ARTICLE
“Sun-Clad Chastity” and Blake’s “Maiden Queens”: Comus, Thel, and “The Angel”
Eugenie R. Freed
BlakesAn Illustrated Quarterly, Volume 25, Issue 3, Winter 1991s1992, pp. 104-116 104 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1991/92
"Sun-Clad Chastity" and Blake's "Maiden Queens": Comus, Tbel, and "The Angel" by Eugenie R. Freed
... To him that dares contemplate a sketch of his own (illus. The pencil sketch shows two nude Arm his profane tongue with 1) which had been suggested by a figures, seen full-frontal, walking hand contemptuous words Against the sun-clad power of chastity; passage from Book 4 of Paradise Lost in hand toward, and looking directly Fain would I something say, yet to what .. . into their inmost bower at, the viewer: a long-haired Eve, and end? Handed they went; and eased the a curly-haired Adam, much as they (Milton, A Masque Presented at Ludlow putting off appear in Blake's earliest extant Milton Castle, 1634 [Comus] 779-82) These troublesome disguises which we illustrations.4 wear, Blake covered the page facing this Straight side by side were laid, nor drawing (Notebook 103) with drafts of n her discussion of Blake's illustra- turned I ween Itions to Milton's Comus, Pamela Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the poems (illus. 2). Three poems that ap- Dunbar comments: rites pear here were to be etched as Songs Mysterious of connubial love refused. .. . of Experience: "The Chimney Sweep- Blake was a tireless critic of the "double (PL 4.738-43) er," "Holy T h u r s d a y ," and "The Angel." standard" of sexual morality and of the repression of "natural desire." It is there- fore not surprising that he should have transformed Milton's "sage/ And serious doctrine of virginity" (785-86) into a sterile and destructive dogma, and his virtuous Lady into a coy, deluded and self-denying miss.. .. (10) The work in which this "sage / And serious doctrine" was mounted was the subject of the earliest of Blake's commissioned series of Milton illustra- tions. Blake executed them for the Re- verend Joseph Thomas in c. 1801;' but he had long reflected on the theme of Milton's masque, with wit and subtlety arming his "profane [read: 'icono- clastic'] tongue with contemptuous words" against it in the poems I discuss in this essay (to mention only two), years before he made Comus the sub- ject of a series of paintings. Comuswzs demonstrably one of the works on Blake's mind while he was sketching motifs for The Gates of Paradisein his Notebook during 1790- 93, for he jotted down quotations from it on pages 30 and 36 of the Notebook.2 Characteristically, it was Milton's vir- tuous Lady who came contrarily into his mind when, while copying and drafting poems into the Notebook at some time during this period,3 Blake 1. "Adam and Eve," from Blake's Notebook, page 102. By permission of the British Library. opened it at page 102, and paused to Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 105
The first two of these arise from "Songs that "Opposition is true Friendship,"5 I dreamt a dream what can it mean of Innocence" having the same tides. the principal Miltonic influence in this And that I was a maiden queen
Guarded by an angel mild The third, "The Angel," was inspired in poem emanates not so much from the Witless woe was ne'er beguiled part by the design that presented itself vindication—with which Blake con to his eye on the opposite page of the curred—of sexual love in Paradise And I wept both night & day Notebook. Blake obviously recalled the Lost, as from the defence in Comus of And he wiped my tears away context in Paradise Lost of the lines he chastity, which he opposed. Having And I wept both day & night And hid from him my hearts delight had illustrated, and affirmed for him deliberately enrolled himself in the self Milton's indignant condemnation Devil's party, Blake in effect seconds So he took his wings & fled there of "hypocrites" who "austerely the urging of Comus: "List Lady be not Then the morn blushd rosy red
I dried my tears & armd my fears talk / Of purity . . . and innocence, / coy, and be not cozened / With that With ten thousand shields and spears Defaming as impure what God de same vaunted name virginity . . ." clares / Pure . . ." {PL 4.74447). How {Comus 73637), and in "The Angel" Soon my angel came again ever, in the spirit of his own dictum ironically dramatizes such "cozening": I was armd he came in vain [But del] For the time of youth was fled And grey hairs were on my head (Notebook 103. The version engraved for *+*< £**. is*>A the Songs of Experience differs only in , c punctuation.) '*rt?ri^i^vni*w*^ •stp^* **H**n '.:?*.Jkf*, Ww The speaker of "The Angel," in her s dreamlife a "maiden queen," rebuffs her angellover because of her own ■ fears and inhibitions, keeping him in a ■ state of tantalized frustration both in her subconscious and her waking life.
14* V/'+*'< '"* ' Soon it is too late to recant: ~\ '. a5 u*6 -~ * /I '• ! I was arm'd, he came in vain, fl£± foe*-**- • *«• Tfffo tv ,/<<•-< ' ^ For the time of youth was fled, And grey hairs were on my head. tfitS At* y~. '/» /£***t* .y~-+-l^.- *&*$ Z A/ ■ (1416, E 24)6 \* + This petrified virgin inhabits a fallen and timebound world in which her imagination, corrupted by the "de uU ir*tir*t /..^/.v..:^>> <*,•'iy ** ?"♦:."•'*?"."•'*'' famation" of sexuality perpetrated by ^truA- c*^Tuf
4. Blake, illustration to Milton's Comus: 3. Falsa ad Coelum Mittunt Insomnia Manes, engraving attributed to Blake (after "The Magic Banquet with the Lady Fuseli), 1790. By permission of the Trustees of the British Museum. Spellbound," c. 1815. Gift of Mrs. John L. Gardner and George N. Black. Cour- tesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. tions on the subject of female erotic ing her face on one hand while with fantasies and fears around the time of the other, in an absurd gesture of re- his composition of "The Angel" and pulsion, she pushes away the angel, eer" (420-21, 425-26). Blake had tumed Visions of the Daughters of Albion, as who seems to be trying to impart to her to the same passage for the image of well as, possibly, Thel.9 "things that no gross ear can hear" female scorn that terrifies Thel, of"... The "maiden queen" of "The Angel" (illus. 5-7). Her expression betrays "wit- eyelids stord with arrows ready drawn, is evidently derived from the classical less woe" and preoccupation with her / Where a thousand fighting men in virgin goddess of the moon, Diana. inner conflict; his reflects distress at the ambush lie . . ." {Thel 6.13-14, E 6), Blake may have been influenced by rejection, while his arms reach out to perhaps intermingled in both poems Milton's description of the nocturnal her, attempting vainly to persuade her with his satirical response to Edmund 13 scene as Adam and Eve enter their to "turn away no more." In the line Burke's exclamation of horror at the nuptial bower, when the moon "rising "Then the morn blush'd rosy red. . . " fate of the beautiful Queen of France, in clouded majesty, at length / Appar- Blake recollects Adam's description of Marie Antoinette: ent queen unveiled her peerless light" the maiden modesty of Eve on the first {PL 4.607-08). But his image owes night of their marriage: "... To the Little did I dream that I should have lived nuptial bower / I led her blushing like to see disasters fallen upon her in a nation more to "Dian the huntress . . . fair of gallant men. . . I thought ten thousand silver-shafted Queen forever chaste" the mom..." {PL8.510-11). But, Blake swords must have leaped from their scab- (440_4l) from Milton's Comus.10 The implies, in the fallen world, Eve's bards to avenge even a look that 15 angel of Blake's poem also emerges, in "sweet reluctant amorous delay"(PZ threatened her with insult. (76) an ironically modified form, from pas- 4.311) is perverted to a "hypocrite mo- The charming Book of Thel, Blake's sages of Comus11 together with the desty," such that "When thou awakest earliest prophetic book, probably com- maiden's dream: . . . Then com'st thou forth a modest posed some time before "The Angel,"16 virgin, knowing to dissemble. . . "u is also both inspired by Milton's Comus So dear to heaven is saintly chastity, The hysterical defence of her chastity and opposed in principle to it.17 The That when a soul is found sincerely so, with "ten thousand shields and spears" virgin Thel, w h o s e name means "wish" A thousand liveried angels lackey her, by the protagonist of "The Angel" is a Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, or "will" (from the Greek verb mean- parody of the simile in Milton's Comus, And in clear dream and solemn vision ing "to desire"), is the only one of in which the chaste virgin is compared Tell her of things that no gross ear can Blake's personages who is given the hear. ... (452-57) to "a quivered nymph with arrows option of accepting or rejecting the keen," whose "virgin purity" encases fallen condition of mortality. Thel The plate of "The Angel" in the Songs her in "complete steel," proof against 12 avails herself of this privilege, choos- of Experience shows the recumbent "savage fierce, bandit, or mountain- ing, when she has previewed this "land maiden, clothed in a long gown, lean- Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY
of sorrows & of tears" (Thel 6.5, E 6), tion Thel enters only hesitantly, fear- recovering from the wound given him to flee "back . .. into the vales of Har" fully, and briefly.21 by a boar. Milton's passage—and the (6.22, E 6).18 The poem makes it clear The Book of Thel shares its pastoral opening lines of The Book of Thel as that the "daughter of beauty" will in- setting with both Comus and the Songs well—stem at least partially from deed, as she foresees, "fade away" of Innocence.22 "The secret air" Thel Spenser's account of Venus lovingly (Thell3, 3.21 and 5.12, E 3, 5, and 6). seeks out "down by the river of sustaining Adonis in the "Garden of As Spenser put it in a passage that Adona" (1.2,4, E 3) was inspired by the Adonis" in The Faerie Queene.2* Both Blake certainly had in mind,"... that "regions mild of calm and serene air" Spenser and Milton associate Adonis faire flowre of beauty fades away, / As {Comus 4) from which the Attendant with fertility in the fallen world25—the doth the lilly fresh before the sunny Spirit descends, the "broad fields of the combating of death and decay by means ray."19 She will leave behind no trace sky" (978) to which he returns again in of earthly generation. Time, in Spen- or useful legacy of her existence—"And the closing lines of Comus. Here ser's Garden, "beats down both leaves 23 all shall say, 'Without a use this shining Adonis appears: and buds without regard" (FQ 3.6.39.8). womanliv'd...'" (Thel 5.22, E 5)—be- Though Venus weeps for their loss, cause she refuses to commit herself to Iris there with humid bow, she has no remedy, for "All things de- earthly generation, fearing the pains of Waters the odorous banks that blow cay in time, and to their end do draw" Flowers of more mingled hue Experience that inevitably accompany Than her purfled scarf can shew, (40.9). Adonis embodies the principle sexuality in the fallen world. The Book And drenches with Elysian dew . .. of plenitude, which continually re- of Thel affirms that sexuality, and the Beds of hyacinth and roses, dresses the ravages of Time: giving of oneself in love to procrea- Where young Adonis oft reposes, tion, is good, and a necessary commit- Waxing well of his deep wound All be he subiect to mortalitie In slumber soft, and on the ground Yet is eterne in mutabilitie ment to life on earth. For the most part Sadly sits the Assyrian queen.. .. it does so within a gentle, almost child- And by succession made perpetuall. .. . (.Comus 991-1001) (47.4-6) like ambience that sets this poem apart from the intensity of the Songs of Ex- Milton's rainbow "drenches" and 20 Thel, lamenting by the river of Adona, perience and the later prophecies, and nourishes "beds of hyacinth and compares herself to a "watry bow" (Thel places it between "Innocence" and roses," symbolic of regeneration and 1.8)—Milton's "humid bow." Through "Experience," into which latter condi- love, w h e r e the youth Adonis, beloved a series of parallel similes ("shadows of "the Assyrian queen" Venus, lies in the water," "a smile upon an infants
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6. Draft sketch of emblem, "I found him 7. Draft sketch of "The Angel," Blake's beneath a Tree," Blake's Notebook, Notebook, page 65. By permission of page 63. By permission of the British the British Library. Library. 5. "The Angel," from Blake's Songs of In- nocence and Experience. By permission of the Trustees of the British Museum. 108 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY Winter 1991/92
8. The Book ofThel, plate 2. By permis- 9. The Book of Thel, plate 4. By permis- sion of the Trustees of the British Museum. sion of the Trustees of the British Museum. face," "transient day" [1.9-11, E 3DThel "Lilly" is one of self-sacrifice and self- 10. "The Little Black Boy" (1) from emphasizes the evanescence of the less caring for other living creatures; Songs of Innocence and Experience. By rainbow, where Milton's passage stres- she gives of her own material being to permission of the Trustees of the British ses its functional continuityvj'whm the "nourish the innocent lamb" and "re- Museum. cycle of regeneration. vive the milked cow" (2.5,10), scatters Thel encounters four symbolic fig- her perfume "on every little blade of ses of Luvah," here virtually identified ures. The first, the "Lilly of the valley," grass" (2.9) and goes, after speaking with the fiery horses of the classical is a "gentle maid of silent valleys and with Thel, "to mind her numerous sun-god Phoebus Apollo.27 Luvah is a of modest brooks" (1.16, 22) who re- charge among the verdant grass" (2.18). symbol of sexuality, wherever he ap- tires after speaking with Thel to a "sil- Thel's second dialogue is with a pears in Blake's later work,28 and the ver shrine" (2.2) (illus. 8). Blake's "Lilly" Cloud (illus. 9) which "shewd his gold- Cloud is likewise portrayed, both vi- is primarily Spenser's "faire flowre of en head . . . / Hovering and glittering sually and in the text, as a figure of beauty [that] fades away," but this ap- on the air..." (Thel3.5-6, E 4). Blake's young and virile sexuality. 29 Blake may pealing little "watry weed" is also re- Cloud takes his "bright form" from the have associated the "golden springs / lated—through the "twisted braids of "hovering angel girt with golden wings" Where Luvah doth renew his horses" lilies" knitted into the "loose train of (Comus 213) who accompanies Faith, with the "orient liquor" which Comus, [her] amber-dropping hair" (861-62)— Hope, and Chastity in the Lady's solilo- descendant of the Sun,30 offers to weary to Milton's Sabrina, "a gentle nymph quy in Comus (and is there perhaps to travelers "to quench the drought of . . . that with moist curb sways the be identified with Hope). He also resem- Phoebus" (Comus 64-66). That magic smooth Severn stream" (.Comus 823- bles the "glistering guardian" whom potion "flames, and dances in his crys- 24). Sabrina, sitting "under the glassy the Lady trusts to keep her "life and tal bounds" (672) as Comus presses it cool translucent wave" (860), is "God- honour unassailed" (218-19) (and upon the obdurate Lady, urging dess of the silver lake" (864) and a whose semblance Blake was to bor- ... see, here be all the pleasures patron of maidenhood. She is invoked row for the equivocal guardian of maid- That fancy can beget on youthful by the Attendant Spirit to free the Lady enhood in "The Angel"). The Cloud thoughts, held fast by Comus's magic spell. declares to Thel: "O virgin, know'st When the fresh blood grows lively, and Blake's "Lilly," a self-effacing "little vir- thou not. our steeds drink of the gold- returns Brisk as the April buds in primrose gin of the peaceful valley" (Thel 2.3), en springs / Where Luvah doth renew season (667-70) contrasts with the regal Sabrina, whose his horses?" (3.7-8). "Our steeds," those narcissistic adorning of herself sug- upon which clouds are mounted in These wonderful images of the fires of gests an immature self-involvement moving about the sky, "renew" their lust, spring, morning, and regenera- rather like Thel's own.26 The life of the vitality at the same source as the "hor- tion are tinged in the Miltonic context Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 109
with the evil of Comus's nature, but * - v Blake was obviously determined that X jfc* Ln«6- ** Ai//»*'t << **+4. the devil should not have the best tunes or the finest poetry. Blake chose to associate Milton's phrase from Co mus, "the sunclad power of chastity" (Comus 781), with the lines from Paradise Lost describing the "apostate" Satan "exalted as a god ... in his sun bright chariot... Idol of majesty divine" (PL 6.99101). In Blake's reading of Comus, Chastity is the "apostate," the "idol of majesty divine," for the divinity
11. Draft sketch of emblem, "As Daphne was rootbound," from Blake's Notebook, secret air, / To fade away like morning page 36. By permission of the British Library. beauty from her mortal day..." (1.23), becoming "like a faint cloud kindled at the rising sun" (2.11). The Cloud, with his "golden head and . . . bright form" is indeed "kindled at the rising sun"— in common with all living beings—but he has followed, not fled, its beams. He . .!* rejoices not only in his materialization, "glitteiiing] in the morning sky," but also in his dissolution, "scatterfingl [his] MM bright beauty thro' the humid air" (2.1415). In his vaporous state he returns to water his "steeds" at the "golden springs / Where Luvah doth renew his horses" (3.78), a generative source where his life is renewed and f 35 he comes again into visible being. ■
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12. Blake, illustration to Milton's Comus, "Comus with his Revellers," c. 1801. Courtesy of the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery. 110 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1991/92
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$$ft 13. "What is Man!" frontispiece of For Children: The Gates of Paradise (1793). By permission of the Trustees of the British Museum. 11 ? h ■ Ski fsV Jl - S\ s* w ^
^) t .a++j s' i 14. Draft sketch of emblem, "What is Man . . ." from Blake's Notebook, page 68. By permission of the British Library. *% ' 't~^j ^\, '' ? t „ 15. The Book ofThel, plate 5. By permis sion of the Trustees of the British Museum. 1 16. (right) Detail. Sketch in Blake's 7^*. /> 4 Notebook, upper left corner of page 58. '*^ix By permission of the British Library. UtUth &<*•>* **«■ ^ 0^^ ^ ^ ■•,■„, ^ ^, Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y 111 Like the "humid bow" of Milton's What is Man that thou shouldst suring her "Tis given thee to enter / Iris, the Cloud is a vital link in the cycle magnify him & that thou shouldst set And to return: fear nothing . . ." (5.16- thine heart upon him. (Job 7.17)42 of earthly generation. Comus describes 17). And Thel accepts the invitation. to the Lady his first sight of her two Three of Thel's four visitants—the What does she find in the under- young brothers as Cloud, the Worm, and the Clod of ground realm of Clay? "Couches of the ... a faery vision, Clay—emerge from the context of this dead" (6.3); tombs such as the grand Of some gay creatures of the element verse of Job: monuments Blake had sketched fif- That in the colours of the rainbow live teen years earlier, as a young appren- And play i' the plighted clouds. .. . 44 36 My flesh is clothed with worms and clods tice, in Westminster Abbey. In this (297-300) of dust. ... As the cloud is consumed and "land of sorrows & of tears" Thel sees Blake's Cloud is, like those of Milton in vanisheth away; so he that goeth down to "Vegetated bodies" like that of Daph- the grave shall come up no more. (Job 7.5, this passage, "plighted"—but with a 9) ne, for there "the fibrous roots / Of shift of semantic emphasis.37 The Cloud every heart on earth infixes deep its of the Book of Thel is "plighted" in Thel knows that she too will be "con- restless twists" (6.3-5). Like the Lady in being betrothed to his "partner in the sumed," to become "at death the food Comus, who finds no shelter "from the vale" (3.31, E 5), w h o m he goes to join of worms" (3.23, 25). The Cloud offers chill dew, amongst rude burs and thist- when he takes leave of Thel. The Thel the wise counsel of acceptance. les" {Comus 351), Thel strays, unpro- Cloud's "partner" is "the fair-eyed Though he will "vanish and [be] seen tected and unguided, about the thorny 38 4 5 dew," who "kneels before the risen no more" he assures her that when he undergrowth of the fallen world sun" (3.14), surrendering herself—like passes away he goes "to tenfold life." (illus. 16). She enters a region (de- Spenser's "Morning dew" Chryso- If worms should consume her flesh, scribed by the Elder Brother in Comus) 39 gone —to that divine source of life the Cloud exclaims, "How great thy where "thick and gloomy shadows just as obviously as Thel hides away use, how great thy blessing!" (3.26). damp" are "oft seen in charnel-vaults, from it when she seeks out "the secret For, he tells her, "Every thing that lives and sepulchres / Lingering, and sitting air" (1.2, my emphasis). The "plighted" / Lives not alone nor for itself' (3.26- by a new-made grave, / As loth to couple are "link'd in a golden band 27). The emblem "What is Man!" shows leave the body that it loved . . ." and never part, / But walk united bear- two worms (illus. 13): one realistic, {Comus 469-72). Blake depicts Thel ing food to all our tender flow- crawling in an arc down an oak-leaf, wandering ers'^. 12-16, E 5). Like the "Lilly of the the other with the face of a sleeping valley," they give selflessly of them- ... in the land of clouds thro' valleys child, lying face upwards on an adjoin- dark, list'ning selves, both to one another and to ing leaf, chrysalis-like in swaddling Dolours and lamentations; waiting oft others in the fullfilment of social re- bands. In the Book ofThelthe helpless beside a dewy grave sponsibilities. Like her, also, they have Worm appears to Thel "like an infant She stood in silence, list'ning to the voices of the ground. .. . an oblique, complex, and significant, wrapped in the Lilly's leaf (4.3), and relationship with Milton's argument and {Thel6.6-8, E 6) is shown in just this way on plate 4. It imagery in Comus. cannot speak, but cries like a baby. At last she comes to her own grave-plot, The Cloud brings to Thel the Worm, Thel expresses compassion at its help- where a "voice of sorrow breathed from one of the "numerous charge" (2.18) lessness—"[There is] none to cherish the hollow pit" (6.10). The voice Thel of the "Lilly." The visual image of the thee with mother's smiles" (4.6)—and hears is potentially her own, moaning 40 Worm on plate 4 of the Book of Thel indeed the cries of the infant do raise from the depths of the grave after the (illus. 9) confirms that Blake either had the "pitying head" of the motherly Clod ending of a life-in-possibility to which in mind, or had already sketched, "What of Clay (illus. 15). the maiden has not yet committed her- is Man!" the emblem-design he chose The Clod of Clay "bow'd over the self. This potential self laments the 4 to place first in The Gates of Paradise * weeping infant and her life exhal'd / painful intensity of the experiences of (illus. 13). Blake's introduction of the In milky fondness..." (4.8-9). This last each of the senses in earthly life: Worm confirms an association stem- personage of the poem attains the ul- ming from the caption he wrote in the Why are Eyelids stord with arrows ready timate degree of selflessness, willingly drawn, Notebook beneath his rough sketch of giving her life as well as her substance Where a thousand fighting men in the emblem (illus. 14)—the passage for the Worm.43 She echoes the Cloud's ambush lie?. .. from the Book of Job from which he teaching : "O beauty of the vales of Why a Tongue impress'd with honey took its title, Har! w e live not for ourselves" (4.10, E from every wind? Why an Ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw 5). In response to Thel's "pitying tears" creations in? (5.7) the "matron Clay" invites Thel to Why a Nostril wide inhaling terror survey her subterraneous "house," as- trembling & affright? {Thel6.13-18) 112 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1991/92 At its climax the agonized murmur ar- may be gained respectively by the -jt CT^_. ticulates the anguish of the sexual sense Eagle and the Mole from their dia- of touch: the pangs of desire frustrated, metrically opposed perspectives and the greater torment of desire satisfied "contrary" ways of life. And they ques- —the agony of self-realization in tion the validity of a distinction be- earthly life that awaits the virgin whose tween Love and Wisdom: "... love name means "desire": indeed is Esse and wisdom is Existere for love has nothing except in wisdom, Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy! nor has wisdom anything except from Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of love. Therefore when love is in wis- our desire? ( Thel 6.19-20) dom, then it exists."48 Blake commented on this passage of At this, Thel rushes "with a shriek" Swedenborg's Divine Love and Wis- back to the "vales of Har." She flees the dom. "Thought without affection makes precepts of teachers who affirm that a distinction between Love & Wisdom, commitment to earthly life demands a as it does between body & Spirit" (E k-Q. continual sacrifice of selfhood. Experi- 603). His annotation indicates that he ential existence in the fallen world is a regards the division between Love and course to inevitable destruction, marked Wisdom in the same light as he does 17. The Book of Thel, plate 6. By permis- by the fierce suffering and terror her sion of the Trustees of the British Museum. that "between body & Spirit"—as a own disembodied voice describes. notion "to be expunged."49 Rather than face that, Thel —who The illumination with which Blake prayed that she might live in "gentle- not yet lost—but only apparently, for concludes the Book of Thel depicts ness"—chooses not to enter into it at the pastoral landscape of that country Thel's choice quite clearly, and inci- all.46 is a false Paradise of arrested develop- dentally suggests the source of his in- Thel's "Motto," in most copies a kind ment. As Blake clearly shows, the con- spiration in Milton's work. Plate 6 shows sequences of the fall of man are of postscript to the poem, suggests that three children—a girl and two young- Thel might have learned more from ineluctable. er boys—riding a dragon-headed ser- In a fallen Paradise continually laid her brief sojourn in the "house of Clay" pent who coils across the width of the than she allowed herself to do: waste by the depredations of Time, page over the legend "The End" (illus. Thel laments that she and every form 17). They cannot be identified from the Does the Eagle know what is in the pit? of living beauty about her must yield text of Thel (or from that of America, 51 Or wilt thou go ask the Mole? to this "Great enimy." She longs to Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod? where Blake was to use the same motif hear "the voice / Of him that walketh Or Love in a golden bowl? (i.1-4, E 3) again [illus. 18]); and indeed, in their in the garden in the evening time" first appearance, on the final plate of The Mole, the earth-dweller, knows (1.13-14), not in wrath, but "gentlly]."52 The Book of Thel, they may represent "what is in the pit," and may also be a The "Lilly of the valley," herself a "gen- the Lady and the Elder and Younger symbol of the regenerative potential de maid," assures Thel that, litde and Brothers of Milton's Comus, shown al- within experience.47 The Eagle, inhab- weak and ephemeral though she is, most in babyhood. Perhaps, in one of iting the sky and aspiring always in "Yet am I visited from heaven, and he the several possible meanings of the Blake's work to the visionary realm, that smiles on all. / Walks in the valley configuration, these figures embody knows nothing of the realm of Clay. and each morn over me spreads his the desire of both Thel and Milton's The "rod" and "bowl" may at one level Lady to retreat towards the security of hand. . ."(1.19-20). be reminders of the charming-rod and infancy—reversing the natural process When her brief life in time is over the the cup of Comus (illus. 4); a rod may of growth through adolescent sexu- "Lilly" is blessed with the certainty that be a symbol of authority or of the ality into maturity. With the girl astride she will "flourish in eternal vales." The phallus, a bowl may represent the Holy and holding the reins, the three child- Cloud direcdy addresses Thel's fear Grail or be a symbol of the womb. ren ride the seemingly tractable ser- that "like a faint cloud kindled at the Blake obviously intends no simple an- pent—symbol of man's fall—without rising sun / I vanish from my pearly swers to the four rhetorical questions fear.50 Back they gallop, in a leftward throne..." (2.11-12). Although, he says, in "Thel's Motto." All Thel can do is or "sinister" direction, to "the vales of "I vanish and am seen no more," yet look in the direction these questions Har," where the phallic serpent has no "when I pass away / It is to tenfold life, point. They direct her (and the reader) visible sting, in a paradise apparently to love, to peace and raptures holy..." to the indisputable value of such ex- (3.10-11). Thel knows that the Worm perience of the skies and the earth as Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y 113 IVJ . 'v ULC i tut: Works Cited Bateson, F. W., ed. Selected Poems of William Blake. London: 1957. Bindman, David, comp. and annot. The Complete Graphic Works of Wil- ^J&up&tel Lot, £, . j^^.jrJFZ,^ liam Blake. London: Thames and Wj w Hudson, 1978. Blake, William. The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. Ed. David V. Erdman. New rev. ed. Garden City: Anchor-Doubleday, 1982. (Cited throughout as E, followed by the page numbers.) . The Notebook of William Blake: A Photographic and Typographic Fac- simile. Ed. David V. Erdman with the assistance of Donald K. Moore. Ox- ford: Clarendon, 1973. . Complete Writings. Ed. Geoffrey Keynes. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1966. Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Cambridge: 18. America, a Prophecy, plate 11. By permission of the Trustees of the British Museum. Cambridge UP, 1929. is loved by God, and that whoever Yet all are vehicles for the divine" force Butlin, Martin. The Paintings and injures it will be punished; but more of life emanating from "[him] that Drawings of William Blake. 2 vols., than that, she learns, the Worm is "cher- smiles on all" and "loves the lowly," New Haven: Yale UP, 1981. ish'd . . . with milk and oil" (5.9-10)— who has linked them all, together with Damon, S. Foster. "Blake and Milton." for, as Blake repeatedly declares, the Worm, in a "golden band" of earth- The Divine Vision: Studies in the "every thing that lives is Holy."53 And ly generation. Thel, inspired by Poetry and Art of William Blake. Ed. the "matron Clay" assures Thel that Blake's complex response to Milton's Vivian de Sola Pinto. London: Victor though she herself is "the meanest treatment of obdurate chastity in Gollancz, 1957. thing," and though her bosom is cold Comus, deplores the loss of Paradise. and dark, "he, that loves the lowly, And she rejects the only alternative —. A Blake Dictionary. London: pours his oil u p o n my head, / And offered to man: coming to terms with Thames and Hudson, 1965. kisses me, and binds his nuptial bands experience, which includes procrea- around my breast . . ." (4.11-12). The tion and generation, in the fallen Dunbar, Pamela. William Blake's Il- divine visitant who "spreads his hand" world. Thel—"desire"—is Blake's first lustrations to the Poetry of Milton. Ox- in benediction over the humble Lilly embodiment of the "female Will," and ford: Clarendon, 1980. and "binds his nuptial bands" about Milton's Comus one of his primary Erdman, David V. Blake: Prophet the breast of the "matron Clay" is also sources for the concept. Against Empire. 3rd e d . Princeton: the force who charges with life the Princeton UP, 1977. "golden springs" where the Cloud's existence is r e n e w e d. Blake typically Erdman, David V., annot. The Illu- makes the female personages passive minated Blake. London: Oxford UP, and acquiescent, and the male per- 1975. sonage, the Cloud, an active agent— an inseminator, while the Lilly and the Gleckner, Robert F. Blake and Spen- "matron Clay" are receptacles for seed. ser. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1985. 114 BLAKE/ANILLUSTRA TED QUARTER! Y Winter 1991/92 The Holy Bible, Authorized Version 1 Butlin 1: 373-74. The "Thomas" set of fourth Comus illustration (in both series, (l6ll). New York, American Bible Comwsillustrations is now in the collection the Attendant Spirit addressing the of the Huntington Library in San Marino, Society, 1967. Brothers) by identifying her with the CA. Blake executed a second set for moon-goddess Diana, "represented as a Keynes, Geoffrey, comp. and annot. Thomas Butts c. 1815; this series is in the severe and uncompromising guardian of Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA. Engravings by William Blake: The Se- chastity" (3D. 2 Butlin 1: 90-91. 11 Compare as well the Lady's soliloquy: parate Plates. Dublin: 1956. 3 Erdman suggests "a beginning date of —. Drawings of William Blake. New 1791 or later, for the inscribing of the O welcome pure-eyed Faith, Songs" and a terminal date of late October white-handed Hope, York: Dover, 1970. 1792. (The Notebook of William Blake, Thou hovering angel girt with golden page 7 of the editorial preface). wings, Milton, John. The Poems of John Mil- 4 The sketch on page 102 of the And thou unblemished form of Chastity ton. Ed. John Carey and Alistair Fow- Notebook was not used by Blake in this ler. London: Longmans, Green, 1968. form in any other extant composition. It is ... [I] now believe part of a series of illustrations of Paradise That he, the Supreme Good ... Pinto, Vivian de Sola, ed. Studies in the Lost interspersed among designs for the Would send a glistering guardian if need Poetry and Art of William Blake. Lon- emblem book The Gates of Paradise. were don: Victor Gollancz, 1957. Blake's so-called "Milton Gallery" is dated To keep my life and honour unassailed. by F. W. Bateson (105) c 1790-91. See Comus 212-18 Raine, Kathleen. Blake and Tradition. Erdman, Blake: Prophet Against Empire 2 vols. Bollingen Series Princeton: (437-39). (Butlin 1: 104; compare with the See my discussion below of the Cloud in Princeton UP, 1968. earliest representation of Adam and Eve, 2: The Book of Thel pi. Ill, 1: 40). The drawing in the 12 Blake first sketched this design as one Shakespeare, William. The Complete Notebook is reproduced as no. 14 in ofhis "Emblem" series, numbering it 42, on Works. Ed. Peter Alexander. London: Keynes (1970). page 65 of the Notebook (illus. 7). In the 5 Collins, 1951. The Marriage of Heaven andHelllQ, E original the "angel" has no wings and is 42. obviously an importunate infant, possibly 6 Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene. The last two lines of "The Angel" were the same who is being lifted up by the hair Ed. A. C. Hamilton. London: Longman taken up by Blake from the ending he had from what looks like a cabbage-patch in devised to the long first draft of "Infant the emblem-design on an earlier page of Group, 1977. Sorrow," already written into the the Notebook (illus. 6). The latter eventual- Notebook some pages earlier (E 794, 797- Swedenborg, Emmanuel. Angelic Wis- ly became pi. 1 of the 1793 series For 99). They there conclude a poem, intended Children: The Gates of Paradise, entitled "I dom concerning the Divine Love and to encompass human life from birth to old found him beneath a Tree" (E 32). Blake Wisdom. Trans. Clifford and Doris H. age, which also emphasizes the self- evidently perceived a different application Harley. London: Swedenborg Society, defeating consequences of society's for "Emblem 42," although the themes of 1987. hypocritically repressive attitudes towards the two Notebook designs are related. "I sexuality. found him beneath a Tree" refers to the Tarr, Rodger L. "'The Eagle'versus 'The 7 Visions of the Daughters of Albion 7.11, prudish fiction that mothers found their Mole': The Wisdom of Virginity in Co- E 50. Sketches for the designs finally babies in cabbage-patches, an answer sup- etched with the text of this work appear in plied to children in the eighteenth and mus and The Book of Thel." Blake various parts of Blake's Notebook, sug- nineteenth centuries when they asked Studies 3 (1971): 187-94. gesting that this illuminated book (dated where babies came from. The "witless 1793 on its title page) was in the making woe," frigidity and fear of the "maiden Tayler, Irene. "Blake's Comus De- during the same period as the Songs of queen" of "The Angel" seem a likely signs." Blake Studies 4 (1972): 45-80. Experience. (See page 49 of Erdman's development from an upbringing of this preface to the facsimile.) kind. Wagenknecht, David. Blake's Night. 8 This engraving, executed after Fuseli's 13 Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of "Introduction." Songs of Experience design entitled Falsa ad Coelum mittunt 1.16, E 18. (The plate of "The Angel" is Harvard UP, 1973. Insomnia Manes, is reproduced as pi. reproduced in Erdman, Illuminated Blake XXXV in Keynes [19561; and in Bindman as Werner, BetteCharlotte. Blake's Vision 83.) pi. 80. The banquet scene in the later 14 Visions of the Daughters of Albion of the Poetry of Milton. Lewisburg, PA: Comus series is reproduced by Butlin in 2: 6.8-10, 16, E 49. Bucknell UP, 1986. pi. 628. (My reading of the significance of »5 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the the elephant-headed figure in the Comus Revolution in France (1790). Erdman series does not preclude Pamela Dunbar's points out that Blake's poem "Let the suggestion [241 that it represents the vice of Brothels of Paris be opened . . .," started Gluttony.) on page 99 of his Notebook, satirizes the 9 See note 16 below regarding the dating same passage (Prophet Against Empire of The Book of'Thel 184). 10 Bette Charlotte Werner explains the 16 Blake began to etch The Book of Thel, presence of a mysterious female driving a the earliest of his "prophetic books," in team of serpents in the sky in Blake's 1789 (according to the title page). Erdman Winter 1991/92 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 115 notes that pi. 6, carrying the final section Thel may have been an allegorized narra- 27 This is the first appearance in Blake's of the poem, and the plate bearing "Thel's tive woven about a miscarriage, or the writings of the Zoa of the passions called Motto," "are later than other plates of Tbel premature birth and death of an infant, "Luvah" (the name is a version of "lover"); in style of lettering... Hence [plate 6] may perhaps Blake's own child. probably the earliest mention of any of the be a revised version of the poem's con- 21 David Wagenknecht comments on Zoas. Blake seems here to attribute to clusion" (Illuminated Blake 40). Kathleen Thel's flight back "unhinderd till she came Luvah the properties of a sun-god, al- Raine (72-75) believes that there are "un- into the vales of Har" that "of course this though in The Four Zoas Luvah's ap- mistakeable allusions" in The Book ofThel last line of the poem represents a failure," propriation to himself of the "Steeds of to Porphyry's Neoplatonic symbolism in but adds that Blake may mean by it "that Light" is treated as a usurpation of the his treatise on Homer's Cave of the Thel can return, at will, to however rights of Urizen, Zoa of the Reason, who Nymphs, which Blake may have derived uninspired a condition ... in short, that has charge of them in the Eternal condition from Thomas Taylor's translation publish- she is still a virgin ([though there are] in- of Man CFZ5.65.5-8, E 344). Kathleen Raine ed in 1788; and also that Blake drew in the dications that she will not remain one derives this passage of Thel from the final section of the poem on Taylor's A forever), but a wiser one than when she "aubade" of Act II of Shakespeare's Cym- Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bac- began" (162). beline. chic Mysteries, published in 1790. 22 Concerning Blake's "idea of pastoral," 17 S. Foster Damon was the first modern Wagenknecht writes that "in terms of the Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings critic to recognize the link between Comus Songs [of Innocence and Experience] the And Phoebus 'gins arise and The Book of Thel, in his 1957 article idea of the pastoral had emerged as the His steeds to water at those springs "Blake and Milton." Rodger L. Tarr per- vehicle for conveying Blake's ambiguous On chalic'd flow'rs that lies . . . ceives Thel as a kind of "negation" of and agonized approach to the problem of (Raine, 1: 169) Milton's doctrine concerning the wisdom 'Generation'" (5). This view is congenial to of virginity. my own approach to The Book of Thel, 28 18 See, for instance, The Four Zoas "The vales of Har" (from Blake's ear- about which Wagenknecht adds that its 7.83.12-16, E 358. lier poem TiriellA, E 277) offer scenes of nature is best appreciated "via the pastoral 29 In Blake's illumination on pi. 4, the pastoral serenity. Though apparently as- ironies and ambiguities of the Songs/ Cloud has the form of a young man, almost sociated with primal innocence, they (148). naked but with floating drapery flying 23 prove ultimately to be a setting for the Wagenknecht describes the story of from his body (Erdman, Illuminated Blake condition of senility, or a form of arrested Venus and Adonis as "a primary myth for 38). Blake's figure of Antamon in Europe emotional development. However, see pastoralists" (2). Raine points out an al- 14.15-20 (E 65-66) seems to be a develop- note 52 for a different critical view. lusion to Adonis concealed in the title page ment of Thel's Cloud. J 9 The Faerie Queene 3.4.38.8-9. See the emblem of The Book ofThel 30 The mother of Comus is Circe, discussion below of the significance of the "daughter of the Sun" (Comus 46-57). "sunny" flocks tended by Thel's sisters. The flowers, from whose centers spring 31 Compare the teaching of the Mother Although my own reading of the poem little lovers in amorous pursuit and flight, in "The Little Black Boy" 9-12: takes a somewhat different line from hers, are pasqueflowers, anemone Pulsatilla... I do agree with Kathleen Raine's emphasis The anemone is the flower of Adonis, into Look on the rising sun: there God does (1:106) on this and other parallels between which he was, according to tradition, live, Blake's poem and Spenser's "Garden of metamorphosed.... (1: 105) And gives his light and gives his heat Adonis," and with her assertion that "Muta- away; bility is Thel's theme, as it was Spenser's" She describes these flowers on the title (1: 100). page as an allusion to the theme of And flowers and trees and beasts and men recieve Further Spenserian sources for The Book Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, adding Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday ofThel, employed by Blake in a "contrary" that "the association of the flower with (Songs of Innocence, E 9) spirit, are explored by Robert F. Gleckner Easter (pasque) is itself significant" (1: 105). (31-45 and 287-302). Gleckner demon- 32 Blake inscribed and illustrated these 24 trates persuasively that in Thel Blake The Faerie Queene 3.6.43-49. lines on page 36 of the Notebook, and 25 parodies Spenserian and Petrarchan "sub- In Paradise Lost 1.446-52, a river called experimented with another version of the limations of the senses and desire" (32), "Adonis" is named with reference to the same emblem on page 12. His water color both in the Amoretti and in the figure of annual rites of the fertility god Thammuz. illustrations to Comus actually show the Alma in Book 2 of The Faerie Queene. In a gesture appropriate to his conception Lady "root-bound," seated in the knotty Gleckner also relates Thel's wish "to die of Thel, Blake has feminized the name to root of an oak-tree, both at the time when because she is of no 'use'" (293) especially "Adona." Comus finds her (illus. 12) and after the to the encounter between Spenser's 26 Irene Tayler notes Blake's emphasis incursion of her two brothers has set Redcrosse Knight and Despaire in Book 1, on the theme of "narcissicism" in his first Comus and his train to flight. Butlin showing that /Thelis a severe attack upon series of Comus illustrations. See especially reproduces the relevant paintings in 2: pis. the underpinnings ofSpenser's Book I and 71-78 of her essay. Bene Charlotte Werner 616, 622, 624, 626, and 630. Tayler com- the language in which it is couched" (288). differentiates between Milton's perception ments on the Lady's "rooty chair" on page 20 S. Foster Damon (1965), noting that of Sabrina as an agent of grace, and Blake's 53 of her essay. Thel does not reappear in any other of reading of Milton's imagery in Comus 837- 33 "This world of Imagination is the Blake's writings, commented disarmingly 39. Blake, Werner says, perceives that "Sa- world of Eternity; it is the divine bosom that she is "far too nice a girl to fit in brina's restoration, her sea-change, to into which we shall all go after the death amongst Blake's furious elementals" (401). immortality has been accomplished, not of the Vegetated body" (A Vision of the Last Damon speculated that Blake's account of through the paralysis of virginity but fudgment, c. 1810, E 555). through the opening of her senses" (35). 116 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1991/92 34 See note 19 above for this reference to With so sweet sence and secret power Now was the sun in western cadence low Spenser's "Garden of Adonis." vnspide, From noon, and gentle airs due at their 35 Raine's interpretation of the theme of That in her pregnant flesh they shortly hour Thelas "a debate between the Neoplatonic fructifide. (3.6.7.5-9) To fan the earth now waked, and usher in and alchemical philosophies" (1: 99), of The evening cool when he from wrath Plotinus and Porphyry on the one hand 40 Erdman, IlluminatedBlake 38. more cool and Paracelsus on the other, dwells espe- 41 Erdman, Illuminated Blake 268. Came the mild judge and intercessor both cially upon its "watry" imagery, which is 42 This sketch appears on page 68 of the To sentence man: the voice of God they "appropriate to the 'watery' world of Notebook; see Butlin 1: 97. heard generation of the naiads and their ever- 43 Compare "The Clod and the Pebble": Now walking in the garden, by soft flowing streams, to the 'moist' souls who "Love seeketh not Itself to please, / Nor for winds attract to themselves the hylic envelope" itself hath any care, / But for another gives Brought to their ears, while day (1:108) ("... the moist envelope of the soul, its ease ... So sang a little Clod of Clay / declined. ... the generated body, [which is] called a Trodden with the cattle's feet..." (Songs 'grave' because in it the soul is dead from of Experience, E 19). Wagenknecht, while citing the evidence eternity, or a 'bed,' as the place of the soul's 44 The sketches of royal tombs done in from Tiriel for "the usual view that Thel sleep" [1: 1091). Westminster Abbey during the period unambiguously retreats from life at the end 36 Blake wrote out the first three lines of 1774-77 are among Blake's earliest extant of her poem" (151), argues that "Thel's this passage beneath a sketch of an emblem drawings. Butlin 1: 1-14, 2: pis. 1-47. 45 return to the Vales of Har' from the grave on page 30 of the Notebook. See Butlin 1: On page 58 of the Notebook, Blake which the matron Clay has shown her in a 90 ("Emblem 12"). (The design was used made a sketch which may be an illustration moment of vision cannot be construed as in a slightly modified form on the title page to Comus 350-54. a return to an unreal Beulah, but only as a of his Visions of the Daughters of Albion.} 46 Wagenknecht relates Thel's concern 37 return to ordinary fallen existence, an am- Milton's primary sense was "folded," about transiency to her "sexual anxiety," which gives the current English word commenting that "She wants to sleep 'the biguous retreat, perhaps, from both the "pleated." He also offers the undercurrent sleep of death' (so long as it comes gently), horror of the grave and from the passionate of meaning that relates the rainbow to the and her sexual misgivings are deflected intensity of her response to that horror" "plighting" of God's covenant with Noah. into concern for the fading of other in- (150). Wagenknecht's suggestion, which is 38 The "Antamon" of Europe is likewise nocents and into the imagery of God walk- consonant with his reading of Thel, implies "prince of the pearly dew" (Europe 14.15, ing in his Garden in the evening time" that Thel's longing for "gentle" experience E65). (155). (1.12-14, E 3) may be a rejection of the 39 Chrysogone (in Tlje Faerie Queene 47 Rodger L. Tarr proposes this view commitment to romantic "intensity" urged, 3.6.3ff) was the mother of Belphoebe and (193). for instance, in Blake's poem "Day," in Amoret, twin daughters born "of the 48 Swedenborg, Divine Love and Wis- which the sun of creativity arises with wombe of Morning dew" (3-6.3.1), mira- dom 14: 7. "wrath increast . . . Crownd with warlike 49 culously begotten "through influence of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 14, fires & raging desires" (3-5, E 473)—an th'heauens fruitfull ray" (6.2). Chrysogone E49- obvious "contrary" to the "judge and inter- is said to have conceived them while sleep- so Wagenknecht (121) discusses this cessor" who comes as the sun sets, without ing in the sun: motif as it appears in both the last plate of wrath "to sentence man" to a life depleted 7/be/and in pi. 11 of America, relating it to of visionary experience in a fallen world. The sunne-beames bright vpon her body similar motifs in the "Lyca" poems of the 53 The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 27, playd, Songs. He restates the questions it raises Being through former bathing mollifide, (158-59), but finds no final answers. E 45; Visions of the Daughters of Albion And pierst into her wombe, where they 5i The Faerie Queene 3.6.39-1. 8.10, E 51; The Four Zoas 2.34.80, E 324. embayd 52 Cf. Paradise Lost 10.92-99: