Jerusalem” As City and Emanation: Places and People in Blake’S Poetry

“JERUSALEM” AS CITY AND EMANATION: PLACES AND PEOPLE IN BLAKE’S POETRY C.C. BARFOOT The obvious place for an article such as this to start is with the lyric that everyone knows as “Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’”: And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic Mills? Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold! Bring me my Chariot of fire. I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green & pleasant Land.1 In Blake’s Preface to Milton, this is followed by a quotation from the Bible (Numbers xi 29): “Would to God that all the Lord’s people were prophets!” To which we can only say, Amen! – especially after one has paused to consider the ways that “Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’” as well as Blake’s Jerusalem (his concept and dramatization of “Jerusalem”) has been hijacked and abused by all sorts of people who have never cared to discover what he might have meant by the name and who would have been outraged if indeed they had ever found out. 1 William Blake, Milton, “Preface” (text as in Blake, Complete Writings, ed. Geoffrey Keynes, Oxford Standard Authors edn, Oxford, 1966, 480-81). 60 C.C. Barfoot Consider, for instance, this snippet from The Observer the Sunday before the 1997 Conservative Party Conference: Last Thursday, in the back room of the Gloucester Museum, the Woman’s Institute was having its weekly meeting .... You expected the people present to end the proceedings by singing “Jerusalem”, the anthem of both the WI and the Conservative party.2 Sadly, one doubts whether most members of the Women’s Institute can have more than a sentimental understanding of “Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’”, and they would no more want to build his version of Jerusalem “In England’s green & pleasant land” than would the majority of “Last Night” Promenaders, or members of the Tory Party, or English football supporters who now claim the anthem for their own. What kind of “Mental Fight” can we conceive any of these groups being engaged in that Blake could possibly have approved of? Blake’s view of the real state of his Jerusalem at the beginning of this new century would not have been very different from his perception of the place and the person at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth: I behold Babylon in the opening Streets of London. I behold Jerusalem in ruins wandering about from house to house.3 In this brief essay on what is indeed a vast subject, I am chiefly interested in the way that the symbolism of these two cities, Babylon and Jerusalem, used by Blake not only in traditional, biblical and churchy ways, even in nonconformist chapel ways, as well as in original, idiosyncratic ways, has been assumed and taken over by people in general, and, even more ominously, by specific groups and parties, even political parties, who have very little idea of what Blake was on about. One may even dare to assert that nearly all the people who sing “Jerusalem” with gusto and sincerity, even with tears in their eyes and lumps at the backs of their throats, have no inkling of what the concept of Jerusalem involved in Blake’s work, what its place was in his vast and continually evolving mythological narratives, or how he exploited it dramatically to articulate his complex and absorbing ideologies and beliefs. Blake would not have been surprised by this usurpation, since usurpation is indeed one of the major themes of the myth or myths of his poetry, one of the most frequent elements in his narrative. For Blake, the whole origin of the material universe (as distinct from the spiritual universe) arose from the conspiracy or rivalry between Urizen and Luvah to control the other two Zoas.4 2 Andy McSmith and Peter Hillmore, “Hague in the Wilderness”, in a section entitled “Psst! Seen any Tories lately?”, The Observer, 5 October 1997, 19. 3 William Blake, Jerusalem, 74: 16-17 (Complete Writings, 714). 4 For an introduction to the nature of Urizen, Luvah, Tharmas and Urthona, the four “beasts” or “lifes”, see the beginning of “Night the First” in Vala, or the Four Zoas: “Four .

Load more