poem. She is the “Emanation” — or feminine projection — of a character named Albion, who constitutes the perfect unity of all Contrary elements, which was once fully realized but has since been divided. The Lamb of God also has obvious biblical parallels which we will unpack in more detail in section 2.5. Otherwise, this passage serves to show that the Lamb of God “languishd” upon the Mount of Olives. This parallel is clearly messianic; and will serve an important role as we begin to explore Blake’s conceits surrounding the Last Judgment in Chapter IV.

In summarizing this long section — the holy east has three symbolic sources, intertextually, for Blake. These are Emanuel Swedenborg’s spiritual sun, John Milton’s generating east, and the Eastern Gate/Mount of Olives in the Bible. In this, I argue all of these examples provide evidence that in Blake’s network of Christian symbols, the east is universally rendered “sacred.” By being rendered sacred, I do not simply mean in the colloquial sense. I also reference the etymological history of the word — that which is set apart — and draw attention to how in all of the above examples, the East is being singled out, drawn attention to, and plucked away from the interchange of the others. When Blake singles out the Genii — what we now know to be the only Christian derived-symbol among the elemental Creatures — he is showing how it defies a prior system of collectivizing and how it singles itself out in defiance of the others. Likewise, the other three instances set apart the East by exalting it. What remains is a region that, in all of Blake’s symbolic sources, has been singled out as a realm rendered outside to the rest. What remains to be seen is how Blake applies this “outsideness” and this “centrality” to his own symbolic characters, and it is this that the next two sections will concern. I argue that

Blake uses the East as the zone of creation, anchored by the presence of warring Contraries. I also argue that this very Contrary sense is what results in an East perpetually bleeding into other directions, made more unstable, and defined by its ability to account for non-consistency: to be fluid and to leak out into other symbolic realms.

2.5: Contrary Messiahs: Luvah and Orc

In order to fully account for how the East functions, and particularly how it functions through the use of Contraries in the later prophecies, one must enter the complex web of Blake’s mythological system. As I have mentioned, entire book-length works, including some of multiple volumes, have attempted to explain it in its totality. Given that this project lacks such space — and that the critical works which have undertaken this project are widely available — it is best to leave such an effort to the works themselves.86 However, there are particular symbolic elements within Blake’s system that pertain directly to the organization of the East, and exemplify its contrary relations. This chapter analyzes the character profiles of Luvah and Orc, arguing that their relationship can be seen as one of Contrary elements — with Luvah, before his fall, falling into the category of Gen1, and Orc falling into the category of Gen2. Later, as I explore in section 3.5, Luvah’s transformation in the furnace transfers him to the same level as Orc.

However, I also argue that a “lower-order” contrary relationship can be found between Orc and the figure of Urizen. All of these relationships echo the primary associations with the East that this chapter has explored so far, namely: a series of Contrary oppositions, the East as a place of instability, its association with war, and the presence of heat, light, and sun.

86 Many of them are cited frequently throughout this thesis. See Northrop Frye’s Fearful Symmetry, Samuel Foster Damon’s William Blake and his Symbols and Blake Dictionary, and Kathleen Raine’s Blake and Tradition.

Beginning with the manuscript aptly titled The Four Zoas, Blake began to systematize a variety of mythological characters he had created into a geometrical array. The attached diagram

(Figure III) shows this organization clearly. To the north is the Zoa Urthona, to the west

Tharmas, to the South Urizen, and to the East Luvah. Each of these Zoas possesses not only a series of traits, but also a series of associations and character identifications that carry with them what we have already discussed with the elemental creatures and cardinal directions. This gives us the Genii in the East and serves as evidence for the uniqueness of that direction. However, a list of associations with each of the directions would be staggering and extensively difficult to account for. Northrop Frye offers a useful chart in his work Fearful Symmetry. There, we see associations with the East ranging from obscure terms such as “Emanation,” to an associated sense-organ, to an associated animal, and many other directional and “Zoatic” associations.87 For our purposes, we will need relatively few of these. The presence and usefulness of this chart, however, will provide a framework with which to postulate a host of assertions about Blake’s

East.

The first aspect of the East that we must examine is, of course, its Zoa. Luvah is first briefly mentioned in The Book of Thel, one of the earliest of Blake’s work.88 This reference is brief, passing, and ultimately substanceless, however, and we must turn to The Four Zoas,

Milton, and Jerusalem to see Luvah as a fully developed character. His “wine-presses” are meant to symbolize war.89 He has intense and fraught relationships with other characters in the poem—

— ranging from his sadomasochistic relationship with his Emanation Vala, to his constant warring with the figure of Albion, to the intensity of the emotional appeals, and the calls to

87 Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 277-78 88 The Book of Thel. 3. 8. 89 FZ. 39. Erdman 326-27.

Figure III: Blake’s Diagram of the Zoas

action and destruction that surround him. He is, according to Frye’s chart, associated with the

Heart.90But what is perhaps most curious about him — and most useful for our purposes — is the large number of Christ parallels in this characterization in the major prophecies.

In The Four Zoas, Luvah is referred to as the “Son of Man,”91 which is the title with which Jesus referred to himself in the Gospels. This was the very title that designated Jesus’

Messianic status. Far stranger and more convincing evidence, however, are the several crucifixion scenes which Luvah experiences. The first is that of an image, specifically plate 54 of

Jerusalem, which shows Luvah’s mutilation at the hands of the “sons of Urizen” (Figure IV).92

The graphic image, while certainly not anything but extremely disquieting, does not express

Luvah’s Christ-ness best. That would have to go instead to the following passage, also from

Jerusalem :

For in the depths of Albions bosom in the eastern heaven, They sound the clarions strong! they chain the howling Captives! They cast the lots into the helmet; they give the oath of blood in Lambeth They vote the death of Luvah, & they naild him to Albions Tree in Bath:93 Where we can see many symbolic correspondences in the sources discussed in the previous two sections. The sun turning black recalls the “sun as a black orb” that Swedenborg’s Genii face towards in Heaven and Hell. This would recall the atmosphere of the Swedenborgian Genii — carried over to Blake’s universe — which are of the set Gen2. The Gen2 emphasis on this scene is continued with the emphasis on ‘Vegetation,” which correlates directly to the concept of

“sexual Generation,” which is the renamed set and dominant characteristic of Gen2. Lastly, the sections begins by acknowledging that it takes place in an “eastern heaven.” Given the direct and

90 Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 277-78. 91 FZ. 41.2. Erdman 327. 92 J. 53-54. Erdman 202-4. 93 J.65. 6-9. Erdman 216.

Figure IV: Mutilation of Luvah

obvious crucifixion parallels in this scene, we can connect this idea to the Messianic parallels inherent within the “eastern gate.” This whole scene — most likely because it refelcts a moent of material death — constitutes Luvah in the clear state of Gen2.

If Luvah is in Gen2, here, however, and the Orc character we will also analyze is also a product of Gen2, then the question remains as to which Eastern character will fully embody the

Messianic characters of Gen1: The answer lies in the figure known as the Lamb of God. The messianic parallels are obvious from the name. This relationship to Luvah, however, can be inferred from several passages. For example:

O Lamb Of God clothd in Luvahs garments little knowst thou Of death Eternal that we all go to Eternal Death94

And:

The wondrous work flow forth like visible out of invisible For the Divine Lamb Even Jesus who is the Divine Lamb Permitted all lest man should fall into Eternal Death For when Luvah sunk down himself put on the robes of blood Lest the state calld Luvah should cease, & the Divine Vision Walked in robes of blood till he who slept should awake.95

These two quotations, in conjunction, accomplish a variety of things. First, they associate the

Lamb of God directly with Luvah, but through name identification and through the usage of the phrase “robes of blood.” This identification is particularly ingenious, as it connects both to a common epithet for Luvah, while at the same time connecting him to the rhetoric concerning the sun we had seen in section 2.4 concerning juvenile poems such as “The Dawn.” In addition, the denial of Eternal Death in regards to the Lamb of God. In contrast to the prior description of

94 FZ. 27. 95 FZ. 33.

Luvah, emphasizes the non-materiality of the Lamb of God. Therefore, the character belongs to the echelon of Gen1.

Orc is an interesting character because, outside of the one mention to Luvah in The Book of Thel, he is much older Having said that, he is considered a “fallen form” of Luvah in Frye’s

Chart.96 References identifying Orc with Luvah are easy to find. For example:

Terrified Urizen heard Orc now certain that he was Luvah And Orc began to organize a serpent Body Despising Urizens light & turning it into flaming fire.97

Such a description serves as a clear identification of Orc with Luvah. It simultaneously parallels the conflicts which Luvah has with the figure of Albion. We thus see two conflicts occupying opposites side of the gen: 1). In the form of Luvah and Albion, who occupy the state of Gen1, and another with Orc and Urizen, which occupy the state of Gen2. This conflict may also reflect a change in Blake’s views on the loftiness of his own goals. To do this, we must first explore the landscape in which Orc is introduced.

He first appears in the poem America, where he fights a figure known as Albion’s

Angel.98 This imaginary gen is meant to mirror the real war which was fought between Britain and the Colonies. He later appears in the poem Europe, where a similarly revolutionary role is forced onto him.99 His origin is later chronicled in The Book of Urizen, where he is revealed to be the child of the characters Los and Enitharmon.100 The introduction of the characters allows me to make one final observation about the Luvah/Orc character before we turn ourselves toward the

96 Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 277-78 97 FZ. 80. 98 For the first appearance in America, see plate iii. For him against Albions Angel, see plate 5. 99 See Europe. 100 The Book of Urizen.. 20. 7-8. Erdman 80.

Figure V: Diagram of the East and Gen

next chapter: the malleability of their placement. A rearrangement of directions occurs in the major prophecies, where Orc is reoriented towards the South. This happens due to a curious event in which:

…Luvah assum’d the world of Urizen to the South And Albion was slain upon his mountains & in his tent All fell towards the Center in dire ruin. Sinking down And in the South remains a burning Fire: in the East a void In the West, a world of raging fires; in the north a solid.101

We learn before anything else, that the realignment of the directions was initiated by Luvah, and that it resulted from Albion’s Death. Thus — immediately— we see the nullification of a

Contrary within the Contraries. The Fallen Luvah (Gen2) against the dominant Albion (Gen1).

The fall results in Luvah’s relocation of the South. Now, what does the South signify? It is the dominion of Blake’s Zoa Urizen, the “son of Generation.” Therefore, the direction of the South can be thought of as a system under the auspice of Gen2, and the redistribution of the Zoas as an enhancement of this side of the gen. The enhancement of Gen2, which BLake saw as inherently lesser to Gen1, may have resulted in this description of the East as “vacuity.” It is empty because the relationship of Contrarties that had previously been susatend has now been obliterated, and he has left it without the central, defining component of the gen: the capacity for production.

Besides the slaying of Albion, however, there is more that is at work and occurring here. We should also discuss the second of these three quotations, which characterizes the East as the

“Center.”

Supplementing the above discussion, we should also take note of the following passage:

And the Four points are thus beheld in Great Eternity West. The Circumference : South. the Zenith, North The Nadir; East. The Center. Unapproachable for ever.102

101 M. 21. 19 - 23. Erdman 112-133. See a near word-for word duplication of this passage in J. 34. 38-42. 102 J. 12. 54-56

Here, the East is defined as the ‘Center.” In comparison to the assignments given to the other directions — Circumference, Zenith, Nadir — we see preference and incidence being given to the East. Like we have discussed before, the East is an orienting direction. That is, it is a direction that attunes focus and attention. It is also, in Blake’s sources, a direction of exceptional importance, compared to the others. These factors confirm the East’s importance and also allow the reader to make the associative leap in interpretation when describing anything with a

“Center” in the major prophecies. What is of note — however — is the “center’s” role in the realignment of the directions. In both the first and the third of the quoted passages alone, the realignment of the directions is described as a state where “all fell towards the Center.” What this implies, by the equivalence, is that all fell towards the East. However, this seems odd — as the primary consequence of the directional alignment that one term moves away from the East. My proposed answer involves the remembrance of the East’s, and Luvah’s, primary characteristics: war, instability, conflict. The fall happens towards the East because the East is the place where oppositions become intense, boundaries become blurred, and realignments become possible. This attribute of the East results in its fundamental paradox, exemplified by this moment: by becoming less Eastern, it becomes more Eastern by introducing instabilities within its own definition, the definition of Contraries. Gen1 is therefore evolving constantly, self-replicating, and creating continually in new oppositions hitherto unseen.

In this chapter, I have attempted to accomplish a much larger view of the gen then was introduced in the first. I have taken the simple opposition of two poles and transformed them from elementary word-particles to vast sets, containing immense stores of mythological data all continually encapsulated within the work of these two oppositional forces. This expansion mirrors the trajectory of Blake’s poetry — which expands from the trajectory of simple, almost

stereotypically Romantic truisms about Genius to a mythological realm which very few, even some of his most avid readers, are willing to follow him into. In the great breadth of this chapter, which has examined everything from Blake’s intertextual sources to symbolic interchanges in the prophecies, I acknowledge the potential to have confused or obfuscated. It is my hope that, in this chapter, I have been successful in only discussing the Blakean mythology in the components relevant to the gen. There is far more to explore in the poems, as there always is, and I hope primarily that this chapter has served as a primer for this discussion, not a closing point.

In the next chapter — I will apply the gen contrary to the symbol of fire. I have mentioned fire’s association with the East in this chapter as well, but the next will cover it in significantly more detail. It, like this chapter, flirts with a larger degree of density. But this explanation, and argument about fire, which I believe valuable for its own sake, will also serve as central argumentative fuel for the final chapter, where I come to a final verdict about the

Contraries in response to the ending which Blake has given for them.

Chapter III: Symbol of Fire

3.1: Introduction

In the previous chapter, I established two categories of the gen — Gen1 and Gen2 — and situate them in the East. Now, this chapter will play close attention to an element I have brought into context with the gen in its many forms: fire. We have seen this association previously — for example, with the fire and the Genii as seen in section 2.3 — but we have yet to provide a full account of how fire relates to the Contraries in the Blakean corpus. In this section, I argue that, like Genius and Generation, fire can be divided into two Contrary senses; prophetic fire and material fire. I designate these two senses as Fp and Fm respectively. I also argue that these two categories parallel, and are contained within, the division of Gen1 and Gen2. I emphasize, however, that these two types are the subterms of Gen1 and Gen2.

This chapter continues to operate within the intertextual methodology that characterized the second. The sections will follow the subsequent order: Section 3.2 will concern Blake’s symbolic sources for both the division and centrality of fire, 3.3 will concern the division within

Blake’s work, and 3.4 will argue for the role of the “furnace” in the prophetic poems, as a

“transfer” between the two separate states of fire, as well as the two separate states of gen.

3.2: Intertextual Sources for the Division of Fire

This chapter argues that in many of the symbolic sources Blake was reported to have read, a division of fire occurs. In this section, I will primarily consult the work of alchemists

(particularly Jakob Böhme), Swedenborg, Plato, and George Berkeley. I argue that both Bӧhme and Swedenborg divide fire into a positive, celestial term and a negative, material term.

Likewise, I argue that in Böhme, Plato, and Berkeley fire is given a place above the other three elements, and is singled out from them. Given Blake’s previously established penchant for appropriating ideas from his influences, the presence of these two conceptions of the serves as supporting evidence for similar qualities in Blake’s own usage of the symbol. This evidence will not be enough — and support this conclusion, but I believe it serves as a useful and intriguing starting point.

Probably the most obvious and explicit source for the division of fire would be Emanuel

Swedenborg. He writes in the Arcana Caelestia that:

5071… That eternal Fire is not elementary fire, may be very manifest; the Reason why it is not a Torment of Conscience is, because all who are in Evil have in no Conscience, and they who had none in the Life of the Body cannot have any in the other Life; but the Reason why it is Concupiscence is, because all the fiery vital principle is from the Loves appertaining to Man, the fiery celestial principle from the Love of God and truth, and the fiery infernal Principle from the Love of the Self and the Love of the World: That all Fire or Heat inwardly in Man is from these Sources, may be known to any one who attends thereto: From this Ground also i tis, that Love is called spiritual heat, and that by Fire and Heat in the Word Nothing else is signified.103

Here, Swedenborg discusses a difference between an “external” and “internal” fire. Likewise, he distinguishes between a “celestial” and an “infernal” principle. These conceptions should be understood to operate in parallel form. That is, “Celestial”/ “Eternal” as well as “Infernal”/

“Elementary” should be understood to be synonymous. What is most explicit here, however, is the commonalities and differences between the two sections of fire. They are both connected to a conception of “Love” and a “vital principle.” However, they are differentiated by their objects: the “eternal” / “celestial” fire directs its love towards God, while the “infernal”/ “elementary” fire is marked by a separation between material senses, which, as i have postulated, are the

103 Arcana Caelestia, henceforth cited as A.C. 5071, spelling modernized.

oppositional divide between Fp and Fm. This passage alone can serve as evidence for this faculty in Swedenborg.

This fire is further expanded upon in another section of the Arcana Caelestia. On one hand, Swedenborg states that “the reason why flame denotes Love Divine is, because love in it’s first origin is nothing else but fire and flame from the Lord as a sun.”104 Simultaneously, he states “that fire and flames in the opposite sense signify filthy loves, as the loves of revenge, of cruelty, of hatred, of adultery, and in general the concupiscencies derived from self-love and the love of the world.”105 These quotations once again maintain a separation between two senses of the word fire. In the first, Swedenborg states that fire in the first sense denotes “Love Divine.”

He argues that this is because this fire emanates from the “Lord as a sun.” If we recall arguments about the spiritual sun I have made in section 2.4, the relationship to the East also becomes abundantly clear. Fire in this case has the same signification as the Fp in the “celestial”/ “eternal” fire in the previous paragraph. Likewise, if we look at the second quotation, we see a recapitulation of the relationship with fire in the “elementary” / “infernal” of Fm, sense.

Swedenborg primarily uses the references to hell-fires to support this position. He associates these fires with what in the English translations is entitled “Lusts.” This particular word, which is what Blake would have understood had he come to this passage, is an association with sexuality this association would justify a pairing with a sexual “Generation” — the core principle of Gen2

— which is the corresponding gen relationship to Fm. In these passages, and the passage above,

Swedenborg draws a clear dividing line between Fp and Fm.

104 A.C. 6832, spelling modernized. 105 Ibid, spelling modernized.

This division, however, is not limited to Swedenborg among Blake’s influences.

Alchemy frequently evokes a dual-sun system, which apparently dates back to the Presocratic

Greek philosophers:

It is said of the philosopher and thamaturge Empedocles that he claimed the existence of two suns. The hermetic doctrines also include a double sun, and distinguish between a bright spirit-sun, the philosophical gold, and the dark natural sun, corresponding to material gold. The former consists of essential fire that is conjoined with the aether or the glowing air.106

This analysis equates a division of the celestial and material, which can still be grouped loosely under the auspice of Fp and Fm, under the conception of “suns” Swedenborg, as discussed in section 2.4, also postulated a difference between spiritual and natural suns. The usage of sun symbolism, inherently, also brings the discussion into the direction of the East, where the sun is prominent at its “Eastern gate.” It is, however, quite a Generality. We would do well to move to a specific example relevant to Blake.

For a specific alchemical example, I will turn to one of Blake’s greatest influences: Jakob

Böhme. In section 1.4, I discussed the passage in The Marriage in which Blake expresses an admiration for Böhme (which he spells Behmen, after translator William Law’s Anglicization) that exceeds Swedenborg. In Böhme’s most expansive alchemical work — appropriately for our purposes, entitled Aurora, or the Day-Spring in the East — Böhme makes a division among types of fire very much in the method we have seen thus far in this chapter. On one hand:

Fire is the very Son of God, which is generated always from Eternity to Eternity: This I can demonstrate by the Heaven and the earth … convincingly and undeniably, and, lastly, in Opposition against all Devils, and the gates of Hell: and I would do it here, if it would not take up too much room.107

While on the other hand:

106 Alexander Roob, Alchemy & Mysticism, (Koln: Taschen, 2018)), 25. 107 Behmen, Jacob. The Works of Jacob Behmen, the Teutonic Philosopher. Volume I. Containing I. The Aurora. II. The Three Principles To which is prefixed, the Life of the Author. With Figures, illustrating his Principles, left by the Reverend William Law, trans. William Law, (London: M. Richardson, 1764), 72.

When the Fire is kindled in a Creature, that is, when a creature elevates itself too high or too much, as Lucifer and his Legions did, then the Light extinguishes or goes out and the fierce, wrathful and hot source, the source of the hellish fire rises up, that is, the Spirit of the Fire goes up in the fierce Quality.108

The two passages clearly indicate opposing usages of fire. In the former, Böhme connects fire with the “Son of God.” Not only does this identification connect the conceit of fire to a celestial source, but it also associates this divine source with a Christ figure — which, as discussed in section 2.5, Luvah and the Lamb of God both are. In the latter passage, it is associated with

Lucifer.109 This identification results in a negative sense of fire.. Therefore, in Aurora as well, we can find a clear division between Fp and Fm.

Before we turn to arguments that view fire as a centrality within Blake’s sources, let us also examine passages in the Bible which inform what we will see as Blake’s division between a

“pillar of fire” and a “pillar of smoke”:

The Lord went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, so that they might travel by day and by night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.110

This passage occurs after the Israelites have fled Egypt and have begun to wander in search of the Promised Land. The pillar of cloud, and likewise the pillar of fire, are two separate manifestations of the Spirit of God It serves as a guide for the Israelites and as a navigator. There is therefore a division here between fire and something else (cloud). This point may seem more tenuous now, but will serve as a grounding port for an argument about Blake’s division of the pillar of smoke and pillar of fire in section 3.4, which I argue constitutes another form of the split between Fp and Fm.

108 Ibid. 109 Lucifer was occasionally referred to as the ‘Prince of the East” in Early Modern English literature. 110 Exodus 13: 21-22.

Now having established an evidence-base for the fiery division within Blake’s sources, we may move now to the arguments for fire’s centrality.

3.3: Evidence for Fire’s Centrality in Blake’s Sources

This section will attempt to prove the centrality of fire within three of Blake’s symbolic sources: Jakob Bӧhme, George Berkeley, and Plato. It will use each of the authors particularly to illustrate how they view fire to be in some way superior to, excluded from, and more holy than the other three elements.

The first source I will consult is George Berkeley’s Siris. Berkely was an Irish deacon and Idealist philosopher most well known for his work Principles of Human Knowledge, in which he argued, quite oddly, that all physical matter was the product of mental imagination.

Between these speculations, as well as between his clerical duties, Berkeley wrote an eclectic philosophical text entitled Siris. Blake annotated this work and in them expressed many of his views on Berkeley. His alliance with him seems primarily to be one of mutual enemies. In his annotations to Siris, Blake writes often in opposition to Berkeley’s claims. Take, for example, his response to Berkeley’s claim that the foundation of all knowledge is experimental. Blake writes in response:

Knowledge is not by deduction but Immediate by Perception or Sense at once Christ addresses himself to the man not to his Reason Plato did not bring Life & Immortality to Light. Jesus only did this.111

Here, Blake — in accordance with the structure of his religious views as we have seen thus far

— rejects empirical philosophy constructed around sense perception and instead favors what he sees as the gen-nature of Imaginative Vision. This point of view, framed as it is against the

111 Erdman 664.

foundational point of the scientific method, is obviously critiquable. My object is not to debate this in and of itself, but to draw attention to what it states about Blake’s relationship to Berkeley.

His relationship is one of opposition, one of Contraries, and one of gen. Blake pushes back against Berkeley’s ideas, but this creates his own.

Let us now take a look at the role of fire in Siris. Berkeley draws on two traditions to emphasize its primacy. First, he turns to the tradition of Greek philosophy:

Agreeably thereto, as aetheral substance or fire was supposed by Heraclitus to be the seed and generation of all things, or that from which all things drew their original. The Stoics also taught, that all substance was originally fire and should return to fire: That, an active subtle fire was diffused or expanded throughout the whole universe: and held together by its face. And it was the opinion of the Pythagoreans, as Laertius informs us, that heat or fire was the principle of life animating th whole system, and penetrating all the elements (a) The Platonists too, as well as the Pythagoreans, held fire to be the immediate natural agent or animal… In the Timaeus of Plato, there is supposed something like a net of fire and rays of fire, in a human body. Doth not this seem to mean the animal spirit, flowing or ratios darting thro all the nerves.112

In an acrobatic display of his learning, Berkeley emphasizes the importance of fire in a series of

Ancient Greek philosophy. He notes that in the Greeks, it is often viewed as a generator that manufactures life from a spiritual vital principle. The reference to Timaeus here is also key, and we will return to it shortly. He supplements this analysis with another:

It must be owned that there are many passages in holy scripture (a), that would involve one think the supreme being was in a peculiar manner present and manifest in the element of fire. Not to infinite [sic] that God is more than once said to be a consuming Fire, which might be understood in a metaphorical sense. The divine apparitions were by fire, in the bush at Mount Sinai, on the tabernacle, in the cloven tongues.113

In these passages, Berkeley provides evidence for the centrality of fire in the Christian Bible. in

Christian doctrine, it is associated with God and therefore also a continually creative urge.

112 George Berkeley. Siris: a chain of philosophical reflexions and inquiries concerning the virtues of tar water, and divers other subjects connected together and arising one from another. (Dublin: W. Innys, 1747). archives.org., 76. , spelling modernized. 113 Ibid, 85.

The next place we will look is once again the work of Jakob Böhme. In the Aurora, we also gives especial attention to fire.

All Qualities take their Beginning-Original in their Middle or Center : There-fore observe where the Fire is generated; for there rises up in the Flash of the Life of all the Qualities, and is caught in the Water, so that it remains shining, and is dried in the Astringency so that it remains corporeal and becomes shining, bright, and clean.114

Here, Böhme connects Fire quite literally with the concept of the Center. If we recall section 2.5

, in which I discussed the identification of the east with the Center in Blake’s poetry. Therefore, we see a series of equivalences that connect the Fire to the East, in an intertextual equation with

Berkeley’s commentary, we also see that fire is a generalizing principle of the same form and manner as the one described in the Greeks and in the Biblical passages quoted above.

Lastly, I wish to explore the centrality of fire in Plato’s Timaeus. It is mentioned in the

Berkeley passage above, and shares commonalities with the Böhme passage, also quoted in this section. This work of Plato’s — despite Blake’s occasionally intense opposition to the Greek and Roman classics — was formative for Blake. This is in large part due to the influence of

Thomas Taylor: a mathematician and Neoplatonist who Blake affectionately satirized in his poem “An Island in the Moon.”115The translation of Timaeus, the only one available in English at the time of Blake’s writing, is his:

But as the universe did not yet contain all animals in its capacious receptacle, in this respect it was dissimilar: to its exemplar….. He connected four: One, the celestial genus of the Gods, another, winged and air-wandering; a third, the aquatic form; and a fourth; that which is pedestrial and terrene. The idea, therefore, of that which is divine, or the inerratic sphere; he for the most part fabricated from fire that it might be the most splendid and beautiful to behold.116

114 Behmen, Jacob. The Works of Jacob Behmen, the Teutonic Philosopher. Volume I. Containing I. The Aurora. II. The Three Principles To which is prefixed, the Life of the Author. With Fugures, illustrating his Principles, left by the Reverend William Law, trans. William Law, (London: M. Richardson, 1764), 87. 115 Much has been said about Blake’s relationship to Neoplatonism through his friend, contemporary, and prominent mystic Thomas Taylor. For an in-depth explanation of this relationship (which will figure more in later chapters), consult Kathleen Raine’s Blake and Antiquity. 116 Plato, Timæus. The Works of Plato, viz. His Fifty-Five Dialogues, and Twelve Epistles in Five Volumes, Vol. II, trans. Thomas Taylor (London: R. Wilks, 1804), 499

Here, Plato’s character Timaeus, in the midst of recounting the creation of the world, discusses how the Creator (called the Demiurge) fashioned the four elements. What is useful for our purposes, however, is the characterization of fire. While all of the elements are given relatively basic descriptions — “pedestrial” for earth, “winged” for air, and the “aquatic form” for water — fire is described here as the “celestial genus.” Not only is the word given an elevated quality, but it is also given a gen-descendant descriptor: genus. Fire therefore finds itself lifted above all of the other elements, and associated with the gen.

With the sources now having been surveyed — we can turn to Blake’s work. The next section will concern the separation of fire within William Blake’s poetry.

3.4: The Separation of Fire in William Blake’s Work

This section attempts to test the framework of Fp and Fm by applying it to certain episodes within the Blake canon that contain fire. Like section 2.5, which concerned the East, there is no space here to be exhaustive. An extensive proof, covering everything of fire within

Blake’s poetry, will have to come later. That notwithstanding, I do believe that all of Blake’s references to fire can be grouped into these two categories. What I will do instead here, however is select representative examples of Fp and Fm. I will then graft them onto the gen diagrams in the previous chapter (Figures I and V). I will also connect Fp and Fm to Blake’s discourse on pillars — signaled earlier in section 3.2 — again using representative examples. In this chapter, then, I will apply the discourses laid out before in the earlier sections.

An early example of fire comes from “The Tyger” in Songs of Innocence and Experience, one of Blake’s most quoted and frequently anthologized works. It begins with the famous quatrain:

Tyger, tyger burning bright In the forests of the night What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?117

This passage works brilliantly well to conjure awe and terror, if it does little at this point to group it into either Fp and Fm. Perhaps its ending lines, excepting the repetition of the opening, can help shed light on this character:

When the stars threw down their spears And water’d heaven with their fears? Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?118

Terror continues to be emphasized in this passage. However, now we are given a point to work off of — an opposite and a Contrary. The Lamb, which also receives its own “Contrary” poems in the Songs, is a docile and innocent creature. It has yet to encounter Experience, as the Songs poems indicate is the natural process of maturation. It, therefore, becomes habitual prey for the ravenous “tyger.” Of course, what is also important to note is Blake’s invidious rhetorical question. These two opposing elements are not part of the same creation; even if they consistently find themselves at war. Lamb and Tyger are therefore Contraries on the side of

Innocence on one hand and Experience on the other. It is now up to me to show on which side of the gen the Tyger/Experience falls under. We can start by looking at what Experience denotes — maturation, aging, the ceasing of production — these are terms connected with materiality. If we think of how we divided the gen in respect to The Marriage, with Energy on one side of it and

Reason on the other, clearly Innocence fills with Energy and Experience fits with Reason. Where it becomes complicated, however, is how the fire is described in this poem. Does the fire of the tyger — in its fury, its horror, its shock and awe — fall into the category of the material?

117 “The Tyger.” Erdman 24. 118 Ibid, 25.

Figure VI: Diagram of Gen in Relation to Innocence/Experience

Clearly not, which is odd given the fact that we know that Experience falls under the sign of

Gen2. What remains, then, is to consider a more a more flexible position. The boundary between

Gen1 and Gen2 is clear, but the symbol of fire — despite — also being binary, seems more flexible. I have, in figure VI, therefore assigned the tyger’s fire to Fp.

This signification also seems to be the case when tygers appear in Blake’s major prophecies, which they do. Take, for example, a passage in The Four Zoas which describes the character of Orc:

Expanded they behold the error of the Sun & Moon The Elemental Planets & their orbs of concentric fire His nostrils breathe a fiery flame. His locks are like the forests Of wild beasts there the lion glares the tyger & wolf howl there.119

Here we see a recapitulation of the forest imagery that inaugurated “The Tyger.” The landscape in this passage is quite clearly set up as one of Gen2: it mentions the elements, which we know to be part of Blake’s maternal reality. They are “beholding” the sun — grounding it and its “Eastern

Gate” so to speak — which also seems to indicate a similarity of position with the Genii from section 2.3. However, the description of Orc here — despite that character also falling on the side of Gen2 — is clearly an impressive one. In this majestic moment, Orc’s fire is as inspired as a forest untamed by Experience — and the fire is the prophetic fire or Fp.

Another example of the tyger connecting prophetic fire in a material context can be found in the following passage, which concerns Urizen:

Then came he among fiery cities & castles built of burning steel Then he beheld the forms of tygers & of lions dishumanized men Many in serpents & wombs stretched out enormous length.120

119 FZ. 61. Erdman 341. 120 Ibid. 70.

Here, the background for these tygers once again becomes material. Serpents — as discussed in chapter II — represent sensual/material/sexual principles of organization. Likewise, the Zoa

Urizen is associated with the South, which as illustrated in Figure V falls under the category of

Gen2. The reference to “dishumanized men” seems to recall — looking towards section 2.3 — the souls of the dead or fallen, which in Swedenborgian theology become the Genii. Yet in all of this materiality, we can trust in the descriptor of the tyger as an emanator of prophetic fire, the personification of Fp.

Yet in order to actually demonstrate that there are two types of fire — Fp and Fm — we must show examples in which Fm is in operation. Luckily, these examples are actionable at several points throughout the poems.. For a passage explicitly connecting fire to Generation, consider the following passage from Jerusalem:

the Rocks of solid fire: the Ice valleys, the Plains Of burning sand: the rivers, cataract & lakes of fire The Inlands of the fiery Lakes: the Trees of Malice: Revenge and Black Anxiety: and the Cities of Salamandrine Men But whatever is visible to the Generative Man Is a Creation of Mercy & Love. From the Satanic Void The land of darkness flamd [sic]. But no light & no repose.121

Here, a series of fire-images are conjoined to the image of the Generative Man. These images, some of them quite sulfuric in context, create a certain sense of fear. Where they differentiate from the images of the tyger, however, are the invocations towards anxiety and vacuity. “Satanic

Void” — if we recall in section 2.2 — directly connotes materiality in the major prophecies.. It is quite literally the defining point of Generation, The fact that the fires in this passage emanate from there indicate that they are obligated to be Generative and therefore part of the landscape of

Fm.

121 J. 13. 41-46. Erdman 157.

Examples of material fire in the major prophecies are, as listed above, too numerous to list here. We could turn to references “among these flames incessant labouring” in The Four

Zoas.122 Or, we could focus on the numerous descriptions of Orc as early as America, which refer to him emitting “heat but no light.”123 But where, I think, this thesis would get away from itself is in a continuous threading of these examples, there is one more, rather large one, which we will come to when we tackle the pillars at the end of this section. For now, however, let us turn to find examples of Fp , which are clearly connected to the landscape of Gen1.

First, a quite direct and estimable example can be found at the end of the poem Milton:

Hiding the Humean Lineaments as with an Ark & Curtains Which Jesus rent: & now shall wholly purge away with Fire Till generation is swallowd [sic] up in Regeneration.124

This passage is taken from a point of Milton which, in contrast to the Last Judgment depicted in

The Four Zoas and Jerusalem, instead depicts Jesus’s victory over death in the Gospels. The

“Arks & Curtains” rent refers to a passage in which the “Curtains” of the temple are torn in two after the crucifixion is complete.125 By referencing this incident, Blake is associating the identity of the render with Divinity. In this case, the render is flames which “Purge away” Generation.

Therefore, they exist in opposition to it and, identifying it with its opposite, which Blake names here as “Regeneration.” From section 2.2, we already know that any incident of “Regeneration” is in fact part of Gen1.

Using one other example, in which little legwork has to be done to associate a relationship of fire to Gen1, let us take the following passage from The Marriage:

122 FZ. 31. 123 America. 4. 11. Erdman 53. 124 M. 48. 26-28. Erdman 142-43. 125 See Matthew 27: 51, Mark 15: 38, and Luke 23:45.

Figure VII: Hypothesized Gen/Fire Diagram

As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius, which to Angels look like torment and insanity.126

I briefly mentioned this passage in section 1.4. However, it serves quite a different purpose here.

Here, we must keep in mind the different signification of Hell in the early Blake poems as opposed to the later ones. Hell here is associated with Energy, and hectic Gen1. In considering the phrases “fires of hell” and “enjoyments of Genius” then, we should look at the nodes Hell and Genius as parallel and synonymous. Since the latter nodes are parallel, their semantic qualities are as well. We could therefore appoint these terms with the contained “fires of Genius” which directly situates fire emanating from a Gen1 term. This is because Gen1 and Genius are in effect synonymous, with the only difference being that a gen term contains all the members of its set, while the word Genius does not. Since “fires” parallels with “enjoyments,” we can see that this fire must be a fire of hell, joy, and therefore a non-material sense. There, we find another example of Gen1 emitting Fp.

To conclude this section, I wish to introduce the consummation of the terms from Exodus brought forth in section 3.2 — that is, the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire — in Blake’s later poetry. I argue here that the pillar of cloud (which Blake calls the pillar of smoke) and the pillar of fire can be divided amongst themselves in the same manner that Fp and Fm are. Like the Fp and Fm examples, space and time form constraints upon the feasibility and the desirability of account for every example. Instead, I will attempt to account for two representative ones.

Through these, I hope to demonstrate that the pillar of smoke is contained under Gen2 and corresponds to Fm , while the pillar of fire is contained under Gen1 and corresponds to Fp.

First, let us examine the following passage from Jerusalem. Here, we see the first instance of the pillar of cloud/smoke:

126 M.H.H. 6. Erdman 35.

Eastward a pillar of a cloud with Vala upon the mountains Howling in pain. Rebounding from the arms of Beulahs [sic] Daughters Out from the furnaces of Los above the head of Los A pillar of smoke writhing afar into Non-Entity rebounding Till the cloud reaches after outstretchd [sic] among the Starry Wheels Which revolve heavily & mightily among the Furnaces.127

In this passage, we see the reintroduction of the term “Eastward’ into our discourse Through all of the associations we have thus far uncovered, we know that such a descriptor automatically places us within the realm of the gen.. What we see in regards to the naming of the pillar is interesting. In the first instance, it is named a “pillar of cloud,” in the second, “a pillar of smoke.”

This clear restatement allows Blake to alter the second name in the reader’s mind. The first,

“pillar of cloud,” is the exact quotation from the Book of Exodus. The “pillar of smoke” evokes the same constitution as a cloud, yet also associates it with fire What we also associate with this pillar of smoke is the fact that we see it by travelling into “Non-Entity.” Non-Entity evokes materiality and therefore if we must pick Fp or Fm. Fm seems more appropriate in this instance.

Therefore, we will select that.

There is only one reference to the pillar of fire, in contrast to the myriad of ones towards the “pillar of smoke.” This one reference occurs in The Book of Ahania:

But the fiery beam of Fuzon Was a pillar of fire to Egypt Five hundred years wandering on the Earth Till Los seizd [sic] it … in a mass With the body of the sun.128

Fuzon is not necessary for understanding this passage, even if it may be confusing to add yet another term. He only appears in The Book of Ahania, and his role is quite similar to that of orc.

He rages against the figure of Urizen, but ends up soundly defeated. He is then crucified on the

127 J. 5. 48-53. Erdman 148. 128 The Book of Ahania. 2. 44-48 [Erdman 85]

Tree of Mystery — which is a role often given to Luvah. Therefore, there seems to be small confusion as to whence to place him in the gen. We must instead look to another place.

The key is the placement of the pillar of fire within the “body of the sun.” To look towards the sun is one thing — the role of the Genii — but to be placed in it is quite another. It is no longer what orients, but rather what is oriented to. Therefore, it bears a more celestial character then it would otherwise. Since it is the pillar of fire that is placed within the sun, it becomes a prophetic example of the burning and brilliant Fp.

Having explored the division of fire in a variety of instances and moments, we are now ready to transfer to the question of the centrality of the east, and the role of the furnace. This upcoming section will be the last before the final chapter.

3.5: Centrality of Fire (and the Furnace)

To be entirely honest, the best evidence for the centrality of fire is its very frequency. I have not recorded the number of usages — it is a task requiring more labor than was available in this span of time — but it is distinctly evident, as the word appears on almost every plate of the minor and major prophecies. I could point to other examples as well. For instance, in a series of illustrations Blake created entitled Gates of Paradise, he paints representative portraits of the four elements, and one instantly notices how much more intensely and aggressively fire is portrayed in comparison to the other elements (Figure VIII). However, these projects, which would themselves require deep investigation, are instead left to the reader. Open The Four Zoas,

Milton, or Jerusalem and count how often the words “fire,” “fiery,” or “flaming” appear.

What I will do instead in this chapter is examine the role of the furnace in the major prophecies. I argue in this section that the furnace functions as a way to transmute a character

Figure VIII: The Gates of Paradise

from one side of the gen to another. In this chapter, this will most likely concern this application as it pertains to Luvah. However, the usage of the furnace will become a major point of argumentation in section 4.6, in which it will concern Albion. For now, we will explore how it pertains to the Zoa Luvah.

To begin with, it should be mentioned that the furnace traditionally has a necessary role in the practice of alchemy. It is what allows the transmutation of one substance to another. In it, one purifies by fire another substance and prepares it for transmutation. It becomes useful, then, to view Blake’s “furnaces of affliction” through this lens. They allow a substance or character to move from one form or another, one shape to another, and this I believe is the case with Luvah.

In order to support this claim, I will look at the passages where Luvah “transforms” in the furnaces and see what follows.

We should note that, both in Frye’s chart and seemingly indicated in Blake’s diagram in

Milton (figure II), we already know that Luvah supposedly represents an “unfallen” form of the

Zoa. That is, he has not succumbed to materiality. This is rather an expression of Gen1. This has been previously established in section 2.5 — but it bears repeating for a future apprehension of what seems to be the problem with this. For now, I will merely express that this seems odd given certain other attributes the character seems to have. He is associated with war, a decidedly material concept, and one that conflicts openly with Blake’s anti-imperial beliefs. He is frequently described as “terrible” and “horrible.” Likewise, he fights the figure of Albion, which represents the Contrary nature of the East, and therefore seems violent and out-of-character for a being nominally associated with Innocence.

The answer, it seems to be, is in the submerging of Luvah within the furnaces. In the beginning of Jerusalem, the following scene occurs:

O thou seest not what I see is done in the Furnaces Listen I will tell thee what is done in moments to thee unknown Luvah was cast into the furnaces of affliction and sealed. And Vala fed in cruel delight; the Furnaces with fire.129

This passage seems to depict a form of torture. After this happens, a character named Vala, often thought to be the consort of Luvah, wails in response to “What has become.” This phrasing implies a form of change, which was undertaken in the furnace. The furnace is what transforms

Luvah into his fallen state — into Gen1 — and it is as we see in section 4.6, what transforms state of division into states of unity.

At the end of this chapter, we come to realize that we have dived very deeply into the pieces of Blake’s system. This divide is bound to raise questions. I believe the jump to the last chapter will quell many of these anxieties. In the last chapter, we will see the introduction fo the

“Last Judgment.” There, Blake unveils what he believes is his resolution for the Contraries and by extension for humanity. In the final chapter, I argue this very Silencing of the Contraries is the Reason that Blake fails. Blake has, up to now, spent his entire poetic career arguing for the importance of difference and the need or opposition. In the apocalyptic ends of his major poems, however, he instead pushes for stability and unity.

129 J. 7. 28-31 [Erdman 149-150]

Figure IX: Diagram of the Furnace Effect

Chapter IV: Last Judgment

4.1: Introduction

In the final chapter of this thesis, I will examine the “resolutions” of the Contraries found in The Four Zoas and Jerusalem. It will concern the resolutions of the divisions made present throughout the epic poems — including the sacrifice of the “Jesus” figure, who is yet another form of the Zoa Luvah. I will also briefly discuss the postcolonial and political implications of the use of the “East,” that concept I have spent so much time exploring. I argue, in those sections, that Blake’s usage of the “East” belies certain political orientalisms as described in the work of Edward W. Said. Most importantly and consequentially, I argue that the apocalypses in both Jerusalem and The Four Zoas are achieved by the unification of categories within the systems of the Zoas. What was once only an unstable “East” instead becomes an “eternal” permanent Albion in which there are no permanent categories or divisions. In doing this, I argue that Blake has turned his back on the Contrary gen — and therefore failed his own project.

4.2: The concept of the Last Judgment

Like much of the rest of Blake’s imagery, there is a clear foundational parallel between the prophetic imagery of the Bible and the poetic images of Blake. The Bible, as we have spent time establishing in the previous chapters, was a primary source for Blake’s images. While I have previously spent the majority of this space looking at the Old Testament prophets, the Book of Exodus, and the Gospels, it is now paramount to turn to Blake’s reading of the Book of

Revelation. A very clear instance of this reading occurs in a description of one of Blake’s own paintings, entitled “A Vision of the Last Judgment,” Blake describes how he sees the process of the apocalypse in the “Last Judgment”:

The Last Judgment is not Fable or Allegory but Vision [sic] Fable or Allegory are a totally distinct & inferior kind of Poetry. Vision or Imagination is a Representation of what Eternally Exists. Really & Unchangeably. Fable or Allegory is formd [sic] by the Daughters of Memory. Imagination is surrounded by the daughters of Inspiration who in the aggregate are calld [sic] Jerusalem.130

In this passage, Blake does not necessarily say anything substantially different from when I first analyzed his conceptions of religion and poetics in All Religions are One and The Marriage of

Heaven and Hell. That is to say, Blake continues to emphasize the imaginative spirits of the

Poetic Genius. The binary divide, which Blake establishes between the conception of “Vision” and “Fable of Allegory,” contains echoes of the previously established divide between the gen of the Genius and the gen of “vegetable generation.” We could view Fable/Allegory as being yet one more term in Gen2, and Vision as being the domain of Gen1. That is to say, there is one form of gen-ing established as superior, and one form of it established as inferior. They exist, and give themselves meaning, however, through the fact that they are Contraries.

Blake also establishes a connection between the figure of Jerusalem and the status of

“Vision.” Vision, then, is a state existing after the reunification of the four Zoas into the Giant

Albion. What Blake represents as Fable and Allegory also cannot represent Vision, which is the

Genius or higher formation of the gen. Instead, it must represent an inferior state of gen: which we have discussed in the second chapter as being “sexual generation.” Already, then, we are beginning to see a problem. If the integrity of Blake’s poetic system up until this point has been based on the mutual opposition of Contraries — the idea of a “Last Judgment” which resolves this opposition begins to feel counterintuitive.

Various other evidence for the continuity between “A Vision of the Last Judgment” and the prophetic poems exists. Blake continues to divide fire along the lines of Fp and Fm. First, he

130 Erdman 554.

explores the “hellish” and material use of fire, which is connected with materiality and the material/sexual replication of the gen:

The Last Judgment when all these are Cast away who trouble Religion with Questions concerning Good & Evil or Eating of the Tree of Those Knowledges or Reasons which hinder the Vision of God turning all into a consuming fire.131

And he later emphasizes this point with another hellish image:

Between the figures of Adam & Eve appears a fiery Gulph descending from the sea of fire Before the throne in this Cataract [sic] Four Angels descend headlong with four trumpets to awake the Dead. beneath these is the seat of the Harlot. [[xx]] Mystery in the Revelations she is [bound] siezd by two Beings each with three heads they represent vegetative Existence. it is written in revelations they strip her naked and burn her with fire.132133

The repetition of the fourfold recalls the four living creatures from Ezekiel and Revelation, who are simultaneously named by Paracelsus and Blake as the elemental creatures (one of which is the East/Fire side Genii) as pertains to the organization of the cardinal directions and the Zoa.

The underlying imagery contains many parallels between the Lamb of God’s (Luvah’s) sacrifice of himself and the machinations of his torturous Emanation Vala. Vala laughs and delights in the tortures of Luvah within the “furnaces” as discussed in section 3.5. The Lamb of God’s sacrifice, however, as we will eventually explore, provides the crux for the reunification of the “Living

Creatures” — that is, the elemental creatures which include the Genii. These Creatures, divided into the generative, are made whole into Albion once more by being cast into the fire.

The reason why I focus on the fires, however, is to show that this is once again the material, torturous fire of Orc and Luvah after he is transmuted in the furnaces. These creatures

131 Erdman 554. 132 Erdman 558. 133 Revelation 17: 12-14, 16. “And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but they are to receive authority as kings for one hour: together with the beast. They are united in yielding their power to the beast; they will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of Kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful… and the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will hate the whore; they will make her desolate and naked: they will devour her flesh and burn her up with fire.”

replicate the torture through which Luvah was to go before he waged war on Albion. Embodying these two contradictory roles, Luvah remains the personification of an instability of elements within the East. The first section quoted above further corroborates this.

The reference to the Tree of Mystery further establishes the fiery connection between the crucifixion scenes of Luvah and Fuzon as they appear in the major prophecies and The Book of

Ahania respectively. Luvah, as discussed in section 2.5, is himself crucified on the Tree of

Mystery. Both figures represent the sacrifice of Christ: a form of material death. This material death, associated with the material form of fire, however, is merely a prelude to the redemptive sacrifice of the Albion, and the reunification of the Zoas.

The second interpretation of fire— that is, the celestial one— also occurs within the text of “A Vision of the Last Judgment.” For example:

If the Spectator could Enter into these Images in his Imagination approaching then on the Fiery Chariot of his Contemplative Thought.134

Here, Blake associates the “Fiery Chariot” with the faculty of thought. Thought, as Blake approaches it, is a sublime act. Blake associates it with what he considers the divine arts--making poetry, “art & manufacture,” — that is, the holy city of Golgonooza. This is further corroborated by the following narrative:

Then he would arise from his grave.135

This phrase directly echoes the language at the end of the Book of Revelation, in which the dead arise and are given new life.136 It is therefore the celestial fire that powers the “Fiery Chariot” of

“Contemplative Thought.” Blake believes that this imaginative force that powers Imagination,

134 Erdman 560. 135 Erdman 560. 136 Revelation 20: 12-15.

Vision, and Regenerative communication. It is this celestial fire of Genius that fuels the work of

Jerusalem.

4.3: The Last Judgment in The Four Zoas

In The Four Zoas, Blake entitles the apocalyptic chapter “Night the Ninth.” It begins with an invocation towards the symbol of fire, starting with the following quotation:

Los his vegetable hands Outstretchd [sic] his right hand branching out in fibrous Strength Seizd [sic] the Sun. His left hand like dark roots coverd [sic] the Moon And tore them down cracking the heavens across from immense to immense Then fell the fires of Eternity with loud & shrill Sound of Loud Trumpet.137

Here we see the recapitulated of several images directly related to the East, and to the Book of

Revelation. First, the image of the trumpet recalls the four trumpets of the Living Creatures, as well as the angels whose trumpets break the seventh seal. The blackening of the sun, meanwhile, reflects the second level of the gen. If we recall the image of the blackened sun from Emanuel

Swedenborg’s hell, as discussed in section 2.3, we will remember that it is to this “black orb” that replaces the sun that Swedenborg’s Genii face. This image signals the overshadowing of an impossible well, one directly related to the shrinking of the aspect of the Genius.

In the apocalypse of The Four Zoas, the Eastern figures of Luvah and Vala play a central role. The Eternal Man, Albion, becomes exasperated with Urizen, the Zoa of Reason:

Thy self-destroying beast formd [sic] Science shall be thy eternal lot My anger against thee is greater than against this Luvah For war is energy Enslavd but thy Religion The first author of this war & distracting of honest minds Into confused perturbation & strife & honour & pride Is a deceit so detestable that I will cast thee out.138

137 FZ. 117. 6-11. Erdman 386. 138 FZs. 120. 40-45. Erdman 390.

Recalling passages from section 3.5 , Luvah, after being tortured in the alchemical furnaces,

(which transmute Luvah to material, and not prophetic, fire), wages war against Albion. This war was meant to represent the mental state of Orc, a revolutionary figure that Blake would originally support, but eventually believed betrayed his ideals. In this passage, we see that Albion sees legitimacy even in the Gen2 activities which characterize Luvah’s behavior on the other side of the furnace. That is to say, while he believes that war is evil — it is “Energy enslavd.” If we recall that in The Marriage Energy is one of the defining signifiers of Gen1, this passage becomes uncannily brilliant. The Energy that is enslaved is a signifier for the state that Luvah has been transmuted to due to the furnaces.

In Jerusalem, this leads to Luvah’s sacrifice and crucifixion by the sons of Urizen, and eventual reincarnation that encourages Albion’s transmutation. Here, however, Urizen forces the apocalypse to take a different path:

I alone in misery supreme Ungratified give all my joy unto this Luvah & Vala … Let Orc consume let Tharmas rage let dark Urthona give All strength to Los & Enitharmon & let Los self [[]] Rend down this fabric as a wall round & family external Rage Orc Rage Tharmas Urizen no longer curbs your rage.139

Here, Urizen seems to give up his position to all of the other Zoas. However, given that he is responding to Albion, who showed a preference for Luvah, and that he refers to “rage,” which is specifically the domain of Luvah, Orc, and the Wine-Press, there seems to be a strong emphasis on the emotions of fire associated with the East. He is in effect stating that his resignation should allow the unstable elements of the Zoatic cosmology to rule. In that case, then it would seem to give license to a full embracement of the gen contraries, and by removing Urizen one is really

139 FZ. 121. 17-26. Erdman 390.

removing the possibility or the Negation. Unfortunately, this is not the route Blake goes down, and he ends up undermining his contrary ideal.

In the ending of The Four Zoas, we also see redemption when it comes to Luvah and

Vala. Blake had previously depicted Luvah with bulls driving slaves. Now, however, the slaves are shown to be freed:

Then all the Slaves from eery Earth in the wide Universe Sing a New Song drawing confusion in its happy notes.140

This happens due to a series of passages that demonstrate the redemption of Luvah from material fire. For example:

And now fierce Orc had quite consumd [sic] himself in Mental Flames Expanding all his energy against the fuel of fire The Regenerate Man stoopd [sic] his head over the Universe & in His holy hands receivd the Flaming Demon & demoness of smoke And gave them to Urizens [sic] hands the Immortal framd saying

Luvah & Vala henceforth you are Servants obey & live You shall forget your former state return O love in peace Into your place the place of seed not in the brain or heart … Invisible Luvah in bright clouds hoverd [sic] over Valas head And this their ancient golden age renewd [sic]for Luvah spoke With voice mild from his golden Cloud upon the [[]]

Come forth, O Vala, from the grass and from the silent Death Rise from the dews of death for the Eternal Man is Risen

She rises among flowers & looks towards the Eastern clearness.141

There are multiple symbolic resolutions to unravel within this passage. First, Orc is described as wrestling with and having “consumed” himself within fire. He has expanded all of his “energy,” which , derived from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, represents the hellish part that rebels against Reason. Orc’s rage— corrupted by materiality— becomes absorbed within the

140 FZ 134. 30-31. Erdman 403. 141 FZ. 126. 1-33.

“Regenerate Man.” This Regenerate Man is the opposition of Generation and therefore contained within Gen1. The “mental fires,” which Orc finds himself quite consumed within, represent an instance of Fp — completing the celestial picture. We know this because of the earlier lines in

Blake’s “A Vision of the Last Judgment,” which indicate that mental fires will occur as a form of

Fp. It is through this that the antagonisms of the Contraries on the material level may cease to be, and instead is replaced by the marriage Contraries on the celestial level, where the celestial or mental fire is located.

Albion, meanwhile, raises Luvah out of celestial antagonism. He instead becomes “His

Servants”--which serves as the crux of his redemption and the firestarter for the reunification of

Albion. The clouds— explained in section 2.5 to be associated with the East, and also Satan and

Opacity--are reduced from a state of darkness to clarity. Blake makes this relation more explicit with the last quoted line, as Vala— the Emanation of Luvah— “looks” towards the Eastern clearness. She, like the Genii who “guard the Eastern gate” which we have described in section

2.3, guards the Holy City of Golgonooza, in both bliss and harmony.

Blake emphasizes the redemption of these characters further by a series of other passages.

Each of them highlight this deliverance. For example:

And Luvah & Vala saw the Light their spirits were fixd In all their ancient innocence the floods depart the clouds Dissipate or sink.142

And:

The Eternal Man arose he welcomd [sic] them by the Feet The feast was spread in the bright South & the Eternal Man Sat at the Feast rejoicing & the wine of Eternity Was servd [sic] round by the flames of Luvah all day & all night.143

142 FZ. 131. 34-36. Erdman 400. 143 FZ. 133. 1-4. Erdman 401.

Where the Contrary opposition between the East and the South — as it appears in Jerusalem in the second chapter of this thesis — is finally reconciled, and Blake resolves the entire environment into the celestial variety of flame. We can see this through a series of signifiers in these passages. Luvah & Vala are shown to be located in the “bright South.” However, unlike the realignment of directions which affected Orc in section 2.5, there is no antagonism in this directional shift. Rather, it is not a shift but a merging. East & South cease to differentiate — cease to be Contraries — and instead become one Entity. This is the purest form of Negation that one could possibly muster.

Likewise, these images finally resolve into a reconciliation of the image of the sun. The sun, as established in section 2.4 of this thesis, is the personification of the East. Like the

Genii— it is a form of gen, the spiritual sun of Swedenborg. It is the glorious image at the

“Eastern gate.” At the end of The Four Zoas “Night the Ninth,” Blake informs the reader that:

The Sun has left his blackness has found a fresher morning And the mild moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night And Man walks forth from the midst of the fire the evil is all coverd [sic] His eyes behold the Angelic Spheres arising night & day The stars consumd [sic] like a lamp blown out on their stead behold The Expanding Eyes of Man behold the depths of wondrous worlds One Earth one sea beneath nor Living Globes wonder but stars Of rise rise up nightly from the Ocean & one Sun Each morning like a New Born Man issues with songs & Joy … Animal forms of wisdom night & day That risen from the Sea of Fire renewd walk o’er the Earth.144

This passage resolves most of the central ambiguities present in the East relationships. At the very beginning of “Night the Ninth,” as I have discussed, Los darkens both the sun and the moon. Both are freed from this covering in this passage. The Sun, which is our primary concern, can also be thought of as Luvah himself. What was once a warlike emotional persona, also

144 FZ. 138. 26-27.

represented sometimes through the generative form Orc, has now been rested at peace. Fp leaves man behind in the third line. The “evil” which is assigned to these fire, is “consumed” or finished. However “animal forms of rise” rise from a sea of fire, which demonstrates that the prophetic fires of Gen1 are still active in the state that has been created.

In all of these images, it is clear that the resolution of the Contraries is essential to the reunification of Albion and the unblackening of the sun. In all of its most essential elements it is shown that the East and Luvah have a central role in enacting this last judgment. Albion reconciles with Luvah, as does Urizen, and the unity of these two Contraries allows the states of antagonism that define the East as a place unstable to the other cardinal directions to disappear.

What remains is an East that has not been set apart, but instead becomes the norm. Orc disappears into “mental” fires, leaving only a stability which removes the other directions of their identity. All becomes Albion.

4.4: The Last Judgment in Jerusalem

As I have discussed, The Four Zoas was not Blake’s final verdict on his own mythology.

He never engraved The Four Zoas — and in 1803 he began a replacement epic that would be made up of the two poems Milton and Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, Luvah is also arguably the central Zoa and the driver of the last judgment, but in a more abstracted form. He becomes a figure with an even greater Christ parallel than he had in The Four Zoas, as the realm of Gen1 becomes inhabited by characters such as Jesus and the Lamb of God.

As I have discussed in section 2.5 , Luvah is connected with the Jesus and Lamb of God characters primarily through his multiple torture and crucifixion scenes. These are seen most clearly in the aforementioned Chapter III of Jerusalem: where the sons of Urizen “nail” him to

the Tree of Mystery. The Christ parallel, therefore, is clear. In Jerusalem, a substantially more

“Christian” poem than The Four Zoas, it is Jesus that ultimately provides for the reunification of

Albion in the Last Judgment.

Jesus is identified with the Lamb of God not only through the obvious biblical parallel, but also the following passage in Jerusalem:

Jesus replied. I am the Resurrection & the Life. I Die & Pass the Limits of Possibility as it pertains To individual perception. Luvah must be Created And Vala; for I cannot leave them in the growing: … … Tho Valas cloud hid thee & Luvahs fires followed thee Only believe & trust in me

So spoke the Lamb of God. while Luvahs cloud redenning above.145

Here, the Lamb of God and Jesus are identified with the same speaker. That speaker, the Lamb of God/Jesus, centers his argument — like Albion in The Four Zoas — on the redemption of

Luvah. Luvah has fallen into a material state, like Orc, as was discussed in the second chapter.

Orc’s primary motif, the reddening cloud, is therefore applied to him. Jesus, meanwhile, announces that he is about to pass the limits of “individual perception.” This line recalls the very first discussions on the Poetic Genius found in All Religions are One and There is No Natural

Religion. Namely, the prophetic impulse is stated to lie not in the “ratio” of material experience, but rather within the imaginative portion of the gen — that is, within the Genius.

It is with this understanding that we can turn to the final exchange between Jesus and

Albion. Jesus, as we have come to see in the above paragraph, represents the Lamb of God-- which is in turn a re-celestialization of Luvah. Then, like the passage in The Four Zoas, we can interpret the final conflict as one between Luvah and Albion:

145 J. 62. 18-30. Erdman 213.

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Jesus replied Fear not Albion unless I die their constant line But if I die I shall arise again & they with me This is Friendship & Brotherhood without it Man is not.146

To which Albion replies:

Cannot Man exist without Mysterious Offering of Self for Another, is this Friendship & Brotherhood I see thee in the likeness & similitude of Los my friend.147

Which finally gives us:

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 still The Sons & Daughters of Albion on soft clouds wakend [sic] from sleep Soon all around remote the Heavens burnt with flaming fires And Urizen & Luvah & Tharmas & Urthona arose into Albions [sic] bosom.148

These passages constitute the effective resolution for the reunification of the Zoas in the poem

Jerusalem. Like in The Four Zoas, there is an erosion in the distinctions between the Zoas which fuels the final “vision” of apocalypse, in which Albion wrestles Eternity from the state of

Division it had been subjected to. It also constitutes — if we bring to mind the explorations we undertook in section 4.2 — a victory of Gen1’s “Vision” over Gen2’s “Fable or Allegory.”

However, there are emphases particular to this telling that are worth explaining.

First, the image of sacrifice, previously associated with Luvah, Orc and Fuzon, is recapitulated both with the figure of Jesus and with Albion himself. Like Luvah at the beginning of Jerusalem, Albion is cast into the “Furnaces.” We saw the effect that the furnaces had on

Luvah in section 3.5 , which was one of transmutation. Like I discussed in that section, the transmutive effect, derived from Blake’s reading of alchemy, Luvah was transmuted in these

146 J. 96. 14-16. Erdman 255 147 J. 96. 20-22. Erdman 256. 148 J. 96. 35-42. Erdman 256.

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furnaces from Fp and Gen1 to Fm and Gen2 .Here, however, with Albion, the reverse form of transmutation occurs. We know this from what follows from the lines “All was Vision.” Vision, connected to Jerusalem and the Last Judgment, signals the celestial environment through which all is achieved in the “flaming fires.”

An important bit of attention must also be given to Los, who Jesus (Lamb of God/Luvah) is supposed to resemble. We have discussed in section 2.5 how the boundaries of the East, personified in Luvah/Orc/the Lamb of God, are more elastic than the other directions. Its ability to spill into the others and have others spill into it, contrasts it with the other three cardinal directions. Los, who provides the construction of the furnaces, constitutes a strong example of this proof. Los personifies imagination, in another form as has been documented among scholars.

It is therefore logical that he should arise a sa blurred boundary through the focal point of the prophetic fire generated by the transmutation of Albion into the celestial.

In The Four Zoas, we also saw Los blacken and unblacken the sun to book-end the events of the Last Judgment. This represents the connection of the sun to the “Eastern gate,” which we can therefore connect to the fiery East itself. In Jerusalem, there is a comparable image:

Thou seest the Sun in heavy clouds Struggling to rise above the Mountains. In his burning hand He takes his Bow.149

Such a formulation mirrors the image of Los when he blackens the sun in The Four Zoas. In which the Sun takes on many of the characteristics we have seen in the “Eastern gate” imagery of the illustration to Milton.

In the previous two sections, I have argued the centrality of the East and Luvah to the occurrences of the final judgment in The Four Zoas and Jerusalem. Throughout this thesis as a

149 Jerusalem. 95. 11-13. Erdman 255.

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whole, I have focused on the existence of the gen in Contraries of the East in Blake’s poetry.

Doing this, I have often stayed close to Blake himself. In these final two sections, I would like to challenge Blake on the very concept of the unstable East. This challenge may seem odd to some, as I have spent this thesis thus far “reading into” Blake’s work in a very abstracted degree.

Others might instead find this process representative of deconstruction, or perhaps of psychoanalysis. I do not embody the second and I reject the first. The coherence of the particular suggestions made prior comes from a close reading — and close reading with somewhat arbitrary conditions — certainly. But if one of his readers stays close enough to Blake for long enough, as well as to his sources, many of these assumptions themselves begin to brew. I therefore feel obliged to address a particular problematic point--and then a broader issue with the resolution of the gen.

4.5: The Infernal East and Edward W. Said’s Orientalism

The first problematic point, which should be addressed, is that the East is not purely symbolic for Blake. It is also geographical. Take, for example, this passage from The Song of

Los:

Adam shudderd [sic] ! Noah faded! black grew the sunny African When Rintrah gave Abstract Philosophy to Brama in the East.150

With many associations established between the East, the fallen Luvah, and slavery in the prior passages of this thesis, this association becomes uncomfortable for the modern reader. In this passage, Africa is also consolidated with “Brama,” a Hindu deity. Even if Blake meant for this consolidation to occur for purely symbolic purposes, it betrays a fundamentally broken way of

150 The Song of Los. 3. 10-11.

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homogenizing vastly different cultures and geographies which could only occur from an English colonial perspective.

This example is not an isolated one. The East also occurs in a similar manner in other prophetic poems:

Mountains where Giants dwell in Intellect Now given to stony Druids, and Alegoric Generation To the Twelve Gods of Asia.151

As well as:

Canaan is his porto; Jordan is a fountain in his porch A fountain of milk & wine to relieve the traveller. Egypt is the eight steps within. Ethiopia supports his privilege Lybia & the lands unknown. are the ascent without Within is Asia & Greece, ornamented with exquisite orbs Persia & Media are his halls: his inmost is greatest Tarley China & India & Siberia are his temples for entertainment.152

In the first quote, we see the location of “Asia” assigned to the set of Gen2 on two counts; first on the level of Generation (its namesake), and second on the level of Allegory (as discussed in section 4.2). Likewise, Eastern geographical images are used to substitute for the symbolic East

Blake has used in other places. Here, the ethics in Blake’s usage of the East become murky. Is he using the East to personify a quintessential Western fear and ostracization? It may seem so.

What is at work here, as mentioned above, is a specific colonial imagination. Blake may have been a figure almost out of his own time in his revolutionary politics, his feminist advocacy, his staunch abolitionism, and his relatively elastic understanding of gender. He is still, however, ultimately bound by the discourses and attitudes of his own time. We see in the passages above a tendency towards a certain homogenization of nations and elements. His use of symbols Luvah and Orc as unstable, warlike, “hellish,” and as purveyors of “Energy” can

151 J. 50. 1-3. 152 J. 58. 33-39.

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therefore not be viewed without this understanding. It is an understanding that belongs to a larger political/nationalist current which I wish to acknowledge here.

This current has been well-described by Edward W. Said’s oft-celebrated and oft-derided work Orientalism. I do not have the space or the inclination to argue the book’s central claims here, but I will cite one key idea as it pertained to the English and French view of the “orient” at the time, which is its method of:

Alternat[ing] in the mind’s geography between being an Old World to which one Returned, as to Eden or Paradise...and to being a wholly new place to which one came as Columbus came to America.153

This passage reflects the binary divisions of the gen itself; and how it manifests into reducible forms. The “New” World is personified by the oppositional characteristics between the celestial and material forms. The celestial, including the un-transmuted Luvah/Jesus/Lamb of God, the prophetic fire, represents an “enthusiastic” New World vision. On the other hand, the fallen

Luvah/Orc/Fuzon, material fire, the Genii, Generation, represent an Old World antagonism. This type of Contrary, and it is worth bringing this point to scrutiny, is one that would most likely not result in any sort of idyllic production. It would bring about some form of production, certainly, but this production would be warlike machinations that become to real, too engrossed in the

Gen2 of actual horror, to be appreciable.

There is also a second symptom to the West’s relationship with the Orient:

the Orient is corrected, even penalized, for lying outside the boundaries of European society; “our” world.154

This point concerns the fear of the East for “falling outside the boundaries” of a Western modality. Both of these tendencies — that is, the tendency to have a mutually oppositional or

153 Edward W. Said, Orientalism, (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 58. 154 Ibid, 67.

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dialectic understanding of the East, as well as the tendency for the East to be thought of as lying

“outside the boundaries” of a Western mold — are found in Blake’s approaches towards the

“infernal” East.

While Blake’s attitude is not one of fear, he does, as I have argued extensively over the course of this thesis, place the “East” in a space set apart from the other elements and directions.

The East is not only excluded from those other directions, but it is also made out to be more unstable and more volatile. When one is thinking only of an abstract metaphysical quality, there is nothing wrong with this. The problem comes when this abstract metaphysical quality is in fact a driving force The consequence is an imperial attitude that contradicts and ultimately nullifies

Blake’s revolutionary sympathies.

Blake may have been genuinely interested in the texts and the religious doctrines of his age; but if the extent of his sympathy is aligning them with an “unstable” East then he becomes a false friend. He is then as guilty of dogma, over-generalization, and over-conceptualization as his own Urizen.

4.6: Nullifying Contraries: The Last Judgment as a Reversal of Blake’s System

Some readers may have noticed an odd and embarassing trajectory in this final chapter’s argument. That is, up until this point I have characterized the East and the gen as a war of

Contraries that are perpetually unstable. This has, in fact, been my core thesis. Now, however, I have come to say that the final resolution of the Blake epics is one of, well, resolution: the Zoas are United, the distinctions disappear, and Albion is restored as a single monist entity. Albion becomes easy to define because he encapsulates all possible definitions. This ultimately seem to contradicts the core premise in my argument, which is that Blake sees the ideal state of Man as

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one of Contrary opposition. This confusion is not an accident on my part. In his final statement on the prophetic canon, Blake really does seem to abandon these ideas. He leaves behind the

“infernal east” as well as the key statement from The Marriage: “Without Contraries there is no

Progression.”

I believe that this, even more than the problematic and outdated constructions discussed in the prior section, constitutes Blake’s greatest aesthetic failure. It is odd for a critical essay to use this phrase in this particular era. But I think any sort of unification, any sort of reconciliation, betrays something fundamental about Blake’s artistic practice. That is, he seems to break all of the formal rules — he creates a mythology so dense as to be off-putting to nearly all readers, he does away with meter and rhyme, he blurs the distinction between poetry and painting, he derides the classics and instead prefers the mystics, madmen, and eccentrics of his own time— and yet he cannot move away from facile endings. He, in effect, goes back on his own position.

There are implications to this, both aesthetic and philosophical. In the aesthetic sense, it feels unsatisfying for such a luminary to settle on resolutions so utterly conventional. But it is the philosophical which I wish to touch on here.

In creating a system of Contraries — a system I have tried dutifully to explore in this thesis in all of its thorny tangles — Blake stumbled upon a system of thinking that remains utterly unique. To embrace a thing and its opposite, and deem them both necessary, is a challenging project in multiple arenas. In the sense of philosophy and logic, one brushes up against violations of the law of non-contradiction. One can become accepting of multiple super- imposed realities, become comfortable with the architecture of interlocking structures of sense and non-sense. All things exist in their corresponding opposite, and the implications of this mode of thinking for apprehending problems and creating art are massive. By Negating it, he reduced

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its actionability within even those who’d deem themselves crazy enough “to” read the prophecies. He has, in effect, shut down his most important opening to inquiry.

This is not to say that I hate Blake’s ending, but only that this thesis should end with a challenge not to resolve. All things can remain in opposition and difference. But as for Blake, it was too much for him. He did close the door; he did betray the infernal east.

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Postscript

A work such as this one inevitably opens up as many questions as it answers. While I hope that a reader may apply these ideas in whatever fashion they see fit, I also wish to enter into a series of further questions which — due to the constraints of time, length, and scope — I have been unable to investigate here. These are notes both for myself and for the reader, and may serve as openings for future debate.

The first is the question of opposition and negation. In this thesis, we have seen the positive role of the Contrary (as it pertains to the gen) but a negative role given to the concept of

Negation. Contraries are viewed as productive, but negations nullify oppositions and render them unproductive. A future paper will hopefully examine the application of both of these ideas within the Blake canon, and continue to examine how the opposition (one may say, Contrary) between these two ideas can contribute to an understanding of the Blakean poetics.

The second point of investigation relates to my commentary on the first. When we oppose a system of Contraries — by stating that something is a Negation of those Contraries — we are in fact simultaneously creating a new Contrary system between poetic production and poetic non-production. I have mentioned this paradox at several points within this thesis, but I have yet to have the space to fully examine it. This, in particular, seems a question that would be fruitful to examine under the constraints of philosophical logic. These interplaying systems of

Contraries and non-Contraries seem increasingly maddening at a further glance, and I have only avoided their powerful influence over this thesis by deliberately avoiding a detailed exploration of this problem.

Finally, and this is largely a point illustrating my own future desires and goals, the extract of a poetic system based on oppositions has far wider application than an analysis of Blake, or

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even an analysis of the Romantics. A future book-length project could consider the poetic meaning of gen and Contraries in the larger fields of structural theory and general poetics. There are both, I think, creative and pedagogical uses for such a theory. It is here that I sketch out only the introductory point in a system of much greater breadth, length, and height.

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Glossary of Key Terms

Albion: The ancestral name for the British Isles, who also functions as the “Eternal Man” in Blake’s later prophecies. According to Blake, the material universe first began because different aspects of Albion were divided from itself, and that our salvation will come from a reunification with the figure.

Fp : Prophetic Fire, which connotes celestial relations.

Fm: Material Fire, which connotes earhtly relations.

Fuzon: a Character in The Book of Ahania who is inconsequential, associated with fire.

Gen: The key-term I use to describe the production of two or more oppositions.

Gen1: The set that contains all things pertaining to Genius/Regeneration.

Gen2: The set that contains all things pertaining to Generation.

Generation: The creation that comes from materiality, opposite of Genius.

Genii: The elemental creature representing fire in Blake’s work. I argue that he developedthe idea from Swedenborg.

Genius: The creation that comes from imagination.

Los/Urthona: The Zoa of the North, and the closest thing the major prophecies have to a protagonist. He is viewed as the personification of imagination.

Luvah: The Zoa of the East, represents passion and emotions. Part of Gen1 only nominally in the major prophecies. In unfallen form, represents Gen1.

Orc: Fallen form of Luvah. He is associated with revolution, and represents Gen2.

Urizen: Zoa of the South, represents Reason and Religious Dogma. The closest thing the major prophecies have to a villain.

Zoa: One of the “four immortal starry ones” that Albion is divided into when division first takes place. Contrast with elemental creatures.

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