The symbol of Christ in the poetry of William Blake Item Type text; Thesis-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Nemanic, Gerald, 1941- Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 01/10/2021 18:11:13 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/317898 THE SYMBOL OF CHRIST IN THE POETRY OF WILLIAM BLAKE Gerald Carl Neman!e A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the 3 DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 1965 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This thesis has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the. Dean of the Graduate College when in his judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. APPROVAL. BY THESIS DIRECTOR This thesis has been approved on the date shown below: TABLE OF COITENTS INTRODUCTION. 0O OOOO 0O&0000OO THE LYRIC POETRY,,O&O0OO0000OOOO THE EARLY PROPHECIES,Jo o & & <S> O 0,0 © 0 o THE LATER PROPHECIES, ........... THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL. CGMCLUSIOMOO&0O OOOOO 00 O&OO0 FOOTNOTES. oodoooooooooooooo BIBLIOG]W>HY. , OO. 0OQ0O .0 OOOO CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION TO BLAKE6S THEOSOPHY Blake told Crabb Robinson that Jesus^ is the only God, 66And so am I, and so are you,66^ Perhaps in' the understanding of this paradoxical statement we find the key to all Blake6s thoughts on religion and philosophy. From an early age William Blake had been fascinated by the Christ­ ian religion, but it was only as a mature adult that he used the figure of Christ and put it into a prominent role in a private vision of history. Blake9s vision of history is a highly imaginative one. The clearest and most comprehensive elucidation of this vision can be found in Northrup Frye9s excellent study of Blake, Fearful Symmetry. I have used a good deal of Frye8s commentary in formulating this introductory chapter. It is certainly the clearest way to outline Blake9s concept of history, before turning to the poetry itself.3 Blake considered himself a. prophet1, and, like the Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament (to whom he felt himself closely related) he had the power to visualize the world., the whole of existence, as a drama of Fall, Redemption and Apocalypse. His later prophetic^ works, The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem become epic narratives of this vision. In The Four Zoas. Blake, as prophet-poet, is possessed by a daughter of inspiration (Eno) and sees the history of the world: 1 Then Eno, a daughter of Beulah9 took a Moment of Time And drew it out to seven thousand years with much care & affliction And many tears 9 & in every year made windows into Eden. She also took an atom of space & open’d its centre Into Infinitude & ornamented it with wondrous art.-5 Blake sees the basic framework of history as Fall. Redemption and Apocalypse. But within this framework are cycles of history. These cycles can be likened to a wheel rolling on a linear plane. The wheel continually rolls back upon itself (i.e., history keeps repeating itself in cyclic fashion) but keeps moving along toward the end of the plane (as history moves from Fall to Apocalypse). There is, of course, only one difficulty in this view of existence. Fall and Redemption through Christ are history already happened, whereas Apocalypse is history of the future seen through prophetic vision. Apocalypse may occur at any time, i.e., the linear plane has no definite limits. Paradoxically, the wheel comes to the end of its journey only when Mankind ceases to believe in the existence of the wheel or plane, when all conceptions of linear time and space have dissolved with the idea of a !Srealt? physical universe. Then all men live in the vision of Christ, and the city of God is found. Blake felt he had good reason to believe the Apocalypse was coming upon the world in his own lifetime. The political revolutions against tyranny going on around him were exciting signs of Man breaking the bonds- .of ignorance and proceeding toward the light of God. Blake realized his own prophetic genius and felt his own task to be that of 3 rallying men8s minds to the final Apocalyptic glory through the power of divine poetry. Northrup Frye says Blake divided the whole of history into seven major cycles, the last of these being that time from Christ to the present day. Frye finds these cycles clearly delineated in J erusalem. Let us start again with Blake9s division of history into seven periods identified with the Biblical Eyes of God, and called by Blake Lucifer, Moloch, Elohim, Shaddai, Pachad, Jehovah and Jesus. Each Eye is an Ore cycle, yet each, as an Eye of God can only be the eye with which man sees as God, is a plateau of imaginative development, and there is, thanks to Los, some evolutionary development in their sequence. The sixth of these, the vision of Jehovah or the Hebrew'religious imagination, is...a mixture of genuine imagination and moral law, and was purified into the former by Jesus. The vision of Jehovah, thus purified, constitutes the essential Bible. The cycles of Blakean history are not identical, but follow similar patterns. A cycle begins with a revolutionary burst of imaginative life, often precipitated by one man and eventually per­ meating a large group of people. The J ehovah cycle begins with the mind of Moses and eventually becomes the mind of the Hebrew nation. Moses the revolutionary leads the Jews out of Egypt. The Hebrew nation degenerates after crossing the J ordan into Canaan. Imagination is replaced by reason, the spirit by the letter of the law, Moses by the Pharisees, The coming of Jesus brings the cyclical nature of history into focus. Jesus comes as s. revolutionary of the imagination to fulfill the law of Moses (i.e., to separate its intrinsic Mosaic from its extrinsic Pharisaic nature). The cycle of Jesus is similar to that of Jehovah (Moses), but it refines and clarifies the Mosaic vision. In this way the cycles are progressive. The beginning of these eras represents their greatest hours, and from that point of origin they lose their force. The era of Jesus, in Blake6s mind, has decayed through the crucifixtion, establishment of church religion and science to the low point of contemporary deism, the epitome of reasonable, non-imaginative religion. Jesus has great importance in this view of history. Jesus was a. Hebrew prophet as had been Ezekiel, Elijah, and others before him. But the light of Jesus is unique; his imaginative vision is so strong that to compare him with the early prophets is like comparing the bright, intimate sun with faraway twinkling stars. The source of light is the same energy, but in Jesus the beam is stronger, more pervasive, clearer to the mind. J esus also introduces a new element into the prophetic imagination in the doctrine of forgiveness. What can this Gospel of Jesus be? What Life & Immortality, What was it that he brought to Light . That Plato and Cicero did not write?... },Thy Sins are all forgiven thee."7 Only in the most intense mystical vision can the prophet divorce himself completely from Self, and only as a Self-less mind can Man reach the height of compassion necessary to complete the Redemption. Thus Christ, by reaching this Self-less mind, has modified the cycles of history. Man is no longer plunging from the original Fall, but progressing toward the final Apocalypse. All the cycles of history are'progressive, since the six cycles before Christ progress toward him, preparing the way for his visions. 5 The important element in the personality of Jesus was his ability to ignite the minds of other men. The sheer power of his imagination became a force in making other men understand and follow him. We still live, according to Blake, within the cycle of Jesus, since the kernel of his mind still resides within the human psyche. The power of his imagination could not die with his body. When Christ comes a second time (i.e., when the imaginative vision which the historical Jesus represents flares anew in all Mankind) Apocalypse will occur. ^ The question as to whether or not Blake thought of Christ as $tGod$i has little more than semantic difficulty, "Thou art a Man, God is no more,/Thy own humanity learn to adore..."® It is evident that he visualized no ^otherness" in God. Man is God, or at least can be. The seed of Nazarene genius is within the minds of all modern men, and it has only to be brought to flower. Jesus, the revolutionary hero of mankind, comes into the world and is crucified by the forces he came to destroy. As a physical body, Jesus of Nazareth is bom, lives among men and finally dies on a cross.