The Book of Thel"

-I THE CONTRARIETY OF CREATIVE INNOCENCE

Lawrence Damien Lauzon B.A., Simon Fraser University, 1975

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF

THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

in the Department

of English

@ Lawrence Damien Lauzon 1979 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY October 1979

Name: Lawrence Damien Lauzon

Degree: Master of Arts

Title of Thesis: The Contrariety of Creative Innocence in "The Book of Thel"

Examining Committee:

Chai rperson : Paul Del any

- - - Robin Blaser Senior Supervisor

l __C - a Rob Dunham

- -Yeter Taylo External Extminer Assistant Professor Department of Engl ish UB C

Date Approved: (&/ 24/79 PARTIAL COPYRIGHT LICENSE

I hereby grant to Simon Fraser University the right to lend my thesis, project or extended essay (the title of which is shown below) to users of the Simon Fraser University L ibrary, and to make part ial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. I further agree that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by me or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission.

T itI e of Thes i s/Project/Extended Essay

The Contrariety of Creative Innocence in "The Book of Thel"

Author: -- . - I e m - (signatu:e)

Lawrence Damien Lauzon (name Abstract

The purpose of this re-interpretation of "The Book of Thelw is twofold: to present a radically different view of the Virgin of the drama from the established one; and to employ this new interpretation of her function, withir. the cast of its poetic identity, to locate and consoli- date discursively an understanding of the Blakean poetic ideal as "sublime allegory addressed to the intellectual powem." The prophetic voice, Blake vows, redefines the eighteenth century's understanding of the nature of allegory and the genesis of poetic inspiration. Except in Nancy Bogen's critical edition of "The Book of Thelw (1971), the history of l*Thel'l criticism viewed the Virgin as a hypocritical and self-deluded adolescent bent on naive question-begging,

The present thesis proposes that nowhere does the lyrical beauty of the poem disagree with the basic magnanimity and the unimposing nature of the Virgin's character, Furthermore, it advocates the necessity of retaining Blake's emphatic distinction between "states,'l which are mental categories of existence or perception, and individuals in those "states" to apprehend the meaning of Zhristian forgiveness, The narrative progression of the poem symbolizes Thel's intellectual journey towards an awakened, or self-conscious, understanding of the meaning of forgiveness,

She is among the class of men Blake nominates the "Redeemed.w Her task is not to learn the sorrowful consequences of what it means to be a mother but to awaken the unexplored regions of the fallen mind, the imagination that has become engulfed in the sensuality of physid

existence, to a spiritual condition whereby the re-integrated sensibility of the "true man" completely reflecta the life of the Holy Spirlt. This re-interpretation of the poem relies upon Blake's unrelenting attack against the tradition of natural perspective which had dominated the eighteenth century. Blake viewed the "lifeless sanity" of the perspectival school, championed by the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds, as the death and imprisonment of not only visionary and imaginative being but of humanity itself. He saw that a tyrannized submission to 'outward form, ' or the chimerical aloofness of nature*s impenetrability, resulted in the loss of man's essential divinity. Hence, a Druidic worship of nature amounted, for Blake, to a self-righteous glorification of man's satanic Selfhood, or a spurious image of humanity born of nat+ursl memory. Blake's conception of prophetic art implies a strict antinomianism. The prophetic voice is continually engaged is a re- definition of humanity. To accomplish this it must break down the established limits of form and imagination to make way for the appearance of a divine image of humanity which Blake calls "living form." Blake sees the wntinual death of God as the contrary, the inexorable 'other,' of the immortality of the human soul. The purpose of this re- interpretation of "The1 ," therefore, is to outline the achievement of the poem in terms of Blake's attack against the tradition of the TABLE OF CX)NTWTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

dlmmuL NOTP:

CHAPTER I: PRELIMINARIES AND INTRODUCTION

GWTER 11: PLATES 1 AND 28 THEL AND THE LIUY

BUPTER 111 r PLATE 3: THEL AND THE CLOUD

CMPTER 1V: PLATES 4 AND 5: THE&, THE WRM, AND THE CLAY

GMPTER V; PLATE 6: THEL AND THE "VOICE OF SORROW

WTER VI t "THEL'S hOTn?"

APPENDIX: PLATES AND TEXT

BIBLIOCBAPHY LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Plate I "Thel'8 &tbn

Plate I1 Frontlspieoe

Plate 1 "1 8 The daughters of Mne Seraphim., ."

Plate 2 #Uhy should the m2~trsssof the vales of Har,,.*

Plate 3 "11: 0' little Cloud the virgin 8aid,..*

Plate 4 "111 I Then Thel aetonishba viewed the Worm,. ,*

Plate 5 "But he thsct ~OV- the 10trlye en

Plate 6 "IVI The etsrnal gates terrific p~rter,,,~ The following abbrevlationa of works by Blake have been used in the text.

ARO "AU RELIGIONS are ONEw

ec *The Crystal Cablnetn

n "THE IgUR W)ASn

J "JERUSALEM"

LBB "The Utth Blaok Bop

N *Maw

MMI "THE MARRIAGE of HEAVEN and HELL@

NNB "THE= Is NO NATURAL RELIGIONm LtiJ and [b]

U "THE BOOK of URfZENn

VfJ *A Vision of The Last Judgmentn But the natural man reoeiveth not the things of the 3pirit of God; for they eure foolishness unto himr neither can he know them, because they are spiritually disoerned. (1 Corinthians 11114) Not that we are suffioient of omelves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of Cod; Who also ha# made us able mdnisters of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. (11 Corinthians iii t 5.6) Blake's oomposite art was so far in advanoe of the intellectual climate of his age that he was forced to endure financial hardship throughout the greater part of his life, The handful of devout and faithful friends, some of them in little better financial position than himself, who used their influence to encourage patrons for Blake, brought him the greater part of his mea,gre economic success, In order to survive he had to undertake commercial enterprises whioh more often than not hindered the produotion of his own oreations. Neverthelespl, Blake marained prodigiously produotive in the face of contingent adversity. The early period is marked by an enormous range of philosophical, religious, and artistic concerns, most of which he would orchestrate on an increasingly larger scale thmughout his career, Oftentines the dates of particular wrspoisitiona overlap one another, Blake havim been swept away into further areas of inspiration, He would return to the unfinished work as the vision engaged him, This is the reason it is diff'icult to read one Blake poem in isolation, The corpus in its entirety composes a oorapelling visionary 'system.' During the early period he was sometimes o~cup2edwith ae many as three major undertakings at a time as well as his aoauaercial aormnissione. Blake's interpretation of the suuuese of the Amerlw Revolution radidly influenced hie views of social apocalypse and psyohologid. fulfilllaent. me subsequent politioal events in Fnrnce and England during the late 1780'e and early 1790'~largely complied to deternrlne his re-evaluation of Reason and Energy. The relative1y self-sufficient religious prophecies of "Songs of Innocenoe" (1784) blossomed into the more flexible form of "The Marriage of Heaven and Hellw (1790-93) in order to minutely delineate the incarnate loglc and bounding line of Energy itself, The political crises in Europe during these early years awakened in Blake a profound understanding of the deep sohiem in the nature of Reason, At Its best, Blake's reason is similar to the Renaissance notion of intuitive reason or apprehension: ti divinely inspired uonsoious- ness of the potential divinity of man which can be realieed through the lfZMration of Energy. More often, however, Blake's reason aanlfeets itself as discursive reason or comprehension which operates through deductive or inductive processes to establish absolute laws of being, laws which can then be enauted as represalve soeial uodes. The prinoiple achievement of the early works is to dlstingdsh between Reason and Energy as genuine contraries and fallen reason as a speutroue negation of Energy. It would seem that the body of Blake's early works deplot the struggle to amlve at the swinglrrament when he will actually name the four great eternals. They are present in the early oompositlons In their embryonic etates and the reader should be aareful to apprehend the struggle each endures to emerge as a ulcrasly identified -

entity. An exemplary uase of this stsruggle may be seen in the contrariety of Reason and Energy,

Anne Mellor, Blake's HUM Form Divlne (~erkeleyt Unlverslty of Wifornla Press, 19741, pa 45. Reason is the fome that draws a bounding line irround Energy and thus makes possible the creation of an artistic imge...Only when the expanang vector of Energy meets the contracti veotor of reason can a stabilieing line be drawn and a form shaped, )2e;

This understanding of Reason in its richest Renaissance meaning implies pure vision, the return of Urieen to his uondition of contrariety with the eternal who will later be identified as Urthona, The spectre of fallen reason vanishes with the disappearance of a creation myth in the prophetic

voice, "We say of the prophetic world that we could not possibly have made it; for, as the characteristic manner of prophetic poem drives us to assent, it uas there alreadyOw3Contra~y to popular opinion, I dl1 argue that unfallen Reason is the fundamental principle structuring the early works, Blake moves from a wholeness of religious vision with the early works deeper and deeper into the machinations of psychic fragmentation to disclover in the later epic prophecies a grandly orchestrated avowal

of the oreative innocence of "Songs of Inn~cence.~This is not to say

that Blake did not lsuffer the same changes of head and heart to uhiah we are all subject. It is to say that a man never changes his principles. Blake's corpus may be seenvas an ever branching attempt to contain the

contraxiety of creative innocence, to render the human more human.

Blake's patient concern with Reason during the early period bears

witness to the fact that he is working simultaneously from both sides of his material, the fallen and unfallen realms, The tension between

Ibid , P* 48, Roy Hwey Pearce, *Introductionw to Walt Whitman's Zsaves of G Fackimile- - -- Edi tion of the 1860 Text (1thaca t Cornell Univensi ty Press, thought and vision, i~ocenceand experience, my be seen in terms of the conflict between visual outline and philosophical principle.

Between 1790 and 1795...Blakees poetic vision and philosophical principles came into conflict with his visual style. Philosophically, he began to question the social and political implications of a conmitment to a self-sufficient religious vision. Since this closed vision had been visually associated with the framed compositions and bounding lines of Blake's early art, this zlso brought into question the nature and value of outline. Blake explicitly identified this bounding line with reason in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" (1793) r "Energy is the only life and is fmmkthe Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy."

I will argue that as early as 1789 Blake incorporated this conflict into his visual style, and with the composition of "Theln rnastered'a clear vision of the outline of Ehergy itself which he would later orchestrate in terms of the "sweet Science" of the innate logic, the pure vision, of the heart. In other words, Blake achieves with "Thel" a binding of the infinite Energy of eternal form by means of a clear and minutely delineating outline. The outline is not the product of fallen reason but is an exhibition of Energy itself. This achievement narks Blake's philosophical success in revealing the infinitude of the mortal body. Outline is not only the means but the end of apprehending Energy. It is a transfiguration of ~ortalitythat mirrors potential divinity just as a transfiguration of perspective will be seen to mirror the potential of a prophetic dwelling within the anti-perspectival. In short, it is "a thought which sees ideas as perceptible forms and sees forms as intellectual signs."' Blake's discovery of the Wallen contrariety of Reason '

Ic Mellor, p. xvl.

Octavio Pa., Claude Led-Straussr An Introduction, trans. J.S. and Ikxine Bernstein (New York: Dell Publishine Co., Inc., 1974), p. 5. and Energy signifies the transfiguration of perceptible forms into the types of identioal existence. Contraries are not ts be seen as exclusive opposites but as dialectically interpenetrating functions, which must be held in contrapuntal harmony, of er single act. The early works compose an ordered continuum of related concerns.

A brief summary of thew will help to ctoherently position "Theln in relation to the mturatlon of Blake's thought. 6 As early as 1776 Blake composed a sketch in oils after Michelangelo's @LastJudgment.' Tt shows a Herculean figure rising in self-annihilation. The act of self-annihilation becomes a fundamental religious principle, a subject of adoration, throughout Blake's work. The creative impulse tomrrtls the act of self-annihilation springs from an imaginative perception of contraries, The act of self-annihilation bsoomes, paradoxically, the sole entry into eternal life and a concrete apprehension of the "living

form* of "the hum form divineem In 1780 Blake engraved the plate knom as 'The Dame of AlMon,' or

'Clad Day. ' At the age of twenty-three he had mastered a fin apprehension of the eternal linearaentkl of the resurrected body. The 'Glad Ikyq design prophetically envisions the end of Blake's intellectual journey by

sirroring the risen body of Christ, ox the life of the unmisal creative Imagination, is an awakened Albion, AlMon takes on the aspect of the

'Original of Prophecy' in this design, Blake's aahievemnt here is a

shattering of the finitude of natural perspective. The @CladDay' design

early workre relies for the oost part on Ruthven To&i8s, ~illiamBlaket the artist (~ewYorkr E.P. Dutton and Co,, Inc., 1971), pp. 9-37. Of oourse. the suggested association of each work mentioned with nThelm is not taken from7Todd. all be seen to beax heavily on #e a&eveslent of plate IV of "The Book of Thel." In 1783 Blake puuished nPoetld Sketuhe~,~Work on these had been progrrsssing since 1770, They are a txansfomwd version of the Hebrew prophetic poem. !lhey venture beyond the Hebraic sublim by seeking a heighhned sensibility in a new inwardnees, Blake felt that the Hebrew prophets had foresaken the 'Source of Prophecy' in favour of the prophet. "Perhaps the unique freshness of nPoetical Sketches" w be epitondrted by noting Blake's firat achievements in the greatest of his projectst to glve definite form to the strong workings of inmdnatlon that produced

the aloudy sublime images of the earlier poets of senaltdlity.* (E 88617 These poems shadow forth the psyohological dootrine of coexistent 'etates- of-beinge which would later become the most original aspect of Blake's mythology, (E 886)

In 1784 Blake wrote the incomplete satire "An Island in the Moon.@ This work shows his strong antipathy to the philosophiaal oonceits of

his day. At this early date Blake was well versed in the polltias of

fallen reason, He eaw that a tyrannised adherence to the prinaiples of positivism amounted to little more than the death and Imprlsonment of

"living fomn Perhaps the met entertaining aspect of "An Island in the Moonn is Blake's use of the Instruments of natural rssson to under-

? All quotations of Blake (including Em%aan*stextual notea and Bloom's commentary) are from the text edlted by David V, Erd8lan, The Poetry and Prose of William Blake, commentary by Harold Bloom, 4th- ed, (Wen City, N.Y. t Doubleday, 1970). copyright 1965 by David Erdlnan and. Harold Bloom, cut the foundation of that tradition, 1786 mrks the pro&uction of a large sepia drawing of 'The Complaint of Job.' Blake wodd return to this theme to re-create, by illustrating, the entire Book of Job during his most mature period, In 1793 Bake published a revised state of 'The Complaint of Job.' These two coatpo- sitions chronologically frame that of wThel.H Clearly Blake was greatly concerned with the be8towa.l of definite outline upon an Image of human loss at the time of Vhel'sN coraposition. In terns of the minute delineation of this motif, "The Book of ThelM may be seen as Blake's attempt to focus the humn in the divine, to mirror the disappearanoe of the human in the appearance of the divine, Because of the nature of contrariety, this movement will be seen to entail its opposite and ooqlimentary

In 1788 Blake produced his first attempts in 'Illuminated Printing,'

"There is No Natural ReligionH and "All Religions are One." These didactic tracrtates poetically demnstrate the incongruity of the prevailing philosophical conaeits of Blake's day, They celebrate the infinitude of huaan desire and the pmphetic apprehension of contrariety necessary in order to participate in creative innocence, These first illwdnated works prophetically invoke the universalpresence of Blake's "Poetic Genius." TheHPoetic

Geniusw la present to the "true Manesw self-consciousness of the infinitude of mortal desire, The unengraved symbolical book, "Tiriel,@' appeared in 1789. Tiriel worships an outward manifestation of his divided selfhood as the foxm of

God, As such, he beax8 the countenance of a leprous and aged tyrant. We shall see that the unimposing lament of the "gentle" virgin, Thel, countercposes the aged leprousy of Tirlel's false doctrine. "Tirial" and WTheln am mually seen as coarplinuntasy texts. The1 is discussed in term of the hypocrite Tirid, The present minterpretation of "Thel" will argue that Thelas position is fundamntally opposed to that of Tiriel, Blake published "Songs of Innocence@@in this same year (1789) and also the title page plate of igThel.H It Is wore than likely that Blake did not complete WThelmin the version we now know until 1791 or 1793. The Vongs of Innocencen will be seen to bea.r heavily on the aohlevemnt of "Thel" in that the Virgin learns, during the course of the dramtic narration of the poem, an experiential innocence born of spiritual osuse, The plight of the Virgin re-opens the issue of mas%ncient innocencdg and emphatically locates that innocence in the infinitude of man's revolutionary desim. The issue of manas "ansient innocenceg' attalns a new significance in nTheln as the prophetic narration reveals the plight of the humen a8 identical and synonymous with the plight of the divine, By nineoring the plight of the divine in the human, Blake locates raan's "ancient innocencew in the ila8eortality of the mortal. Naturel categories of time, space and causation are reorganieed in a pmphetic apprehension of an eternal present. During this tim (1789-90) Blake was engrossed in annotating Sweden- borgas writings with great severity, Undoubtedly B1akeas refutation of Swedenborgian mysticism affected the coPtposition of *ThdLW Blake felt that $wed4nborgas mtaphpical system was not only grounded in a doctrine of predestination but that it denied God as the Creator of laan by placing Him in an inaccessible vaauum, Blake's task in Hlhel" is to reclaim

Swedenborg's inaccessible deity from its collapsed repose and to re- locate the dlvine in the human.

Between the years 1790 and 1793 Blake composed "The trhsriage of Heaven and Hellen "The Marriagen carries Blake's refutation of mysticism further. This work looates the dynamics of creativa innocence in the genius of the human heart. Blake inverts '! Swedenborg's orders of spiritual agency. He constitutes the devils of poeticinspiration as the true ntessengers of divine love while rendering the angels of divine providence mral tyrants and fearful alaves of a cunning rationalism. This explosive work celebrating the contrariety of unbounded Energy and infernal delight perfectly nrarries philosophical prinuiple and visual style. It achieves a casting aside of an extraneous metaphysics in order to redeem the contraries of unfallen Reason and Energy. Blake engraved the plates of "The hrriage" and possibly the

last three plates of "ThelH at the same time. It will be seen that his conuern with the renovation of the body in "The Marriageg*surfaces as a more direat ooncern with the awakening of the spiritualised body in "TheLn In 1791 Blake produced six illustrations for Nary Wollstonecraft's

"Original Stories from Real LifeH and a single plate, 'The Fertilization of Egypt,' for Erasmus Darwin's "The Botanic Cardsnew The first aerved to offer an impetus to Blake's formulation of the relations between the higher and lower forms of active intelligence by solidifying his prophetio apprehension of divine innocence, He saw that God is in the highest causes a8 well as the lowest effects. The second affonled Blake an in-

sight into the fertility dtuals of the natural ayole. Blake's keen

and associative eye quickly transformed this information into @asublime allegory addressed to the intellectual powers" with the composition of 'Thel." This same year Blake may have begun work on engravings for

Stuart and Revett8s "Antiquities of Athens," and if so, he would have

had access to some Greek well in advance of 1800, which ie the usually accepted date he began teaching himself. 10

1793 Blake is~ued Visions of the Daughters of A1.bion, "Ameriua," and the first state of Vor Childrent The Gates of Paradise.n Critical exegesis of "Theln has, for the most part, seen fit to mnsider the young Virgin, Thel, an abortive prefiguration of the accomphshed virgin, Oothoon, in "Visions of the Daughters of AlMon." The plights of the two virgins will be seen to be radically different during the come of the present reading of mThel.w *WslonsMis a socially pm- nounced statement whereas "Thel" is a representation of the mniftst&ions of divine creation and is directly concerned with the issue of the prophetio voice. "AmericaM concentrates Blake's concern KTth rebellious desire in the figure of Om. The Virgin, Ihel, wlll be seen to embody Orcos fiery energy, but in a ngentlew mner, as not only Thel, but all the characters of the dramathation insist. The appearance of "For

Childrenn in thls year shows that Blake was concerned with the image of the Worn not only as a symbol of man in the grave but in relation to the issue of prophetic authorship as well, The Worm becorns a particularly fecund image. It erbodieo the contrary states of the soul and so is the sole hope of salvation. To raise the spiritual body of the Worm is to save the life of theuniversal creative IrnaginekieBn from eternal death. The life of the Holy Spirit is dependent upon the self-consciousness of the Worm* In 1704. Blake published "Europe. The Fairy of the delightful introductory plate to thls prophecy gives voice to the tiny eyes and mouths suggestive of infant faces on a fold of Thelee gown on plate 2 of '"Thel." As prophetic mentor, the vegetative fairy of the introductory plate to *Europen re-integrates soul and world. Hie appearance marks the mraetnt of divine transgre~sionagainst an inaccessible exterlorlty.

He sbwe that "outward formn must be impregnated with the loving power of the prophetic imigination. The Fairy serves the silldlar function of dictational authority as the miltiplying faces on the fold of Itred's 8 gown and the worm siblings with whom the Worm shares his bed on plate 4. Blake's vision of the natural world had been impregnated with the alchela- ioing power of ilnagination long before he brought Milton bsok frow an uneasy heaven in order to redeem the worldr The soul cannot be redeemed without the simultaneous redemption of its contrary, the world. The rnuted faees in the designs of "Theln foreshadow the moment when the vegetative Fairy wlll speak in "Europe.n

17% also narks the definitive binding of Urlzen by Los, the *Spirit of Prophecy* in time, in "The First Book of Urisen." In this book Blake minutely articulates the bounds of fallen reason so that error may be purged from human remembrance. Perhaps the most astonishing achievement of nThe Book of UrfeenM is its mlrror structuring, As Lo8 bestows s body upon falsehood he defines hintself. A shilar mirror stmcturing wlll be seen 88 the creative centre of the prophetic voice in HThel.w A shattering of Urieen*~*fearful symmetry" all be seen to reveal the mainsprings of reality in language. Blake's spiritualirted Nature involves a speaking into being of the risen body of Christ, the universal creative Inaginatiiora,

The nSongs of Innocenue and of Experiencen were issued jointly as 8 unified work Y3hewing the Two Contrary States of the Humn Soulu in 1794..

' Erd~point. out the existence of these tiny sibling faces on plates 2 and 4 of "Thel.n "A gentle hint to the virgin Thel?H Ekdman coments. See The Illuminated Blake (~ewYorkr Anohor Press, 1974), PP* 36, 38. The individual poems eoaposing the nSongeo wt not be seen as exclusively e~blemsticof either one state or the other. Blake aoknowledged as much when he decided to shift a poem of one state to another, as he did in several instances. They depict contrary states in that Innocence and Experienae mutually interpenetrate. The "Songs" lnay be read time and time again, each reading awakening new criterion of thought as far as the experiential creativity of innocence is concerncsdr Each poem is a separate, highly polished mirror reflecting Innocence within Experience and Experienoe within Innouenoe. Together they compose the ground of

Blake's system of Imaginatioh in an inexoraBle contrariety. The present re-interpretation of Vhe Book of ThelH will argue that the narrative drsmatization of the Virgin's intellectual journey is a aontinued intermgation by Blake into the nature of contrariety.

Finally, in 17% Blake engraved the plate 'Ezekialt I take away from thee the Desire of thine Eyes,' This plate seems to be a companion plate to 'The Conplaint of Job.' Clearly, even at this early date, Blake was concerned nith the prophetic voice as a mythologized revelation of a futurisn beyond desire, a futurism available to ct prophetic apprehension of unf81len time which oould be made wholly manifest in the prsaent. The attainment and containment of prophetic futurity signifies the awakening of the corporeal understanding to an eternal present. In order to attain to a wholeness of creative perception restorative of human loss, Blake had to minutely delineate the infinitude of desire itself, Blake's composition of plate 6 of "The Book of Thelw is exactly this delineation.

Only by gauging the extent of Albion's "blank misgivingsw could the prophetic voice make visible the hallowed ground of a redeemed earthly paradise. Only by displaying the infinitude of human desire can the prophetiu voiue radeeai tine In the bosom of eternity and reveal the nature of a genuine historlad conscioueness, Vhe Book of Thel,** then, is framed by interrelating religious, philosophid, and artiatiu conuerna which determine one another and

consistently expand throughout Blake*s entire corpus, With these associ- ations in mind we can move to a axmideration of the uhronologlual dif- ficulties surrounding the cronposition of aThel," The title page (plate ii) bears Blake's 8ignatux-a and the year 1789, Recent evidence exists to suggest that although 1789 is the year in whiczh

Blake engraved the title page plats and possibly the first five plates d text, he could have begun work on the poem as early as 1787 and returned to It as late as 1815 or later to make revisions, Keynes and Erdman present inclusive dates of 1789 to 1793 and 1789 to 1791 respatively, There are severdZ textual differences between the seventeen extant copies of the poem, inuluding major deletions administered to the final two, These final wpies of HThelHbear the watermark 1815. Blake gouged lines 19 and 20 of plate 6 front these copies and replaced them with

Hfigures of a man with a cane on a cloud-line and a gowned woman soarlngr perhapa an ironic response to pemons uho asked Blake to erase references to the boy's "tender curbt* and the girl's wcurtain of fleah. n9 The religiously artistic (for Blake did not divorce the essential religiosity

of perception from the business of creation) intention of the author $9

obviously modified by any change between text and text. Therefore it become important to deterndne as closely as poasible the actual data of

conrposition of each plate as well aril the execution of each copy in order to be able to grasp the maturation of Blake's thought as it is made manifest by the prophetic continuity of the poem. "Thel" consists of eight plates in all: "~hel'sMotto" (plate I), the title page or frontispiece (plate ii), and the body of the text (plates 1-6). In several editions the "Motto" is placed after the last plate of text. Nancy Bogen, who has edited a critical facsimile of "The

Book of ThelVt based on a collation of the seventeen originals, explains the chronological order of composition of each platea Only the date 1789 is given, and it appears on the title page. It probably corresponds to the time of composition rather than execution of the plates because a deleted line of nTirieln (1. 370) appears as the last two lines of "Thelgs Motto," and "Tiriel" is generally dated 1789. But since wThel's't opening lines (1: 6-14) croncern the "children of the springt' who are "born to smile & fall," the poer may conceivably have been commenced as early as February 1787, when Blake's much loved brother Robert died in his early twenties. As for the date Blake finished the plates of "Thel," there is good reason to believe that this occurred after 1789, possibly as late as 1791. The lettering of the text is cursive, and thus the plates postdate "Songs of Innocen~e,~whose title page is also dated 1789 but whose lettering is roman, except for "The Voice of the Ancient Bard," which is eenerally believed to be a late addition. As it happens, the cursive characters of plates 1-5 of "ThelM resemble those of the latter, whereas the cursive characters of plates 1 and 6 are larger and mxe unifomnl slanted, like those of W.sions of the Daughters of Albionn (17937, and gave the 'go with the serif on the left side that David V. Erdnrsn claim Blake introduced into his work about 1791, It would appear, then, that plates i and 6 were executed independently of plates 4 and 5. First, the prlnting of plates 1, 2, and 3 is uniformly poorer than that of plates 4 and 5, and more often than not Blake had to retouch the printed page of the first three, Second, the lettering on plate 4 is different; a good many of the lines of text have a downward slant, and the words tend to be lager . on the right-hand side of the page. On plates 1, 2, and 3, however, the lines are uniformly horl~ontal,and when a word on the right- hand side is larger (as a few of them are), it is hardly perceptible, It is reasonable to assert that Blake etched the engravings of '*ThelH between the years 1789 and 1791. However, it should not pass unnoticed that no earlier that 1815 he performed a major revision to plate 6 by deleting lines 19 and 20. 1789 marks the composition of the title page plate and plates 1-3 which differ in tone from plates 4 and 5. These last two no doubt followed soon after. It is important to acknowledge any brief lapse in time since the structural continuity of the poem as a whole depends heavily upon the revitalization of the image of the Clay and its action as a progression from the relatively singular perspectives of the Lilly and Cloud. In accord with the multiple perspective on which the poem's structure is based, the confrontation between Thel and the Worn, and Thel, the Worm, and the Clay offers a simultaneous descent and ascent of the soul very different to the innocent perspectival stances of plates 1-3 and from the spiritual existentialism of plate 6 agzin. Plates 4 and 5, in other words, act as a pivotal tzarnition introducing the anti-perspectival. The year 1791 probably marks the composition of the present version of plate 6 as well as "Thel's Motto.n But since plate 6 directly introduces the contrariety of creative innocence in terms of an extreme contingency, it is possible that it was composed as late as 1793, a year before "Songs of Innocence and of ExperiftnceH a2peared. If plate 6 does indeed replace an errlieq"Innocencet' version, as Enlnyn suggests,'1 then the poem as a whole, as we now have it, achieves a harmonious rendering of the contrariety of innocence and experience indicative of the more mature Blake. In any case, the indisputable two years between the

XL Cf. "Q~eries,~Blake Nensletter, 11 (15 Sept. 1968), 24. 16 composition of the title page plate and plate 6 should be kept in mind as bearing on the qualitative measure of the perfect control exerted by the poem's structure. It would seem of crucial importance to note that Blake deleted lines 19 and 20 on plate 6 -- "Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy! / Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?" -- in 1815 at the earliest. These lines, as we shall see, achieve a searing strength of imaginative conviction far in advance of the particularieed statement of lines 11 to 18. They embody the prophet's most direct misgivings with Platonism as regads a poetics maklng visible *Sgdritual Mystery."

(VLJ E 54.5) Nancy Bogen suggestss Since those lines are preceded by a passage on the corruption of the senses (6811-18), Blake may well have deleted them to give more emphasis to the passage, the idea being that particular forms of restraint, like sexual inhibition, are included in the general condemnation of restraint. On the other hand, he may have recognized the inconsistency of following the general condemnation with a complaint about a particular form of restraint. Similar passages on the senses in later works (e.g. "Jerusalemn 49134-41) omit specific reference to the sexual. Blake never lost his antipathy to organized religion and the inhibited wretches that it spawned, but sometime after the turn of the century ultimate value and the possibility of fulfillment shifted in his uorks away fmm th~~objectiveworld and its delights to imagination and eternity.

I will suggest quite the opposite; that lines 11 to 18 are possibly the greatest example in English literature of a particularized account of the resurrected senses married in existential delight, and that lines 19 and

20 propose an ixnaginative transition from the particularized sensuality . of the awakened body to the universalized forms in which the poetical imagination necessarily dwells. They are profoundly unambiguous, born of a prophetic celebration that codd only spring from a woeful defining of the fallen order of thought as that order is diecovered anew in the cosmology of forgiveness that characterlees Edenic perception. This is the deepest meatning of fourfold Wenic wholenesst it remains a futurism.

Blake was to add a rather curious statement to plate 6 of "The Marriage of Heaven and He11lWt

Lt indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was cast out, but the Drvfls account is, that the Messiah fell, & formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss This is shewn in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to send the comforter or Desire $&& Reason mray have Ideas to build on, the Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he, who dwells in flaming fire. Know that after Christs death, he bemne Jehovah. (E 34-5 Underlining added) I woad suggest that linee 19 and 20 of plate 6 embody the reorganisation of a spiritualieed Nature so oonpletely interwoven with the narcissism

of love and dislRissive of the fallen anxieties of fear and doubt that

their complexity could not be supported by the realitted motifs of the

poem. In other words, these lines are inherent in the prophetio articu-

their dixect emergence on plate 6 carries its supportive structure beyond the poem and into the labour of the larger epics, especially

"Ydlton" and Blake would wresth with the sngulfing sensuality of thought as poetical thinking throughout hie entire career, In "Thel" the sexuality of generation provides an analogy of the method of prophetic composition. Blake alahemically transfigures the sexuality of the symbol into the forms of eternal existemel or rather, he depict8

a erpiritualimd Nature as the eternal multiplicity of the risen Christ, "In his copy of Swedenbarg's "Wisdom of Angels Concerning Divine Love and' Divine YlsdoaP o on don 1788) p 286, Blake underlined words in a passage especially relevant to "ThelWr "for-- the Image -of Creation 9

Spiritual, nevertheless that it may appear, and furnish Use .c-in the . .. natural Wrld, ..,it mast be clothed in Matter." See K 95,"13 Blake was well aware of how man is seduced by his symbols. For this reason he placed the HMottowat the end of several copies of the poesl. The

"Motton serves as a mythic vehicle to re-open the function of the symbol. Indeed, lines 19 and 20 of plate 6 my have been deleted because the addition of the "Motto" provides a sianPlar universali~ationof the fecundity of thought.

@"l%eBook of Thel" was the flrst prophetic work to be issued by Blake as an illuminated raanusoript. The text and illuminations are complementary and to study one exclusively is to run the risk of render ing the wholeness of Blake's prophetic imagination incomplete, The development of his process of "Illuminated Printingw is inseparable from the development of his thought because of the simultaneity in the prophetic of the conception of thought and the execution of vision.

Blake saw eternal forms as historical realities, Recent scholarship has become more amenable to the parallel importance of the illualnation, hence wider and deeper significations of each work ats a whole are emerging, The illuminations slay be read as a text unto themselves in many cases. They not only complement the nritten text but guide It. The colour of Theles dress changes not only from copy to cmpy but of ten from design to design within each copy as well. The colour vrcriations inaude pale yellow, pale greenish yellow, pale bluish green, purplish red, pale blue, bright pink, light bluish ereen, light grayish pink, to a vivid yellow in the later copies. Clearly, Blake's conception

l3 Michael Tolley, "The Book of ThelN and *Night Thoughts," Bulletin of the New York Public Library 69 (3965): 375.85. of Thel me anything but static. The poem was not conceived as a piece of moral mongering. Erdman believes that the variations in colour scheme from copy ta copy are of little consequence to a jut reading of *~hel.*'' Sinae the colour of the dress alternates between a varying paleness and a mbwt and lively yellow, I would swgest that Blake came to vlew Thel more and more as a human being, whereas initially she had been conceived as a sublime receptacle of divine creetion. The changes in colour soheme show that Blake became increasingly resolute as to the relation between man and God. Thel's dilemma surfaced more and more ae the struggle of the human to become more hum. Man uan have no idea of any thing greater than Qm as a aup cannot contain more than its capaciousness But God is a mian not because he is so percievd by man but because he is the creator of man (E 592).

Thel beam more human by becoming the Spirit or Original of Prophecy.

"Thel*t may be regarded as an apitome of the contrariety of the soul, as Blake's profound interrogation of the commitment and obedience of the prophetia in the face of the absence of authority, It is a transi- tional piecre between "Songs of Innocence,'' and the later "Songs of Experience" and NThe Marriage of Heaven and Hell." The achievement of its graceful beauty is a delicate delineation of how the contrariety of the soul permeates and governs the four stages of peraeption proper to humn existence. The contrapuntal harmony of innocence and experience is disoovered in the prophetic articulation of "Thel*sw epic cosmology of mutual forgiveness wherein innocence and experience ceaselessly seek l4 Cf. The Illuminated Blake, p. 33. annihilation in one anothergs esnbmce. "Theln Intemgatea the religious ground of perception as a mental creation, and by so doing =-opens the prophetic as an intellectual mode of abandoning the manacles of psycho- 1ogtca.l mystification. With nThel'' Blake advances from the conventional , albeit emphatic, use of perspective in the "Sone;sn to an understanding of multiple perspective as the governiw principle of structure and as a mthod of arriving at the anti-perspectival, the pmphetic renunciation of ownership and assurance of identity, It is this shattering of per- speative that affords the overcoming of natural limltation which signifies the advent of a prophetic delineation of genuine oontrariee, The structural pivot of "Thel'' may be said to 1ie between contrary perspeatives, issuing from the silence created by the speaking voice, &aprogressive conflict of contmry perceptions in which 'Opposition is true F'riendship 1 ."15 The ultimate concern of the poem comes to rest in an interrogation of the dynamics of the anti-perspectival as the condition of fourfold perception or Edenic existence, for Blake's thought seeks the reunifi- oation of the emanations of Albion to form the "txue Manm (ARO E 2) who is the Poetic Genius and the Spirit of Prophecy. By means of a definitive delineation of a cosmological forgiveness and the development of his technique of mirror inversiq, Blake is able to discover an ana3ogue of the prophetic process within the world of generation permitting him an artiaulation of regeneration, He is able to articulate the sameness of that which is above and that which is below, to marry heaven which is infernal deli&t with hell which is unbounded energy,

l5 SW~Fox, Poetic Form in Blake's "Miltonw (~lncetonl Princeton University Press, 1976), p, 20. The shattering of natural perspective provides for the prophetic substantiation of the mewry which lies between man and man as an un- fathomable chaos, while it la also an entry into an understanding of the eternal lineaments of the wtrue knN as the individual who passes through states which theaselves remain forever. "Thel" seeks the eternal identity of individuality and therefore must make manifest the contrariety of the humanity-divinity poles in order to determine the source of the prophetic. The immediacy of the redeeming power of the anti-perspectival characteristic of prophetic language, which is the signature of the divine, is the achievement of a "new heaven and a new earth," not as eschato- logioal catastrophe and recreation, but as the recratlon that occurs in every moment of every day, when the Newtonian voids are filled with the lige of the Spirit, and Tine is seen as "the wercy of Eternity. "

To make visible unfallen !Fine is the labour of the prophetie, and kta acrhievement is the visibility of the sacred gmund of the anti-perspectival.

The mirroring of Theles departure from eternality is not a retreat from passionate iqinative activity but an inversing of the tnwnate logic, of poetical thinking within the context of a reorganization of fallen time. The prophetic language ushers the reader inside a nTi.me less than a pulsation of the artery" which is "equal in its period & value to Six Thousand Years. / For in this Period the Poets Work is Don8 (M28862-3 2911 E 126) to discover the genesis af the "true Mann in the contrariety of the soul. The prophetic method is a making visible of absenoe, of humn loss. As such The1 passes through a series

Florence Sand1a, "The Iconoclastic Enterprise8 Blakees Cri tlque of '%lton8s Religionw," Blake Studies, 5, No. 1 (1972), p. 21. of direct confrontations with the *othere of her present state. Her lament is nothing &ort of a prophetic pose by whioh to interrogate the mti-perspectlv& aa a .ode of reuniting the human and the bidne. I will argue that, ftnally, The1 does not lave Eden, The condition of Edenia wholeness is not an abstraction but is within the individual as the sole passage to community. The outward form of Eden blossoms as the individual engages more fiercely in loving intellecrtual warfare. If Thel can be seen as remaining in Eden throughout, then the prophetic narrative of the poem may be seen as attempting to show how Eden bsoomes Eden, how eternal form is named.

The present reading of "ThelM will therefore encourage a view of the elusive figure of Thel as Virgin Bride. She is supported by the contraries of fallen time as the soul.'s lost 'othere and Time as "the mercy of Eternity." These contraries involve a further contrariety: fallen time is "the raercy of Eternity and Time, as eternality, is the

soul's lost 'other'. Thel becomes the true Bride of Christ in the existential condition of the absence of authority. The supportive language of the prophetic discovers in her the inrage of Christ, thereby

endowing her with the status of the Original of Prophesy. She is the fir& representation of the figure of Jeruealem. Jerusalem, the Bfide, speaks to Vala of her former unfallen relations with Jehovah as Lamb,

The Lamb of God reciev'd me in his arms he smiled upon use He made me his Bride & Wifet he gave thee to Albion. Then was a time of love: 0 why is it passed away! (3 20139-41 E 164) This unfallen relation between Jerusalem and Jehovah is not only past but its mythologiaed content exists as a futurism as well. It signifies the potential humanisation of the "inmost Ford' (CC E 480) of an eternal present. 'Theln is to be seen, then, as a pmphetic pose undertaken to resurrect not fallen man but fallen Cod. The prophetic is a revelation of the eternal. Prophetic futurity is to be seen as the opening of the eternal lineamerhis of the human foraa from fallen tirat itself. "The Book of ?helm composes Blake's first statement of the problem of Vala or love in the fallen world. Luvah (I have ~oved)is named for the first' time (388) To dismiss Thel's lament as the "pale religious letchery" of virginity is to rniss the point entirely, since she begins her experiences as one of Blake's much favoured whores. In terms of the unfallen realm the language of prophecy seeks the purity of chastened love in Blake evert more fiercely than it had done in his predecessors. In the perspecztive of the English literary tradition, Blake has been following on where Spenser and Milton went before, defining the chaste love of the Garden of Adonis against the impurity of the Bower of Bliss, finding his own conception of the mrried love of Eden that distinguishes it both from the bestiality of Cow and- what is to Blake's ndnd no less reprehensible -- the Lady's sage and serious doctrine of Virginity. In "Milton," Blake uses the word "Chastity" (as he uses the word "~tonement") in the pejorative sense. But that should not distract us from the essential crantinuity of Blake's poem with the great works of Milton and Spenser whioh also present a ohastend love, and which also acknouledge -- though not as consistently as Blake required -- that the ohaste love is not exclusive, but that it enbraces the Bride as multitude, and finds in her all Nature transfigured. Milton and Spenser, like Blake, had worked under the iapact of the vision in the Apooalypse of St. John where all heavan and earth has ached At-one-ment in the Marriage of the Lamb and his Bride, 1f Blake departs from the established accounts of chastened love only to reorganize the religiosity of perueption and then return with a transfiguring aocount of chastened love that is able to contain the contrariety of imagination. The appearance of unfallen Vala is dependent upon his reconciliation with fallen Tharms,

The controversial ending ~f the poem must be uonstrued not in term of Thel's fearful retreat to a land of pre-existence, for neither the

vales of Har nor the realm of Mne Seraphim depict a s-ge and objective world set apart from the contrariety of true marriage. hel's shriek

and subsequent departure will be seen as analogous of the refusal of the prophetic voice to accept an apocalyptic revelation bearing the

taint of sorrow. The ending is to be seen as the struggle of the

prophetic process to release itself entirely from the known and the deoay of memory, That struggle takes place within the highest as well as the lowest stage of perception, The prophetic reveals itself as a self-critical, self-consu~ngart in accordance with its discovery of

the eternality of forgiveness. In this sense, we shall see that HIR?el'en ending constitutes one of Blake's greatest imaginative successes. It provides for the resurrection of possibilities, the re-opening of the prophetie voice as a mode of discoursing the eternality of pproess. David Erdman sqgests "that when he [the reader3 reads the last page he mast look back and alter hie view of the preceding pages.n18 "Thel'd ending my be seen as a negative, a mirror reversal, of nJerudem's* conclusion where "All Human Formn are Hidentified.H (99rl E 256) Both endings are born of the same imaginative implSLse, a celebration of the infinitude of human desire. They insist that the prophetic voice rarwLin a minute delineation of contrariety.

If the ending of the poem can be seen as a return to the beginning, the'narrstive structure of the poem parallels the movement of the whirlwind,

l8 "Queries," Blake Newsletter, 11 (15 Sept. 1968)' 24. the dramatization through Lilly, +Gloud, and Worm depicts the threefold "still perceptions* of potential divinity, arnd the pure vision articulated by the "voice of \wrrow" signifies the final apotheosis of the 'Sleeping Body." Thel's departure suggests a shattering of the "inmost Form" of the rersurrected body, the image of iqes, and the reader is returned to the Motto's re-opening rhetoric of revolution. Thus the structure of the poem represents the movement of a wind blowing from eternity which serves to inform and animate the events of time. Although "Thel" is considered one of the most readable of Blake's works, interpretations vary so drastically that it is necessary to make clear sense of its narrative direction. I shall proceed by examining certain passages within each plate which focus Blake's attack against the trsdition of the naturalists.

A few preliminary observations concerning the exact nature of contrariety would prove advantageous to this re-interpretation of "Thel." Throughout his career, Blake's inspiration lies chiefly in the uncovering of contraries. The poet's prophetic eye is forever on the *othert of any given intellectual state, and hence his enormous concern with the emanation.

Blake's profound celebration of the human imagination oarmot be regarded too closely. It is the imagination, that vehicle of whatever is poesible to be believed, which unlocks the appearance of contraries. The imagination, as Blake's system makes clear, does not do away with the conflicts and contraries of human life, for "without wntraries is no progressionn (MHH 3 ~149);quite the opposite, it does away with their nee;ations, which make the conflicts insoluble. For exaarple, reason, for Blake, attempts to negate passion3 in so doing, it insures that passion will be rebellious and perverse, and war, heightened conflict and destruction, will be the result of over- rational order, Blake's faith is a denial only of the occult 1 there is nothing that is secret, there is only that whicth the nlnd has neglected or feared to regard. The belief that mn is oapable of aoptng with his contraries and of creating a oulture whiah contains them harmoniously is simply the faith that man is capable of becoming everything that he potentially is, and that what he potentially is, is all he needs to be, The only thing debased in man, for Blake, then, is the denial of hls own human nature, a nature which is neither oorporeal nor disembodied spirit, but both -- Jesus, as he would say, or the 1magination. 19 The imgination, Blake's principle of life, is generated by the existence of aontraries. Each individual is, and partakes of, imagination. The histarlaal Jesus is fully present wherever there is suffering. This complete identification of the historical with the eternal constitutes the foundation of Blake's radical Christian vision. Through it he is provided with the means of banishing guilt and doubt from the sphere of the imagination, The genuine historiaal understanding is enabled to peroeive the pmsence of the resurrected body of Christ in the world of generation. The islagination gives birth to, and is nourished by, the appearance of contrariee, The imaginative lnan struggles tonards an ever more complete vision of the "true Mansm His task partakes of the nature of the eternal, Eternality nay be seen as a dwelling within the pmcessive nature of the life of the imagination. The eternal and the historical are revealed simultaneously, In Blake's prophetic poetry the eted takes on the aspect of the fullness of the temporal8 it becomes an ever

l9 Eleanor Wilner, Gathering the Windst Visionary Iagination and Radical Transfomation of Self and Societg mtimrel John HopWns University Press, 19751, pp. 9-2. blossoming stance in relation to the realm of infinite potential. The prophetic conception of the nature of eternality announues the unveiling of the pernicious codes of destination and pre-ondlainment. A genuine dwelling within the body of Christ beoomes a participation in m's primordial freedom. Blake conceived of eternity as a dynamic multiple, and not as a static abstraction inaccessibly divorced from the powers of the human imagination. The dynamism of eternity functions as the inspiration of the holy nThunders of Thought." (J 316 E 144) This is illustrated, for example, by the nPreludium To The (~irst)Book of Urisen."

Eternals I hear your call gladly, Dictate swift winged words, & fear not To unfold your dark visions of torment. (215-7 E 69) Blake's secretarial style of reporting positions the Eternals as the awakened faculties of the resurrected body. The source of inspiration is here the "true PiH who embodies the ancient oracle of Desire by seeking reaonciliation with his departed emanations. He is the Source of Prophecy in Blake's ever branching nythology and the harbinger of the &den vision, Eternity, as a perspective, is artificially isolated in oxder to delineate the minute proportions of the "true Man." The "true Man'' is the bright reflection of the shadow that is fallen man in time. He acts as the creator of kn, the redeemer of God and the infinite.

The "true Mant' is aomposed of four great eternals who live in mutual interdependence without absorbing one another1 Urieen, the plow;

TPlarms, the sheepfold8 Luvah, the loom) and Urthona, the blacksmith. The appearance of the "true Man" signifies the bestowal of epic proportion upon the fallen orders of time and spsoe rao that the infinite is returned to the finite and the finite nmy be seen in its fourfold aspect 06 ahinlng fmm within, Blake writes in WiltonH that %very thing in Eternity shinea by its om Internal light," (1 10816 1E103) The appearsnoe of the

%rue ManW sinniltaneously signifies the return of the genus of external nature to the incarnate science of the hart, thus rendering "every particle of dust" that "breathes forth its joyw (E iiirl8 ~59)a jewel of the human soul, The prophetic method seeks to realign world and soul without drinking up man's prinordial condition of desire in a synthesis of oontraries, Contraries must always mutually exist. The composition of epic proportion signifying the appearance of spiritual beauty must be seen as the ceaseless labour of the prophetic, for by definition the prophetic is always a futuristic epistemology,

As none by travelling over_ known lands- can------find ou the unknown,- - _ So-f_~~m_#-r~~ac~~~r~ed--~~--- Marn_~?-~_npt_ac9Ui!..f! therefoxemJanW._v_exs&l. Poetic Geeus exists (ARO E2). The prophetic, as a naming of eternal form, is a futurism grounded in the identification of incarnation and trrulsfigumtion, transience and transcendence, Blake's work is finally meaningless apart from its ability to evoke the presence of a human and imaginative Eternity in the concrete momnts of real time. When Blake says that the ruine of time build nernsions in Eternity, he can only be speaMng from the perspective of a kenotic understanding of the Creation: not only is Eternity present in the - ruins of time, but Eternity is dso enhanced and expanded by the seemingly destructive process of temporal duration, Eternity enpties itself and becomes time so that time itself might lead Eternity to its goal, Refusing to imagine time as an aged msn, Blake alnays insisted upon personifying it as an eternal youth, a youth who is the "Spirit of Prophecy" and the deliverer of the deadening inertia of a one-dimensional laattext Time ie the mercy of Eternity; without Time's swiftness, Which is the swiftest of all things, all were eternal tornent.20

The "true Man" fs the principle of creation. His appearance is always a becoming;. Creation is to be seen as perpetual transfiguration. "In alchemy, meretrix the whore ie the prima materia, the dark or unconscious

corpus imperfecturn that must be Fallen man beara the same relationship to the "true Manw in that the one contains the other. The appearance of the "true Man" signifies the revelation of the interpersonal nature of individuality so that the universal creative imagination may be made visible. His infinitude dialectically passes into a composition of the resounding infinity of the finite, since infinity is construed by

Blake as an entry into the process of the continuation of the Devourer

and the Prolific, which in turn is a manifestation of his central principle

of Self-Annihilation. The prfnci ~l&_(rf~Self [email protected] consists of a continual _purlfistion of perception, a casting aside of the fallen man's -- . ------reasoned construction of an i of the Self'hood in isolated finality. -\-- - -< Ownership and assurance of fallen identity is seen by Bhke as the negation of genuine uontraries, 'Negation* is unnecessary4 but the existence of the contraries, the active *Devourerg or 'Desire', is essential for the creation of the contrary portion of the *Prolifice, 'Some will say: "Is not God alone the Prolific?" I answer# %od only Acts and Is, in existing beines or Men. #t

20 Thomas J.J. Alti~e~,The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake (~nnArbOrt mchigan $%ate uruversity Press, 671, PP* 934. * Thomas R. Whitaker, Swan and Shadow: Yurts's Dialogue With Hitstoq (chapel Hilla University of North Carolina Press, 19641, p. M. Here Blake gives a human form to the heavenly God of the priest, In his nAnnotations to Reynolds," he wrltesa ',.,I always thought that the Human Mi was th'e mst Prolific of All Things & Inexhaustible. ,. $9 Blake was wry much a part of his age, His entire vision is gmunded in a renunciation of the time in which he found himself. And this renuncf- ation becomes the key to an understernding of his universal process of Self-Annihilation. The newly risen body must oontinually be cast off to allow for the advent of the sacred, The divine aspect of the human is therefore Desire. According to -. _____I-- - Blake's poeticsl thinking, Desire is more than a quality or an individual trait of perrsonality, It is a concrete method of progxesslon based in the existent c~ntrarietyof creation as the appearance of %iving Form," (M 1 382 ~96) Contraries are creative oppositions, neaessary if existence is to be Human, which for Blake means "Poetic or Prophetias' as much as nPM30sophic & Experimental." The Human, standing still, becomes the wholly natural "unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over %ah." Progression means to become wore HuBvsn, and the final mark of such development is to marry all contraries together without reconciling them. Blake'a dialectic has no synthesis or transcending of contrarik, but seeks a mutual iwmanence of creative sWfe, an exuberant becoming. Marriage means so placing the contraries of Reason and mergy that they cannot absorb and yet do not reject one anotherO23

Thm bmearance of spiritual beauty, which, in term of the labour of the prophetic, is a naming of the "Living Form" of eternal &iga&&, 'is dependent upon the contrariety of consciousness and the mume of con- sciouraness as a constant struggle towards mutual forgiveness. The

22 C.R. Sabri-Tabriel, The 'Heavene and 'Hell' Of William Blake (~ev YOX~International Publishers, lm), p. ~UO. 23 Harold Bloon, The Vieionary Co~panyi A Reading of English Romantic Poetry (~thacar Cornell University Press, 19611, p, 66. desired source of consciousness perennially takes the form of the departed beloved.

Blake' s didectical stance, with its apotheosis of the physical and its simultaneous zwjection of the merely natural, is mast frequently misunderstood...Against the supernaturalist, Blake asserts the reality of the body as being all of the soul that the five senses can perueive. Against the naturalists, he asserts the greater reality of the imaginative over the given body. The naturalist or vitalist, in Blake's view, teaches heat without light; the orthodox theist wants light without heat. Blake insists upon both, and finds his image of cons mted mrriage between the two in poetic genius or imagination. 21: Blakean dialectics progresses in linear fashion towards an ever increasing humanization of all that is exterior without seeking a finality apart fron the eternality of process. The "Living Form" of the eternal, as an actualization of multiplicity, is both the beginning and the end of Blake's dramatization of a wholeness of intellectuality. The mking visible of "Living Form" is the task of the pm?hetic as a casting aside of "the rotten rags of Nelaory by Inspiration." "Living Form" can only exist as a tension between contraries. ( 2 1 141 The prophetic task takes on a profound ambiguity when it is realized that native to the language of prophecy is an unavoidable tension between the prophetic as discovery and as creation. The contradiction is construed amiss, however, for the eternal, according to Blake, lies in a dialectical interplay of

these contraries. "God becomes as we are, that we my ba as he is':

(NNR [b] ~2)Eternity is to be seen as the labour of the "true Man" by uhich the strictly human is married in contrapuntal harmony with its immediate other, the strictly divine, The human becomes more human in its astonishment at the emergence of a new Selfhood.

PLan is born a Spectre or Satan & is altogether an Evil, & requires a new Selfhood continually, & must continually be changed into his direct Contmry. (J 52 E 198)

PIis "altogether an Evllw in that his earthly lineaments remain dark and unknown in accord ulth his infinite proportion. The prophetic voice is never the voice of accusation. To witness the birth of the New Self- hood is to explore manes native infinitude. The eternal. acts as a process of immanence transfiguring the present. As incessant creative activity it returns the human to the divine, and vice versa. When the insufflationary measures of the prophetic voice are divorced from the eternality of process, the divine is disparaged, Eternity shuddered when they saw, Nan begetting his likeness, On his own divided image. (~19114-16 ~78) Here again, eternity is seen as a dynamic multiple. To erect an' image born of the decay of the Selfhood is to forsake the contrariety of the huh condition. The eternal becomes the champion of %ivlng F~rrn,~a labouring to reunite the fallen emanations of the inchoate sleeping giant, Albion, with the minute lineaments of the "true Man." It is a futuristic mode of intellectuality wrestling to image the "Eternal Forms in the Divine body of the Saviour the True Vine of Eternity" (VIJ ~35)within the world of generation. As such, the eternal becomes a cyclic vision in the fallen order of time and space, while it repains a linear progression in the unfallen realm of the spiritualized body. - An essential tension in the prophetic is the making of a human image capable of sustaining contraries. Blake writes: Think of a white cloud. as bdng holy you cannot love it but think of a holy man within the cloud love springs up in your thought. for to think of holiness distinct from man is impossible to the affections. Thought alone can make monsters, but the affections cannot (~593). The natural man erects a non-human ima@ fmm the divided Selfhood whereas the imaginative Titan creates a human image revelational of contraries.

The making visible of contrariety signifies the disappearance of an externalized space-time tyranny, an openine of the eternality of pmcess.

The breaking through of iqinative power in man is his legiti- nate Genesis story; it is the huwvlization of nature, rather than the dehumanization of man by "natural religi~n.~If man does not create a world in his own image then he remains a fear-ridden alien in an oceanic world of time and space designed merely to obltterate the traces of his footprints. The "new heaven, new earth" of Blake's vision is, in fact, the projection onto the cosmos itself of deep oonsciousness; the internal homeostatic rhythms of the body, the systole and diastole of its heart, the fires of its internal heat, the owns of its senses, the rivers of its blood, the luminosity of mind are directly perceived as unified form, perceived so powerfully that they are no longer felt as a self-enclosed organism but as the universe in which man lives.25 In MMilton'o Blake describes the intensity of the imaginative activity in

Eden as "the wollds of man to man / In the great Wars of Eternity, in fury of Poetic Inspiration, / To build the Univerrie stupendousr Mental forms cratingw (30118-20 ~128). Blake's system is unique in the wholeness of its self-sufficiency. It does not point beyond itself but functions as an ever widening ascent of the human to claim as its om the forgotten or repressed aspects of its divinity. In psychological terms Blake's system is an open-ended mlmrlng of the latency of the auboonscious within the fullness of the superconscious.

25 Wilner, Gathering The Winds, p. 59. The "true Manw --.-is the multiplicity of eternity. His awakening is not to be seen as a release from repression but an expansion 80 as to \ inelude the myriad thought-forms of eternity in the immediacy of consciousness. Blake is careful to distiwuish between the inspired Reprobate and the risen Christ: "And the Mvlne Appearance was the likeness & similitude of Los." (J 9687 ~253) Christ and Los exist in their contrariety of principle and ultimate, universal and individual creative iaraginations. me "true Man'sw inspiration springs from a self-consciousness of the contrariety in which the sould dwells. Obey thou the Words of the Inspired Man All that can be annihilated must be annihilated That the Children of Jerusalem my be saved from slavery There is a Negation, & there is a Contrary , me Negation must be destroyd to redeem the Contraries The Negation is the Spectrej the Reasoning Power in Man This is a fglse Body: an Incrustation over my Immortal Spirits a Selfhood, which must be put off & annihilated dway To cleanse the Face of my Spirit by Self-examination. (M 4Or 29-37 El41 ) The contraries operating here are the pure emptiness of the "Immortal Spiritw and the overfloning exuberance of unfallen time, the soul's lost other, perceived prophetically as "the mercy of Eternity," Their genuineness as mutual contraries is disclosed by the creative innocence of their linguistic experience which is a continual creation of one by means of the emptying of the other. Emptying is to be seen as the universal process of Self-Annihilation, the williq death of an authoritative deity. It is this process of spirit+ diffusion that permits the language of prophecy to image the eternality of "Living

Form." Unfallen tine exists as the realm of historicd potential and not as a fascile and dualistic idealism. The prophetic task of defining the minute lineaments of the fall is undertaken by Blake to arrest its 35 vortical dement into mental chaos. The prophete& pity, whioh divides the soul., moves into the intellectual vision of Los labouring mercifully by naming, and thereby binding, the fall, eo that it nay be transfigured

In the self-consciousness of its immediate eternality. Only thus can

"The mercy of Eternity" be redeemed from the nightmare of eternal death and restored as an aspect of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirlt appre- hended as the divinity of the human heart, The task of the prophetic Is to make visible the method by which eternal form becomes eternal form. It is to display the manner in which the fallen lineaments of thought undergo transfiguration to emerge as an image of the eternal forms of the divine. At the same time the prophetic is tO establish Itself as an antinomian method of displaying that the contrariety of the soul is the dismissal of an alien and inaooessible realm of ideal objectivity set apart from the human,

Some will say, Is not Cod alone the Prolific? I anewer, Cod only Acts & Is, in existing beings or Hen. (HHH 16 ~39) It becomes evident that to image is the highest function of the human, To inage is not to refer but to signify the full and immediate prmence of the spiritual body, according to Blake's poetical thinking.

The eternal as a polnt of view is based in the contrariety of innocence and experience. These are mutually penetrating and inter- dependent states of the soul. Their explication implies the basis of Blake's renunciation of the dualistic philosophy of the natural man whiah is able only to determine a ratio of the data remembered by the fallen senses. ,..poetic perception does not arise from a mere change in perspectives. As long as lsvrn limits himself to the vegetative, the eternal, the Infinite, the Godly will remain distant and undiscoverable, The tools of rrqterialiat scienae do no more than alter the relationship between the perceiver and the perceived, either reducing the gigantic to the minute or e nding the minute into the @gantio. The consequence is delusiony As a method of awakening the natural man to the contrariety of the soul, the eternal, as a prophetic stance, represents the dynamics of creation. The eterna3 is signified by the realm of unfallen Tbarmas, whose function the fairy, as prophetic mentor, describes on plate iii of "Europe" as that of the penultimate resurrected sense of touch whereby the fallen man may "pass out what time he please, but he will noti / For stolen joys are sweet, & bread eaten in secret plea~ant.~(5-6 ~59)The stolen fire of eternity is rejected by the self-minted Elect. The resurrected and creation81 sense of touch is depicted by Michelangelo in "The Creation of Adam." The unfallen aspect of Tharmas embodies the ability to dis- solve the natural memory which lies between man and man, or, by extension, the spurious distance which separates fallen mn from the eternal forms in divine Imagination, his ancient home. An idea in Blake bears the si~natureand countenance of the human.

Tharmas represents the Senses, and hence the physical body, "for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern9d by the five SensesH (HHH 4). As "Energy is the only life, and is from the Body* (MHH 4), Thamas is the "Parent Power" (FZ 1824) and 'the Mighty Father" (FZ ir413). His place is in the Loins; his Emanation is Enion, the sexual urge [on whom he begets "the poetic instinct, the infants Los and ~nithar~non"~. He is a shepherd1 his attribute is a sheep- hook (FZ 114.14, ixt 776); he has flocks and a sheepfold (J 95816).

26 + Thomas W. Herzing, "Book 1 Of Blake's *MiltonwI Natural Religion As An Optical Fallacy," Blake Studies, 6, No. 1 (1973)~ p. 33. As an aspect or reflection of Deity, he is the first Person of the Trinity, the ever-pitylng Father, but also the Good Shepherd ... *His art is Fainting, which chooses its forms from the outward world.. .. His special sense is the Tongue, called "the Parent Sense" (J 981 17). .. , When Tharmas quarrels wl th Enion, the Daughters of Beulah close "the Gate of the Tongue in trembling fear" (PZ 18108) ....When Tharmas falls, his doctrine becomes the false doctrine of materialism; "Tharmas the Vegetated Tongue, even the Devouring Tongue, a threefold region, a false brain, a false heart and false bowels, altogether composing; the False Tongue, beneath Beulah, as a watr'y flame revolving every my (cf. -Gen iiii24)r and as dark roots and terns, a Forest of affliction, growing in seas of sorrovt' (J 14r4).2if Thartnas represents, in his unfall en aspect, the reunification of spiritual essence and the resurrected or spiritualimd body. It is the battle between Urizen and Luvah, thought and the affections, that slays him. In Blake's view the labour of Tharmas is the composition of the unfallen realm of Ideas, the t'llivi ne MembersM (M 2 35 t 6 ~134))or the eternal1ty of imaginative forms. The contrariety of innocence and experience is present to this composition, for, in his division from Enion, Tharmas must work on the reverse side of his material, The1 bears the form of an emanation from Tharmas as she is seen in plate ii holding a shepherd's hook. Her purpose will be to show the method by which Tha~rmaslabours on the reverse side of his material to emerge as the resurrected body capable of displaying falsehood and error. ...truth and error are exposed together, for wFaJsehood is prophetic', (J 82120); ugliness reveals its own nature, so all things conspire toylthe vision that comes not so much after apocalypse as out of - it?

27 S Foster Damn, A Blake Mctionary; The Ideas and Symbols of WilLiam Blake (~ewYorkt E.P. Dutton & Co. , Inc, , 1971), p. 399. 28 Wilner, Gathering The Winds, p. 52. A prophetic rendering; of the eternality of process is thus inseparable from a minute delineation of the fall. The language of redemption is rooted in an articulation of the immediate contrary of a falling notion.

Only in this way is the chaotic disproport~onof the fall arrested in its descent and illuminated by a proportionate rendering of its contrary. According; to Blake's poetical thinking the fall is simultaneous

with creation, but before creation all was not Y3olitude & Chaos." "Eternity Exists and Al.1 things in Eternity Independent af 2reation

which was an act of Mercy." (VIJ 91 ~552-3) The "true Manw emerges as the "true Man" by virtue of his activity of rethinking the eternality

of process. This is Blake's me~ninewhen he inverts the three classes of men according to Suedenbore;, so that the inspired Reprobate takes on the aspect of the disciple of a chastened love which the ELect had held in the former repressive system. In this way the eternality of the fall becomes synonymous with the history of salvation.

The Jesus who is seen only after death is not the particular and historical Jesus of Nazareth, nor is he the lamb of Innocence or the cultic Ghrist of traditional faith: he is the Cod who only "Aats & fs in existing bsines or Men." Furthermore, this final Eye of God only appears and only exiets in the self-annihilation of Experience. The individual who is c'reated by this "Eternal DsathWhas passed through aI.1 the states of Experlence, his "Individual Identity" is the product of the historical and fallen process of self-annihilation, and it is precisely the fact that he has passed through the historical states of Experienae that gives his identity a unique and individual form. Consequently, the eighth Eye of God must be hidden in ~lbion'sforssts if it is to pass through the self-annihilation of Experience and be xesurrected in the definite identities of the minute particulars of the universal body of ~esus.29

29 Altieer, The New Apocalypse, pp. l*5. The absence of the eighth Eye of God, a full revelation of the unfallen proportions of eternal jdentity, inversely becomes the presence of the

eternal. The condition of eternality is mrkd by a genuine duelling within contrariety. The appearance of unfallen time, which is the task of the prophetic to mke visible, depends upon the self-consciousness of poetical thinking because the self-consciousness of the prophet-as-wltness dialectically becomes the mirror in which the Holy Spirit, as the originator of eternal form, is able to behold Himself and know Himself for the first time. The Holy Spirit lives by means of the "true Man'sn oontinual act of self-annihilation. This beholding of the newly risen spiritual body signifies the resurrection of the forms of external nature as an emanation of the "true Plan," Innocence and experience are not exclusive conditions of the soul but mutual participants in the creationall recep-

tion of a single idea. Blakean thought, or poetical thinking, may be seen as a participation in the kenotic movement of the Inuarnation whiuh is itself spawned by the universal process of Crucifixion. It becomes evident that Desire is born of the constitutive emptiness of the eternal.

Blake's pmphetic pilgrimage led him to a vision of the omnipresence of the passion of Jesus, and, once having seen that presence in every pain and sorrow, he could celebrate the naked PMY6 of experience as an epiphany of th& crucified Lamb of A recognition of the spiritual cause of the Crucifixion signifies the beatification of innocence, That spiritual cause is the resurrection of the human as the divine, the awakened mirror of the Holy Spirlt's self-consciousnesrs, or the incessant labour of His birth pains. Innocence and experience may be seen as double movements of the same process. "Innocence must be beatified and Experience must be tried in the furnaces of affliction. *31 Innocence dwells vi th Wisdom, but never with Ignorance*

Blake writes in "The Four Zoas." (~380)In order to redeem the contrariety in which the "true Hanw ceaselessly discovers his new Selfhood experience must be beatified and innocence must be tried in the furnaces of affliction as well. Innocence may be seen as ecstasy ('ex-stasis') and experience as the sacramental confirmation of innocence, the complimenbry knowledge of a self-conscious ecstasy.

What is the price of Experience do men buy it for a song Or Wisdom for a dance in the street? No it is bought with the price Of all that a man hath his house his wife his children. (FZ35rll-13 E 318)

QEIbPTEBII; PLAT8661ARD2: THELANDTHELIIILY The inexorable contrariety in which the human soul dwells is exhibited by the first three lines of "The Book of Thel."

The dawhters of Mne Seraphim led round their sunny Mocks, All but the yaungest, she in paleness sought the secret air. To fade away like morning beauty from her mortal day: (ltl-3) It will be necessary to deal with each of these lines in detail, but for the moment it must be acknowledged that the condition of eternality depicted by the first line is substantiated only by its contrary, the condition of mutability, which we see in Juxtaposition in the second and third lines.

31 Joseph Wicksteed, William Blake' s *'Jerusalen" (London t The Trianon Press, 1991, p. 122. The prophetic narration begins Prom the artiftclally isolated perspective of the eternal in order to redeem the contrariety of fallen time and eternit~. When fallen time and eternity are seen as inter- functioning mutualities, the pattern of descent known as the fall can be arrested and the process of reotorirg the Golden Age of man's primordial condition begun. Without the insufflationary measures of the pmphetic voice, which are restorative of the purifying function of motion, eternity remains a hollow abstraction, sentenced to the lifelessness of a cruel dualism. The purifying voice of the prophetic moves backwards through the fall in omr to substantiate the fullness of the mirror reflection of the fall in eternity. In other mrds, the

fallen condition is orLy possible as the contrary of the unfallen. The eternal, as a perspective, initially exists in artificial isolation in the first line of the poem to restore a fourfold depth to the natural

man's fallen perspective. Later the eternal will be seen as a mode of

discoursing the profound absence of a natural pexspective, as a means of delineating the aqualinity of the anti-perspectival,

But the primal contraries operative throughout the poem are

established even by the first line, and ao, with respect to the second and third lines, there are contraries operating within contraries. The daughters of me Seraphim led round their sunny flocks (1a 1). Herein is the supreme measure of the being further delineated by the prophetic voice's tracing of the journey through the fall Into experience, the sea of time and space. Thel's subsequent experiences will be seen to hearken back to the first line to achieve their ordered proportions, The perspective of the first line, a reporting from eternity, establishes the

nature of a genuine historical understanding, When all events of time and space remain permanent, and the "destined lineamentsn of humanity will exist forever, we are far from the horieon of either a cyclic vision of time or of a movement of redemption that annuls the concrete contiwency of spatial and temporal events. It is precisely this acceptance and affirmation of the eternal reality of the contingency of the cosmic process that constitutes a genuine historical understanding.. ..Not only is a fallen or falling humanity the only reality, but that very reality is also inseparable from the actual occasions of its movement in time and space, and the order of a fallen spatial-temporal proces becomes paradoxically identified with the history of salvation. 92 Thirs paradox is resolved in the first line of the poem as the "daughters of Mne Seraphimet act as a communal aggregate of their myriad emanations by conducting "their sunny flocks." Yeats tells us that these characters are the daughters of inspiration tending "their flocks of innocent imaginings. *33 The opening line articulates the eenuine paradisal condition of mankind in generation itself, because if a fallen or falline; humanity is the only reality, then the fall is itself an imposture. It acts as the still point of Edenic wholeness in Imagination.

The degree of Edenic wholeness established by the first line will depend upon its mirror inversion in the vales of Har to give it intelligible form. As divlne innocents in their activity, the "daughters of Mne Seraphimtt show that "distance is a phantasy,w34 the result of a fallen spatial-temporal order erected according to a ratio derived from memory.

Men does not exist as amorphous, unbounded energy. A passionate participation in the contrariety which betokens imaginative wholeness signifies

32 Altizer, The New Apocalypse, p. 114- 33 Wwin John Ellis and William Butler Yeats, The Works of William Blaker Poetic, Symbolic and Critical (3 vols. I London: Bernard Quaritch, 1893), 2, 92. Reprinted by AM Press Inc., New York, 1973.

34 Quoted by Altizer, p. 33. "the reconstitution of ideal Apollonian form, *35 me eternal form seen and comprehended in this realm of Tmgf nation pmteoted by '%ne Seraphimw issue from a madage of inner and outer.

Blake was the first visionary to make explicit the connection between religion and art, +a see the imagination not as a "furor poeticus" through which the divine volce might speak, but the divinity itself, Jesus, the Word made flesh, energized order in human form, iwination.. .,There is no mystery in Blake, no inscrutable divinity lying behind the imaeination; there is only the imagination itself, which is the redemptive power, and which, as the deepest source of man's vision, is sufficient unto itself. The consequences of this belief are as enormous as the giant forms they createj man is neither the absurd nor heroic victim of an overpowering God or nature forever beyond his comprehension, nor is he a half-way creature on a Great 2hain of Being who must accept the often brutal orders of the world and nature because it is all part of a "goodn plan beyond his limited ability to comprehend. The brutality of the non-human world is not to be acquiesced in; the imagination has the authority to hate what is destruc human life, and to create in conformity with human need. p to It should be remembered that the gift of the Holy Spirit is the power of prophecy, It is fitting, therefore, that the narrative of

"Thel" begin from the perspective of We eternal, since the language of the prophetic seeks to consummate the beginning of its intellectual journey in a transfiguration of its end. In other words, the Imagination is both agent and principle of its labour. It gives Mrth to, and is nourished by, the eternal, The reader is made aware by means of the point of view established in fhe first line of the poem that the subject of the prophetic discourse is to be the nature of thought in its unfallen aspect. This is to be achieved by examining unfallen thought in the context of fallen perspective, Again, Blake is working from the reverse side of his material in order to bestow intelligible form upon the life

35 Uhitaker, Swan and Shadow, p. 65. 36 Uilner, Gathering The Minds, p. 51 . of the Imagination. The opening line of the poem celebrates the existential condition of

God as the creator of man. The appearance of a humanilied Cod takes the form of a worship of passionate activity, a surrender to inspiration. The natural man's understanding of activity is subjected to a complete reorganisation under Blake's aegis. "Thought is Act," (~612)he cries, and with the prophet's wrathful condemnation of positivistic progress, the obsession that has driven the west mad with a lust for personal power, the realtn of the eternal is restored to the human imagination. "Thought is Actn in that the natural man's hankering after demonstrable cause and effect is rendered a cyclic pattern of pernicious unbelief, The realm of the eternal does not exist as endless time, nor is it sustained by natural causes propounded as infinitum, The contrariety of innocence and experience is embodied in Blake's singular use of the name "Pine Seraphimgt as the parental love spawning the '"nnoaent inraginingsw entertained by the eternal fenales of inspiration, The appearance of "he Seraphim" serves to polariee the contrariety of poetical thinking by distinguishing between the prophet as the daughters and the source of prophecy. The daughters of inspiration are inseparable from "their sunny flocksw since Blake repeatedly asserts that Los became

what he beheld. The image of "Mne Seraphim" is an inoarnation of "the mercy of Eternity" which appears when the ''true Man" confronts his other, the eternality of forgiveness. "The mercy of Eternityn is to be seen as

inseparable from the pitying labour of the pmphetia. The prophetic task is.undertaken to redeem the eternal. from the dualism of natural perception.

The first line of the poem, then, suggests that Thelvs departure from

the realm of Mne Seraphim will be an interrogation of the eternal. rroperly s?eaking, her departure f s a mirmring. The prophetic mirroring will be an interrogation of the source of .motion, the nalnsprine;~of human freedom, since mution in human terms largely involves the issue of choice, the decision to reject error, Blake writes t "Identities or Things are Neither Cause nor Effect They are Eternalw (~64-3). The realm of Mne Seraphim signifies a spiritualimd pastoralism, an alchemy of the lmagina- tion, in which imagination is shown to be not a state but "the Human

Existence itself." (E 2 32~32E 131) Lines 2 and 3 in relation to line 1 act as a mi~ringto establish the nature of Thel as the supremely resigned aspect of the pmphetic that has already been consumed by the Prolific* The daughters of Mne Seraphim led round their sunny flooks, All but the youngest, she in paleness sought the secret air. To fade away like morning beauty from her mortal day; (111-3) Nancy Bogen suggests an association between the realm of Mne Seraphim, the vales of Har, and the river of Adona r

A possible meaning for the word "Mne* my provide us with .. .indication that the vales of Har are on arth and may clarify the relationship between Har and Nne Seraphim. According to the probable source, "We" could mean "moonw j and after her departure from the daughters of heSeraphim, Thel is discovered "down" by the Aver of Adona, Therefore, perhaps Thel is beneath or below Mne Seraphim -- in part of the sublunary world. Also, there- are indications that Mne Seraphim is a realm of spirlt, In the vales of Har, the lamb, though "innocent," must wipe his mouth of "contagiow taintst'; but in heSeraphim there are Wsunny," or uncontaminated, flocks; and the air of the vales is nsecret,N or dark, yet the sun shines there, too. From these possibilities it could follow that the river of Adona is a dividing line between the vales of Har and Mne Seraphim. And this idea should not seem strange because river boundaries between realms of matter and spirit are traditional in Western literature -- in HPilgsim's Progress," for instance, in which Christian d Hopeful cross a river in order to reach the Celestial City. 3y

37 The Book of ,el, pp* 23-4. The appearance of the river of Adona in line 4 is cruoial to an understanding of the distinction between the realms of essence and existence because it functions as their marrying Rather than a dividing line, the river of Adona is a mimrlng, It may be compared to the field of poppies which sing Dorothy to sleep with the refrain 'Hold on to your breath, hold on to your hat' in "The Wizard of Ozgt before she reaches the Celestial City. The function of the river of Adona is to raise the condition of sleep to the level of conscious thinking, It mirrors consciousness and the source of consciousness, thus performing; a restoration of the soul's contrariety. The association between the two realms and the river of Adona is a fixing of eternal proportion by establishing the polarization of the mortal and human. There are indications that Mne Seraphim is a realm of spirit distinct from the vales of War. "Bne Seraphimu ("sons of the ~era~hin")occurs In a list of planetary influences in "The Gonjumr'rs Magazine," pp. 86-89). The same list may be in a similar periodical of an earlier date, or, Blake may have found it in Cornelius Agrippa's "Occult Philosophy" (see Damn, William Blake," p. 310). Perhaps Blake found "Elnew in Bryant, where it occurs as the first syllable of a number of antique names, e.g,, Mneuis and ?+?news,Accordine to Bryant (3: 62, 290)~"Nn" is a contraction of "#en," a word in the language of the first civilization after th Flood, and originally meant "noon" (wm6ni? is Creek for wmoon"), 39 Vne Seraphimtt may be seen as an eternality made available as a multiple prophetic mentor, The name implies an androgynous condition of existence, The OED describes the 'seraphim' seen by Isaiah flying above the throne of God as representing a mythic or symbolio conception which must

38 *Adon, or Adonis.. .is the name of one of the principal rivers in Canaan, It ran near the city Biblus, where the death of Thamus was paPticuZarly lamented': (3. Bryant, A New System.. ,of Ancient Nythology, (1775) i. 376; cf, I.'. L., i. W6-52) Bentley, William Blake's Writings -I Oxford, 1978, p. 65. 39 The BC&C of Thel, pp. 65-6. originally have had the form of a 'flery flying serpent', The word

'sH6phe, as the name of a kind of serpent, may belong to the root 'sbaph', to bur& in allusion to the effect of the bite. This etymology has given rise to a conjecture that the celestial 'seraphim' originally symbolised the lightning. In Esekial Cod emerges from lightning, (1r 14) Blake's use of the name "Mne Seraphiml1 functions as a metaphor of the contrariety involved in the prophetic process itself since, according to Biblical use, the Seraphim possess a human voice and are the highest of the nine orders of angels. They are specially distineuished by fervour of love as opposed to the Cherubim who excel in knowledge. Blake holds the creative fmagination separate from the philosophic imagination, The creative Imagination alone is capable of revealing the eternal, As for the compound "Pine," the OED associates it with the name 'seraphim' as originally an apprehension of a plural. We may surmise from this that according to Blake's insistence on the contrariety of the "true Kan's" dwelling within Ima~inationas the Human Existence itself ,'I the realm of Kne Seraphim connotes the realm of unfallen ideas. It is a realm in which the potential of the present is seen as a dynamic multiple, However this realm of pure spirit is not to be distinguished from the vales of Har in terms of spirit and matter but in terms of a prophetic mirroring. To see the river of Adona as a boundary between spirit and matter and not as a reflection of one within the other is to see the realm of Wne Seraphim in terms of a strange and objective world of Idealistic dualism, Inherent in the etymology ofthe word 'seraphim' as originally a 'fiery flying serpent' is revealed Blake's apprehension of the contrariety of innocence and experience. As an invocation of the word "moon," the title "Pine" enhances the meaning of "Seraphimq' by showing that in the realm of the eternal the prophetic process is a reflecting of the Source of Prophecy. The play of lfght will undergo a prismatic shatt"eng as it floods through the river of Adona an6 illuminates the vales of Har,

The narrative posi tl oning of %new wf th "Seraphim" to connote a single identity carrjes an even richer significance, One cannot avoid the association of "MneM with Enemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory. Blake's antipathy to the false muse is we13 known, wImagina- tion is the Divine Vision not of The World nor of Man nor from Ran as. he is a Natural Man but only as he Is a Spiritual Man Imagination has nothing to do with Plemory" (~655). "Nan by his reasonine power, can only compare & judge of what he has already perciev'd. " (NNR El) He quotes Milton in his annotations to Reynold's wDiscoursesMt "A Work of Genius is a Work 'Mot to be obtaind by the Invocation of Memory & her Syren Daughters, but by Devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit. who can enrich with all utterance & knowledge & sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his Altar to touch & purify the lips of whom he pleases"' (~635). However, Blake uses memory in an inspirational sense elsewhere -- on plate 98 of "Jerusalem," for instance, where he speaks of "exemplars of Memory and of IntellectH (30 ~255)in terms of resurrected eternal forms, the recovery of ancient innocence is the labour of a significant remembrance in "The Four ~oas:and the early known as rclemory, hither come" celebrates the contrariety of memory. There is reason to believe that Blake is establlshing the contrariety of memory and inspiration by the use of the name "Yne Seraphim." This involves a reorganization of the natural man's understanding of memory which is a disproportionate ratio of sense data. Just as fallen reason is at odds with the pure vision that is unfallen Reason (before the fall Urisen occupies the most prestigious compass point, the north), fallen memory has nothing to do with unfdlen Memory, except that the first is a mere shadow of the second, Unfallen Memory may be seen as the illuminating presence of the ancient and primordial, the insufflationary measure of being in the form of the Mvine Logos, The appearance of spiritual beauty in the form of the new is a continual re-cmation of the ancient and primordial, "MneH and "Seraphim" operate co-instantaneous1 y as contrary aspects of inspiration and purification, The pri moMS a1 spiritual body is present in the re-created spiritual.i.zed body, This renovated conception of Memory is not a natural process but a spiritualized ubiquity, Yeats tells us;

revelation is from the self, but from that age-long memoried self, that shapes the elaborate shell of the mollusc and the child in the womb, that teaches the birds to make their neste4*

The awakening of unfallen Memory in the individual imagination effects a shattering of the fallen man'8 natural understanding of oause and effect,

Thel, as the youngest of the daughters of inspiration, is born of a profound contrariety, Her plight is to articulate the method by which the contrariety of memory and inspiration sustains itself, She must make

visible the contrariety of the old and the new, Blake acknowledges as . much then he writesr "He who Loves feels love descent into him & if he

#I has wisdom may percieve it is from the Poetic Genius which is the Lord

(~592). In a very real sense eternity itself may be seen as the realm

40 quoted by Yhi taker, Swan And Shadow, p. 19. of unfallen lrlemory and thought-forms as the myriad apirituallzed bodies of the Holy Spirit. A prophetic participation in Imagination involves a becorning aomplicEt with the eternal forms of unfallen Memory. Blake in

does not even credit himself with his own purified vision; he has been wandering in Udan-Adan when Kilton enters in with him, and it is not until Los joins the union that he can enter Golgonooza. Thus impination realizes itself in Blakei he who has nearly failed his vision is restored to vision by vision. That self- regenerating qualgy of imagination is what will purify Eden of strife and error.

The function of the soul is to create a significant remembrance in "Livinq

Formew We shall see that Thel's lament is essentially the cry of the 42 soul. The first line of the poem, then, purports a transfiguration of fallen time or perspective in relation to lines 2 and 3. Thel's departure fmm the realm of pure spirit is mirrored in her departure from the arena

Susan Fox, Foetic Forn In Flateeo "Milton*, p. 201. lC2 Perhaps Blake considered unfallen Memory the substance rathe than the subject of prophetic poetry. Hart Cnne is one of the few poets who has directly dealt with the contrariety of Imagination and Memory. "Repose Of Riversw is one such astonishing event; "The willows carried a slow sound, / A sarabande the wind mowed on the mead. / I could never remember / That seethine;, steady leveling of the marshes / Till age had brought me to the sea. / Flags, weeds. And remembrance of steep alaoves / Where cypresses shared the noon's / Tyranny; they drew me into hades almost. / And mammoth turtles climbing sulphur dreams / Yielded, while sun-silt rippled them / Asunder . . . / How much I would have bartered! the black gorge / And all - the singular nestings in the hills / Where beavers learn stitch and tooth. / The pond I entered once and quickly fled- / I remember now its sineing willow rim. And finally, in that memory all things nurse; / After the city that I finally passed / With scalding unguents spread and smoking darts / The monsoon cut across the delta / At gulf gates . . . There, beyond the dykes / I heard wlnd flakine sapphire, like this summer, / And willows could not hold more steady sound." It is interesting to note that The1 flees the "houseM of the Clay just as the narrator of "Repose of Rivers" flees the pond, The reader is tempted to wonder if the reasons could not be the same. of historical experience in which pure spirit is made wholly manifest at the end of the poem. The prophetic mirrorlng of the departures is the key to an understanding of the eternality of process. The essential. contrary is the dynamic between unfallen Nemry and the immediacy of purifying inspiration.

In her article entitled "The Iconoclastic Enterprise; Blake's Critique of "Mltongs Reltgiodl ," Florence Sandler writes 8 Blake's antionomianism has too many roots in Paul and the Reformation tradition to be called anything but Christian antinomianism, and his Pauline reading of the Old Testament is not a passing reference but the thesis that pervades hi6 work. It is true that Blake is critisi~ not only *the Jews," but also the Christians -- even John Ydlton -- who are worshippers of the Mystery. Nevertheless, after Auschwitz, the only adequate response is to witness agatnst Blake as he witnessed against Milton t Blakes Religion is the causet there is no end to destruction! Seeing the Jhurches at their Period in terror & despair; Rahab created Hegel! Tirzah created Nietmhe; Asserting the Self-righteousness against the Univercsal Saviour, Mocking the Sonfessors & Partyrs, claiming Self-righteo ness; With cruel Virtuer making War upon the Lambs Redeemed, 13 But inherent in Blake's system is a self-conscious anticipation of such witnessing performed at his own hand. He writest

Are those who contemn Religion & seek to annihilate it Become in their Feminine portions the causes d: promoters Of these Religions, how is this thine? (K 2 40r94l ~140) Noreover, his iconoclasm is so extreme that even the forms of Biblical apodypse must be destroyed and created anew, This is the reason for Thel9s departure from the pure spirit of the realm of Mne Seraphim, It is an already erected form of resurrected intelligence and therefore the decay of memory, From the position of the generative perspective -- which

Blake Studies, 5, No. 1 (1972)t p. 28, 52 the prophetic seeks to realign with the fourfold perspective of creative innocence -- the '*daughters of Mne Seraphim" leadine "mund their sunny flocks" is seen as the Anti-Chr3st in the form of the Elect who assumes responsibility for the Redeemed. The verbal construction of the line is in the past tense. Acconding to this reading Thel would be entering upon a just departure from the known -- no matter how "wearied with jof' (FZ 9 133rll ~386)in that realm -- in order to attain to a wholeness of imaginative independence. However, the narrative is equally concerned with the individualism of Thel and the pmphetic. It, must pass over to the opposite side of its immediate reflecLion in order to interrogate the source of light that animates Its initial identity, The unfallen realm of Mne Seraphim performs the function of Tharmas, a passing out of newly risen self to

perfectly marry contraries by a holdine of those contraries in the immediacy of self-consciousness.

k.om the loins of Jreative Cenius there issue two lines of sons, perpetually at war with each other, as Abraham fathere (by his wife) Isaac, the child a the promise, and (by his concubine) Ishmael, the outlaw and enemy. The't.l;lughtens of Mne Semphimn may be seen as the children of the pmrmise,

who we will meet again in the Lilly, whereas Thd is the outlaw and reprobate. She alone possesses an understanding of desire, Therefore, her departure from the realm of the erected spiritual body signifies a casting aside of the robe of the promise and a genuine dwelling within the division of Tharmas as the sole hope of the eternality of resurrection and the appearance of the body of Christ in history, She must depart from the realm of pure spirit in order that the prophetic becone capable of articulating an unfallen measure of desire. Thel's lament will prefigure the descent of Hilton in Blake's epic of that name. Milton does not await fulfillment in eternity but travels through the fall in order to purge himself of the taints of a submtssion to the repressive decrees of a belief in pre-destination. Sandier writes; .. . taking off "the robe of he cthe Jesus in ~ilton]taken upon himself instead the burden of his #Shariow" of Incarnation, a nmournful form double1 hermaphroditicU (14a13-37), and passes by a precipitous descent tnto Time and Space, there to confront, in the course of a re-capitulation and transvaluation of his life, the various forms of Spectre and Emanation, both Urizen and Rah b, both the accusations of the Law and the seductions of the Flesh. it 5 The mirroring of Thel's condition in the vales of Har is to be a similar

descent but one which contains bath points of view. She muat reweave the robe of the promise by participating in the same experiential perspective

in order to arrive at an understanding of the anti-perspectival. The Worm in herself must appear to consciousness in order to redeem the divine.

Thel's departure sf enifiec; the early Blake's refutation of Ivtl.lton's and

Swedenborg's doctrine of pre-destination, If she were to remain in the realm of the Seraghim the proghetic voice would be intolerably subject to

an authuritative tyranny. Self-consc~.ousness of ecstasy would be lost. The recovery of man's ancient innocence wuld become impossible in the fallen world.

The realm of pure spirit perfectly reconciles the male and the female

as is made explicit in the name "Pine Sesaphim." Bogen has shown how "Mne" . connoteer "sons of the Seraphim," or "Een'' as an adaptation of the Greek

word "moon." Itt!ne Seraphimw is balanced in harmonious tension with his female emanations (the "daughters") since they are immersed in the passion-

" -Ibid., p. 18. ate activity of leading ammd "the) r sunny flocks." Operational here 1s an image of eternity as a wholeness in Imagination, As an image of wholeness the name incorporates past, present, and future as a mode of unfttllen eldstenc~present to the prophetic nithin the bounds of fallen time, The secrecy of the female is made visible in the action of Self-Annihilation, Male and female are to be seen as metaphors of the rigorous activity of

Edenic fourfold perception descendiry: according to the weakness or state of the individual. The female is the visible creatIon of love, either the world or the work of art, She is the labour necessary to contain the

The male-female relationship acts throughout "MiltonM as a metaphor for the dynamic union of contraries. As M, H. Abrams says, "The aentral type of the contrary Is the severed female Emanationo but all contraries, in Blake, operate as opposing yet complementary male-f emale powers which, in their energetic love-hate relationship, are necessary to all modes of progression, organization, and creativity, or procreativity," That relationship is the opposition of true friendship in Eden, the integral relationship of form and emanation as single entity, With the fall it becoses an adversary relationship, an iqediment to revitalized humanity. The relationship of the se is thus symbolic of contrariefi in both ideal and fallen states. ET

The unity of Edenic wholeness exists only as the mimrlng of fragmentation in the fallen order, The appearance of the Menic condition can only exist as a futurism, Male and female may be seen as mykhologieed symbols of

sexuality affording the pro,nhetic a mirroring of conscious and subconscioue identity nithin a particular perspective. Since the male and female operate consistently in Blake in terms of that which is successfully contained and that which is as yet amorphous, the genders nay also be seen as symbolic of the labour towards prophetic consummation, or the

46 Susan Fox, Poetic Form in Blake's s*Miltonw,p, 213. naming of eternal identity. Phle and female are metaphors of a generic difference. They are not degrees of a like genus connoting either infer iority or superiority. I=ont,rarit;.ty is grounded in a marrying of kinds which mutual 1y partake of one another while retainin& their individual identity. Sexuality is to be seen as a metaphor of the method of regenerating the spiritual body. Femaleness is.. .not a synonym for failure but a metaphor of it, .. we may see the significance of Beulah's female character simply as evidence of its incompleteness for complete existence is inteerated and does not recognize gender. 47

Femaleness, as a metaphor of failure, is not perjorative. The self-sacrifice of the female makes possib1.e the eternality of process. A revelation of "complete existence" remains the labour of the pmphetic in its activity of continually delineating mntraries. The prophetic voice does not point to a finality beyond itself.

What Blake shows us as Eden is a community of human forms embracing thruuefh their activity. 'k'ow toncue and touch are unified and are, together, reintegrated with the other senses with the effect that the rlsen activity is a kind of speech, an utterance of the whole man. It would appear that the Edenic conversation and the erotic comming- ling are identical., the transfigured tactility of the reorganized body, now acting as a whole. This Is like no sexuality we know, nor any modification of it, far when Albion awakes, Enitharmon vanishes and there am no lonzer two sexes...in the resurrection, spiritual and sexual are indist neuishabl e; indeed the risen body subsists in their new identity. h k

Thomas R. Froech, The Awakening of Albion! The Renovation of the Body in the Poetry of William Blake (Ithacar Cornell University Fress, 1974), P* 173. The disap?earance of the sexes siplfies the disappearance of the fallen orders of time and space, the restoration of fourfold depth to the natural man's perception. Edenic wholeness Is to be seen as the labour of a prophetic futurity, 'it is p~esentto the prophetic as "a going forth & returnin$' (~597)for the restoration of the Colden Age 1-8 always the labour of a transfigured and transficuring becoming, Only thus can fallen time be seen as the stru~gleof eternity to empty and therehy reveal itself.

Both Jerusalem and paradise are outside the dimension of the fallen art form, We know of thelr existence throtqh art, and, Rlake says, the more trust we place in the works of the poetic imagination, the firmer our conviction of an Edenic possibility becomes, Dut Albion's final reunion with the departed emanati.on and his actual. re-entry into the paradisaical state of human integration is not achieved within the limits of fallen art, Fallen art, in Slake, always occupies an ambivalent position, at once sharing the horizons of the fall and liberated from them, both fundamentally opposed to all our limitations and finally subject to themO49 dlake writes; "I labour upwards into futur5.ty." (~662)The condition of unfallen existence described by the first line of the poem he daughters of Wne Seraphim led mund their sunny flocks") is wholly dependent upon a prophet.1~gaqing of the minute lineaments of the fall because the seeds of apocalypse are embedded in fallen time. The second and third lines of the poem

All but the youngest. she in pileness sought the secret air, To fade away like morning beauty from her mortal dayr bring the first into relief by polarlzinc the immediacy of unfallen time with the contrary of human desire which is made manifest in fallen time, It must be remembered that the existential condition of eternality is substantiated by its relieving reflection, The Noon has chambers where the babes of love lie hid And whence they never can be hroucht in all Eternity Unless exposd by their vain parents. (EZ 7 94112-14 ~398) The full appearance of free love depends upon the creative innocence of contrariety.

It has been said that Thel is an embodiment of the resienctd aspect of the prophetic, the attentive power of contemplation in the face of the Prolific. She embodies the paradox of pmphecy tn that she is the passive activity of a listening which is creational, Her nmorning beauty" is the perpetual benediction of eternal form. As "the youngestN of the daughters of inspiration, Thel is the most tender, the most suscepti bl.e, of new-born joys. Her status among the eternal forms in Imagination is to represent the life of a slngle thought, or the history of ideas, as they go forth and retun? animating the interpenetrating and nouriehing fallen and unfallen orders, Thelgs "paleness" is the vi reinal emptiness of the moon inundated as a reflecting of the sun's fullness, She is an embodiment of the prophetic task as it mest1.e~to name the forms of eternal Identity.

As the Original of krophecy in contrapuntal harmony with the source of prophecy she seeks the eternal identity of all things, or the "inmost Form" sought by the speaker of "The Crystal 2abinet." However a distinc: tion must be made between Thel as embodiment of the prophetic task and

Blake as prophet, The distinction exists in terms of a degree of self- consciouanessr Thel's dilemma is dramatized in order to arrfve at "the renascence of an integrated sensibility beyond self-consciousness, H 5' This is the paradox of prophetic poetry -- it struggles towards the naming

50 -Ibid., p. 141. 58 of the disappearance of desire while sirnul tanmusly celebrating desire as the method of athinine that disappearance. The "secret air" of her loneing is to be identified with the "inmost Form" of fourfold perception, the containment of prophetic futurity, She seeks to incorporate within her conscious self the method by which divine love is made manifest. Thus Thel's lament involves the most profound aspects of the Urisenic dispen- sation. The "air" she seeks is "secretw because unknown and so dark, However it is not necessarily foreboding but bears the aspect of a trembling anticipation -- indeed, the secrecy of the unknown air contains the seeds of apocalyptic reintegration. As an emmation of divinity, or a tracing of the life of a sing1e khou~ht-form issuin~from the eternality of the realm of Me Seraphim, The1 presents the genemtive life binding the infinite. This is shown on plate ii mirror-wise as a nude male with his back visible holds a clothed female with her arms in the "Glad Day" position signifying the celebration of eternity as a perpetual youth, It is possible that the n~~demale represents TheL's androgynous contrary in Edenic existence, Flate 4 shows them as possessing similar faces. What we have here is an emanation from the fullness of Eden imaging the binding of unnamed joy and thereby creating the necessary passage through genera-

tion. In other words, the interaction between the two figures on plate ii depicts the emanations of divine love as an imaging within the fallen realm. It ie Blake's particular use of the technique of mirroring that displays the binding of +he infinite, and hence, a movement towards the

unknown by means of the encircling energies of an emanating love, This

account of the contrariety involved in creation is paralleled in the fallen realm by Blake's doctrine of friendship which is based on divine

love, a self-conscious recovery of "that age-long memoried self," When in Eternity Kan converses with Kan they enter Into each others Bosom (which are Universes of delight) In mutual interchange, and first their Emanations meet Surrounded by their Ghildren. if they embrace & condngle The Hurrmn Four-fold Forms mingle also in thunders of Intellect But if the Emanations mingle not; with storms & agitations Of earthquakes & consuming fires they roll apart in fear For PIcannot unite with Man but by their Emanations Which stand both Male & Female at the Gates of each Humanity How then can I ever again be unlted as Man with Man While thou my Emanation refusest my Fibres of dominion? When Souls angle & join thm all the Fibres of Brotherhood Can there be any secret joy on Earth greater than this? (J 4 08:~-15 ~244) Within the realm of the anti-perspectival a full epiphany of the emanating descent of divine love remains secret because it is the ground in which contrariety dwells and bestows infinitude upon the earthly lineaments of man, The secrecy surrounding the oontainment and perpetuity of eternal identity or "inmost Form" is an acknowledgement of prophetic futurlty and is not to be confused with the leprous jealousy of the seorecy of Urieen. Thel's hope of fading away "like morniw beauty from her mortal. day identifies prophetic futurity with the transfiguration of generation into regeneration, or, more specifically, the appearance of eternal day in the inrage of perpetual fading. "Mne Sera~hlm,~as the multiplicity of eternity, can only be mde manifest by the creative reception of a single thought, and "One thought, fills immensity." (NXH 8836 ~36)There is no black irony sunrounding Thel's desire to "fade away like morning beauty from her mortal day," The narrative repeatedly reminds us of her 'gentlenecss* and her 'lovliness* (1: 12-14, 1r 16) . She does not measure the world or reality aoooMng to a Jaundiced imposition of the selfhood upon the eternal form in fmsgination. The1 seeks a total surrender to "the beam of loveM (LBB 14 ~9)while the narrative illuminates that struggle by couohing it in the sanctity of experience. The prophetic, as a pure speaking, is able to contain the contrariety of creative innocence. I~Rmethod of emptying itself of the known dialectically becomes a reception of the multiplicity of eternity as its other, or genuine contrary, The relationship between line 1 and lines 2 and 3 is a reflecting reflection because the etarnal is contained by the temporal and the temporal ts the essence of the eternal and the full revelation of both is reserved for futurity. Their articulation is the imprint of the divine.

The fourth and fifth lines incorporate a shift in tense from the past to the present serving to bring fomrd as in a glass the contrarlety of the empty and the full.

Down by the river of Adona her soft voice is heard: And thus her gentle lamentation falls like morning dew, (11 4-5) The eternality of process depicted in and by "the river of Adona" mimra the prophetic voice and the source of prophecy, The act of mirroring, in the river of Imagination does not imply a descent of the soul as much as an ascent of the mortal and fallen, a paralleling of structure and polarirt- ing of opposites, The "river of AdonaN is a mirror giving birth to the eternal form of the Imsgination, In its polarizing capacity it functions to 're-membert the eternal identities of the Golden Age in inverse proportion as the thinking mind witnesses the lightning flash of its own crucifixion on the cross of hlstory and a new Selfhood is discovered. The

'seraphimt originally symbolized the lightning and the word is here being used in the same sense, as a shattering revelation of the ground of being, the omnipresence of a lovlng divinity, The "self-regenerating quality of imaginationN provides the creative impulse towards the sacred act of Self- Annihilation. The "river of Admaw 18 the "look of love** that "aalam," (~6~)~It is the burnine water of the metamorphosing forms of the Imagination. In*its action of reflecting a reflection is discovered the

meeting of two eternities and a prophetic acknowledgement of the disaz;9ew ance of sin in the engulfing astonishment engendered at the forms discovered

therein. Leutha cries in "Pliltongtt "The Sin was begun in Eternity, and will not rest to Eternity / Till two Eternitys meet together, Ah! lost! lost! lost! for ever!" (2 13110-11 ~106)An invocation of the creative

Titan, Ins, may be heard in Leutha's repetition of nlost." The appearance of "the rlver of Adona," as a mirrorhe of the etsrnality of forms in Imagination, is a 're-membering* of an epic cosmology of forgiveness supporting the individual peninsula of consciousness. What we are presented with in lines 4 and 5 is a spirituallzsed account of the death

of Christ as a once-and-for-all event that nourishes all subsequent acts of Self-Annihilation in an immemorialized present. The act of Self- Annihilation is rooted in the crucifixion of Christ, Theles lamentation

is to be an emptylng of self pet-formed willingly so that the 'other* of her sensually organized thinking may appear to self-consciousness, It

my almost be said to be a lust after self-consciowness~ In other words, her lamentation ia necessary to redeem the thought-form rsleeping in the

,,face of the Holy Spirit if the divine is to attatin to self-consciousness and be ,mved from the tyranny of eternal death, These counter movelnents are parallel and yet identioal f n that The1 2 the embodiment of the Holy Spirit, She 're-presents* the plf ght of the divine in its searuh for

51 Blake writes 8 "The look of love alarms / Because tis filled with fire / But the look of soft deceit / Shall Win the lovers hire, * (~465) -.1

62 self-consciousness, in its desire to inform the movements of history. The prophetic language of the narrative mirrors this configuration by means of a resurrection ofb"1iving Form" in the transmutability of memory, In other words, the mask of the eternal is rendered liquid. The strictly human is saved from being swallowed by an inaccessible dualism, Fallen time is mirrored as an eternality of potential. Nancy Bogen cites several possible derivations of Thells name which support this reading of the narrative direction of these opening lines of

(~hel), Perhaps derived from Bryant, where one finds the two sup- posedly ancient words -ath and el, and the following explanation concerning their combination a -e Egyptians had many subordinate Deities, which they esteemed as so many emanations.,.from their chief God..., These derivatives they called fountains, and suppoaed them to be derived from the Sun1 whom they looked upon as the source of all things. Hence they formed Ath-El and Ath-Aln, the Athela and Athena of the Greeks. These were two titles approp- riated to the same personage, Divine Wisdom1 who was supposed to apring from the head of her fatheP (lr 63). This source is particularly appealing when one realizes that Thel is a human being (see 3122-23) and, according to Christian tradition, possessed of a soul, or a spark of the divlne fire. The usual explanation is that Thel's name is an anagram of' Lethe, the river of forgetfulness in Greek legend (see Schorer, Politics of Vision, p. 202 and Harper, "Thomas Taylor and Blake's Drama of Persephone," p. 3861.. .Rainems idea in Blake and hadition, p. 114, that ?helVs narne was mggested by the name Thalia ("thallein " Hblossomlng" or "blossoniw one") is an interesting possibility. 52 Bloom suggests that Thel's name derives from the Creek ward %ill,t'(~808)

It may have been suggested by the Greek 'thelo', "to desire. A word with the same root, 'thelusl, meaning "woman," is an attractive possibility, 53 . As an incarnation of the original type of "woman," Thel gives voice to the soul of the world, It is possible to see her as an archetypal Eve figure,

52 The Book of Thel, p. 67. 53 See Michael J. Tolley, "The Book of Thel and Night Thoughts," p. 380. the spiritual beauty of the world as it has been abandoned by fallen man. Her plight 're-presents' the dilemma of the pmphetic voice in its woeful activity of worki'ng from the reverse side of its matedal, forced to Gauge the degree of error to which fallen man has succumbed, Thel's 'womanhood' moves into the cry of the soul of sensuality for release from the joy of regeneration. The issue of "Thel" is not that the Virgin separates transience from transcendence but that she knows she must wage continual mental warfare to remarry them. She acknowledges as much when she points out the functions of the Lilly and Cloud -- functions which they had failed to observe. Thel is the resigned aspect of the prophetic gaee whioh functions as an active listening. In fallen time she has encountered a confrontation with the ambiguous function of the will. The various derivatives of Thel's name suggest that it is indicative of human desire. The Egyptian soume of Thel's name found in Bryant becomes more appealing when it is realized that Thel is not only human but that her lamenlation is a mirroring of the strwgle of the divine to realize itself. As a human being she interro~atesthe nature of the soul's contrariety, and, as an embodiment of a single thought-form of the Holy Spirit present in the mirror of Imagination, her lamentation establishes the dwelling-place or locus of the divine, Thel's "gentle lamentation fallsN in the sense of being delivered or presented in an eternal present that is itself the soul's lost other and the incarnation of the perpetual "morning beauty" of the eternal. Thus the mirroring of the "river of Adorn" is a double movement redeeming the divine. As an emanating fountrtin of divlnity Thel's

appearance signifies the struggle of the Holy Spirit to attain to self- consuioursness, Again, we are presented with an 1mae;e of the oontrarfety of the soul. Ihe struggle of the *woman8 is to contain the mntrarlety

In which the saul dwells and has life without abandoning the infinitude of desire.

As an embodiment of the faurth element, fire, Thel's lamentation performs the function of chastening the dtvine by making incarnate the history of a single thought-form, As the presence of a spark of divine fire, Thel discovers the nature of the soul's contrariety in the burning waters of the river of Imagination as it reflects the illuminations of universdl forms in her own thinking mind. The tension between the eternal and the mutable is doubler genemtion is swallowed up or burned away in regeneration while regeneration undergoes a transfieuring incarnation.

'Ihel's lamentation, then, implies not so much the descent of the soul, but a fixing of the mirror of Imagination so that what is above may be seen as that which is below, in a reorganization of the natural man's understanding of fallen time, The eternal forms which dwell in Imagination as "the Human Existence itselfwhave no purely ontological status of their own. This would seem. an impossible absurdity to Blake, an accusation of the law, Thel's lamentation is a mirrorine of the plieht of the eternal which serves as it@ mode of redemption. Her lament signifies an emptying of the eternal in order to redeem the human. The active lnind of Thel mirrors an awaken- - ing divinity and both are to be seen reflected in "the river of Adornw as the appearance of the immemorialized forms in Imagination, Thel's departure in line 2 from the sheepfold construes her individual identity in relation to the "sunny flocksw of line 1 arxi the burning water of "the river of Adorn,'' Both are to be seen as eternalities sustained by the rigour of her lamentation. Aa the burning water, or metamorphosing form, of en inspirational marwry, "the river of Adonaw dist%n@shes between the realm of Mne Seraphtrn and the vales of Har as the prophetic voice must be distinguished fmm the source of The appearance of *the river of Adonan is a placing of the eternal lineaments of the "true Man." It is the composition of eternal identity in and through transience. The "river of Adona" bears a semblance to

the Bride Ololon in Eden as a "sweet River, of milk & liquid pearlw (hi 21rl5)r the spermatic stream of the Hermeticists, similar to the "Pure river of water of life" which in the Apocalypse flows f m the Bride when her marriage with 608 is consummated kv, 22tl). 33 The "river of Adonas* images marriage as it flows from the secret, because infinite, earthly lineaments of ThelVsdesire. In this sense, the imaging flow of "the river" serves as an inspirational 're-menbering* of ThelVs eternal identity in the context of an exuberant immanence, Blake's well- known renunciation of secrecy implies a renunciation of the repressed jealousy of the Elect. The secrecy surrounding the method of divlne creation is not guarded jealously but is involved and revealed in the eternality of process.

SLI nE~mp18rsof memory may be prophetic as well as exeaplara of intellect. Albion's memory of what he was can serve as a warning of what he might become, when it is objectified in an outwad form rather than internalised in guilt and self-accusation, that is when it appears at the ciraumference rather than hidden at the centre." Ben F. Nelms, "*Exelaplars of Memory And Of Intellecte: 'Jerusalem', Plates 96-100," Blake Studies, 5, No. 2, p, 85, "Exenplars of memory" are inspirational in that they return the poet to the eternal forms in Imagination. The revitalteed notion of memory places the existence of the eternal form in Imagination dthin the context of Theles eternal identity which is always a becoming just as the prophetic rendns grounded in a futurism, Unfallen Memory may be considered the contrary of unfallen thought -- passionate thought, that is, a unification of head, heart, and loins. George Eliot makes use of the burning flow of the etemdity of a resurrected memory in Chapter1 of The Mill On the Floss, Thel'e lament is to be the composition of individual experience, or a tracing of the life of a single thought-form, within the realm of the

Mghth Eye of Cod. Her interrogation of mortal new-born joy involves an intermgation of the eternal forms of identical existence. The perspective in generation of her 1.ament Is necessary to bake visible the eternal. Her interrogation is addressed to the eternal.

0 life of this our spring! why fades the lotus of the watef? Why fade theee children of the spring? born but to smile & fall. (18 6-7) It poses the finitude which is the necessary polarieation nursing the appearance of the eternal forms in Imagination. The "spring" of our perpetual awakening is seen as interpersonal by the Virgin. Her lament is to be anything but a solipsistic retreat from the universal pmcess of Self-Annihilation. Individual experience appears as the Eighth Eye of God which gtcame not" because its incarnation is a perpetual transformation.

According to Blake, when the Eternals met to elect the Eight Eyes of Cod, "They named the Eighth; he came not, he hid in Albion's Forests," The Eighth Eye of God is the single vast illumination, a "momentary god," fallen man in the forests of AlMon, the tieer "in the forests of the night." It is the sudden brightening of a shadow in the jungle of a speeding, expanding, and contrasting flux of space-time, When cawht and held it appears as the spring of the beast -- the self, separated off fron the soul by the "vegetable glass of naturet* ---crashing through in violence to total resolution, The emergence of man's ticer-demon from the forests is among other things the shattering emeqence of history into etexzjty &;re the seven eyes become the Eighth Eye, where all are one.

The eqtiness of individual experience paradoxically gives birth to the . revelation of the Eieht Eyes of God in Christ. The individual peninsula of consciousness is sustained by the universal Poetic Genius, The absence

of the Eighth Eye of God from the council of the Eternals signifies the

56 Hazard Adams, Blake and Yeatsr The Contrary Vision (~euYorkt Russell & Russell, 1955), pp. 120-21. 67 redemption of history and therefore of eternity. The existence of contraries depends upon the uni versa1 process of Self-Annihilation. The narrative purports to show that the existence of the realm of the eternal depends upon the self-consciousness of the individual imagination, It displays the engulfing astonishnent of thought in the process of transfiguration . Thelos interrogation takes the form of a pmfound purification of the Selfhood, The appearance of eternal identity and the oven?o&ng of the chimerical negation signifying the restoration of the Golden Age (inherent in the labour of the prophetic as the seeds of apocalypse) depends upon the immediacy of the self-annihilating crucifixion of the thinking mind as it encounters the forgiving otherness of the ''Human form DivineH (FZ 9 126r10

~380)on the cross of history and witnesses its own shattering. This is

Blake" meaning when he says, "Thought is Act." That which witnesses and that which experiences cr~cifixionare the same. Both are involved in the universal process of regeneration, Crucifixion is to be seen not in term of sacrifice for this would produce a dualism but as inoessant Self-

Annihilation which is a marrying of contraries. Thus Blake's prophetic art steals the language of the seething silence of its *othero fmm hn unorganized ontological repose and returis it to the divinity of the human heart in order to reopen the historical, the finite, and with firm conviction places the divinity of silence in the redm of the speaking voice, Thelos lament is a mirroring of the images created in "the river of

Adona." The voice of the female is to be seen as the revelation of the eternal, As a primordial Eve figure, she is both gmptress and the soul of sensuality. Her lament is a vital imaginative act. The power of tongues is present to this composition. She takes on the oontrariety 6a involved in the etymlogy of the woni 'seraphim' as a 'fiery flying serpent'.

Asr (i symbol of fire, The1 is supported by a rebellious desire which Blake will later manifest in the character of Om, who embodies generative lave,

Her lament burns away the Covering Cherub, tears the skin of things, so that the prophetic might display "the infinite which was hid" (MHH 14 ~38).

Thel's lament displays the method by which the condition of etsrnality is sustained by the activity of wthe daughter8 of Mne Seraphid' in the first line of the poem.

While the early Blake saw the female as the primary went of that repression which is the source of all that we know as history, the mature Blake, although deepening thts vision of her demonic role in his renewed symbolic portrait of Valet, came also t6 see the fentale as the willing repository of male negation and the sacrificial victlm of a universal kenotic process. Blake took up, and then orchestrated on a cosmic scmle, the ancient Christian teaahing that, if lnan fell by woman, it is by woman that he is redeemed, Indeed, the sheer horror of the fersdld_~~-_mle asthss hi. priestess of marifi ce *.a open dialectimll$.to her opposite arih-c~mie~;);;rr~m~as- -- -- the chief instrument-- of ealvatlon. 57 The contrariety involved in the role of the female is underlined by the early Blake in his creation of Thel, The poem is anachronistic, even precocious, in that The1 possesses an extreme #elf-consaiousness of the role of the female, She likens herself to "the doves Woe* (1111)while viewing her nshining lotm (513) as an inadequate response to astonishment.

The purity of her lmtent announces her as the true Bride of the Iamb. This is acconrplished by means of her self-consciousness of the contrafiety of the soul, She is a precursor of the figure of Jerusalem.

57 . Altisar, me New A~ocalppee~p. 97. Jerusalem, in fact, is the incarnate body of Jesust she is present# wherever there is pin and suffering, for she is the "IWof every sufferer, the passive self or anima of all pain. Moreover, Jerusalem's sacrificial role is- established by the Greation. Most of the 35th plate of'3erusalenP iu occupied by an illustration of the creation of Eve from Adam's rib, but Blake followed Milton in believing that the Son was the Creator of Eve, and in this design the Saviour hovers over the newly-born woman with the stigmata on his hands and feet. Woman is born, then, under the destiny of the sticmata, her passion is finally the Passion of the Cross, and that passion is the most immediate manifestation in Experience of Jesus' "fire," As Wicksteed interprets Blake's portrait of Jerusalem on the 32nd plate of her epic, when she greets Vala's proffered veil not with hatred and horror but with sacrificial love: was a bold inspiration of Blake's to anticipate the grand climax of the whole a (the closing plates of 2hapter 4) by representing the tender naked loveliness of Woman yielding itself to the dark way through the Underworld to save mankind by her vicarious sacrifice, and thus prepazlng a way through He1.l by which to receive her Lord i the hour of his final descent, upbearing him in eager embrace. 58 Sacrifice is here to be seen as a self-conscious emptying of self. In her desire for 'At-one-ment' with the Divine Loeos ("and gentle hear the voice / Of him that walketh in the garden in the evening time," 1813-14) The1 displays the sacrlffcial essence of her femininity. Her lament em2loys Ftlcherilical symbols of eternal identity while she bewails human loss. The loveliness of her lament images diffusing symbols of the presence of the Holy Spirt t. The appearance of the Holy Spirit involves a cijsappearance of the eternal as wholly other, Thel's lament composes a multi-faceted crystal of reflecting reflections. It is a ngentle**cry towards "total resolution," the nameless anxiety of the livlng. She wishes to "gentle sleep the sleep of death" (13) to endure the passion of the cross without imposing her frail constitution upon the order of divine creation. Her plight is extreme in that her consciousness must mirror

58 -.* -.* Ibid 8 pp. 98-9. the freedom of creation without succumbing to a doctrine of predestination.

Her lament is a prophetic pose undertaken to dlsplay the infinite. The narrative delinsation of the anti-perspectival will depend upon the shattering of Theles perspective. But since her perspective is already cleansed, the task of the prophetic narrative 3s to delineate the exSs- tence of the anti-perspectival in and through a spiritualized perspective. It is the task of the prophetic to outline contraries, We are told that Thel's voice "is heard" "Down by the river of Adma" and she completes her lament by stating her desire to "hear the voice / Of him that walketh in the garden." 'Ibe narrative juxtaposition of the voices, of presence and absence, is a deljneation of contraries. Altizer writest "since- the resurrected Jesus is the underlying and hidden reality of every person, __1-___-_-- -- the states In which that person appears -- both to himself and to others -- cannot be identified with the individual h~nself."~~The1 seeks a self- - -- conscious containing of the Divine Logos because it is only in her self- consciousness that the Word can be made Flesh, Her lament is, paradoxically, a desire to be born.

Blake writes at the end of "Riltonof that "with one accord the Starry Eight became / One Van Jesus the Savtour. wonderful!" (2 42110-11 E 142) Prye believes that the Starry Eight is the eighth Eye of Jesus* second comlng: "The latter Is pure vision, as the former is the hearing of the Word, the lesser revelation to the ear (cf. Job xlii,~) which also ceases at the upper limit of Beulah. If so, the eighth Eye is the totally incarnate form of Cod in which Cod has become bo& fully present and wholly enclosed in the concrete individual.,. The eighth Eye of God as the fullest epiphany of individual experience must be hidden in Albion's forests, the darkest regions of the sub- oonscious, or arbitrarily cut off from the eternal as a speaking of the whole man, if eternity is to be seen as the fallen realm. The appearance of the eighth Eye of God, which brings the previous seven forward in one rising inage of apocalyptic epiphany, is reserved for prophetlo futurity. If the "true Man" can be regarded as the agent of "pure visionw containine; both the individual wholeness of creative imagination by being at one with his emanations and the universal Humnnity of creative Ima&nation in Christ by freely dying into the newly-risen body, then the dramatization of Thel's lament may be seen as a series of shattering8 of the Y3leepinl: Body" (M 1 1581 E108) so that the infinitude of her earthly lineaments may be restored to consciousness. The narrative dramatization through her 'fall' is a mirrorin(; of states within states so that she may attain to the wholeness of "pure visionM in the final plate. But, as we shall sea, plate 6 is a mirroring of the condition of the first line of the poem, Blake's meaning seems clear -- the anti-perspeotival exists in and through fallen perspective,

The question remins as to why must unfallen time exist as a ndrror- ing. Herein lies the heartbed of Thel's creational lament as the struggle of the divine to realize itself. What we have in the flrat fourteen lines of the poem is a working backwards, a prophetic bestowal of reality upon the lie of the fall. The1 seeks the "inmost Formn of the Divine Logos,

(1112-14) Her plight i s an analogue of the prophetic process sinoe the pkophetic purports an imaging of eternal form in Imagination, Thel's lament is delivered in the vdes of Har, an earthly paxadise that mirrors and is adrr~rsldin the realm of Pine Seraphim. It erestas the vales of Har. , 1 Har my be seen as "the image of an inner spiritual. vision that transforms the barren extar&. world into an earthly paradise."61 It is the land of creative innocence where contraries are equally true, where experience is uontinually beatified, and the just take responsibility for not only their om but the spiritual progressian of others as well. This is seen in the Lilly's ast of wiping the Lamb's mouth "from all contagious taints." (287)

But the mirrorirlg of the realm of he Seraphim within the vales of Har implies a transfiguration since Theles lament involves a bewailing of humsn loss. Thel sees the presence of the Divine Logos in terms of an imemorialized absence, The cause of her lament is the pure emptiness of the soul in the face of the engulfing: astonishment of the spiritual. beauty of the world, She feels that she has nothing to oontrlbute, that her lot is out of joint with creation. The narrative ushers Thel throueh a series of direct confrontations with her most immediate contrary in order to reosg;9nize her view of fallen perspective.

The vales of War exist as a reflection of the winmost Form" signified by the realm of Mne Seraphim. The imges of Thel's lament are threefold whereas perception in Eden is fourfold, the spiritualieed body it orates is perpetual,

Ah! Thel is like a watry bow, and like a parting cloud, Uke a reflection in a glass. like shadows in the water. Like dream of infants, (1r 8-10) Desire has entered into the poem as the composition of fallen time and, hence, individual identity. Thel's perception of fourfold vision is now external to her. Her lament is essentially a cry for the return of the

Anne Mellor, Blake's Hun Form Divine, p, 15. beloved, The beloved exists as that aspect of the undiscovered self that assumes the form of a stubborn exteriority, Yeats learned from Blake to see the departsd'beloved in much the same way.

The Yeatsian joy must emerge tragically amid the fallen world of Incarnation, amid what, in his Blake study, Yeats had called the contest of "fierce firewand "the external cold and feminine eternal nature," of "the fallen spirit and the fallen *mimr', or of scorpio and virgo." That contest and conjunction translate into extreme and re- ciprocal terms the sexual dialectic between swan and shadow or self and Daimon which runs through Yeats's work from Mosada.. . to On the Boiler, where we readr "When a man loves a mt should be because her face and character offer what he lacks, the more profound his nature the more should he rdiee his lack and the greater be the difference, It is as though he wanted to take his o death into his arms, and beget a stronger life upon that death,"a2

To beget a stronger life upon onees death is essentially to desire the spiritualized body, The return of the beloved in the form of the awakening of the newly-risen body signifies the renewal of virginity. The recovery of the spiritualized body 1s dependent upon the disappearance of the corporeal understanding. Wilner explains: for Freud there is a kind of near-Romantic sadness, a sense that in the best and most mature love there is a residue of dissatisfaction because the satisfactions of the adult are always the less than perfect substitutes for the original loved mother, For Blake, however, infant Joys are recapturable, not by thwarted infants, but by imaginative man who is married to his creation; there is no distance in Jemalem between what is imagined and what is; the latter is the former, When Jesus repudiated his earthly mother, which Blake emphasizes in "The Everlasting Gospel,* he was remaking himself as creative man, the imaginative individual who rebuilds his life ac- cordfng to the dictates of intellect and desire; he is oapable of constructing a relationship to the world more satisfying than the one with the natural motherr humanity is his father ("I am doing my Father's business") ; his female side is the creation of his love, no longer an object but form allowinfl; for the fullest and freest play of all his powers. 69

62 Whitaker, Swan And Shadow, p. 285.

63 Gathering he Winds, p. 57, If Har is the projection of an inner oplritual vision that transforms an external stex%lity, then The1 may be seen as interrogating the aontinum between internal and external, She interrogates the truth of what is imagined in relation to eternal identity. The task of the narrative is to make visible to ThelSs self-consciousness the method by which internal becomes external and both are aspects of the wliving Formw of the Logos.

Each image of herself The1 numbers over is a pose incapable of not assuming another pose, The prophetic issue at stake here is the invisible thread of spiritual cause which areates eternal identity throughout states.

The prophetic concern with futurlty becomes a mythic substantiation of the present, a present that both is and is not of the speaking voice, or 'remembered' body, because of the nature of contrariety, But in the vales of Har, which is a mirror inversion of Eden, the tragic abyss of human experience is made visible because thought must deal in terms of the sexuality of the image which seduces and futurity is seen aa an absence. Here we have not only the deepest nature of religious thinking but the profound humanism of social thinking returned to its orlgin In reiligious experience since the minute delineation of the symbol by whlch to wntain the eternal is BlakeSs gmatest celebration as well as his most profound grief. The essence of Thel's lament may be seen in terms of Hegel's depiction of the "Unhappy Consciousnessw:

Since it Cthe 'Vnhapp y ~onh;eiousness~~thus, even while thinking, proceeds by way of fiprative ideas, absolute Being is indeed revealed to it, but the moments of this Being, owing to their synthetic pictorial thlmking, partly fall of themselves apart from one another, so that they are not related to one another through their own notion, while, part1 y again, this figumtive thinking retreats from the pure object it deals with, and takes up a merely external relation towamla St. The object is externally revealed to it from an alien source, and in this thought of S?irit it does not recognize it own self, does not recogniee the nature of pure self-consciousness. 84

\ Experience in the fallen realm is a ravagine after the pure self- consciousness of absolute Spirit, a return to the primordial condition of creative innocence. This is perhaps the deepest meanine of the prophetic impulse towards death. The casting aside of thgea8.tt.n-8.makes ------possible-- --el.mification with the belwed. However, the mind is unable to self-consciously contain the eternal lineaments of pure Spirit. It cannot contain its own pure self-consciousness at any @ven moment in fallen experience. The djfference between the vales of Har and the realm of Pae Semphiln in Thel's own self-consciousness of death as the mirror of divinity. And, of course, her plight Is extreme iehat the divine -. ----I has no- ~l_fZc~ns~i~us~e_ssa2art from her partfcipation in the eternality of gmcess. What makes her so attmctive is that she knows this as the immediacy of the innocence of the given, Her consciautsness of death is ar,alo&ous to a prophetic ccmsciousnssr; of the contrariety involved in individual perspective, h'er lament is an invocation of the Mvi.ne Logos as a surrendering to the ar~ti-~ers~ectival~~~It i. the genuine bacuhan-

64 Quoted by Altizer, The Wew Apocalypse, p. 47, 65 On receivinc news of the death of the sculptor, John Flaxman, Blake commentedg nI cannot consider death as anything but a removing from one mom to an~ther.~Todd, p. 143. The prophetic, concern with death iie thus rendered in terms of perspective, Hake no more believed in death as a finality than he eoncelved of perspxtive as an enclosure within an irreversibly collapsed cave of consciousness. The prophetic opening of the anti-perspectival is achieved by means of an awakening of unfallen perqpective. This is accomplished in and through fallen perspective. Fallen perspective is transfigured. alia of the loss of self which has already taken place In #e realm of be Seraphim since Thel is "the pure spiritual essence, ever fleeting bscause ever As far as the prophetic labour of naming the etesnsl form8 in Imagination is concerned, The19s lament is twofold in that it acknowledges the un-self-conscious promiscuity of pure Spirit in relation to the thinking mind as a fallen mirror. She likens herself to %he departing images of eternal identity in Imagination. Hex desire for c-ontinual Self-Annihilation- - - is a_des$2.e to provide a clearing where

the Mvine______I Lo= -_nray __ speak, Implicit in hex lament 5s a fear of the precariousness of the lma&nation, She seem to be aware of her role as an outlaw or enemy of the promise of fulfillment. Her lament gives voice to the necescsary death of God, the smptflng of eternity, so tihat the human my appear as the seat of the divine, It is essenttally a desire to contain hex met immediate contrary, to bestow self-mnm%ownees upon the divine, by acting as a dmr in which the Lagos may behold iteelf, f t is a deeire to raise the sense of hearine; to a condition of npw vision.

Mst of the action of "The Book of Thel* takes plaae in the vales of Har, A, an earthly paradise, or extemaliaed '*imaq:e of an imr spiritual vi~ian," it contaf ns the seeds of apocalyptic twufiguration, or Edenic wholeness, because it is the landscape of The198 gerrapeative and Blake does not construe the existence of divinity in term of a dualisn~. In other words, individual penspeotive oontains the potential of m awakening of the anti-perspectival by marry-.& the contrPclety of

inncraenoe and experience. But orily the labour of the prophetia as (I

frrturisar can make this visible, ft is important to detsredne the minuts 'be Ellis and Yeeta, The Worka of Williain Blake, 2, 93. bounds of the vales of Har because The1 returns there at the end of the poem. As Susan Fox observest H'lhe paradox of Blake's uoemlogy is that the more distinct its division become, the nore profoundly inter-involved 67 they becomeeU We have already seen this paradox at work in relation to

the funotion of the river of Adorn. It applies equally to the weof

the vales of Har.

3lake conceives of aZ1 being as force or power; both the phyPiical and the spiritual realms are manifestations of this 8piritUril force. What men have been ta-t to percsfve ies fixed material Wies are only momentary images of this unbounded spiritual power, images imposed upon it by the limitations of the five senses. Blake's notion of the five senses as framing windows or "narrow chinks in the cave* which limit the potential infinity of' being to bo\nrcPsd, finite sense-data Is very siadlar to Kant's concept of the Hoategorles.n Kant arped that the human mlnd inherently imposes forms or nrodalitiees, most notably of time, space, and causality, upon conscious experience and thus receives a-21 Its knowledge of the external world preshaped in term of these categories. If man would expartd his five senses, thus cleansing; %he doom of perceptionn and annihilating such restrictive cat;ergosies, Blake arguets, then he would perceive that all so-called bodies are only iwes of a single spiritual power or soul, inkges t can be chanced at will by the poetlo genius or ima&nation. "$

Plellor's observatlona lead us directly to the abysa rrftlob the dhawive understandine; must confront when presented with the lwagilurtive accaount of

the divine involutions and evolutllonrs of being. The senses not only conhot to create omler, but they expand to provide a permage through which to perceive the innate logic of eneqy Itself'. The "potmtisl

infinity of kine is present only to the active power of the remnmclted . senses. Corponscll existence is the crsative act of paroeptlon since @'the

67 Poetic Form in Blake1 a Wiltonfl, p. 210. 68 Anne Mellor, p. 43. corporeal world exists only as objects of consciousness, a system of ideas or spiritual f~rcea.*~~The appearance of the epiritudised body in external natk is the achievement of the prophetic imagination. Thie achievement belongs to The1 because the landscape of her experience is her own creation, an externaliaed image of her spiritual condition in the form of the vales of Har and its characters. The "tme Mann aannot receive knowledge of the external world preshaped in fallen categories since this would deny the existence of the potentfa3 for Self-Annihilation.

Images of "a single spiritual power" aan never be changed at will because thipi implies a perversion of the labour of Urthona and a disregard for the contrariety spawn in^ his creation, Apocalyptic images disaover the

"true Manw to the same extent that he discovers them. We my then ask the exact nature of Thelqs lanent.

The18s lament in the vales of Har voices the pli&t of the pmphetic within the bounds of fallen time, It is a negative of the f'ullness of eternity, "an alluslon to process and repeatability. ,. suggmting. ,. that definition is a function of the fall and that the line bki~shape Gr the emanations of divine love mde visib14 is not a revelation, but only an imprlnt of the lnfinite,,,a bodily signifier of abtlence, arbltrar2ly sewate from any origin in eternity, *70 Her lament ia an analogue of the religious desire for the second coming of Christ seen in term of the prophetic as the desire for the return of the lo& bsloveril. Thel's self-

70 ' Peggy Meyer Sherry, "The 'Predicament1 Of The Autographt *William Blake1 ," Glyph 41 John HopUns Textual Studies, ds, Samuel Weber and Henry Sussman (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, l978), p, 148, 79 consd,ousness of confinement within perspective as the simultaneous presence and absence of the Divine Logos entails a further un-self-consciousness of the divine as her immediate other. She must explore the infinite lineaments of her confinement in order to witness a transfiguration of perspective.

Her experience in the vales of Har are such an exploration. Her successive encounters with each of the dramatic characters represents a continuing creation of her most immediate other, a responsible search for a wholeness in Imagination by means of a deepening of self-consciousness. The appearance of the naked male with his back visible on the introductory plate, for instauce, Invites a shatterlng of Thel's readership as a witnessing which "undercuts in turn the opposite authority of the word as living breath and body or ~hrist."" This should not seem strange since "Thells Motto,* which is the epitaph of the Virgin, advocates a continual casting aside of the newly risen body. The1 is to be seen then, as purely human acting in the arena of history as the sole envelope of Spirit. The death of God is mirrored in the act of Self-Annihilation in inverse proportion to the prophetic witnessing of the newly risen body. The pmphetic issue at stake in Thel's lament is the continual transfiguration of perspective. Creation -is perpetual transfiguration. The vales of Har represent the realm of generation which must be continually shed. It is the realm of the mortal and vegetative body struggling to appear as the fullness of sen, As the perspectival landscape of melts creation, the vales of Har signify an innge of her freedom in bdndage. She is free to the extent that she chooses to exage in the act of Self-Annihilation. Her plight is double in that she represents

Ibid., p. 148. when Albion allowed externality to divlde from him. As a pr1mmdIa.l We ?%meThel ray be seen an Albioner departed ewnrtlon, tho mlom of aoa eabodie8 by the Lilly uPd #e plrrising voioe of fallen Thuru.

(-0 n 1~:1-9B*) x~storj,or the ell~lltiagappwrmoo o;la perr~(~~tlveof the Lilly an an eabadiaent of the MaeLoQSo. beoms the tyrruunidl authority of the written law, hlddsn In a prodoe of athe

Thelmamvesent tow8rda an unfallen duelllrrg within the antQ-poxttp.crtior1,

diswourrd it. muroe In geneation, in "the humble meY that the r.irlyma self-cowiourneos of her role in weation

83 innocence. The locus of the anti-perspectival must issue from a minute delineation of perspective in fallen time. The prophetic language of the narrative shows the Lilly to be bound by fallen perspective and yet wonde- fully free to contemplate the issue of her bondage. Both the cydical

nature of the Lilly's message and the fact that she in an externalized creation of Thel's immediate other show this. The prophetic narrative reveals the mystery of creation as the opening of the anti-perspectival in and

through perspective. Perspective is to be seen as neither fallen nor unfallen but as the redeemable and redeeming aspect of the soul. The Lilly, %o weak, the gilded butterfly scarce perches on my head,n (1818) introduoes Blake's lifelong concern with the nature of Thought in the fallen and unfrillen realms by means of an image of Psyche. In Blake the head is invariably the seat of sublimity wherein the Holy Spirit attains to self-consciousness and the "Divine Kercy" (J 32;9 ~177)knows itself for the first time. "Thoughtn does not mean philosophical thought or ratiocination; the term should not be dLlowed to invoke deism, the mechanistic and materialist philosophy of the eighteenth century; nor is there the remotest relation between.. ."thoughtn.. .and what Blake derides in "An Island in the lioon. " .. .At the touch of Blake's thoughtn all charm is intended to flow -into the poem, for thought means sensibility or sym- pathy -- In its richest later eighteenth-century meaning; or, in the more technical language of Blake's latest vision, love, the affections, intellect, mind, art; indeed, vision itself...Blake early in his career began defining "tho~ght.~The first task was to make a separation, the next to make an indissoluble connection. The separation involved distinguishing %ciencen from *%ntellectnand elevating the latter; and also distinguishing between nintellectn and **affectionnand &via the priority of power to the latter. So it is that love as the very life of man, without which everything else is passive, must animate and control mind ox thought or intellect. If the understanding is to rise, it must rise with love, for they are elevated together. But then, once anirstad by the affeatfons, tho lntelleclt itself bw#s a prlnalple of redemption, .. , Thought urimted by affecMon wt prfome iusue In be& of love, and so Bake ortea out Bgainat Bawn'e 81bp~rUon of dnd and retion: *Thought is A&.* Thought, king d'fmtlon and rat, ~ot\lt~tesmpe being art -- rislonrry art, of cbaurse, for art irr the lovlng imginrtlon a work -- tb "Human Ltendl Body Zn Every AU in meH+3 Blake mks Iulah:

does a flra penswasion that 8 Wng ira ao, make it M? He replied, All poet8 belleve that It does, 6r in .gee of llugfnatlon this fln perswarton rrrnovsd mountains; but mny sre not oapa)rle of a flrn peramasion of any thing, (WH12 ~38)

@VhmThought 16 do& in Carvsa, Then low, shall shew its root In deepmt

~oll''(F2 5 65812 ~337). he enptp abetraotions of the natural un atre A #r)mhlp of a dead selfhood, devoid of the dymlefum of tho soul's contrariety, Thougtrt Pnd love are to be men as contrarleat nursing one another. Thought doe@ not eatail s eonpilation of the *rotten =go of mmrp but wnslsk of 8 pssfo~tegartiaipstlon In the era~ffonrof dfvlnc, love by whish the four2oLd aepeat of the flnSte lu return&, It involrcrs a crcrefilonal stamender to, and a oondwtlng of, @thebwma of lowe which is tho aole entry Into a m;vthologle.d grarrent %hat our only attrin to full nanifestneu In the futurity of the prophetfo voice, *Thought witbut rrffeetlon arkw~r di8tlnetlon between Love & Yis&on as It dosrr betuem body & ~~ldt*(~m).When dfvorcd fma It. aontrnry of love, thought is unable to attain to the condition of *pure vldon* restor;.tiw of fourfold depth to the finlte, Prophetic thinking Is rrratorrtlvs of tho

73 Joan H. Hagst-, nIhe Fly,@ Villlwa Blake* Eau~.for 8. Foster -Ikrmn ad. Alvin H. Rosenfeld (~rovldenae: Brow University Pms, 1969), PP* 373-8.

prrrp.afirr dvprrb qpr#r t&t of m.l lm cdar fo l*t%rf.ly oonfrin the wurler, ofafmcrirtye Aad, ~floop~tly,it i8 'hral #bo 4mlehf.. the LfflJr'. ob8- rPnotiW&(213.10). IQ.ifbwr the mv8 anr: ma*. p~lcrpw~ej.ve.Xlllk lm I.0lrtlen. They m ooatrrdes nun5rlJ one wthas*

8amt8 ob th. rur, oorarwioaurwrr, Xnntxmme and expex&.9ior, ur born

togethe% Th.ldl#as~th.~yinfhrf~eIruaAl#m(eu19.u of dm# a6 aoarilm.wrrt wlfbia ~~tlr,rhiab i. cr;b.f#otmly mr, m-8 *Iu~rrld.lirucd iaeoa tgypt ilr &% 8dtiv.mX RK)m #attar8 h r.it.u-"(nn). m h. maa tm - bu -J -\llC86 an aP3,rrbYUIon oJ t&a vOlod of dirla. aamtSen, If.r lot I0

#afhtimr fhjndold, a pautuxalhed 6plrlt\Jltf, me crogditien of mae, lrrrwrt .hows t&t ehe .IHkll fO mk* tn8ible #a UI~YTpxo&mmaIoll of frrlpnrtion in et#nlty dChod rtsoc~u.Mrl(J to ths aJauorit pat- of Ch. WUfr thinldtl(l. Th. Wy mpthe bmmt of tho lcbeux of the pso*ticr UntiZ rrh. is 00auUIdd by th. i•÷emlresf "#Ot;lrllltrt" a6 tho +irSfrtAool of th. mysplrtt. 83rk0'0 bottoalarul pjrJnil drth A. to bs dim- in tb idafijli~fiaof *tha~&t" rrSth fho "- hut,* Th. 0##3frrrSstj6f th. rwJm of Id- ma tho *Mvlmr habum* of the atrue V~aPBfsnJtfudthsrdoi~~fheZlaornuYanai*~~

78 ,-tin app~c#~dcmot the uth u aau 1s the bi.00~of ppbotio Wdon, WMU, ia Sum , rLJI hi* wuiurio 4hxwter my: a8u& b the rutnwa 7-?#!%o raw ldmm +he a1@8 dwall* fhrt ii w rsp~dwd wftb 00~1.furtlyapid ~fh.~~h~l~tiro.th.nurto~ro;rfh,mdiibo&ulcrd thmugh aU etcbndty, his eps muld find no hariron to rr~torren The "heavenn is to be seen as the delight at the discovery of the newly risen body. The "earthn is the infinite lineaments of the eternality of process. The18s address to the Lllly

0 thou little virgin of the peaceful valley. Givlng to those that cannot crave, the voiceless, the owertired. (283-4) locates the condition of astonishment as the contrary nursing the desire

that is Eden because "those that cannot craven are wearled with the joy of imging an ever incomplete spiritualized absence. Fox points out:

"The female emanations in "Miltonm are terrified not by the fall of Albion from eternity, but by the very character of eternity: "because the life of Man was too exceeding unwunded / His joy became terrlble to them: (30~22-23). They beg shelter not from eternal death, as they do in "The Four Zoas,# but from eternal life. w80 Thel, too, interrogates the nature of eternal life by focusing on the issue of eternal death, the infinitude

of mortal perspective. In relation to Thel's strenuous Edenic activity,

the Ully is a flower of Beulah in meditative repose. Bed.ah was created to npmtect.. .love that kills its beloved.. ." (J 48115-16 ~194). Thel sees "those that cannot crave, the voicelessH as confined within astonishment at the discovery of eternal life. This is the deepest significance of Thel's understanding of death. Her purpose is to unlock the gates of the fallen tongue, to witness the mimcle of the Worn's speaking, and so she must travel throwh the mirrors of her reflected perspective to the

threshold of her own grave where eternal life and eternal death are one.

Fox, Poetic Form in Blake's "YLltonn, p. 203.

YhanBhb.urjrtr, t&t what i88krrr 1.kfOwhewraar that the'mvlm Yloakn* am .bnl~,xod in fh. daxk W of the ~aboonrroiou.rQ.sy Urtbmna labourr. Tkm 18 no dirtlnatioa bstwlbcr~the subooarcollow md th. mqm-

tion* Itrc, 4hl-<# at 1-w ~*~WXTMthe Mdk tO th. iYaif..

The worm should immediately come to mind in looking at the autograph, for the sixty-odd years of the artistic career com- memorated there happen to fit the familiar trope from the poet by which man is described as a %arm of sixty wintersm (J 341577 . But although Blake seems to have found the worm a peculiarly expressive emblem of man's mortal career, identifying it uith both the embryo in the womb (U 19-20) and the old man, the norm is perhaps most provocatively imaged as a threshold figure who sits at death1$ door in Plate 16 of nFor the Sexes" as an emblem of tiAnne Hellor identifies the stick this figure holds as the traveller's staff, but it seems more exact to call it a stylus, for it is held in writing position at the loner tip, not grasped at the to like a walking stick (cf. the traveller's staff in Plate 157. That the system of differences in Mch the self is always displaced and the name figured should be a system of writing is not opposed to the emblem of the weaving worm to which the text of Plate 16 alludes, for the written text often figums in metaphors of warp and woof in both early and late Blake. But here the inscription at the gate seems to urge the traveller to halt and reflect on his readership:

The Door of Death I open found And the Worm Weaving in the Ground Thou'rt my Mother from the Womb Wife Sister Daughter to the Tomb Weaving to Dreams the Sexual Strife And weeping over the Web of Life. ("Fo~the Sexes," 15-16) At such a threshold, man meets a riddle in the textuality of his own identity that figyes his destiny from embryo to old age in dreamlike doublings.

The threshold of death is construed by Plates 15 and 16 of "For the Sexesw in terms of the act of Self-Annihilation. The poem displays the cyclical nature of the advent of the spiritual body to the generative understanding. Regeneration is rooted in generation. Regenerative love -- as it becomes knowledge, as a sleeping on the couch of divine love -- -sees the "living Form" of eternal identity. In Blake's special sense, the appearance of eternal identity depends upon a minute delineation of the inffni-

85' Peggy Eieyer Sherry, tud. of ildivl.dW. identity, sf hwrn .~PtrJli.ty, Wd- BOX indirldual idonUty attala fa a fiaility in the prophatlo raioo but are olwaya aga@ In tho uaLvsrsrZ gma..r, of oruariflxion@th. -ity of pma6... !rhe UUJ. a8 no- of B.ula@or .a p- \odd* joJ,aa6 the rl- mu71 IMJ atuili~d bod^ oz tho b4508, tho of he

Srrqpbi~f~~n Wok Th3 dspu;.kd w~110of fh. ~ero~ld-,-oh a-\p1ts to tho ab011,c~eof human dssirr, Ib. Ully rrkm vlaible tho oooditia~of

Blrtlrlrrh aa ThJ dolbo the ctoadifion of' Edmlo rtruggle, An a- of the u 8 pmaem oonstrb in the peudng beyond ibelf aad inb th. oorpori-

Uon af it. irudilb othar by #e two amtrarles. tblli.8 Vlrm-pxem is dafinod in tsaw, of a dmr invemhgi

by fumtionlng us tho ln~l~lll~tionof *Uvlng FoM aoaord;lng to the ~.O~CIO(H~

faoo of !&dl,* (3r6) lrr the vision of *a ~)(3mtof pnealrCanc~.,* one that bo~~~*of Energy ifaelf. Buthvm ToUd Iaiom w Uut In 1791,

Tc, Yoaddut on Pcbwtert lay a ground ola tho Plate & mmko it arr for

93 lrlrurloo Xezluu-Ponty, *Eye and W&,* pp. 181-2. 96 S, Foakr Damn, I Blak. Matio-, p. 247. Damn deeuzibu Lots u a *mkil shaping fornew giviag r body to fslmeh004 80 ttua it nay be CM8t off ~O~C~~YCICICICIC~.b ill the (Yg -6% f&rn tf-8 bd.cbde ho ir tine ibalf, Tho Qoud is aa embodiwnt of fadi+idual amative gcmiur who ukeu .miieat hlu ~fb.r,ChrJist, the \Yaivoaul01c#tio, pniur. faUm end tho unfdklen m murlrhd by the su. .our~e, "Pha Qoud r3.o fmotfons cra a wlifeatstlon of unfrllm Thrmws rim his knofiedge is one

0 Y;Cn I tall thee, when I paor away, it la to twf01d life, to low, to peace ud raptur+s holyi Umeen d~endlag,trow y light wings upon baby flowers$ And oourt the far eywd dew, to taka .s to her shining tent, (3110113)

in tho unfa,llan oondition of ein iuginrtive partloiprtfaa in tho sport. af

etwml ddqght they act u r.(l.nt. of mtu3 fOgiMW.9 Bl* *rlt..

Cloud, t)wp.by allowing tho "Mvlne Uomj* iks nw8aiwy wlpdftion of stm&ng, heUoud debthe ~rbW of dfvine @mationwhile he Errthe $8 It not j~t&I. fhrt PU ~ttto rrir~. Invisibly in ull? fill not p?: dream to be one &y isvtsible? Eurfh! inrllrible! what I. go= =qpztt CbOlund, ii wt ~ormfion?

spread without, The exirtarae of aoatrarlea *ptmly det.nbne8 on ton* The thought-foxm of' tho llfe of the Holy Spirlt look for truuilgurrtlm the lcrwult of a 6h8tterlng of the Ilntrrllwtrdl body, the .ot of Self-

tho dewof the *true ha,* epio pmprtlona Epib lu to he seen as the a.uel~Iabour of the prophetlo *up#uds Into futurity," a perpstud rethlnkirrg of eternality, It bsgim with a orsting ad6of the corporeal underatandlag which dudle in dsductio~made fmr a statio mtio of the 98 tWUisr War Yeat4 *Wllul Blrk. And Hla Rlurrtrrt50~1lb %a Coud~,"&ryl & IN~XQ~WUQM~~pe 119. of #ttd rrallu for a bueturd and a-dirurt rrllrm, *oh fr In faot Acr with Ule pun othonme of the mi- of the Ully, tho Cloud rrtioulatcr

dlreot irpl;lioatlon Is a strtwnt of how a transfigurafion of perspwtlv@ is eP11eofed. his I8 to be seen in the liquidity of the rimr of Xlsgi- nation. The Uoud8r "Hovar&n& and glittering on the aW fs m enaotrant

fulf@lllunt, md fulf@lllunt, The Uoud foamcbb tba imge of Chrirt u the 8pwddng Wr8 in tbs aGla88a Mw~ntions'~b uhlah ihel. as pot.ntl;al crative

%tam, arn behold rad rsoognire the rmiversal c~ndit5oaof ooafsprlety uad clorgrgs la r wditrUcm upon the stsnrllty of ioqPwu~.rrr. Just as the rlsen body of CbxUt wk.. poss;tbile the rcrrrumuotion of divid.8 m, the prorim of the (=Loud Is that Thd shall hsur th. #orn*r voiw, that .an shall be madtdth the porn of ur exbibiflon M Me spfritucrl beauty of %he world whit& is Me divided crlranrtlcm, The q&rItudl beauty lo3 Gf. BkL.@aJob, p. 34. Hew Uw, the flret explfuit oonn8~tionof har wlth the Won. Her 1- 60 wke way fox the newly eonbody which la WLI.a rdleotion not at~trinltsslf alnoc, &dm is mot& in the lni5lnfta ad*# LDOIl in tho fallen real. of divlrsion olnol, the ulslng of the *larort Ford'

hum dwelling within apoorlyptier ?owfold rsinfagratlon, whhh never - attainm to a ffMUty beyond the prophetto voioe. At Chis point in the

Joy or the mfleotlon of the eternal locam of a dqle thought-

form aa tho paasyys of that thought-fon seek8 to mrarrjr fallen t.2~and

the double fa08 of divinity, Her lslsrnt Is a del1namt;tun of dlf'femmao

aoe ir nwmaary fa a oorqposition of the realm of fhe etamale Agaln, a pmphotito pose, har ftlaofion la to raiae tho plight of the unfallon

the human in relation to the othanurm of tho dlvlno. Blake writear *the

peraeptlonn of her immUate other, a further dellneation of the un- ad~otireaesaerll of tb aoul, The appearsnae of the Vbn is a ammtlve Yon will be a rautoration of biviaity to tho huran hea& ur apprclhmAon of the unfallen Ulresmnts of eternal Identity. Thie approhenoion of eternal identity wlU take the form of a viarionn of the contrariety involved in the Yorags aMlity to upoak.

Wanuy Bogen staggusts that ThQles pmeption of the Worm is a e~n- ifeatatiorr of her ado~bleviaionba

Just as Blakeg In rrritlng about a thistle, mtvealed that Yhat to 0th- a trifle appears lPilla mr full of ePdlos or tears1 For douUs the vislon ay Eps do bee, And a double vladon is slwsgs nitb me. Ylth my inward Eye Otis an old man py; Ylfh Jqoutm s Thistle across my my, 118 witness its own Annihilation and be reborn in the spiritualieed body,

This is the deepest meaning of the eternality of process, Because of her stern debate of self-consciousness, Thel is rendered one of the Redeemed and returned to the place of the immediacy of contrariety, which is de- termined by "Spiritual poner alone." (M 1 26840 ~122)As Thel is revealed to be among the class of the Redeemed, the prophetic is revealed as a re- opening of the anti-perspectival, a shattering of perspective in and through a minute delineation of the fallen lineaments of perspective, Because of her ability to shed nthe rotten rags of Kem~ry,~signifying a genuine dwelling within the contrariety of creative innocence, Thel's stance in relation to the Worm and the naked male of eternal identity is that of mercifa mediatrix and sustainer between time and eternity. Indeed, Thel is here identified as nthe mercy of Eternity." In Blake's poem entitled "William Bondn a tran~figuredspeaker gives voice to the locus of nthe mercy of Eternity,"

I thought Love livd in the hot sun shine But 0 he lives in the Moony light I thought to find Love in the heat of day But sweet Love is the Comforter of Night Seek Love in the Pity of others Woe In the gentle relief of anothers care In the darkness of night & the winters snow In the naked & outcast Seek Love there (E1189). But the image of the risen body of "the mercy of Eternity" embodied in

Thel's shattered perspective must be accompanied by the complementary movement of the resurrection of Urthona as a returning of the Spiritual

Beauty of the unfallen forms of nature to Thel's breast. Therefore the

"Clod of Clay," as an image of strong Urthona, takes upon herself the labour of Los, raises "her pitying head," and performs a miracle of lairsalsa In prophetlo poetry -- ah0 rZlom the volrre of Me Worm to be heasd by The1 as *tho memy of Btsmity,w a nraing of eternal identity,

ia 'Rm3'cr condifAon aa one of tho Ruleem& hiah results in the imrsdi- with the appeamno of Thelee *double visionw for it ia the wntrucy fold* h th~WXBI begI~to ~pdc-- "0 beauty of th@ Vlji~lllof Hd'

tion. @hadimovens hemelf at the ~tll1point between time ard etemlty, hie nu where *IlortalIty lmglne to roIfi$he h.om of Eternal Death before tho Gate of hN(3 3988).

Altho* UrUlona wrs unnamed at the tlu of tho oolllparition of "TholeN

Unial1.n exuberance of the finite, *never Illanif-ts in hlr own personw Zh0 mytaka on Ule hutc~tlonof c#wrting fo- mew. She mk08 it POS- aible for Thdl to hear thQl individual areatlve artiotalation of the Yonr.

The Logo6 is ilrsds ranifatat in the Spiritual Beauty of the Clay rrr the rlrcm body of a spir%tdi5c;edNatum, Nature bcwoaes Illlsrgination in the flgum of tho Qay. Rie rppcwamoe of" the univcrreal oreatlve 1.rglmtion is iargerl in the et.mal death of Lor u, a oontfnual orudflxion of the Intallc~otuslbody on the emma of Nrtory. The csoqporrltion of history la groundad in the oontinml rhatt* of ~peotitre,thr, autiag &do sf the Sailfhood, aad the taSdng on of the newly risen apirltual Wy. At Ulria point in Me narsation Thsl beooma an onbodimt of the ooatrrariety of Wet a8 un%veraal Imgination and Uzthom arr illkdividd - areativa fuginatlon In the form of" the labour of the mtron Qay. Thd taku on Me mpwt of bein order to rsdeen fallen perapmtlve. It la ber task to show the poaslbllitier of miolaptlon for tho hwan voiole. lire pmoess is fourfold: gonerstion and ragenemtion In stlbndty are to be

Damn, A Blake M~ti~~ aeon 18 r mtmrlng of generation md mgen~~ltlonin faen time and be seen as the errs6noe of generation and retgen~nrtfonin eternity, Xn other th. dath of cShr1.t w the XOBUZT(KI~~Wof the Hw~rnitfof rmiver6al mmtive Im~&~tia$8 maad in the appcwrrmas of UrthoM as the Clay's dfulaot. Tho Clay', .rot is essentially a *rs-mm'barrlng* of the efoX%&a&ahMWWlt6 Uf the f'%&%0.The %fifik08XI 0d.y b0 r08bred to the fin$- by mean# of the rot of Self-Annihilation. Thdt boaoms a

8d.f and Ws a8ecradenm of the extam3 to bow- hwwa uco rrd. rurifest in hex orucSfon po814Aon on plrk, 4, In this way the infinite ia returned

tho Clay, the Uoxn, and The.%shows that Blake saw the Blrlna Lo- 88 fUy uerif~tU tho dnuk moulsr.

T)ta profound oontnfiety involved in the Worm ar r spW of potcsntbl Yrrisga bstwcbm the f83l.n utd tmtallan olrdenr it4 dim- In the dlmat aonik.onfptioa barf- the Won rs r trarrrrPlguration of the Lilly Yrclulatl~

the ~rllrrsntaf tjla Ruwm, Thel crs a reflutkton and embodf.mt of the Worm, su~pdndat the imislble polnt rrh- gmrrrtlon ULB. regemmffm, nganemtiton and genemtian, bane one anothar, cnd the lrg. of unfiZ1dn Uxthona in the Clryet4 aot, whlah its, InmrClbLy, a retuxan oi the Uoxs a. It Is the God In that is our uorprnlon & Mud, for our Cod hi~~3.fmPr JP~Uw Irreoth.~ dew& y mtb-t 6 St Joha,.tmo.o dwalleth In low dtlQUetb l.n Cod & Cod in Mr. & swh an one ouurot 3-e of my but tn love. & him feeling& wlll be at~tlomor xypulsea.. , Cod is In the lowst aff'mt. m well as In tho higheet aawe for he is bmo.s a rron that he .rj nourl6h tho we& For I& It be reaeaberd that oxeation 18, Cod demendSw aauor65ng to the weakness of m for our Led is the wolrd of (306 & every thl on earth Is the word of Cod & In It. easenos is God (E-9 7 Ymta cllrausrrer the Voxa as a symbol of &.sire In gmeratlonr Extmml nature, In lb ailtlmte ~yabllcrforr, is oalld Satan. In lfs sexual appoaaaacn it Is the Fomle, In it8 lnfcmtlle, or lmoaent aapat, it ir the Worr. T&me t.E.r, arr not used for pwelss of vituperafioa. They belong to a cr.riw of sgrbols wSlioh grow lnovitrbly out of the 1- of the Extwml. ur Mature's W~JP~~C)IUII~V~aim. Ikl symbols all mpert thie, even whlh In detail they seea somtlm to cronkradictt ono wthar. The Worn Is the dragon In embryo. It ia tho DevoWc8r. of a iLrcy ao swmt as to psr6 for hslpl~~rr.3b love tho Won ir to parform fhe most Cod-like aot porrsible. He who do- thie camtot ?ae other than 14s oppelte, safe In Us own 1.pmotnrble irnrtrlitj. so fu: aa we love the mra pltyfqfly, God Is In us. %%toWom*l@vw to our3 munb the bone6 of D#thaw Xt eaI.0~- mum to *Wda palaae of etdtyin the mulderlag ohuroh- yard," Zlhm ns attempt with the oIrt;mwl portion of our .irr& to do the mrk of the intenj, with the tempoxaxy to pdwe the evcuclufing, lm am the wom 8 ThJ and th. Clay "periora the mst God-like aat posrt.iblea by lovlng the

Worr, If tho Wan ahoores fo uphold natUECS nmry as authority, ho fwwfully uorrhiplr extsrnallty in Idolatrous pride. Nature eontinually beao~eSatsa In the Image of the Worm, However:

#at- Is one of the things of which man has no rl@tta dep~lve himself though It be evil, )Ikn has no right to rs;inrin and reetrrin Nllcelf fro. sin. An angel cannot beeom a prophet tI.3.l he ha8 beon a devil. Rmtralnt is self-murder, It ie only In We fwenaoe of of Om, In $hh way generation I6 aruptu~~edtxiby regeneration, The Yonr e~p?mUasboth nature an externality and Nature arr the risen body of Christ.

We see Hature, with Rmaon at the top ond Luet at the bttora, tdth Jwllousy oa the one hand and brality on the othar. We bow that it is all a delusion, and exists norrhero bat In ow own 14C&, ywt we kbBOm IlhlLt we behold - w(, eWCYer -- OW %mnt3Y)8 am open tO .* All this Is Satan, dth Lr;w, hie wife* 10- IMJMIF ~f fh -e We 8- bfik~'6~pp~afb# ~y~bo3.iQdZ1~ Chribt, kourril, foqgiring, -hl.e bee8u.cb awntfve, not jdow, yrt rrith 8 bxk%a - who is liberty -- ud he also dwrlla Mlnhera bort In urr, y@t to WMah he invitcrr u6 to miter, forgsftS,ng psaoe nnd wrivereal brothad. Then the *Ets3ef3 B;lsappsars in fapsowsd knowle4ge,n ud gcwtly *;fabe a#rJT (*vJ. VIII., 1,544). oppoalt+rr we usl, throughout 31srko9r wozka, thlsr we ~rprjrresolve tall hit# apparently contradicttory ryablr It ic the memfful act of the Qay, as the raaurrc~?tsdpower of the life of the Holy SplrAt in the form of an awakened extefiorlty, that rkm vlrrihlo the appeaxamo of #nos unfalen Nature. And pt It nut be rel~amwthat %el, aa ow of the R4xleewb, rak6ba ft ~iblefor the

Qly to appaar rdl funofion u, the Wly Spirit beoaw of hrar "double

Tho design on plate 4 depiats Thel in a 01Cu6590m position with her spiritual agency* Thelea 1eft foot is forward, siQlifylng that her peraeptlon of We Uora is a baptism of the material in the spiritual. Fallen time inB eternity are mzz$ed in one rising image, On plato li Tholes right foot Is formant suggesting her a~mpletedwelling within the

Lillp 1- Mow ha, The mirrored eyanetry of the padtion& of the feet aad the hntand lack views of Thel btmen plate fi and plate 4 su&esta a prasentntlon of the mathod of &vine creation, A naked flying We figure depart8 above the nativity ecrene on plate 4, 4he, too, is a lairror invomlon of his position on plate 1%. The& hQb mved in a almlo between t&o d- of =ah pbta ubarem the rurkad mle iigure baa mvsd in a linear psogmulon. Thib mirroring iadioatam the 80vemmt of

irgi~tlvsridon In the fallon urd tUr;raUan malam. Ia g~tlonth.

iaaglnatton mves oplloally wbi;ls b, ofennity it pdst. in ib linoar

ctourse, The ot.a of the Lilly noamat the tree hu flve ooU8 8ugg-tIng the amkening of the five 8piritual mnss~)u they am sumported In generation, Tho oo8poeitiondL crreodation betwean tho plat- Is exp1loltr the WUy hrs baoome the Wn-fnisnt urd The3 brs beoom both Uycuad Vom, Ihd a etdldentlty by reana of a seZf~~)lil~~iousnec~eof her

cwntrarlety .I, idwe *Mvine Memberee or 1-t joy, and pcwrlaching mrtPl dssfm, or Vor;l,

But Thel hu beeurn maoh .ore, It hao beon notad that the entire drnrlgn of plat. 4 is a nbmr inversion of the play of sexuality depAated In line wlth Thales upright stmoo in the ~satrrllower portlon of plrte if, Plafo 4 fcmecb. the crentrrl lowportion of' glrte 5% by dirrcrtly involring Thd, In the latter iUudnaticvl Thal atn.uei~a *IBUU pezmpfZonw of her *Slscrpfng Body@' acr a nude We (om of the Wivlne Herboren or fhoqht-form in the Holy ~plrit)with Ma baok visible

stmgglw to 'Mnd TheE (a vegetative falry) down *to It8 Qsllightea to

iqrcrgrute the finite with +he lnfinltude of eternal identity. he1 la . almrly d~nga "loss of -em on plak 11 anU her right foot, the

symbol of her spiritual ~8an00,18 for#LIF6 aa she ~~.L.LIin dmar-

like foshion of the aport6 of eternity, The position of ttro rlght foot

suggsarta the rrplrltusllty of heelre, On plate 4 Blake haa ravereed this

1-8 of the ettmmllty of procreeo, tho struggle invdlved in divine wnr, to ro13 tho blllom of Eternal Dmth Won, tho Cak of Lo&* m(rr revsa2ad rs Urthom, or *the keepcar of the ptgs of hoavenen She has

pemalptlon of the Wonr. Sho hers rdogtQd both the Mghwt and the lowat,

ll? Ells and Yeat., The Worb of -1- Blak., 2. p. 93. ll8 -Ibid., p. 93. a pulsation of ur wterJr In *oh "Period the Poets Work is Done."

the stcmral. ?MM ban sooompUahd, And It is intwerrtlng to note that

The voim of the Vora fa head by Thal as a hwvtn iaage of the Mane

But he that IOVBCIthe lowly, pttns his oil upon &y he& Ad fdmw me, snd Mnde hie nupti.l bmdr around ry bramt, Aad sap.; Th~u.other of my cSrildrsn, f have loved thee. And I ham &van thee a orown that none o;lur take away But how this is smret mid, I know not, and I ~naatk#nr, I ponder, and I a~aotponderr yet I live and love, (4rl042, 511-6)

119 - sin , h,, In wemity, ,a1 mt ,t , ,t,ty Till two Eternitys meet together" (M1 13t10-11 ElO6). 1-t Thdl is able to oonpletdy 8ouept tho voice of the Uora a8 her mat direst wntrrry* The Worm is ong tho olrss of the Redeewd, an meRy of tho prorduo of Arlfillmnt, Skr &es mt know how she hu been given *a arowrr that none am take away and &e *~thow" yet ebe partakas of the eternslity of prooeee. Divfne love diecovere itrr uulalim ultimate in a knowledge that has passed kyond Me ratiodity thrt imdsts upon an aratlng of the taxto of good and evll, The Mvine ie married with the Wllsdom of the hwrt. The YO&- of the Uora la an echo of &at nay have been the voicre of one of the daughters of Hne SempMr hrrd there existea self-cronsoloucr desire in that &in. But &nos the prophstio task ia to show how lDdsn booass Eden, the volcte of the Yorn may very well be seen as the voiae of a daughter of Mne Seraphis, Ihe narration has colas full dds, The -inning of Thal'a inWeatual jomey le tranarfi@med in its end and o, new beginniw launched, Bdone proceeding with our disoussion of the narratSve dlrsction of tb mait $8 neceseary to determine the speaker of this lyrid oraole. The pmsent re-interpretation of the poem olalm that It is the Worm who dsl$vers this wafortlng Insight to Thel, Propa&y @peaking, the voioe hMby Thel Is not that of a strictly gsnszaklve worn, nor is it ths Ssolated voice of a regenerative Clay, "0 besuty of the vdes of W Is dellverad by a voice uhicrh le the Inoorpe,mtion of raortal wsaknetrar cudl spiritual beauty, a .ri&@f Warm and my, Crltloisr of the peas has hitherto seen the Clay as the speaker of this prrssage, Let uia review that argumnt bsfore pmsenting the gruund. of an appeal,

The argwent In favour of the Qayts spang Is bedon the ae- sumption that what Thel needs from the Worm is how to be a mother. Con~iderlines 41 6-9, And none to answer, none to oherlsh thee wfth mthear sdles,

The Qod of Clsy heard the Vo'cob voice, & raid her pitying head; She bowed over the weeping 1n?t'te and her life exhaled In mllky fondness, then on Thel ahe fixed her hunhZe eyes,

The Worm is 8een by Thel as an infant unable to spgok, Where is a mother?

The Clay hears the UOJCP~~SVOICC~ weeping and born, ever the weeper, She nweses it, exhales her life in inilky fon8ness, and by so ddng demon- strates what dre means by living not for self done. She has a crhild la gfw, mllk to, Ulth the ohild rratiefisd, she turns to Thel and

The paswe is spoken by a mthares ttoioe, Vly bosom., .Is wld, and,. ,dark? (4r12) but Jmus, "he that loves the loorly.. .Mnds hie nuptial bands around my breasta, (511-2) and loves rpe as wnother of (MU) children," (583) The dirlogue indiostee that Wet is refenclng to the matmn Clay, dth a wora ss rthlld, Thr cold dark breast desiw%brrothQ womb of in fhy cold badw, (5813) the cbazrth. Christ .srrien the mther Qay and

their ohildrsa, ie. mms, The symbol of Hm, a worn In the Grave, is basio here. The convsmmtion between Thel and the Clay IJJseen by eon- tempoxmy -ties as fairly straightforward, even if ellipttaal. To suggeet that the speaker of "0 beauty of the wlea of Nrr* ie an dlision, or transposition, of the vofoes of the Worm and the Qay reate in tho dlrsotion the nrrratlon has Wen thus far; namely, that the spiritual purpose of Tholes lntelleotusl journey ie to auakem her to the Christian voioe of foxljivenees, Her self-oonaroiousnees wt bo made to provlde an appropriate epbry wlth Whloh to contain the HWYnfty of r univ8rua.l amative genius, Thelea purpose isr not to learn what it mum to be a mother in Che gawative oyale, but to looate r urriv.rul aoeaology of forgiv.n.rur wlUn the hrwrn heart, To this snd the prophetio nrr- ration depicts the Vera in it8 natlve dupllfoity: it f6 reen crr both the highest and the lomat form of aetlve Intelligence. In short, the nuli rrtive progrerrlon of the poem fndlortem that Thdee purpom 18 to show th.t the human mots with snb boom6 the dlv%ne in the rot of f~rgfve- nssr, Xrst us rstraoe the ataps of the aooepted argwmt wfth thir re- virion 09 lIhales purpose in rrfnd.

Thslerr *douUe virionn of the 1~0~1~is the c~arpo~)lt,ioa!of an orphan04 and i~laulatcbohild. Almst rstsrnilly #he laments the &beancrib of a mthsr'rr Joy to ahesish tho Worm. The lmge of Man sr a a~l)rMJhlwsWorn in the Gmve ir Illdeed blohem. But it is the Wnd of rrp.csohl.orrros8 thpt ia 5uporknt. The Mae which rddnsaes TheJ $8 cr p~~phetiaaff3- tiorr of r &vim apewit Woh bemmsrr artioulste only aft= the srturJ mn hr rumended to the engulfing *beam of love.* Th. ~obmproUm the .doat of the hlssrtbed of lnspilrrtion in Christ, A% th%rpoint '&dl seem oriry the words natural he1pl.rsn.s~ whereas the mtron Cloy hems the ~om*rvoicrs a# the YinrrticMIZate ory of the light.* The may, .a the rwwt(#IdplrltUsLJ. beauty of' the world of IrrgEinsttion, as the infinite pots#t&dl of *DIvlne lbroysa nowirhee the Von ulth the ph@orl rtnngth neewmry to partake of her own *etemol lot,' (W 19 l&l) The phyebal a& of riourlshlsg twmrrfigurea the Clay and Worm aa fhe~e~~ a %piritual mrging, a psrtokiag of identities in a uniwraal arscrtlve pX'OC@88, Bbke depiate the -me tnmefueion of eternal 1d.ntity Wlrough olay, mother, and Infant in Plate 1 of *For the Sema*: *I found hla beneath a me(B 2g). The Clry*a mrcrff'ul wt la the btowal of anti-prspcrotivrl my be seen u an inauf'flatlo~urfrprophetlo rrpsaMng whbh fmot;tona rrr a prlmmtia rsfrrotlng of the infinitude of potential, urd by eo &%a(: rake8 vialble the wsatlve omtm of Quciatianity in

Blake's "Wvine M~roy,~The Worm muriabad, the Qlry turas to Thel ad fixea hex with her huwble @yea. TM8 is really the ollrrx of the entire dramtisation, The Clay's gas6 ib.tMtanmusly binds the mmnt of .imaulouri tmmflgurat&on wherein the Vorrr fs seen as sprrarking the Logos into exlstenoe and yet dla~lal~ngmy knowledge of the of its ability to do so,

The truuflgumd volae of the Uora-Clay (fox they lrre now engsged

In a purpaae bgyoad thdr om) &I- the dark ergtinears of the human heart (*MY of Itself la mid." 4112). A knoulwlge of the innrte science of the hum hart rcnd thQ firs8 of inspiratlorr Is bibcovorrd

hursn iurgiastlon. The eternal dlaaovexr, itealf In the refleatlon of tho

The mlcre which addrrrsses The1 fa not that of a riraoulow worm, nos is it the voloe of dlsctabodled splriturlitg, It la the lwammte voioe of the etemallty of proueas, Them ranulna an apparent aontradiutlon between plat- 4 und 5 ff one wirJhes to lnaiet that It is the Clay alone who atddmss~The3. Bloom tdls ua that the Is erblerstlo both of generation and of death.. ,, The diod of Clay replies for the worn becrurre It atands at both poles of the woraea oyde, the Adaala flesh and the grave,@ ($808) If it Is the Clay who speak6 for the Worm while ma1 li6te~,why then doea Thel apeak of her awakened konwlwe of Me Uorr in her rejoinder? Tholes new underatanding of the Veda plight our only have rlsen mrn a transfiguring peroeption of the Yora'e pUrpO8fJ. She hur been gnaaed with a Wdoutile visionw of the Mom &a rieen Adrda moulded in the irsge and like netm of Chrlst, sr w8I.l aa a viaion of the Wozm as etedGrave. The pa48age presents s suhlim allegory of the mume of prophemy: the pXQphet utbm surd ~t that &ah ha utte- is of U8 OWn The narnation aohievcrs this reaaxkable rrversal of mtursl prooess by srcllonfng #a unbeguiled voice of infunt Jog uttersrwe, (!the reader should maaU tke etyrdlogicPl signiiteation of the word *lniasteas 'unable to sp.dr. ' ) The pmage spoken by the Wrm-Clay announces the imrtrility of divine love in huaan wmkness in a swzmnder to the abasams of love," It pmfmmw a faith the sole aersnt of uhbh simply knows ao bubt. Ttre virglml knowledge of the wlos of the Morn-Uay is aoWrdl in the

Chrlstfrn tmdltlon of the crootmrit~tyof worn and day, life ud death. The huWS13 lyzkcrfa~iof the pamage falls upon Thdt'r .ur Uke the kisr of etema2 life. Her npurgoes* is instMtly rade rvallable to har. me voiw of the Wor~t-Qay ir rrr elleion balanofng I&&soul-flesh pol- arity in one rlsing lrrge of apoealfplie trarroflguratlan. Thsl h.ua the voiee of her own wwokene4 foxglverws in the &teulatioa of the Womb-Clay and rwrlfrrars that the purpose of htuwrLty ir to rat in the image and llkenesa of Christ, who is eternal forgivcmser. As r divine analogy,

Thel herself, the primordial We figure, aots as the feterle portion of the eternal, the riaen form of eternal existanoe in nature, She funatfons as OL vl~selfor the sourasless flow of irragination. The Chrlstisn tracai- tion of the aontrrriety of risen sfirftu;.S body aiad pericrhing mortal derire ts Uoto Thelea eremenbranad of her pv. Only af'ter she is made to disc the tmsontial divinity of her mrtrll'ty am dre acoept the *cold bedn (5813) of the hwan heart ao cm eternal slumber in the embraue of the nMvins Hemy,"

*Thb dwire of Man Wag Infinite the poseeealoa is Infinite & himself Infiniten (NNRE2), The Worm-Qay reflw.tlr to Thel that hfs nboslom of itmlf is csold, and of itself Is &knn thw explaining the deepeat natum of the soul's aontrariety. The emanating g3ncationa of diYim low damend to oreate the lnnarenoe of the given, to wap the in mental ilarrsr to revad its orlgin in the etsnul, The appeaEblloe of unfsrllen love Wes place in the rrs~of history, "He that love8 the lowly* nourishes 'the mrs with dlk and oil, wlth the rrtwal ud spiritual .uanaeo -- the food of th. generated life rdl the burl. of

form in the HeSg Sgirlt dep~supon a MIZS-comaio\~~e~)sof the wn- tnrlety of mmtive i~1ooenc1e. He my recall that Urthom m-pond. to the Holy Ghost and In plate 4 Thal iraages the ~aloualabow of Urthona. If Nature he2wlf ir to b8 soen as the emmoe of Splrltud Beauty, Ole flnltrade of the bra rust be rrrrlrsd in oontrSpuntil hammy dth the ozutive ianoaw of etuarJ. icbntlty. @Where rur %anot nature is laxrema (HHH9r 69 ~37). Spf ritual and sxt~isedBat- me Identioil to nterfal .nd Intornal Nature, 1US Identifled farm u?r, htmu. @God only Aa* & I@, in existing beings or Hat, a It is @tho .urury of Etemftyea sr tho dillvot olontnSy of the knonn, Mah aots as tho vieitation of thoucght aothexlng the birth of eternal identfty In the hwur irrrglnstion, Therefore the VoICh-C1ay ir given the status of w~therof my eM1drr,nw by the DAvIne Logos, The iadividuarl disappears In the unlvsrurl cxreaitAve Iwbati~n*It is the univerarl cmative Ilsgiartlon whioh eupportr the

@MvIneHmberrllW aac)ordiag to the tmakaess of the Individual, The d.rrpcwt naturcr of amtrrrlety the Wora-Qay do- not possess of itmelf, an& @am- not knowemain~~ a full ruvelation of We emenoe of oonfrrrfsty is the labour of the @trueMulw as s futurrlsa. Blake oorrcrsivcrs of existenoc~aa the etaidentity of easrmnoet both are mlvQla in m emboaat %.ranorma, Blake, the fozv.011t antinoaaian pmphat, sap -what the ooetaw&es uo even crs he remias unable to asy -how they are. An exhibition of their .Mcjlng aathoa io reserved for the prophetto a6 the purr speaking of r futdtg, a

end of a golden s*~Ang,~(J 77 E229) The prophetla rPioe does not attrin to a fbmlity beyond itself but stmgglaur to asks visible the etdity -

Thel then wipes may pitying team with her *to veil-,@ (587) The guvr soul is no longer Blvidad froa its earsnations uzd clrhrdow, for it ha6 dicll~verdits own apoorlypse in the mntrariety of the infinitude of the material ud the flnitudo of divine love, The udrrstanrlrag of the Vom-Clay aad en& in a iuturistla epistumlogy. "X ponder, Md X uannot ponder1 yet I 1%-uxi love. Mdne love our only be muriahad and eagentlerad by the mind of .ur. The fullnesa of tho 0- form in

I~natbonrut appsar in the mflwtion of an emptld psyche, The Worm-

Clay is able to sustain the seat of divinity within the human brrc#rrt by aeasele8ly Mfez%rrg hlasdlf so that the 0th- of hie selutmlly mytpdsd thought right live. Thim is a ~LDO(UICIof Self-Annlhilotlon and not self-_ saorifioe. Thel ha@ beoopio Yoxa-Qay. Her "whits veila ir to be eeen as the tranaywrrenoy of the invltsiblle ground of the visible, the crlothirg of tha atwe of history, by Woh silenoe ir mtwclled to the

sturd naked am the divine, srror is cast wide. Again, the apseking miae of the WortwQay effots its own revelation as the fncrarnation of the

Mvine Lagos by articulating cont;rarles, As The3 oaste wide error by wiping auay her tarira the pum emptiness of the soul is mWed as the

crontrary of the Dlvlnie, Logos. Manes primrdial oondtion in srrtorrl,&ment ie revwaleti ars a coseaology of forgiveness.

Significantly, 'hal, in her rssponae to the miss of the Wmm-Clay,

indludes the dlk of Vhe mterlal e8iotmcen with the of1 af "the spirlturl esaearre* named by the Worm-Clay. Even her oonfmntation with the Wore say aa her most direet contrary har been a fbrber dain~ttonof her

own infinite perspective arousing othsariae "dead portions of ttra alnd into life." Her rscognition that Cod cherishes the Mom with -both milk and oil signifies the fid apotheo6i6 of a wholene- of sc

It la Thel hemelf who realiltss that tho essence of the divine far the . She irs enaUed to enter upon an eta& nw%trrtion on the fme of the Holy Spirlt eontinually creating forma anew. Indeed, this is shown in the ill\urimtion to plate 5 MI Thal gases inmrds, significantly in a Urisyic po~~ltion-- perhapa emlag there what is depiuted beneath her4 arnelj, the C%ay a8 a naked noplan -thing her *Idlky fondnwsn into the Uonr-infant who Jo~roudyhords hie aprrt in the osu&form porslt%on, Thel hes attained to a uonditaoa of "pw visionen a rsWfi- ortion of Urlsen adlharw~. In "A Vision Of me Lut Judgmentn Blake wr%test "The Ilaginative 1-e retuarar by the seed of tJonte.plrlivs Thoughtea (E%) The e%em~Iityof' prooeea Is eignlfled by the prophetla mndof the spirltualiceed body, the dmaf chastened virginity. ThdL8e urrs are folded on her knees providing a polarising balance, s sgtlurltrlaal rrtruoturing, of the infant's umifon porritlon. The Uom has horn Thsr and Thad hsr; beeom the lffe of the Hdly Spirit, Thr de-n retunur the namative corgposltion to tho bQglnnlng of tb poor uhers l!uums 1s asen ss the mtro and 01rouPdgrencub of the unirazsal tmmtivo Imglarrtive, But the bgginning has been trmsflgumxl, &nee Thal, s6 unfrllm Uxleen, embodiers tho alcrhemy of pura ttidon and the dm%rs,of the Uom~lnfant. Fallen time arrd eternity am seen ur nourfsh- - lng one another 5n tbs acmmetg of cmatlve innwsnoe rade visible in tho posiUons of the Uoreirrfant anti Tbsl, Thdl hem hamthe awakened faoe of the Holy Spirit arsditrrting upon the ete-ity of forglrcraeae, As

such she is a leanifeotaaon of Uxthorur, uld so it is fitting that her face

is not reen, Her position in plate 5 Implies a slepliflau\t nrcrrbrraoe d the loaus of the hum. lhrt remmbxm~etakes the form of pua, .viaion, a PIIVEIage between IntelPal and extenul. The Clay then offera Thol a vision of the oontrorlety Involved In orertive the mthiod by whiah trirginlty rsnev. itself.

Queen of the Wss, the natron Qay urswerd; I hWthy bf&e. And all thy rroans flew o'er ray mf. but I have called the& down: Yilt thou 0 Queen enter ay house. 'tid given thee to mter, And to mt.urnj fear nothing. enter with thy vl-n foot. (5114-17) Following Thelea depluctm froa the re.lr of Mne Sozaphim she Ir $hcwered in the vales of Hu: beside the river of Adorrs. The vales of Har have bn emstrued In termu of a sacred lsrrdecr~poof the wul, an eXt.railicsed iuge of ur inner apfrltual paradise, They reprmont the land of gcsnsrrrthn oomtantly struggling to lafrror the iourfald depth of Eden, the etermllty of prowm. Ihe oontraries of Ifallen Memory and fiery Inspirrrtion opeatlve in Me realm of Mne S(ll~1phlmare foeused ud brought into rslief in the valea of Har in the reflecting watere of the rlver of Adom, The dranrrtirstlon of the tmmflgurrtlon of the so& hu b.csn prrrc~td

the huaan to swmkoa a8 the the oontnrriety involved in the grsfag into the iraging flow of tho riwrr of Adom u tho ~litxonClay lnvltea her to enter her homo, She haa discrovered the vale8 of Har, the infinitude of the inner spiritual paradlee, in the vleionary stream the rlver 09 Xnragfnation, The Qay auknowladgeur that .he baa hd intUeetur3 intamgatloa thruughaut, Am the splriturl huty of the

fo- of lkt~~.,th~8%- of tho Word of God, tb Chy hs~ rade possible Thsl'8 moovery of the lomu of tho huwrl by allodng har to hear the voice of oontmrlety. Thel haa Men rcbstorrd to vision by vialon ltmolf. ft Is 8plrituril beauty whlah nourldr.8 tho hwran, Tho Clay now offer8 Thdl a virion of the crorqdrwntsry sovowat whereby the

It Indeed appeared to Ramon am if Damin wa8 met out, but the DQvils8aaowzt 18, that the Hsasirh fell, dl fumed r hemen of what he atale froa the Abyea (5-6 m),

awn 8s the emptying of the life of the Holy Spirft Into fallen time.

pmeerrs to show how contraries are intawwolved, Tho QIlcy gently relates to Thsl that haa: home la &van her to enter ro8 to return. She is not

repmmntat2on of the essence of the hueiur, a rlrrorlng of tho preesnos of tbe Logo~lin huran suEf ering aad the paasage of time, Tt issn emptying of ti- fnto eternity, a dcrgiotion of the radr where "not one Momnt / Of Tim is lost,w where all %emaine pe~l~anent,*and #The generatlona of men. .. leave their destind If neanante permanent for evelr (HL 22 a 18-25 EU~), Thd is invited to enter this prophetlo lainroring of the human sot&. The opportunity to oom& and go haar always kssn with her. The Qaye8 house in a Pdlldal vision of the immrlalirsed forms of etarnrl identity, Roy

Harvey Pmme exgdains the dlatiacrtion between the vidonary md the prophetia. The vlsinnary poet 1s at bsst utopian and reee beyowl his world to what it mlght be whereas the pmphet arr poet aesrr through his world to uht~tit 1s in ac3twllty. VirPionaxy poetry project8 a world wNuh the poet would teaah us ta rroknou1edgo as our own; it aoms to have the ~dnetssof the terribly faadliar, Prophetio poetry projcwts a woad whicrh the post would teaoh us 18 alien to our om yet aentrd Co our seeing it as it rmlly is, a world built upon truths we had hoped in vain to foqget, As the ohulirotsxistia ~ruurerof vidonucy poem nrrkc18 us fed, we say of the visionsry woad thst ws cddhave wade it, at least in dmaplwork. We say of the propheticr wrld thst we oould not posrrfhly haw mde it1 fox, aa the oharaoteristia rarurer of prophetic poem driv- us to assent, it was there already. The ground of vl&mxy ptry Ls fadeed brsarit-work and ~llegi- thought; the ground of prophetie poetry, revlation and inythid Thus tho atpedal lmgurrgt, of prophdtio poetry -- one of ite mt lllcuclted iorrrrl ~I~uaotmistios-- muet, by the dcri5nitlon of ite purpoor, be fa- to ua (for it rsvesln a world, and the otmage Mngs in It, hiaden fro& us) 1 pt, by the paradox of prophwy, it Is a wenative to ue (for the thlw it rovsd~,bbiw univ- @real,out of the zwdm of Qpto-&ry tire, spa00 and wllloaption, put all of us, a31 our "acrturSu world, Wer thdr aegis), That Zaaguage mr cwn "undentanda baawe it6 grasllar and nyntut am do~wto our own; underrrtandiag it, we asseat to -- urd perhaps believe in -- the 188t&phy8i& system wtricxh its etwtura a. voo1bulay Wail; trylag to aaootmt for its origin, wa muat gmnt thQ. jutaeus of the post's reportAng to ua that he hrrr bema, in some qdt. lltsr;rj, eense, nlnapirsd,n Rob the vI&onrry of hie poetry, usb only he xurvalnrr. Rob ths pmphet of hia pocltzy, tad tb .tuff of hb pmph.oy rrrilu.. .@rop&oy] pmj.ct.. ..a aodd to Woh the poet sZurds ae witness,. ,,

&vine, ar, witn.sd. She is the impirstianal voiae of Unpallsn PIemory ) 8hs Invites Thel, the tender young She invltcw her to trrvel through the rirror of Ilrrglnation eo as to vlew the hwrn wmiitlon fror the other VI PLATE 6: THEL AND THE ''BOPCW OF SORROW"

+''he eternal gates tesrlfio ]porter@' (681) my be @om aa the rrle aspect of the Clay. He is the Poetio Genius involved In the Clay's loving nrsrc~r, the beatifying oontrary of heimmcmae. Tho porter and the Qay are double aspeat8 of the Zoa Blake wlll latex name Urthona. As the personified type of indlvldual arartive ilv~ginatlon, the porter guards the realm of the unfvensal orartive Imagination. Both principle and tiltinate of Poetia Genlus are ombodied in his act2vity. Hi8 rdm is the +'pure vlsionMof Xnagfnatlon. Life 1s seen arr artd death, as a eonstant partioipation in the univer8al. aot of Self-Ann%hllation, and death Irs seen as eternal life, aa a pssslonate participrtion in the life of the, Holy Spirlt, the lnoss~ultadvent of the spiritualislad body, in this rdm of' "pure vieion." Life and death are seen ss one, cis the threehold of o discovery of the soul@soontrarlsty. The 1-e of Urthona lifts, "the northern barW far Thel to enter einatansoWy as the Clay voice8 hdi~Invitation, The north is the gate to the home of ths &mi.

I3seMal mites that the dlrine hatad "brought me in tha vlsiom of God ta Je~sa,to We door of the inner mte that looketh torruld the north;

"the northern bar? refem to both tk rarnfallen reah sf Urthona and the fallen realm of Orireen. Clearly, fallen time and eternlty rrs one and the aame, he mrzatlvo profoundly reareatea the accrount of the how of the Lard given by PStekial so that the Bibllaal Godl ba30~osa Jsaloua t~tof UtIbOurdOd ~Mo&AcOOYdIw Blake, E%eMilo6God beam a dome a~pwttHe is both lovln~;Imglnrtlon aiad fdlen vision. Everywhere fn Bl&eas eyeter the true Cod bsars the aspeot of an lnmaou- late otherness, Urthona, as the eternal labour of divinity, subelsts similteneowly 3n this oaythologiaod present. The true Cod mat be revealed at the earn tlme m the Devil, hence the neaeesity of the fallen aondlttan, plelaantsry ~xistrmoeof UrthoMa in thls realm beawe his labour, ss the clontrary of Wscra's fallen Imagination, will make poearlblo r re-openine; of the etbxpdldty of pr~(18~~)thmughout, and espeoidly at the end, of the Hate, The ddineation of oontrories is neoc18dary to all orsstion.

Man, the lmge of God, is fourfold; God therefom mat also be fold 158 the TPinity illr reflooted in tbe athsr Chrscs Zoua (~haxma, the Father; Luvah, the Son; ard UrUlonat the Holy ~hoat), Urlton mat be that aspeat of deity which, u)rm fall-, Wrse Satan (1PZ ~217). All thiwa, even the Devil, arcr of the divine substaxtee, 125

%oiae of eorrow brea%hedfrom the hallow pitn (6810) rdll .rke #niteat a rdnnrring of the axtrem existential condition of the Vorr re bath the blmsbg of the Logos upon the Horn-Qsyr "And I have given thee a omwa thrt none can takb away* (484), The "voiae of somP will be a ranifes- to the fnasmriallsed plsoe "where 8lrsp the dead," to the place where the contents of' ~0nsrelousnss6 rooted, "lZ6 In other mrda, ehe has of the iadivldual peninsula of cwrsaiousnees,

Tho prophetic, delineation of the *land of sorrows dr d' teamw signl- fies the final announcenent that fdlen pcsrepective and the anti-

pcrrspwtlval c~-exist, Fallan perspwtlve is not to be seen u a fitting of the mindPo eye to a tyra~IWextaxiorlty but m the aompmition at'

frlWlen the, and hsnae, of eternity, Blake writesr

And &gain;

12' Ymt. tell. u, *The1 goes do*. to see the flaca whore U..p the dead, thorn who have died out of prs-mtrl life into Wlydwellings. She re- that a31 the liv&ag deslrecr and af'fscUoas dnrw m&rh.snt anb rind eugport -- ow mot4 -- in this placte of genemtioa," The mrk. of wi~ia~lrks, 2, p, 9, xt 10 ax80 SUB at = plaoe &em We tho dead, those who have been born out of mrtalitg- into the aplrlturl&sed body, She as- the wwlmt innoowe of the in- tsrpezsonsl nrturs of the BOILThe Clay'8 house Ir a ldrrorLng of life in death and death in llfe, This only be echiersd at ?he expsnse of am8ting the etdityof process, of surspsgding tho ~aetsac,rphosingflow of fireginatlon, to shon how pmesr 'bsoomrp process, booorerr eternal, And so ttre Clay's house is presented in tmp8 uf a Thd to view the iniiaifa spa- ln8ide flux only in oxtier to crmte fZux, fallen Urisen pIurtlulpate In a dnute delineation of the "bundary- linew of Energy itaelf . They an f nextriaobly interwoven with the true !!an'sw 8~ppreheMionof the iaflnitude of desire. The Elwt anrst mntln-

Thd ante= the Clay's house, her "Sleeping Bodv attalne to full slf- consoiousnese. The nlmr of her imagination proportlonattrly renectsr unfUen Spirlt. It bewaes the Flesh of the Dlvlna, -80 Her iriae;inotfon CM olPly refle~ltthe Word of God by enduring a uhatterlng, a cz.uciflxion of the intellwtuol My, to reveal the pum emptlnasrr of the soul, Thel la suspded at the still point rrhere tino b.ooslrr steraityo If It were not stretahing the language too mu&, It aould be said that ah@ Is inside the n&rror of Cod the Fafhbr*~IYtQSination. _I She in able to taee With the ear @theseerets of the land wknownnt

She aaw the czouches of %hedead, & where the flbarrrue mota Of wsry h& on earth inflxes deep Its rastlsaar twists. (682-4)

[a] eqmmion and &amsing,* ti nraturn to a wassansui~ by the eenaesn ans Wunited with eacrh other, a Mnd of total nynawsthrrsia The *couohes of the &.adnimage the paslllion of thought ctea6elWy oon- s~ in *fierce namesY (n 1 8131 8323). The prophetis nrRLng of "the land unknoma Ls exaotly the "sclarst aif for w)ll& Thsl hui ycrmed in the realm of )Pis Ss~aphf~.It iu a wmummtion in aelf-aowiownsscr of her mat igmedirte other, a oasting aside of the vdls of Jehovah, 8nd an u~mtiwof the tree of my&my. The darkest aepect of the inter- visibze in the "lsla8 of sorrows,"

Not until *the land becone uttsrly mate, and the tofti have ~moved raen far away, and the forsaken plaroes be mny Itn t nidat of the lutdH will the nation bo restored (I.siah 6r12). 12p The csontentb of (39mciousaesa muat be totalp onnihilrtdl in oxd- for tho

mt* (8 2 32136 ~131). Falling Urisen and unfallen Urthonr wsf we

.oveH@n3t omurr, The *land of eomtm* la siet3tan&y a dnute doline-

12* hxy Lynn Johnson, "Beul.h, *me Seraphid, adB1.kees mThal*m" -JQcPm 69 (1970), 29-78. The Nature of a Female Spaoe Pc, War it shrinke the Organs Of Life till they beeom Finite & Itself seems Inf'ini te And Satan vibrrtdl in the immensity of the Spoe! Limited To those without Infinite to those within: It fell do# and Be- Gatman: dosing Lo8 from Eternity in Albions Cliffs. (1 10 t 6-10 Elo3) Thel has been introduued to the mat profound ambiguity Involved in the issue of fallen perepeotive. She Is both inside and out~idethe mirror of Inragination for she has enterad the Clay's house but only to encounter her own nvoioe of som~.~Clearly, the aimnost Foma of eternal identity ie always a booming, Hruaan atruggle to seiwi the fourfold depth of the

Ma-God is involved in the eternality of prooess. The appearance of fourfold form is reserved for the pure speaking of prophetic futurity. And yet the "voiue of sorrown Is an articulation of Thel's "dark aompeeP (I% 6115~340) semdng to resurreat the native infinitude of her "Sleuping

Body" as well a6 an artiuulation of the oontrarlety involved in the creative innooerrtle dlacovessd by the spiritual eenmee, CAearly, the lineshemta of fallen perspective are Involved In the labour of the anti- perspwtlval, the restoration of asnes amlent innoomoe, to the extent that they parthipate in the infinitude of desire. The vision rdth which Thel is presented is profoundly ayclical, Her desire to hear "the voioo / Of him thnt walketh in the garden in the evening tlmwis repcratsd by tho nvoioe of aorrrrw," The essenae of Chri8~anityliveson ss a wnstitutive eaptlnese, The reader is presented with a profound humanlaation of Christianity in an extreme existentialisla. The dmof the Clay embodies the labour of the anti-perspectival in proportion to Thelea self-ooneolou6- negs of the finitude of fallen Urleenes perspective, Both an, involved in the crontrsristy of ureative innocenoe, The stmge;le tonards self- aoasciousnees and a desim for %he renasuenoe of an integrated sens- Ability byoM self-aonsd.ousneasrw are double aoveaents of the ease prooees, Ddre would seek ids own uraihllation and yet ersnnot at the risk of losing right of oontrarlela, And so the *voice of 15orwP artiaulafarrr a profow3 undemtudlag of the etsmdiity of prooess. The pmphetie speaking of the nsrrstivs kmes a pure othernew at thls point as eternal identity gradusilly emerges of It8 own volith,

The soul icl seen as a purr, emptiness In the faoe of the divine. It is the eternal idsntity of desire itaalf which the *voice of sorrow* dl1 interrogate, The pwe speaking of the anti-perspeotival issues from a dwelling within the eternality revealed in the aot of Self-Annihilation. Tho "voice of sorrotP asuillatss betwen an annunciation of the labour of Urthom and a aryetalll~ationof Urlmn'e falling persp~tlve.It is

*a going forth & returnIngew Aetonlshmant and terror are revealed siwiltan(1ouaSy. The voice froa Thel's grave is a &ute delineation of

the method by which the human becoms the divine and the divine hu~lan.

It is a retatoration of tha, fluidity of the eternallty of pmocbrs, r

.iarltm6owr rc3velatioa of truth and falsehood, only baame ft Is a

shattex&agof the eternality of proacbss, The Word of Cod is wholly inaamak in the orucified body as the loczus of the hutma is mvealed in the divinity of the other. It la the taek of the *voicre of sorrow" to 'm-memberg the eternal ljnealaents of forgivenem by shmlne: the contrariety involved In divlne creation.

The queetiorm put to The1 by the winmat Ford' of her perspeotive at thirr particaar point in her intelleatusl journey reveal the eternal identity of the human in an bexorable contrariety, They are aiwlta- neomly an articulation of the hardening of the arter?lea of life, 80 to speak, as the PI.inB confronts the other of Its aeaually rounded thinking, and a glorious cldlebration of the etemul awakening of tho spirltuallsed senses a8 the eotlj. realisas its participation in the life of the Holy Spirit. The Woice of mrroWn acIIl#)wlodgeu that atfrB(3tion and repulsion arr, necesreery to eniatencs. The aamunt of the progreesion of the Pro- Ufh and the Devourer fittingly be&~~with the hr.

Uhy oannat the be clowi to its own destruotiorr? (6811) The Eu. is the op;irltudl seme of Urthona by whieh the "true Man" weivea the Word of Cod. Sfnce Urthonr correaponde to the Holy Ghost, the l!b is both pzrlno%ple rrrd went of the Word of Cod. Urthonres art is poetry, a sp.aklng of the Divine Logos snd witatmising of the involutions and evolutionar of being. The "mice of sorrow'sn firat question aFYimn8 that araafion cud destruction are on., The orucifirdon of tha intalleotual body 1. binultm8ouely a mvelatlon of thr, Maria Logos. The WvbnrroL pmwsa of ontoififion -is the Word of God, Bl&e writ-

8-t thou the little vim fly, rlaaller #au a gmb of omd? It hrs a heart like thee; a bnin open to heaven & hell, Withinaide wondrous & expaursiw; its gates ma wt alodd, I hope thine am notr heme it dlothes itself in fioh axmy8 Hens thou art dlotfr'd with hwra beauty O thou mrtal ran, Sesk got thy hsavenly father then beyond tho skieat hem Cbos dmU6 & Went Night & Og & lt @ad: For every hwvrrn heart hsrs of braas & barr of rdrrsnt, Wuh few dme unbar because dread Og b AMk gr;rud tho gatas TezTAf'fa! and eaoh go- bsrln irr walld and mated round uithigt ud 06 dr mk~tah he-8 h- 18 ths sat Of Satan in its Yekit for In brain and heart urd loirur Gat- open bQhlrd Satsns Seat to the City of Colgonoosa Whhh is the apirltual foiarf'old London, in the loins of AlMon. (20127-40 nil The huaran soul aust paas through athe fn\itful mystery of evilWto

8isoover the fourfold depth of the word of Cod. God doe. not dwell @beyondthe sWesw but is the appearwoe of eternallty made visib3e in and by the aat of Self-AnnihilatSoa. The divine ZOCW of the hulllan is seen as m*sinflnite derrrire. Blake's icronoczlasr will adnit of no rertraint. Although he writre "Tho Four Sensea am the Four Faoes of E*n k the Pour Rtwa of the Vatmr of lifeM(~653)) the 'voice of sorm~f@inverb the estsblished aesns of apooslyptlo revelation in the form of the awakened senses aa true apodypse nust. The Eaar

oa~rnot"be dosad to Its own destructionw became the divhe essence of the hum Is arlwap a; -mi%. The wliving For@ of the Word, of

God must be walothedwith huaan kwutyan The contrariety of the ProSific and thm hvoursx must be wntinually redeelard. *But the ProZiflo would ac#se to be Prolifia unlesr the Devourer as a sea received the ammi of hir dullghk.* (W 16 $39) 'Phe awakened senees cronUnua;tly Wise that the *boundsrplinen of mergy itmlf

fr given over to dmth etwmlly in the mflsction of #me8 Reamn.

The fourfold far8 of Chslstianity lives on irs a wnstitutive ukrenw. The divine, ab an impsc\irats otherness, is oonseamtod by the avoiocl of rsoj?rowaa This voiee from Thelea $rave plot is sorrowful in the senbe that it mmr her deepest eonvhtion of the etarrul Identity of the rroul -- mladly, the infinitude of desire, DeMsirtb $8 awn a8 the Soylla and ChuryMis of the sour, and hence, of the Word of Cod.

nThe memy of Etctmityn i8 consistently seen by Blake a6 a hurrsrn translator. Man's erstoniahment in the faoe of the Proliife ie rendered visible in %he pure speaking of the prophetic voloe. The divinity of *Con-Saienclen of the hwm heart where it of the errpty an8 tha f'ull.

retwm to the lk a feu lines ktOr to function. *my an Ear, a whirlpool fieme to draw areatiom in?* The inner whorl of the ear Is the mmh of oreation through &oh the life of the Haly Spirit atkina, to self-

%Q)*roioe of wrrorf" mves to articulate the aontrarlvty 1nvullv.d in the e]p%ritudl 6ense of Sight u the Eye st~m in the divine irsge, Or the gliatnlng $ye to the poiaon of a mlle! Uhy are Eyelids ~torildth smm ready &am, Where a thodfighting &en in anbush lie? ' Or an Eyu of gifts & gmOeS9 ehoworing fruits & ooinda gold! (6: 12-15) The oontfary aonditfons of the Ey. -- its susoeptibility to "tho poison of a srilea md the *pure vision* tdrioh showers "coined golda -- are @tenas inaeparrrble, A mlnute eldineation of the bound Inf'inlte, the form of Energy, -is an articulation of the eterndl identity of the human. And yet Blake crrles outt "Uho shall bind the Infinit@ (~673) The hueaan heart is fomvsr uncreate, A pmphetiu rapmsentation of the g~rratingemtion8 of divine loveirr simultaneously, a presentation of _ "a going forth 6 returning," The ugliatning Eyeesu laability to be

closed to "the poison of a sarlleen the soft, delusive thseefoldnsss of Betitah, Is presented in term of a vondrous exdamtion, an *affirmation of Satanes partialpation in the Trinity so as to render it four-

fold, A8 the s~erof "The Crystttl CIIbinetn bends to Wtw the "three fold SntleeWtha abinet bwfste, and both he and the *lovely Haid* am

thrust baok Info generation and the vegetahls body. Wamolst For#@ eatas as the infinite doeire of the Uora, The elspty knuwlsdge that is

ecrstasy is *mwtmmbsrwf* in a passionste pastiulpation In the eteraality of pmorrrs. Th. vldonary eye is involved in a mntlniurl prooew of wting off the Sellhood in order to redeem clontrarles, the *ctaiW

golda of the bow Infinite. The etemality 09 p;roctem in cronsuurted

in the appsasasrce of' the lnsuly risen body, which $a, ahulfansoualy the birth of the new Satan. me Eydklds "stord with arrow ready drawn, / Where a thu& fighting men in ambush liemare the voiam of relf-

Dsrson, A Blake Mctfonaq, p. 419. 153 loving memy la identified as mn*u ~fciplrtionIn the profound movement of forglveneae, Ae Satan rsalizsecr his error, Cod la made vlsible and restored to the seat of dlvinlty whfcrh is the hunan heart, A prophetic definition of the falling Uriaen ir Snse-blo from r Prlnute delinesrtlon of Los, the aativlty of Urthoar in tlna, for Blake inalst8 that Lo8 bswnw uhat he beheld, By extension, the nvoloe of somw* *as virriMr the ?tarnal labour of Urthom only lay nand= falling ~rlaen'sextrsae existential whdition. Urxfallen Urisen, the alahu~yof -pure vlsloi~" transformtrig an inert one~mer~~lonalmatter into the type6 and uyabols i of eternrfty, is ahasrraterlleed by "an Bye of gif t;s & graoee. He is born Sn the rot of Self-Anaihllation whlah must be oontinurllly repeated to redeem tho life of the Holy Spirit urrP the oontrariety of tho huran soul. Exteriority ia oonseanrted as the tongues of the Holy Spizlt by unfllen

Urlaunge alohemleal IULgfnation. Consequently, the tnaivldual dilll~ppeam in the unlvarwl creative Imagination.

Urfosen dirrrpprwm wlth the full unfolding of Blrke'r rlsfon of Crsat$oa, and with Him dltsappeam anything rsseabllng a genuine omtion myth, Gradually the Creator beaoaaslr s universal but ween rcldegptive power, operative throughout the mat strcllterherr of r fallen tlm and space, but vleible only in the fullnam of l#xporlencte, whom He beaoles panlfeet as the "one ~esu1.130 "The fullam8 of exparienae" disoow~rarmngs ancient iarrooencre, The "coiae8 gold,n the appearance of vldm by vision itself, mwt give way to its own internal logic of the Infinite, The smxeoy surrc~undisgthe - internal logio of the Infinite Is repeated and revea3ed In the "Innate Saicmoew of the hurran heart. Unfallen Urieen's 'Reason' is the "srnet faZling, Hi8 labour aan never attain to finality. The XnFlrrlte is

Eye, The mgbnexation of the spiritualiced body depends upon the rebellious enewy of the prophetie, Satan ntst be oontinually redeemd ae the gensrrte Lwoh.

"Vhy a Tongue 1rpposrr'd wlth honey from every nind?" The prophetie voice is %he rignature of the divine. Blake writem "Every honast rwt I6

r a Prophet he utters hie oplnlon both of' public & priwta mtttem Thus If you go on So the rssult ir So He never ssys such a thing Shall happen Iet you do what you wi13, a Yraphet 16 a Sees not an krkltrary Matator, *

(1606-7) Tha pure spMking of the pmphetic Is a Mming of eternal identity, a addrag vieiUe of the "liviag formm of aaurts artfvb didnity. An artiaulation of the anti-perspectivaJ is achieved in and by a ahat- taring of fallen perapeotivs. The spiritutil Tongue is the gift of the

Holy SpSdt, It lo the power to re-present the nFruiW af the inviuible in fallen ti-. The Tongue ia @inpmsrr'd wLth honey* in the sew thst it is the sign and the sad of the labour of divlnlty, D.aire $6 seen a# the ~otttnrgof the Heavenly Father, the Divine Beetwe, Dsrin and The Hb-tia trorkrrn ma Wad*god of the flre, and the Splritn# for *the Xiq ~Mohis the Yo&m of all, wth the fln u hi. instrument.* 3

fire of deans a6 *lnst~nt*of *the Mlnd Mob 16 the Vorkw of

eata'biliahm the hum soul as the ~QCUof divine orrrstlon, 133

'3' oonmety urtio~ataiby th. avaice of mmw* IB the *amxi unknownm e0t&blI he6 desire as drailtan~oudy"the crby.8 of Hell.* Both are fnvolvmi In the *f%ro-prlncdplea dohis the Father. Wne notesr . "., . to Boehne rAloheyr] waa a symboliu language pdyand sisplyr his %her, wbe the &vine essenoe, good and evil, Heaven and Hall. In Boehm88 writings the flreplelnoiple is the F(Othtir, so~r0eof natuxa, and, as he ZX~mkbin oountlear nee,the abyss of Hell, Fma the flm proceeds the light, the Son, the prinoiplo of hsrven; yet fire md light sprlag fro& 2 siagle mot8 "For the God of the holy Norld, and the God of the dark Uofld, am not two Godrr; there is but one only God.* It is on the authority of Boehme tht Blake mote of the Jehovah a? the BiUe as "no other than he who dwells In flamlgg flra,* n\is fire I8 Bochm86 first ~dnciploof the Divine Ewmnoe. It Is, in BlaktPs words, *Energy, odl'd BflXDnad in its iires the deuils dwell, as *living Spirit8 in the Easewea of the EtedOriginal,* alp angel6 live in the prinulple of light; Md -oh spllrrit Is oonf2ned withln its own prindple," Blake anti Antf~uity~p, 74, 132 -Ibld*, p* 84. '33 tab rag.# in ~okr*I om thy spamh~luporn, but to ths lut gap of ay u+Uwldi~w~la.pute It8 uncondiuoa, unintegmit mastery in rs, In tho midst of the pertranifled irpemmml, a pcr1~~0na2lty lpfands haw. Though but a point at best; whena~uoe~ver1 cam, rahercwroV- ever I got y.t WeX earthly live, the queenXy paraonalfty Uvcw in re, urd feel8 har royrl fights. But waz. is pain, and kk ie woe. Core in thy 1ows.t fom of love, and I dl1 kneel and Mms thee; but at thy highe8tD cram a6 mre supernal powuq; urd though thau launcrh-t novles of fUl-frsighbd worlds, there's that Sn here that still m&nr lnd5.f- femnt, Oh, thou &tear splrlt, of thy fire thou mdea m, anfl like a ~MOahfld of amr I &-the ht b~lkh, thee*. (aa119) Th~l, dssircs, 16 the inownation of the serenois of that *queenly p~sronalltf Ahab cdb&zates, She is the prlnalple of defiance upon wMoh divine creation is forrnded. She csnnot be expwted to r.st t'som 1ntdXsc;rtudl W83Cfw at any point in the poea. A surrender to *the beam of lowH is, parrrdoldoally, aohieved by lreaas of a pasrrionate defilll~~)of *the beam6 of love." Blakevs rohievemnt in *The Book of Than ia a profound huvrnisation of the life of the Holy Spirit, The atem debate of self- ~~~~llulousnsrsie the arena in which the historlodl and spiritual l~an enwunter one another in astonlsWnt and rscop;nI%e, .omntarily, the other, or genuine source, of the Oo3lt6nt6 of oonalalaurrness, Xnapiratian icl to proportionately mflact the gift8 of the Holy Spirit.

The "land unknowfl my be aeen pa the wonb of tho soul, Ralns telle

U8: Thol hert~dlf my he nam4 from the aharming figure of Tbalia ("the bloumarlng onea), who in Thoura Vaughan*~HLumcsn de Lumine" initiates the Alahendat Eugeniw Philalethes into the myaterim of Yhat whicrh is bentmth.w Philaletheas -eta Thalia In a living "binple of nature," where the murmur of bees -- the generating souls -- may be hard; thenae she leads him into the underworld, where she shows hla an altar shaped as a oub (the traditlonrl il-1 of +erth), where a young snake hatcrhes from the roots of an old rotten tree. Still deeper is a cave, slacrlllng of the grave; and this, Thlia tells her idtiate, Is the lnnaost ~~~1\ctwucyof Naturegar m@eries, where death perpetually gim place to regeneration,, ,

Blake has mt3~gan&redVaughn's account of initlation into "the Lnaost eaxrclrt.~~;~of Naturs9s ay~terlras,~Thal haa been leii by hex om desf re to a 'hearing* of the divine loous of the soul, the hartbed of inspiration in dontrsdety. It cannot ba forgotten tht the acratatic afflxmations of oontrariety rurcs posed by the "voice of somlS as queatioruo to Thelea self- oonslcriouuness. This voice ie that of her own ohildsen, the voioes of self- accusrtion whioh ntarke goaarlble the &vent of the newly rlabn bdly by inftlatlng #e aof of Self-Annihilation. By as=% why it is that the Tongw is nlrgbm~'dHith honey froa every the "woicw of ram* afflmsl that love in the fdlen sselm muat take the fon of a Mnding of ensray. She fr not only m embodiment of hum desire but of divine de- aim as dl. She 're-presents* the plight of puri~Splrlf bouad by the generative body, Her prophetic funotion is to swtain the tamion Involved

Blake and AntiquityL p. 71. in creation from both aide. of the lrrimr of Ilagination, She is e8sum- tlally an en- of de~tiny. Thln 1s the deapeat aignifiaanae of her l~~t.

The *trrrmU~nNoatrll ilrr seen 'by the %~ioe of wrrow* as Inexor- ably open to "terror.# "Way ar lYorrtril wide Inhaling terror trea'bling & rffrleht." (6118) T~Unvoiue of somP wkes rwrilaucr to me1 an enaounter with the refleation of 8 polarlcd mlmring of the aoMfLtion of the realm of be SexspWm in the *lad unknown." The appemanae of tNs ps2lrlbiq3 mfleotion in tho poem signifis. the aoarplartion of r aycrliaal and unifyinig vision of states wtthin states. ~hsoondition of the Noa%ril in the "land unknown* la the other, the cmatlva aentre, of the divine inrrooen~emdo rPanifest in the realm of Mns Se~~~phla.Only by WePrloting the oontrary lpoveaont involved in areation cwur the pmgheUa narrative proportbnrtelg delineate the bounds of Edem. Agony and scr.tusy am double aapmte of the principle of ammt~on, In isolation moh adtion ie dieproportionate, perhaps even eapty, The dbaleoticur2 rovemnt of aontraricra is e~trh2ie)ddby th. pltrxaing of UH quwtion 00naera5.ng the uonatitfon of the Nostril, Iho avohe of rroncotP .sea the mveaent of c~ontrauFiesfmr both aide8 of %he dmr of Irrrgfnation, It volcas the plight of the Holy Spirft ad tho hum In genmtion, Thia aon only be acrhiavd 2n the aontext of a mytho1ogis.d praseat. The Matrll fa seen to inhale terrof tu though *tmmF were without. Uhat the aostr%ltakes cran only be desurlbed in teclb tbt are bubJecltivo -- cran only oonm la som erpprshemible fon, as though ' * tarrror* ., , wen, f ma without. The semes proteat the Individual mcl they Involve him in hi8 world; they mke paxtidprtion possible but do ra by shapizg that with whiah we partlaipate, so that we are both form3 by our world cad yet form what it la.. .the mnacra bring urr the profound vitality of oontaot.. ,sob of psrtiaipcrtion involve 158

the *le being and are simultane y an inteirffi .on of the @elf tux€ a giving up of the relf, fut;' What the NootrU takes can only be deaorlbed in turm that rre Humsn, not

"8~bjeetive.~The nostrils, *am the East* (J 12t 39 ~19).They are the rrpiritual sense of LuW, who is the Heart, or Centre, *~~,ppr0aohablefa everon Luvah is a weaver and his elemnt Is fire. The "Innate Soiunae* of the Heart never attsins to a finality beyond the pure spawFdng of the prophetic, The loom of divlnlty is In the contrariety of the soul. me- nostrils are the sy~bolof creative intelligencel therefom, they are often depicted breathing firs. The spiritual Nostril is ever open to the "terms" of the *Human Formw (R 1 18126 El11)> an absence &doh is alnys in the prooeae of bscoodng. The nHunan ForP must be continually transfigured to bestow upon it the Infinitude of tho "Humn form Divine.* Generation must be superseded by regetnerrrtion. The "voice of eorroZ artiadatea repeat-

edly the plight of both the human snd the divine in generation as they

struggle to beoals one amther and thereby Rake vlslbla the fo\urf*old depth of Eden, Blake mltes in mJtt~emn:

In H~W~Mbve begets Inve! but Fear is the Parent of Earthly Love! And he who will not bend to Love auat be subdud by Feas (4 81#1).16 ~236). Plate 13 of "For the Sexesn reader "Fear & Hope are -- Vidon* (~263). By posing the extrem exirratential aondition of the Nostril In tho form of

a question, the *voice of sarrotS acknowle&ser that Sear ~ustbe replaoed by fear if Love is to bs superseded by We. The vegetable body muat without. Huuur desirs beow the &mire of the lffe of the Holy Spirit

of generation. ,. , in the N~eaof the Noatri3s, Aoddent bing farad Into 8ubstrnue 6 Principle, by the omwlties of De~~)nstratim It baoam Opako & Inddflnltr; but the Divine Saviour, Formxi it into a Solld by be's Mathe~latiopower, He masd the Opake Sahnt he named the Solid Adam (M 1 29t35-39 ~126)-

into the types of "Identloal Exiefenouen into the symbols of' the Hwm The Virgins Ololon, orie. in *Ultann: Althoe owr Hum Power caa suetalln the severs contentions Of Iesiemp, our SexuaX cannotr but flies into the Ulro, Hence orosct all our temm in Etemlty! & now rsmm-e Retunrs upon uar! am we Contraries 0 Irlilton, Thou & I 0 Imrtal! how were we led to War the Wars of Math Is this the Void Outside of Exirrtenoe, whioh if entered Info Both *terror* and the oexwllity of the generative form mat be oontinually tra~~&ig~Ild.e he aatdogue of the spirituel Sonsea in generation depiots the 'terrible Bsauty' of the living eduotr of the Illaginatlon. ft

3.6 r ropdering of the crreative strife bgtwesn the Human ad the life of the Holy Spirit aa these oontrsrleca are misad to self-wnsciournesa in fallen tirue, True apocalypse must shatter ita own apocralyptio irsgery in order - to mclesr the eternality of prooess, The narrative aahieves swh s ekrcLttsrlry~of the i-ea of apoaalypss by depicting contrsriea within contr&rie6 in the penultilrrste articulation of the nvoice of aomw." Why a tand4r ourb upon the youthful burning boy! Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire? (6119-20) The first sktensnt ia delfvered In the form of an rxdlrmtion, while the ssoond Is poasd as a question, Rather than Platortie, lamntaUons, they are astonlehed af'firmations of the uontrary oondition of the aexuil in gensnrtion, glorlous celeb~tlonsof the Infinite olothed in *hu#n beauty." One of the *Fmverbs of HellW made: "Ths hssd Suhline, the heart Patho@, the ganitals Beauty, the hands & feet Proportfon, * (IWi

10863. E37) Ttre tender uurbn ia the hum Beauty of inaortal Joy while the "1ittLe owFZgin of fleshn it5 the hymen of the female form 0x)mtmtly penetrated by the infinitude of deslm. The *youthful burning boy" is the etayouth of the life of the Holy Splrft, Inspiration itself, The "Divine Menibere* whloh am the life of the Holy Spirlt are depioted m a

"youthful burning boyw baawe they are oonstantly ahrkstene8 with hmn Beauty in the individual i~m&mtion, The nlittls curtsrln of flesh," the virginal hymn of not only the outward fom of external nature but the veils of the sirxi as well, Is the heartbed of loan's infinite desire In the unexp3ored lineaments of his earthly body. The astonishing aspect of beauty ie that it appears at dl, The mrtal bady perfectly aontaina and sustains Spirit. The infinitude of human desire, the oontxariety invalved in poekicoal thinking, wntinuslly rsnde, "the skin of thingsUin order to show how they becows t.hlrge, how the mind reflects Spirit, how the prs- temted positivity of things is upheld. The contrary of inspiration's wtender curbH is seen as desireen "little curtain of flesh." They are - contraries wlthln crontraricss and restorative of the fourf01d nature of the "Huaran form Divine,"

According to the decms of divine inspiration, the "little aurtain of fleshn Is tranrtrfigured into the infinitude of the mrtsl My, the infinitude of nature's lineaments ass rendered the crystalline Jewels of the hurasrn soul, At the same time, the prophetia narrative is cronsuar- mtd as the pure speaking of the anti-perspeotiveil, Incarnetion (life) and tronafigurartion (death) becorn one in the oontrariety of "tender curW / "youthful burning boy* and "curtdn of fleW / *bd of our These contraries are the four faces of dlvlnlty in every man. The proyhetio voiae does not seek a finality beyond the Human8 rather, it extends Char inoarrate lwio of the Heart, the rhythm of the body, to hussanlse all that would otherwise wmak 4th the aspension of Fladnesr" (R 2 4188 E141). The hale business of the prophetia ie to *copye Inr- gination and not the cruel holinesses of natural religion. The "voioe of sorrofl rcrtictu2aterm the atrugle of divine creation in genemtion in

term of a question because it nust be left to Thel, the indivlduaf, oreative iaraginatlon and teorple of desire, to decide to reetore the lost

beloved to self-consciousness, The oontrariety of the human eoul must ever be dlsaovered anew in order kt) redeelar God as "the oreator of mn,"

to resurrsot the for- of external nature US the living breath of tho Holy Spirit. Thel has been almost wrivemmUy ooadsmned for her 6hrilrk and sudden departure froa the *land But she is an embodiment of the infini-

tude of human desire. Her depart- fma the house of the Clay afrr~ra her departure from the rsalr of We Seraphim at the beginning of the poela, Both departure8 are essentially a crating aside of the known signifying

the rsetorrtion of the etelCIUlity of PL100es8r a rmaummtion of the infinitude of Hurnrn potential, The prophetic ~~Imringof the departtwos

is the key to an apprehension of the ssthod by which the narrsrtive re- opens the etedity of proces8. The V0ic3e of somtP has preaentsd Thel wfth a profoundly uyolioal vision of the movement of thought la the

ra8h of genercrtion. Thel, as d6eix-e. ruat show the linw laowns-nt of

nrtlon Ln eternity. The cyalla and the linear mt bs rsdoemd

as wntrariss, Tbe oycl1ca.I asion ntet be ever shattemd anerr to give

wry to the rise of the new Intelleutudl body, thereby redeemlag the linear progzwss5on of Imagination from one etenity to another, TUe ia depiated by the illuaination at the bottom of the plate by &dng Thel, mins !in heurd, leading sr arplralled serpent forward into etarrrtty. Tharl must ccmm~~y in the univarrwl aat of Self-AnnlhiXation in o&er to xeveaJ the anti-perapecrtival in and through a transfiguration of finite psrspecltive. Her ahrisk is errsentially a oastlng wide of the ie to dsfy destiny. negation, the sseuranae of identity, ---.-..weHer task She hss been presented dth a *80rronNe aooount of oont&ety by the voice

of herr desire. %Lake wrltest "The bwsy bee has no Ume for sorrow," (HKH E35) The bminess of Spiritual Man f8 to create himself anew In the 1-0 of the Mvlne Father, and henos, to humise divine cnwtlon, If

The1 wem to roaain In the hotma of' the Qey, her sojourn would be kwrta- munt to M idolatrous worship of the mrtdl rother, the holinesses of natural religion, The mvoioe of sorrown haa articulated the winmost FoW of her pempwtive at this point in fallen ti-, That perspeotlve nrust be tran8iigurcrd. Her shriek my be construed in term of the act of Self-Annihilation, It is the rejection of the Selfhood, a bursting of the Wefold fora of her (2amanlte identity, True apoorilypse -not be tainted by sorrow, *The solemn, tha painful, the t-o my ultlvrtely be seen as only food for laughter, The1 rust rethink the extraae condltion of the divine f n generation, She pluat Interrogate further the amhetypal Narcissus myth, the 8lixrorIng of the Huwan in the dlvlae, Therefom, ehe returns to the vales of Har where the wSleepfng Bodyn My again be graced with Wstlllperceptionsm of the potemtidl divinity of the

Humn, Her return to Har 1s Wogoua to Bl&em8 return to tiae and spaas at the end of "biilton," awaiting "Resumeation dc Judgment In %he Vegetable

Bodp (8 42,2127m42) he erxl of the poem has been r t-flgunrtioa of the beginning, the discovery of a new beginning, Thelmarrhrlek and subsequent departure constitute the profound ima,ginative rsucaesa of the pro?hetlc, for 2n her "unhindedw release from emr Is dlsuovercrd the - potential for a further renewal of virginity and a rcsthlsrking of the contrariety involved in divine creation, Indeed, In The.les munhindemiw

136 Robert E. Slmmona. "Urlsenm r The Symmetry of Far,@ Blakem@Vldonary Form8 Dramatla, eds. hvld V, Erdm and John El Grant (~rinceton: Princeton University Press, 1970) , p, 167, ln Cf. Pluy Lmn Johnson, *Beulah, @Me Smphid, and Blakemsqhel!, * p. 272. retreat is diectovered a shrrttering of the decrees of destlny, a resur motion of the stmlity of ymcess. Her nunhinde~wdeparture e~hblieho~ the influx of Spirit at3 "a going forth (I returning,* The influx of Spirit is dependant upon the ahatterlng anit resumeation of pempwtlvcb, Thdeai departure ale0 ahows that the anti-perspectival exists to the extent that perspeutive anbe seen as "a gohg forth & returning. ~138 Blake writes in aJeZWLIIJ.em*, Then those In Gmat Eternity who contemplate on Death Sad thus: Yhst seem to Bet Ior To those to whom It lEierrRa to Be, & is pradwtlw, of the most dreadful Consequences to those to whoa it 6eem to Bm even of Tolmnenta, Despair, EtedDmth; but the Mvlne Memy Steprr beyond Qncf Redeem Han in the Body of Jesus Amn And Lengtb Bredth Highth again Obey the Dlvine Vision HsLlslujrh (32: 50-56 m7). Tfreles encounter tdth the nvoice of aorrotln has not been a dark Satanla illusion or a myopic view of Eden in generation. It has been a minute delineation of the Iron foundation of Blakeee Colgonoosa whiah arust be aontlnually wandtxated in the rlchemid llrsglmtion in odor to prog~sa

toward the golden lilleal~gntsof manes ancient lnnoccncte, An IntemgaUon of the inflaitude of m's mrthly perspeotive is seen by Blake as the

method of uncoveitig the anti-gerspeotival. To the extent that the Hugvn ie engaged in the universal act of Self-Annihilation, It is prfoneing

the labour of the first prinoipls of divlne orestion. In this way divine

love Is returned to the physical creation and God is redeem3 as nthe cmtor of man,* The seat of divinity is revealed in tha human R-t, *unupyroacheUe for everen Msnee infinite deesim is locate4 in cuad creates the eterndlity of process.

13' The reader may reed1 the huty retreat fro. the dnging pond rda by the speaker of Hsrt Crane's poem, nRepose of Rivens." Thelee expdenae In the "land unknown* is brought into relief and given proper perarpectivs by the design at the bottos of the plate, Com- pos%tionally the deeign lasrrles tho plrevious six In rr cyeliual wholeneer of experience ctouchad In the oontrarfety of areative innocents. The land of the design Is a return to gensxation, but it is to be aonstrud in term crf the creative #strife chaxabterletic of Eden In rrccozxi with Blake'& pmphsUu principle of forgiveneat;s, The soene depicts the marriage of the individudl and universal creative I.agination. The1 Is depleted as a aan%festation of unf'allon Urthom, and Christ, the universal creative

Imaglrntion, $6 incarnate In the serpent whiczh Thel Tides. QIristhas taken rrin upon Himelf and boome Satan so as to &or aankind, and therefore, God. "The owes and coils of the serpent s~ggsetthe 11w pentine mtur of the lilir of the previous illu~trrtiolu,*~~~~i~n~fying ate presence of the Divine Logos. Thus the serpent is to be seoa QE~Christ hfmelf and the serpentine mile the 6wlle of in- spixation or fhe Spiritual Senses, It is Thel who holds the rsim of tho asrpcurt snd rides gleefully. She Is at last naked, Thfr fie is rseucedly Thel, even if only beclrsuse of the position of the hair at the back of the hatad ~Mchshe has wora thmughout, The naked figure of the Clay, a further aanifestation of Urthonar, lends a hand to the naked More infant who is in danger of falling, Plate 16 of "Fox the SexesM rsadsr

have ssid to the Worm Thou art ay mther & ply sister" (~265). The design is a depiation of the spiritual marriage between tho lamb d the -bride. Msa's "double vfsionn is always engaged In the prophetfa mvement 139 The Book of Thel, Qd, Nanoy Bogen, p, 48. tonards the fourfold ewinenae of Eden. Ve my reoall Blake's stateaent that aCod only Acts & Is, in existing beings or Men." It aleo be seen that the vine of etdtyis growing froa the serpent, thus further identif y%ng the rssurrsated Christ with the labour of the "true Ran,* The four great rternals in every man wnpose the Image of Chrlet, The entire scene rstms us to the creative innoaencs of generrrtlve love, Theles willing engagement in the univsrael pracess of Self-Annihilation _ has made possible the appdaranae of the risen Chrlst, However, the Clayear support of the Worrr-infant is a oonstant rendndes of f8aiahes wordel "I saw no Cod, nor heard any, In a finite organical peroeptlon; but my earnsee dlsaover*d the Infinite in every thingn (HHH 12 ~38).

Q~~~PT,IEBn: a~*sxmma "Tholoo Mottoa pmvides Wle Virgln*s apprehension of the etarnality of protress with a mythic vehicle by whloh to expama the oon+stitutive eaptlnuss of the "innate Sciencem of the Heart. The questions rrroaposlng the Blotto give the priority of power to the labour of the lodng Irrragina- tion rather than to howlage and the conoeits of humur eadrramur, Doe8 the Ea&e know what is In the pit? Or wilt thou go ask the Mole: GM Wlsldom be put in a silver rod? Or Love in a golden bowl? (plate i) Th-e qu~stlonsaxe not to be answered either negstlvwly or posltlvely. Curtalnly 3lak8'a readers err when they treat the Motto as a Mnd of puisle for adolescents and atteltpt to aart off a r~ucaessfulappraisal of the laerlts of experienoe born of their om rationality. The quc3~lltlons cmnpoalng the Motto am questions and should be intermgated and re- interrogated as 8u&, Surdy there is rcwslson enough to ghrs8e the earyty knowledge of the heart in the form of a question.

me questions composing the Motto auhieve the great fat of initiating the act of Self-Annihllatlon, They perfom a re-opening of the eternallty of process because they stust be thought and rethought, saswored and re- answered, again, A conclus&on ccm only lead to the further act of Self-

Ann%hilation. The fact tbat there are as aaany anew- to these questions_ as there are clriUcs shows that they are a sdnlature of the achievement of the poem; namely, that the Humn ~aust,and yet cannot, escape its dest;ln& divlnlty, The divine 1s ever arecated anew in the contrariety of the hwn soul, Blake's wonderfully blasphemous aohlevearent is the crsatlon of a new Heaven -- and consequently, a new Earth, APPENDIX: PLATES AND TUT Plate i

Copied from Nancy Bogen, William Blake, The Book of Thelt A Facsimile and a Critical Text (Providente: Brom University Press, 19711, p. 34. THEL'S Motto,

Does the Eagle know what is in the pit3 Or wilt thou go ask the Mole; Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod? Or Love in a golden bowl3 Plate ii

Copied from Nanay Bogen, William Blake, The Book of Thd: A Faosiaile and a Critical Text (Providenee: Brown University Press, 1971), p. 37. THE BOOK

The Author & Printer will! Blake, 1789 Plate 1

Copied from Nanoy Bogen, William Blake, The Book of Thel: A Fatmimile and a Critiual Text (Providence: Brown University Press, 1971), p. 39. THEL I The daughters of Mne Seraphim led round their sunny flocks. All but the youngest; she in paleness sought the secret air. To fade away like morning beauty from her mortal day: Down by the river of Mona her soft voice ia heard: And thus her gentle lamentation falls like morning dew. 0 life of this our spring! why fades the lotus of the water? Why fade these children of the spring? born but to smile & fall. Ah! The1 is like a watry bow. and like a parting cloud. Like a reflection in a glass, like shadows in the water. Like dreams of infants, like a smile upon an infants face, Like the doves voiae, like transient day, like music in the air; Ah! gentle may I lay me down, and gentle rest my head. And gentle sleep of death. and gentle hear the voice Of him that walketh in the garden in the evening time.

The Lilly of the valley breathing in the humble grass Answer'd the lovely maid and said; I 8m a ratry weed, And I am very small, and love to dwell in lowly vales; So weak, the gilded butterfly scaroe perches on my head. Yet I am visited from heaven, and he that smiles on all. Walks in the valley, and each morn over me spreads his hand Saying, rejoice thou humble grass, thou new-born lilly flowert Thou gentle maid of silent valleys. and of modest brooks: For thou shalt be clothed in light, and fed with morning manna; Till summers heat melts thee beside the fountains and the springs To flourish in eternal valee; then why should The1 oomplain, Plate 2 $ Copied from Nancy Bogen, William Blake, The book of Thel: A Faosimile and a Critioal Text ( Providence: Brown University rea as, 1971). p. 41 Why should the mistress of the vales of Har, utter a sigh.

She ceased $ smiled in tears, then sat down in her silver shrine. Thel answerd, 0 thou little virgin of the peaceful valley. Giving to those that cannot crave, the voiceless, the overtired: Thy breath doth nourish the innocent lamb, he smells thy milky garments, He crops thy flowers, while thou sittest smiling in his face, Wiping his mild and meekin mouth from all contagious taints. Thy wine doth purify the golden honey; thy perfume, Which thou doet scatter on every little blade of grass that springs, Revives the milked cow, & tames the fire-breathing steed* But Thel is like a faint cloud kindled at the rising sun; I vanish from my pearly throne, and who shall find my place.

1 Queen of the vales the Lilly answerd, ask the tender cloud, And it shall tell thee why it glitters in the morning sky, And why it scatters its bright beauty throg the humid air. Descend 0 little cloud & hover before the eyes of Thel; The Cloud descended, and the Lilly bowd her modest head: And went to mind her numerous charge. among the verdant grass. Plate j)

Copied from Nancy Bogen, William Blake, The Book of Thelt A Facsimile and a Critical Text (Providence: Brom University Press, 1971), p. 43. O little Cloud, the virgin said, I oharge thee tell to me, Why thou complainest not when in one hour thou fade away; Then we shall seek thee but not find; ah Thel is like to thee. I pass away, yet I czomplain, and no one hears my voioe;

The Cloud then shew'd his golden head & his bright form emerged, Hovering and glittering on the air before the face of Thel. 0 virgin know'st thou not; our steeds drink of the golden springs Where Luvah doth renew his horses; looklst thou on my youth, And fearest thou because I vanish and am seen no more. Nothing remains; O maid I tell thee, when I pass away, It is to tenfold life, to love, to peaae, and raptures holy; Unseen descending. weigh my light wings upon balmy flowers: And court the fair eyed dew, to take me to her shining tent; The weeping virgin, trembling kneels before the risen sun, Till we arise linked in a golden band, and never part; But walk united, bearing food to all our tender flowers.

Dost thou O little Cloud'? I fear that I am not like thee; For I walk through the vales of Har, and smell the sweetest flowers; Ikrt I feed not the little flowers: I hear the warbling birds, But I feed not the warbling birda.they fly and seek their food; But Thel delights in these no more because I fade away, And all shall say, without a use this shining woman lived, Or did she only live. to be at death the food of worms. The Cloud reclind upon his airy throne and answer'd thus.

Then if thou art the food of worms. O virgin of the skies, How great thy use, how great th3 blessing; every, thing that lives, Lives not alone, nor for itself: fear not and I will oall The weak worm from its lowly bed, and thou shalt hear its voice. Come forth worm of the silent valley, to thy pensive queen. The helpless worm arose, and sat upon the Lillys leaf, And the bright Cloud saild on, to find his partner in the vale. Plate 4

Copied from Nancy Bogen, William Blake, The Book of Thel: A Faosimile and a Critical Text (Providence: Brown University Press, 1971), p. 45. The Thel astonish'd view'd the Worm upon its deny bed. Art thou a Worm? image of weakness, art thou but a Worm*? I see thee like an infant wrapped in the Lillys leaf: Ah weep not little voioe, thou oan'st not speak, but thou can'st weep; Is this a Worm'? I see thee lay helpless & nakedt weeping, And none to answer, none to cherish thee with mothers smiles.

The Clod of Clay heard the Woms voioe, & raisd her pitying head; She bow'd over the weeping infant, and her life exhal'd In milky fondness, then on Thel she fixvd her humble eyes.

0 beauty of the vales of Har. we live not for ourselves, Thou seest me the meanest thing, and so I am indeed; My bosom of itself is cold. and of itself is dark, But Plate 5

Copied from Nancy Bogen, Willia. Blake. The Book of Thel: A Faosilile and a Critioal Text (Providence: Brown University Press, 19711, pa 47. 5 Wlt he that loves the lowly, pours his oil upon my head, And kisses me, and binds his nuptial bands around ny breast. And says; Thou mother of my children, I have loved thee, And I have given thee a crown that none can take away: But how this is sweet maid, I know not, and I cannot know, I ponder, and I cannot ponder; yet I live and love, The daughter of beauty wiped her pitying tears with her white veil; And said. Alas! I knew not this, and therefore did I weep; That God would love a Worm I knew, and punish the evil foot That wilful, bruis'd its helpless fom; but that he oherish'd it With milk and oil, I never knew; and therefore did I weep, And I complained in the mild air, because I fade away, And lay me down in thy cold bed, and leave my shining lot,

Queen of the vales, the matron Clay answerd; I heard thy sighs. And all thy moans flew o' er my roof, but I have called them down: Wilt thou 0 Queen enter my house, 'tis given thee to enter, And to return; fear nothing, enter with thy virgin feet, Plate 6

Copied from Nancy Bogen, William Blake, The Book of Thelt A Facsimile and a Critical Text ( ~rovidencetBrown University Press, 1971). p. 49. 6 IV. The eternal gates terrific porter raised the northern bar: The1 enter'd in & saw the secrets of the land unknown: She saw the couahes of the dead, & where the fibrous roots Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twiats: A land of sorrow & of tears where never mile was seen. She wandered in the land of clouds throe valleys dark, lietning Dolours & lamentations: waiting oft beside a dewy She stood in silence, listning to the voioes of the ground, Till to her own grave plot she Game, & there she sat down, And heard this voice of sorrow breathed from the hollow pit--

Why earmot the Ear be closed to its own destruction? Or the glistning Xye to the poison of a smile: Why are Eyelids stord with arrows ready drawn, Where a thou~andfighting men in anbush lie1 Or an Eye of gifts & graoes. show'ring fruits & coined pld; Why a Tongue impressgd with honey from every wine Why an Ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in? Why a Nostril wide inhaling terror trembling & affright, Why a tender aurb upon the youthful burning boy; Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?

The Virgin started from her seat, & with a shriek. Fled back unhinderd till she aame into the vales of Har. The End BIBLIOGRAPHY

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